Home + School

Thank goodness for TED-Ed.

Well this has been a rather different kind of week: Homeschooling. Something I had only had a vague notion of up until about 5 days ago, had done very little preparation for and certainly had no recognizable talent for.

First off I discovered that I couldn't literally think straight in our house. It's such a mess (yes, you Saffa Mama's - hard to imagine, I know) that I needed to tame that beast before I could think about the ABC's. So Week 1 of homeschooling was actually spent doing housework. We sorted out washing and boys cupboards and toy boxes and stuff like that, and the noble Kamla waged war with the Fabulosa and a mop and we now have something resembling a normal home. I'm sure the boys learnt something in all of that.

So this week has actually been Week 2.  And it's been a pretty steep curve, to put it mildly. "Just give me the syllabus" said my husband on Monday evening, as he is meant to take the controls for a bit on Tuesday. "Well we have the National Curriculum" says I, pointing to a very large file "but that only tells you what we need to achieve, and not really how to do it". There was rather long silence after that, with a bit of muttering too. Anyway he was too tired to teach so I think the kids just coloured in pictures or something on Tuesday. Watched TED, probably. Thank goodness for TED.

The text books have been duly ordered from England and are now awaited with much anticipation (by me mainly). In the meantime it's a bit all over the place. Some days have been quite structured and we've done maths and spelling and gripping stuff like that (I can't remember any grammar and I sit with my calculator) but most days it's all been a bit whimsy. We've done airplanes and jet engines since we'd just spent so much time in them (and watched a brilliant BBC film on the making of the A330). We also learnt all about New York and urban hierarchies and spheres of influence (how far would you travel to go to Peebles Hospital?) and today we did Superstitions because it was Friday 13th.

So I've learnt quite a bit this past week, although I'm not so sure about the kids. They dug out all their old schoolbooks today, for reassurance I think and to gently remind me that there is more to school than just the Discovery Science Channel.

What I've really learnt though, is how happy I am at home. Tyler has quietly given me the space just to pootle around here in Carrot Bay in our very beautiful house, re-educating myself in becoming a mensch again (oh yes, we also learnt about Rosh Hashanah as well).

This may make a sane (and educated) person of me yet. I have nothing but optimism about it all, despite not remembering what a syntax is, or what 9 X 12 is.