Friday 6 December 2013

One Snowy Night and fractions with the benefits of home education

We had a lovely morning watching a show based on the Nick Butterworth story, One Snowy Night with our friends from French today. Harry and Peter know the story very well and they both chuckled lots. We went to a playground afterwards too where the children had fun exploring the icy leaves and slides.



We did some maths based on fractions today too. I knew Harry understood the concepts of halves and quarters well from talking to him so we did the related Conquer Maths lesson and a workbook page, which also covered thirds. It is possible to communicate a great deal of learning and understanding verbally when home educating, which is great for us as it minimises the amount of time spent filling in pages of worksheets, which I do not find the most inspiring way to learn something! I use worksheets more as a testing tool and they can at least provide some reading and writing practise too. Harry enjoys maths based work and it comes naturally to him, so he is working through year 2 Conquer Maths lessons at the moment (he would be year 1 at school). This is also a huge benefit of home education and one of our initial reasons for the decision - the child can move at his own pace and that isn't just beneficial for working ahead of school age, but equally (if not more important) where the child is working below school age in something. They are able to revisit several times and over a longer period and fully understand something that is difficult for them by trying different approaches. I believe that primary age children develop at different ages in different things and I do not want my children to be told they are behind or failing at something because they do not tick a box of when they 'should' be doing something and for that then to become self-fulfilling. In my experience, Harry has picked up topics he has found hard in reading and maths very easily simply after leaving him for a few weeks or even months and then going back to them. That turned into a bit of a ramble, sorry! 

Anyway, Harry also had his enjoy-a-ball class this afternoon and he worked really hard and concentrated well today. Before we went the boys played with some bricks and Lego, making deliveries to each other and building garages for cars. 

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