Homeschooling and School
« Previous EntriesStarting homeschooling: the first weeks
Friday, December 7th, 2007We have completed three weeks of homeschooling. They have worked pretty well so far.
We have hit on a system that suits us for now. I do formal work with Harry while William is at preschool every morning. This had been a problem time for us in the past as twenty-two month old Ben made teaching pretty difficult for us. So before we embarked on this venture again, I thought of as many ideas as I could for keeping Ben busy, interested and occupied. So each morning I get a different, exciting project or toy out for him to do or play with - one that he doesn’t normally have. Often he likes to sit at the table and do ’schoolwork’. And I send them outside at playtime to expend some energy.
Somehow I get all the housework done. I walk the dog while Matthew gives the children breakfast. I clear the dishwasher, wash up and put on laundry after breakfast while Harry starts work and the other children colour or demolish the house. I prepare lunch while the children are playing outside. I prepare supper and put away laundry after the school day is over. I shop on-line for groceries in the evenings and think about meals and school work for the following day. It doesn’t feel much different from when I wasn’t homeschooling although I certainly get more done during the day. When Harry was a baby I barely found the time to get dressed, let alone tidy up the kitchen or prepare something for Matthew and me to eat when he got home. If you’d have told me six years on that my days would be like they are I’d have laughed you out of the room with disbelief. But then that’s motherhood: we cope with whatever we seem to be given. Or try to, as best we can.
While Ben naps, I read with the older two or we do play-based learning. We have practiced being doctors, running a grocery shop and operating a cafe. We make food to sell, use real money to buy and sell and write down whatever needs writing down (according to our work, I have never had so many fevers, ailments and illnesses). It covers a lot of what they should be learning without them realising they’re learning. Sometimes we play board games. On days when I am struggling physically, I lie on the sofa while they do this and on really bad days (like this week when the pregnancy nausea seems to have returned with a vengeance), I nap while they sit with me and watch their BBC homeschool programmes and learn all about grammar and synthetic phonics. I open my eyes and find that they’ve learnt to read. That’s my kind of teaching! (Plus I finally feel like I’m getting something for my BBC television licence money.)
Every single day I am thankful not to be doing the long school run I had been doing which was making us all stressed. I have time for my cup of coffee in the morning and that makes all of us happier. If I’m resting in the afternoon I don’t have to rush everyone up (including me!). The pace of life is easier. We also get much more done; by the time I would have been back from the school run, Harry has already done a good amount of work and we have had a pleasant morning. Add to that the one-on-one teaching and he has covered a whole day’s work in a couple of hours.
The rest of the afternoon is spent socializing or going out on errands. Some days we are out all day but Harry is forging ahead with work his peers haven’t even started so although we do mostly ‘formal’ learning I don’t worry when we are learning in other ways.
So what are my concerns? Well, they are minor.
I will be interested to see how this all works when the new baby arrives. But then, when Harry was at school, I was more concerned with coping with the daily schedule than I am now.
Because the Local Education Authority are now officially aware of us homeschooling because Harry was de-registered from school, I have been expecting an unscheduled visit from the Education Welfare Officer but so far she has not made an appearance. Although I am under no obligation to report our progress to her except for furnishing her with details of how I plan to teach Harry, I have always kept fairly detailed records and copies of his work so I think that if she visits I will set her mind at rest by showing her his work and then ask, politely, to be left to get on with it.
I also finally fired the cleaner. I was firmly in agreement with geepeemum’s comment about not finding time to clean but in the end I couldn’t put up with Meriel anymore. So until I can find a good cleaning service, I am resigned to living in semi-squalor or at least spending a good part of my Sunday cleaning instead of spending time as a family.
The main casualty in these new arrangements is, as before, ‘me’ time. A bit of blog reading in the evenings, hurried on-line shopping for Christmas presents and the (very) occasional programme on television and the week is gone - again.
At least you know now why I haven’t posted in over a week - and it’s not because I don’t love you.
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Posted in Homeschooling and School
The playground
Monday, November 26th, 2007I pull up across the street a few metres away from the gate and wait. The poorly dog lies quietly in the back of the car, too sick to wonder why we aren’t home yet. Ben emits little exclamations, attempting to express his surprise at the unscheduled stop.
A few minutes pass and then they start to come out in dribs and drabs, excitable and noisy. More minutes pass and then I see him come out, holding his new gloves. He runs over to a boy I recognise from his class, proudly showing him his gloves. The boy snatches one, throws it to the ground and runs off. Harry walks over, shoulders hunched, and retrieves it and then wanders aimlessly in search of a friend. I watch him for several minutes and as each minute passes I want to scoop him up and take him home. He plays with no-one. He sits on the friendship bench but no-one comes to play with him. Eventually I get out of the car with Ben and cross over to the playground. As he spots me he runs over waving but by the time he gets to me he is crying. I tell him Defa is better enough to come home from the vet, hoping that will cheer him up but it barely registers through his tears. After a while I leave but only after the teacher takes him away, barely concealing her annoyance at my presence (understandably as he is very upset, but not understandable if she knew that this was make-or-break time for us regarding this school). Out of sight, I watch him for the next fifteen minutes. He follows the teacher round. I see her pointing, him shaking his head. He continues to follow her for the remainder of break time but at ten paces. The bell goes.
