"Human life is beyond comprehension."

If there is one thing that I have learnt from the first few years of home education, it's that child lead learning really does work. Being able to design your own timetable around the things that they are interested in is not only effective in their development but the things that they are learning really stick. When I was at school I hated reading and writing comprehension at school. The information I was given was generally dull which meant that I answered the questions based solely on what I had read. I know that's the whole point, but being able to make the reading part an interesting piece full of facts that are of a genuine interest makes all the difference.

 
As we sat at home today shying away from the cold weather for a change, I printed out a sheet about beetles (Opeie's current interest aside from Teen Titans and being chained up only to escape like harry Houdini). I then set out some questions for him to answer in full sentences and left him to it while I made lunch and cleaned the house. Opeie shouted through the house telling me that his activity was fun (a sentence you would have never heard me using when taking about written comprehension).

It was a great activity for putting in to practice all the writing skills that he has learnt over the last couple of years while also giving him fun facts about one of the things that he enjoys learning about most. A win/win for home education. 

"Whoops!" the aliens gasped. "Oh dear!" But their pants-tracker was BLEEPING. How could underpants be here?

Our ever expanding dinosaur book collection is getting pretty big at the moment and Opeie cant get enough of all the dino facts we read about. Before getting in to the factual side of his mesozoic learning adventure there was Dinosaurs love underpants. Opeie would walk in to any of our local libraries, make a beeline for the children's sections and start thumbing his way through looking for entertaining dinosaur related stories.

Recently it has been all factual dinosaur books that have been taking up his reading time but when we were offered the chance to review the new book from the fun pants collection Opeie jumped at the chance. Aliens Love Dinopants follows the same crazy path as the other titles before it. This time aliens are catapulted to a distant land untouched by humans, luckily the trusty pants tracker finds that there are underpants near by. They are greeted though by not only a pile of huge pants but a group of angry pants loving dinosaurs that had eluded the human race and were living a peaceful life hidden away. I did have to google and see if it was based on a true story but sadly no.

Opeie found the book very entertaining and it was lovely reading out in the sunshine staring down at a peaceful valley, we talked about how we could image the dinosaurs living there munching on all the lovely plants (and wearing their undies of course!). We're both looking forward to the next installment  of pants fun.