Working with, not on your kids...

I am sitting waiting for my eldest to finish his iGCSE English literature exam. He was pretty nervous going in, mainly about how long the exam was going to be, two and a quarter hours sounds like ages. 

I have time to fill and I am feeling particularly philosophical,  thinking about my last fifteen years of home educating and what I understand now and wish I had known and believed when I first started this journey.

I can see so clearly now that the key to home education is believing in your kids and allowing them to be who they are and working with them to let that unique awesomeness blossom in them.

This week I signed my two Border Collies up for sheepdog training. I have learned a lot from my extremely clever dogs over the last 5 years. When my oldest dog was one year old, he is five now, I started sheepdog training and visited a true shepherd,  he has had international champion sheepdogs, brought up with farming, sheep and dogs. Was seen on 'One Man and his Dog' at a young age, many years ago. 

The first time I visited him we went out in to a field with sheep and he said absolutely nothing. He took my dog off the lead and let go. We stood and watched as my dog, having never seen sheep in his life, take off he flanked around the sheep went behind them and brought them back to us. It was so exhilarating and thrilling to watch. Here is the You Tube video of him doing this if you are interested.
 

  This pattern of saying nothing and releasing the dog was how this shepherd teaches. The lessons continued in this way with only the additional of myself and the shepherd walking backwards with the sheep in front of us and the dog behind the sheep. As we turned slightly the dog would shift so he remained behind the sheep at 12 o'clock to us, this gentle leading is called finding balance. 

I have also taken this same dog gun dog training.  This involves lots of retrieving and guns. I knew that my dog wasn't a natural gun dog but I was curious and thought it might be fun. It was fun, but I can declare official my sheep dog is the world's worst gun dog. His idea of retrieval is chasing the ball then possibly bringing it back, if it seems worth it. Also he really hates guns. We had a giggle, well I did, mainly at his complete ineptitude compared with the 'super duper' Spaniels who were definitely showing off, all stuck up with their long shiny ears and perfect retrieves. We left feeling slightly inadequate,  but 'hey' what did I expect!

All this got me thinking, recently been chatting with many new home educators,  that have chosen this path because their kids weren't flourishing in school.  It seems to be quite common that it is the very creative kids who love to dream and imagine that haven't fitted in to our traditional schooling models that are quite academic and rigid. These children seem to come out of school and really don't want to be squeezed back into structured learning.

I can see it so easily now, looking back, it seems so obvious.  Why do we try and make 'gun dogs' out of our 'sheepdogs'? We need to step on to this new field of learning and release these creative kids to dream and create,  work with their strengths,  believe in them , see their true potential,  not in terms of 'number of ball retrievals' (exam marks) or their ability to be tough when someone shoots a gun (strict timetables), but look on with excitement as they take off and be what they were created for and finding a gentle balance with them.

Week in the life of...

I try to get up before my boys in the morning, not being little anymore they don't leap out of bed at 6am and demand fun, so I need an alarm clock now. I usually assess my day the night before and try and see how late I can arise with out messing up my carefully planned morning routine.

So yes I spring out of bed full of vim and vigour (sarcasm) and start my day with a morning routine of folding clean clothes before leaving bedroom, get dress, carry dirty clothes, my gadget bag (contains essential to life electronic devices) and struggle downstairs slightly overloaded to my bathroom. I put on the washing machine, clean the bathroom, and prepare myself for the day. As we only have one bathroom, if I get interrupted in this routine I get stressy.

Then I go let the dog out into the garden and go start cooking bacon and eggs, or similar for breakfast. Make a cup of tea for me and the boys, plus empty my dishwasher. While the breakfast is cooking I go drag children out of bed. This is achieved with a 'Mum of teens' dog lick attack. I take the dog with me upstairs and get him in turn to leap on the boys and lick them awake. If this doesn't work, I have taken to lately dragging my eldest legs out of bed and sitting him up, then quickly positioning the dog so he can't lay back down. I have tried removal of covers, stealing pillows, suggesting the use of an alarm clock..well the alarm clock is useless he can have a siren going off by his head and sleep through it. I have tried leaving him to sleep in, but all this does is turn him nocturnal, which isn't good for productivity.

