"Perfection is attained by slow degrees; it requires the hand of time."

Day 104:

For many of us the last 100 or so days has forced us into seriously changing the speed in which we are living. Ive always been fairly chill but I've seen the people around me have to adapt to this new way of getting through the days. I had high hopes for the lockdown period, I was going to learn new skills and pick up things that I had put down a long time ago, and although I definitely have learned some new skills and have tackled some new projects, this time at home hasn't been as productive as I had invisioned because of concentrating on our emotional wellbeing. I lay in bed tonight thinking about how much creative fun we have had, I have really been empowered by the things we have been doing and Its been awesome watching Opeie get into his drawing too, I've been putting a lot more thought into how his home education is going to be going from this point and I'm really excited to see where it goes.

"A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world."

When we started the home ed back up at the start of the month, I had every intention of having a museum week but sadly something happened and it completely threw me. So last week we decided it was time to start making up for that and decided to visit Derby Museum and Art Gallery. I love a museum that grabs your attention straight away and the Natural history section of the museum was pretty much all we needed for a perfect afternoon of visual education.

We can pretty much rate a museum on the amount of beetles we find there and this one did not let us down. Opeie loves Coleoptera displays where he can see his beloved beetles up close. 

After having a look around we fluttered our eyelashes at the front desk and asked whether they would mind us painting while we were there. We've gone ahead and painted without asking in places before and people can be really funny. They were more than happy to let us get arty so we found a nice spot to get set up and let our creative juices flow. Museums and Art galleries are usually quiet but this place was so peaceful. We were both fully relaxed as we painted in perfect surroundings.

It's afternoons like this that really reinforce the decision to home-ed. learning visually in a relaxed environment and at a Childs pace is what education should be. Opeie can take what he wants from a visit like this and the both of us probably came away learning something completely different from each other. It's always important to end a day of learning on a high and it was all smiles as we left Derby. Time to plan our next museum trip.

"Writing is an exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go."

When it comes to homeschooling kids you've really got to have some creativity in you yourself to keep everything exciting. We've found this mostly with Opeie's writing as although he does love writing, he loses interest pretty quick and wants to move on to something else. He has created newspapers and magazines and keeps various diaries about his interests and our day to day fun. We are always looking for new ways to keep the writing fresh though and a few weeks back a package came through the door (the usual weekly LEGO purchase delivery) and Opeie did his usual excited dance wondering what it was. It made me think about how excited I would get as a child when mail came with my name on it (I loved those Beano club deliveries). It was clear then that what Opeie needed was a pen pal, or two (or three).

I have a lovely friend who I met through Micro scooters, who's daughter is a few weeks younger than Opeie, they both love their scooters, LEGO and Superheroes, it was a perfect fit. Around the same time someone from one of the online Homeschooling groups I am part of was looking for a pen pal for her little boy, also the same age as Opeie and another fan of those magical bricks, it was like it was meant to be.

After securing two new friends to write to, Opeie got straight to work writing them both a letter introducing himself and letting them know a little about his interests. It's always lovely to see Opeie getting excited about the work he is doing and a lot of effort went into the handwriting and spelling, I know this because of the tongue sticking out of the side of his face as he was concentrating (something I always did myself at his age).

  With the letters posted, Opeie had reached a new peak of excitement and couldn't contain it for the next few days everytime he heard the mail drop through the letter box. It didn't take long for his first reply to arrive and as expected the reply spurred on an instant writing session to try and beat our local post collection. Writing can seem so daunting to some children but if you find the right outlet for it you can have them motivated in no time. Opeie has always seen both Mrs M and I writing various things for companies and publications so he see's it as the norm.

Since the pen palling began, Opeie has since secured another pen pal through one of Mrs M's friends who we are yet to write to yet but I'm sure we will be getting on with that in the next few days. What I love about this the most, is the confidence in his writing and the motivation to continue. I'm sure that Max, Daisy, Talulah will end up being the best of friends to Opeie. 

“There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent.”... and LEGO

As the school year comes to its final week I am reminded that it's business as usual for us homeschooling families. There are no term times for Opeie and although he gets to spend some awesome quality time with his brother over the 6 week holiday, our learning continues because the home education has become a way of life now. This morning as we chatted about what we were going to be doing, I said 'time for us to wind down a little this week' but with out realising we transformed our morning game of hockey to a fun spelling exercise. This is the magic of being a creative and ever evolving teacher to an equally creative 6-year-old.

There is something to learn in literally everything we do and LEGO has added creativity into so many of our fun activities. The building, following instructions and symmetry of many of the builds have been such great lessons for home education and the huge variety of parts, figures and animals mean that there is no end to the mini role playing we can do, which does wonders for both creative thinking and confidence building. Remember our post about the Berlin wall?



The great thing about LEGO is that they are constantly reinventing themselves with new themes and when it comes to their brand, LEGO City has for us been the strongest line for its educational value. This range has given us the chance to talk about volcanoes, arctic exploration, Space and last year the Fun in the park kit gave us such an amazing chance to talk about diversity throughout the world.





