A week how it should be

Sandcastles, picnics, tiedye, poi, dragonflies, butterflies, art and yummy food. Yep that just about sums up the last week. Mmm how short and sweet was that

Solstice and No Sun

We did get up at 4:00 am to see the sunrise but I was here and Myster C was at his dad's. It was cloudy and neither of us in our respective places saw the sun pop it's head up today. After doing my thing I went back to bed only to be woken up at 7:30 am by Myster C on the phone to tell me that his dad had too!!

I don't suppose we will see the sun set either because it's still so cloudy but its been a good day. Myster C is back home now and looking rather jaded by his early start which he says was fun and cold.

Monster Cakes and Paperwork

The last few days have been filled to the brim with learning about the Iranian election, swine flu which led on to farming methods, pottery pig making, Indian food eating with home ed friends, some more maths, a bit of reading, gymnastics and dance. Today we both feel a bit under the weather and just hoping we aren't going down with a bug. I am swamped by work with a deadline to meet and its not helped by the fact that I keep procrastinating by sifting through all the articles and emails about the Badman Review, drafting a letter to my MP and filling in every survey and opinion poll I can.

Myster C is on extreme go slow today, but has managed to enthusiastically walk to the corner shop to buy a huge bar of chocolate to melt on the top of some green fairy cakes he has just made. The natural spirulina food colouring has made them a rather luminous yellowy green so we have called them Monster Cakes. He has created green goggle eyes out of the left over fondant icing from the chocolate bird nest making saved from Ostara / Easter. He has popped two on each cake in the chocolate topping so we have 12 scrummy little monsters to eat. Lucky me. He was quite creative about the placement of the eyes and mouths to create different expressions. A bit like cartoons in cake form. He now wants to make more to sell them. Myster C definitely has a capitalist streak, based on past money making schemes he has come up with, which I relabel as entrepreneurial tendancies.

And Monday went like this

Today I awoke at 5:30 and panicked.....thought I was going to be a guest on a radio station talking about the outrageous proposals put forward by the Badman to keep us home edders in line and ticking boxes. I sat for 2 hrs and scribbled notes on each wretched Recommendation and various other related issues. But in the end the Home Education Review chat and phone in was dropped in favour of breaking news stories about old train lines opening and crabs escaping onto the M3. But hey I'm prepared for next time.

So our morning proceeded with Myster C making Lego spaceships on the floor with help from the cats, then doing a bit of maths sat on top of the fridge freezer with his head nearly on the ceiling and then reading a book about the discovery of chocolate with his mouthful of peanut butter sandwiches. I didn't make him look at the blackboard once or put his hand up to go to the loo. See.... not very good at it am I, this education mularky.

The afternoon was spent in the delightful company of our many home edding friends and their children at one of our regular meets. Far from being hidden from public view we took over one corner of a park with a bright array of blankets and camping chairs and a mishmash of kids and bicycles. Three guesses as to what the adults main topic of converstaion was... Yep that's right. As for what the children talked about I have no idea since they were on top of the skate ramps, miles away on the swings or in the bushes.

Later we picked up Myster C's pottery Spitfire/Lancaster that he made a few weeks ago. It looks pretty cool. Then we headed for the supermarket where we sat in the carpark for half an hour discussing the ins and outs of forensic psychology. Myster C insisted the conversation take place in the car in case the supermarket security guard over heard us and thought we were planning a crime spree. His cautiousness didn't extend quite far enough though as he announced to a non home ed mum, we know from dance, that we bumped into in the frozen goods isle, that his mum was soon to be doing things against the law but don't tell the government. Get out of that one Dreadess! I think I need to have a word in his shell about time and place and solidarity. Tomorrow I need to re-explain the Home Ed Review situation a little more clearly before he starts the rumours flying about and people start wondering what it is that Myster C's mum could possibly be up to.

Posted by the Dreadess only....Myster C is asleep....I hope

Standing up to say, well actually we're sitting ...

Our lifestyle is very precious to us and yet we find it threatened by the latest piece of tosh produced by the government's deadly duo "Balls and Badman". So here it is, our ramblings of day to day life, what we learn, how we learn it, how we don't learn it, when we learn it and why we don't learn it the state school way. We will carry on as we always have done, it works for both us. We are happy, productive and achieving our own goals at our own pace. We will not be changing to fit in with the Recommendations of the Government Comissioned Review of Home Education.

we shall learn in the seas and oceans,
we shall learn with growing confidence and growing strength everywhere,
we shall defend our Home Ed, whatever the cost may be,
we shall learn on the beaches,
we shall learn on the kitchen floor,
we shall learn in the fields and in the streets,
we shall learn in the hills;
we shall never surrender,

Sorry, we got a bit carried away. We're learning about WWII at the mo and it just seemed fitting, what with all these fascists trying to rule our lives.