********
At home that evening I ask him - again - what playtime is usually like. He has already told me how much he hates it, how everyone is already friends and often no-one plays with him, how those that do play with him often engage him in fights or soak his shirt from the drinking tap, how he usually sits on the friendship bench waiting for someone to come, until the bell goes. Witnessing playtime today confirms what he has already told me.
‘Why didn’t you tell me all this when you started?’ I say at the end of our conversation.
‘Because you told me it was a nice school,’ he says, his voice quiet.
********
A week on and he is his old self: cheeky, loving, hardworking, confident, making new friends, renewing old friends.
Because I was not going to leave him at school one more minute.
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Posted in Homeschooling and School
More about the behavioral issues
Monday, November 12th, 2007The last three days have been near-perfect.
The weekend was wonderful, with Harry’s behaviour back to normal after I made it clear to him how upset and disappointed I was (edited to add: about his violent behavior, NOT about the fact that he was crying about school). I laid it on thick, I’ll admit, but we were on the brink of making another major decision about removing him from school and I figured the circumstances required a bit of drama on my part. Matthew and I discussed his behaviour at length over the weekend and decided that if it reverted to bad this morning or after school today then we would almost certainly have to take action because he is clearly not happy.
We were out and about all weekend visiting a French market, shopping, visiting friends and generally not being at home where all the bad behavior has been. Today I got everyone on the school run without any tears (including from Ben, which is a record I think) and then I went to town, shopped for Christmas presents and things I didn’t really need in the lovely sunshine and Ben didn’t cry once (which is definitely a record) and came back to a house which had been cleaned while I was out (I leave so early now for school I haven’t had to do anything about firing the cleaner even though I am still planning to find someone to replace her).
So it’s been a good few days, my lovely boy is back, he had a good day at school today and all in all I’m pretty relieved. Now if only I could sit down with a nice big glass of red wine. And stop reading all those wonderful homeschooling blogs.
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Posted in Homeschooling and School, Parenting
How do you deal with such bad behavior in a five year old?
Friday, November 9th, 2007It’s been a dreadful week, culminating in all four of us crying at some point on the school run this morning, Harry because he didn’t want to go to school, Ben because I insisted on holding his hand on the road to stop him from throwing himself in front of a car, William because he felt caught in the anger-crossfire that punctuated every other minute of this morning’s preparation for school and me out of frustration when it was all over.
Everything in our family life feels out of kilter at the moment. Harry bounds out of school in the afternoon saying he’s had a good day but by the following morning he is tearful, dragging his heels over getting ready, saying he doesn’t want to go to school and behaving really dreadfully, making me lose my patience over and over. Then more tears when we get to the classroom, clinging, begging to go home. By the time I have dropped him at school I feel like I have been through an assault course, physically and mentally.
On top of that, I don’t know what’s happened to my lovely boy. I don’t know where he’s gone. I don’t know if school has made him like this or whether it’s just a (very bad) phase. I feel at my wit’s end with his kicking, punching, screaming, answering back and bad attitude. I’m tired and very stressed. We all are.
Something has to give. But if it’s not school that’s making him like this (although I’m fairly certain it is) and we remove him from school, what then? We’ve taken him out of school unnecessarily.
After six years, you’d have thought I had this parenting thing sussed but then another new challenge comes along making me feel completely incompetent. I try to remember that like all challenges before, this too shall pass. And, as always, I should give it just a bit longer to see if it resolves itself. But I’m going to lose my sanity before it does.
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Posted in Homeschooling and School, Too Many Children
Delaying school for the four year old
Thursday, November 1st, 2007It’s been a mixed week. Harry has been having nightmares and has been crying every morning saying that he doesn’t want to go to school but when I pick him up he says he’s had ‘a great day’ and is full of stories.
So things will stay as they are for now.
Matthew doesn’t want William, who’s four and a half, to start at this school next term. He thinks his speech is too bad and he will struggle generally with school life. I agree, but the school run, which currently involves three trips, criss-crossing the county every day totalling nearly three hours in the car daily is a nightmare for me and will be pretty awful with a newborn in tow, because they always poop right up the back of their sleepsuit at some point in every journey, or so it seems, and dealing with that three times a day? well, not my idea of fun. Also, we have two sitting for lunch (because the toddler needs to nap while we have lunch) and two sittings for supper (because Matthew is never home in time to eat as a family) so you can see why I have no time to update this site. I’m immersed in domesticity. And I don’t like it. Having William at school would take a bit of the burden off.
Don’t ask me to make a decision about it all though: I’m a Libran. I could be here all year deciding.
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Posted in Homeschooling and School
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