LEGO has now joined forces with National Geographic kids on their LEGO City jungle range, which has again given us everything that we need for another LEGO themed project. Weve been learning about the wildlife that can be found in the jungle, different foods that can grow in the climate and about indiginous tribes that live in these jungle areas. as with many of the newer city kits we've also been able to cover the importance of gathering information and learning from these areas and what a huge part science plays in findings.



"The partnership has come about to inspire children to explore, discover and learn about jungles and the importance of their preservation", Which really is a great reason to be partnering up. I like to think that a lot of Opeie's learning is making him more aware of his surroundings and he is also receiving a great understanding of the amazing world that is out there for him to investigate.









the new range has been a huge hit with the boys and Opeie's new love of jungle animals has got him looking at the Jungle exploration site kit and the Jungle halftrack mission kit so that he can roleplay with the new jungle cats from the range (I'd like to get my hands on these myself).

The entire range can be found HERE.

This amazing team up also offers LEGO fans the chance to win a very exciting prize with the LEGO City Jungle competition. Further details can be found at www.lego.com/jungle

Good luck to any of you entering.

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

It seems that every year at the end of march, that Ferris Beuller quote pops into my head "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it". Tonight was no different, as I stood in the kitchen making a cup of coffee, thinking about Opeie's birthday yesterday, it surfaced again. These are words to live by. 6 years can go by so quickly and the last 6 have been my quickest to date. Becoming a parent seems to push the accelerator down on life and as I reminisced about that first time I saw that boy of mine, I found myself feeling so proud of how much we've packed into this time, it may have flown by but we have embraced every family moment.

Those first years, as difficult as they were at times, taught me so much about myself and shaped me into the person I always wanted to be, becoming a father was my defining moment. As Opeie developed so did I and things have been that way ever since. Parenting has been the most amazing adventure and I feel so lucky to have both of the boys in my life. With each birthday of Opeie's that passes, I find myself going over all of the the things that we have accomplished as a family and it really blows my mind.

During those early years I never could have envisioned me being the stay at home parent, let alone home educating Opeie too, but that is where our lives have taken us and I would never change a thing. Watching your children grow up and pass that birthday milestone each year is amazing but home educating adds an extra level to that feeling because you get to fully see that development and be a full time part of it. Knowing that you have been the one to teach them to read and write, learn maths and be a fountain of information at the age of 6 is a huge thing for us.

6 years on and I honestly couldn't ask for a more amazing child.  Opeie has completely changed my world. He is witty and kind and so much fun to be around but most importantly, he is always smiling, which for me was the most important thing to concentrate on as a parent.

In my head this was going to be a post about his birthday celebration, but as usual I've waffled on.

There was only one way he wanted to kick off his birthday fun, and when given the option of what he wanted to do on his very special day he opted to go to Ikea (which made us chuckle). It wasn't quite what I was expecting him to say but our little Lawrence Llewelyn Bowen has big design plans for his bedroom wall and was desperate to get some colourful picture frames so that he could start redesigning, I love his creativity. Yesterday was a day of family and he had an awesome time. 

Another year has passed and I cannot wait to see what the next 6 years have in store for us. Being a dad is Awesome!!!

The sunshine state, through younger, more inquisitive eyes.

After having such an amazing time away this summer we had a lot to write about and the boys had collected ticket stubs, flyers and a huge amount of photos of all the great places we had visited. Opeie, always wanting to be in on the action, Saw me writing holiday blog posts one night and asked if he could make a holiday book about all the things he got up to. It's really adorable, he see's the newspapers and books that he writes as his own version of the blog and I love that. 

A few days after we got back he started his book and we've completed pages here and there amongst doing all of our other home ed activities. We had so much to write about thanks to Visit Orlando. I love watching him write, it makes me realise how well this home schooling is going and reinforces that for us, it was the right decision to make.

Anyway, I'll leave you in Opeie's capable hands, Our holiday in his words...

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."

Mrs M has pointed out nearly every day recently that this is the most beautiful Autumn that we have had and she is so right. The colours on the trees have been amazing and the dry weather has meant that all those red, orange and yellow leaves have been blowing around in the wind for weeks. It has also given me and Opeie the chance to get out adventuring even more. This has been the perfect season for our home schooling fun and we've been taking the Micro scooters out looking for interesting things wherever we've been. Autumn is great for fungi hunting and this year has been exceptionally good as we've spotted toadstools and lovely red Agaric fungus, which Ive never seen out before.

There is so much fun to be had in this dry, sunny autumn weather, making piles of leaves and jumping around in them and we have been taking full advantage. These scooting adventures of ours are what homeschooling at this age is all about. Getting out and taking in our surroundings is the best kind of education for young children and these afternoons scooting together have also been a great way of breaking up the more academic learning we have been doing at home.

I'm hoping that this dry Autumn means that we are in for a similar winter, so that our Micro adventures can continue through the colder months and our outdoor home education can continue on wheels.