After breakfast, depending on how dozy the boys are we either go for a walk and do a strength workout or watch a documentary. We are going through different science/history/social studies/geography documentaries which we watch may be three a week on different days.

 Every week day morning we do maths (exceptional circumstances withstanding). Sometime my youngest does maths while I cook breakfast, they are both using the online conquer maths program, most days I like to sit with my youngest and help him find ways of thinking through the maths, I never answers the questions for him, but I do show him clever tricks for quick mental calculations. My eldest like to work by himself on maths, unless really stuck.

My weekly plan for structured work I would like us to get through changes termly, depending on our goals and aims. Its totally geared towards the boys ambitions and dreams.

Currently this term we are working on iGCSE Physics using this book, we are all working through it together, my eldest is making note cards with key terms and formulas for revision and my youngest is just making general notes. We all snuggle up on the sofa and I read through and explain, until they understand one topic or part topic if a complex one. I use real life examples they can relate to, for example, how would you work out the velocity of our dog as he runs from one end of the room to the other?

This may seem quite a formal approach to learning, but my eldest son has goals which require certain exams, so we need to work through some set work for the exams. As a home ed. Mum I am always very aware of the balance between interest and driving the boys to achieve. If they are not interested they won't learn, so I drop the subject or find something that gives them the motivation to regain that interest. I am also aware of age differences between my boys (3 years), so obviously I don't expect my youngest to concentrate for as long and if it gets too technical and switches his brain off, its time for him to go do something else.

On top of the above formal work, my eldest works on English, which is set by his tutor. He is currently working on English literature iGCSE, having just passed his English language iGCSE.

All other learning is informal and autonomous, here is an interesting article on autonomous learning. Our days are full of spontaneous conversations, discussions on every topic you can imagine, for example, this morning we had a 'film studies' type discussion on about Star Trek and how the different aliens were supposed to be based on different stereotype national identities. This discussion also included the big question 'Do aliens exist?'. All quite fascinating, and as always learning happened whilst laughing.

My sons are both avid computer gamers, I gave up trying to turn them in to gardeners or chefs quite a few years ago, they love computer games, much like their father and myself. I can't really condemn this love of PC gaming, when one of my favourite ways to relax is to load up 'League of Legends' and play a few competitive online matches, trying to keep the 17 year old gamers on their toes! I have an extremely competitive streak and this is a fun outlet for it. Anyway digress slightly, my boys have found that role play gaming is fun, its basically drama online, so you act the part of the character in the game you are playing, this is usually part of a community of players, who you can chat to whilst playing. Its sounds mindless, but believe me its highly complex including flying realistic flight simulators whilst talking to a control tower, mapping flight paths and rescuing comrades. I challenge Mums and Dads to attempt to play these games, the multi tasking involved is huge. Both boys have become server admins for servers running gaming communities, to do this they had to write application  and submit them, they had to show maturity and responsibility, believe me there is nothing worse than an 'online gaming troll' so they both are learning to be polite respectful, but also how to deal with idiots (a useful life skill). Both boys have learn't internet safety, how to avoid scamming and how to keep a balance between real life and online life. I discourage night time gaming, so most of the time they go on the PC is in the afternoon, before dinner. This is if we are not out swimming with friends or visiting interesting places.

The boys evenings are jam packed. I guess this is my season as taxi driver, I remember my Mum and Dad taxi driving me about at this age too.  My eldest is very involved with the Air Cadets and is highly motivated to be a pilot, hence the exam work. He is also working on his Duke of Edinburgh award so he is helping to lead the local cub pack. He does many sporting and physical activities with the Aircadets and is also working through a BTEC in aviation. Nearly every weekend has some sort of activity, from service in the community to flying aeroplanes.

My youngest loves Scouts and the camping, archery, hiking, shooting and chopping wood with axes that this involves. He is also learning Karate, which is excellent exercise. He reads every night at bedtime, spy stories and wants to be a Ninja.

Then we all love to watch TV in the evenings together as long as it is an episode of Castle or Chuck, or similar.

So this is us...how we roll...

Today's Pigeon rescue.