More little things

9yo displayed that he does have some organisational skills while we were playing Minecraft and he wandered off and said he had found some mines, then told me the coordinates so I could join him. He had made a book and quill to use as a journal (and would be less likely to misplace seeing as it’s in-game) in which he was writing down the coordinates of our bases and any mines he encountered (which would then be deleted once we’d finished exploring and digging them out).

If it's relevant then it's ok!

[9yo was carrying on like a pork chop about doing his maths workbook.]

9yo: Do I haaaaaaave toooooo [bleat whine moan etc]
me: It’s on the way to stuff you’ll have to know to be an engineer.

[9yo’s eyes light up]

9yo: Oh in that case it’s okay!

[9yo hits the books]

This work by ryivhnn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

Writing and thoughts on school

From writing and art not really being his “thing”, 9yo recently had a sudden explosion of doing a bit of it without me yelling out that it was bookwork o’clock and him coming and doing some or not as he felt like.

He made a new character which is supposed to be a roleplaying character (though I have already told him I’m not sure how well it would fit into the WoD Changeling system we have but I can usually make things work and if there is a next time maybe it can be after Winter if I ever get my paws on and head around the new version) and spent a couple of days writing notes and a backstory:

!schooling 0000L06z-13z

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We had one day where the smalls played Maths Seeds and 8yo found himself a doco about octopi (or at least the bit I saw of it had an octopus glooping through a “maze” of clear plastic pipes) just because it was fun. We had a kerbside collection recently which meant there were a lot of people kerbside collecting, including JJ who picked up an outdoor setting, three tubs, a shelving unit and two working monitors.

!schooling from whenever til now

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Due to stuff (some it was the parents coming up to visit for a couple of weeks, some is that business has picked up dramatically), I haven’t been keeping track of the homeschooly stuff. Also we’ve been finding better things to do than sitting and doing bookwork, so it’s a really good thing that’s not the core of our homeschooling program (I need to write one of those for next year by the way, and also a booklist). So here’s some photos of things it occurred to me to point a camera at.

!schooling 0000G10n - 0000G15n | Jun 17-21

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And just as you’re enjoying the nice blissful month of no weekly posts from fyn, we’re starting again! Anyway we’re about midyear so this is part catch-up and part vague plan for the rest of the year.

We had one week of staggered flu (nothing too serious, just lots of sleeping, lethargy and general blarginess) followed by a week of gastro (again not too serious in the grand scheme, the kids were a bit lethargic but not listless, the biggest issue was the washing machine choosing to break down immediately before the gastro hit and it was out of action for a couple of weeks), followed by a short week (thanks to a public holiday) of me taking it easy because I was exhausted from the previous two, followed by a week of JJ catching a really bad flu and then a week of me catching a much milder version of that flu which technically only lasted a day, I just chose to take the rest of the week easy. We did have a few bouts of okay or mostly okay in that period fortunately.

!schooling 0000E25c - F02n | 6-10 May

This weekly stuff is tiring. Seriously who reads this anyway? May just start hiding them as I still kind of need to write them. Anyway.

Bit of a slow week this week as the kids all caught a cold and I spent a couple of days heroically fending it off.

The kids wanted me to teach them how to draw. Actually what they really wanted was for me to magically confer kickass drawing skills onto them. I told them they would need to practise a lot as most of drawing was getting your eyes, brain and hand to cooperate and the remainder was your imagination. I put out a few items on the table including a Duplo block which I deliberately angled towards them. They don’t like drawing things on angles, everything has to be STRAIGHT. Even 8yo who currently has slightly better spatial perception drew it straight, even though he drew all three corners that he could see (in a straight line rather than having the middle one come down slightly as it did in perspective). Almost forgot about maths bookwork. 8yo is at a stage in Dragonbox where it’s stopped pretending it’s a game and has presented him with actual maths, with cute graphics like it’s marker on nicely textured paper. 6yo is struggling with Dragonbox so opted for her book and is progressing extremely slowly with it (getting bored easily and I think it’s s getting a bit hard for her).

!schooling 0000E11c - E15n | Apr 23-26

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Monday: sick. Fortunately there was JJ to help with maths. JJ was making noises about wanting to do modular arithmetic. When I passed the kids were doing basic arithmetic on the whiteboard. JJ wasn’t quite sure who was where and thought 8yo knew how to carry 10s. I said we were working on carrying 10s, he hadn’t quite got it yet but could so multiple digit addition and subtraction in his head as long as the numbers were under 10.

Home Ed Program 2013

Now with more detail and split into National Curriculum subject areas as best I can manage (because I fail at reductionism and bureaucracy seems to fail at holism; with some luck perhaps we shall collide in a catalystic rather than confrontational manner somewhere in the middle, and bonus if this helps someone somewhere in some way).

The players are an 8 year old boy, a 6 year old girl and a 4 year old boy. Bookwork (which includes using the computer programs) is officially done weekly and is tied to their pocket money, they can do extra for fun and profit, and they don’t get paid if they don’t do the work. The 4yo doesn’t get pocket money and isn’t required to do the bookwork though he will usually do some if everyone else is.