"Tell me school, are you proud of the things you've done?"

I don't usually share video's etc on the blog and I don't like this guys videos usually but this one really got to me last week and I felt it was relevant to what we are trying to do with Opeie and his home education. There are a lot of intelligent points made here and it paints a very clear picture to why in my opinion the UK school system is broken. enjoy...

"The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality."

Remember those days when if you wanted to take a photo you had to have an actual camera with you? my first mobile phone didn't do ANYTHING! apart from make calls and send messages, which at the time seemed amazing. I am the first to moan about people being glued to their phones or tablets, but despite the frustrating rise in antisocial behavoiur, technology has made everything easier. Documenting Opeie's homeschooling adventures has been amazing and as a lot of our learning is done organically outdoors, being able to capture the amazing things we see and get to talk about means that those things can stay with us.

This week, while scooting home from an eventful homeschooling adventure we spotted a huge cobweb with a very busy spider wrapping up their dinner. Opeie was fascinated and we stood and watched for quite some time. This for me is one of the big plusses for home education, we fill our days with all sorts of little events like this. As we scooted the rest of the way home we talked about what we had seen and the interesting sighting spurred on many, many questions from Opeie, exactly what I want from a day of learning.

"To go out with the setting sun on an empty beach is to truly embrace your solitude."

With the start of the school summer holiday in full swing and there being a clearly huge change in the number of children and families everywhere we go, I am reminded of how lucky we are that we have the flexibility to do fun and educational things at our own pace, wherever we please and whenever we like. Home schooling is one of the best decisions we have ever made as a family and seeing Opeie stress free and eager to learn every day is extremely rewarding. We were obviously fully aware of how busy everywhere gets during the holiday so Opeie and myself tried to squeeze as much as we could into the last couple of weeks before everything became a lot louder.

I don't fancy the idea of going camping to a family site during the holiday because I remember many of my old family camping holidays to St Ives. The fields would be heaving and the tents felt like they were almost on top of each other. I remember awkwardly stepping over guide ropes between tents to get round to the back and there also being very busy shower blocks. So we decided to make the most of a few days last week where we had nowhere to be. In Shropshire, as we were pulling away the weather was awful! rain, gloom, the sort of weather we've come to expect this year. As we reached Shell island though the sun was lighting up the sky and the big white fluffy clouds were the perfect backdrop for our camping adventures. We found a great spot in a quiet field practically on the beach and got set up.

Opeie loves being in the tent, we had camped earlier in the year and used our 2 man tent but with it being a lot warmer now I thought it would be best to try out our bigger tent. We've had it for a couple of years, just haven't had the chance to use it (until now). Opeie was a great help pegging the groundsheet and guide ropes down with his trusty mallet and once the tent was up it was time for our adventuring to begin.

I wasn't sure what the weather was going to be doing so I packed a LEGO kit to keep us entertained if we got stuck in bad weather. The weather as I said was great but Doc Ock kept Opeie occupied while I was cooking the tea so that was great.

There was no way that Opeie was going to be able to sleep at any reasonable time that night so around 9pm we headed down to the beach (with a sleeping bag) to watch the sun go down. We curled up on the sand and read The Tiger that came to tea, The Gruffalo and loads of Dr Seuss and Berenstein Bears books. It was the perfect end to our first night at the beach.

Surprisingly the bright sunshine glowing thought the tent fabric, the warm sweatiness and even the seagulls making a racket we not waking Opeie up the following morning. He slept great and had a long lie in so I opened up the tent, made a cup of coffee and sat outside taking in the beautiful morning. When Opeie did wake up I quickly realised that I hadn't packed any bowls for our cereal, so Opeie had a large mug and I used a saucepan....classy!

After our Michelin star breakfast, we took a drive along the coast to Black Rock sands as I thought that Opeie would love investigating the caves. I'd not been before but while googling the surrounding area of where we were camping the beach popped up and the photos online looked great. I couldn't have picked a more perfect day for us. I start to feel irritated when it is too warm and although the sun was bright and warm the breeze from the see had the perfect chill which kept us cool during our long walk across the empty beach.

The caves were so much more fun than any of the pictures I had seen while researching and Opeie was asking question after question which is the sort of home schooling day I love the most. The textures of the caves were fascinating, we got to see birds making nests in the rocky hillside and we found lots of Crabs, Jellyfish and Sea Urchin shells.

We spent three hours investigating the beach and the best part was that we only saw 5 other people (I'm not antisocial but having a huge beach practically to ourselves was very idyllic).

I somehow managed to get extremely lost on the way home and drove an hour completely off course. I probably would have realised sooner if it hadn't been for the beautiful scenery along the way. Our satnav lost connection and I got so drawn in by our surroundings that I just kept driving. Opeie had fallen asleep by this point anyway so I didn't feel too bad about the time it took us to get back to the tent.

We had our course taken the Micro Scooters with us and when we finally got back to Shell Island it was time to show the other holiday makers what a pair of pro scooterers were capable of. Shell Island was made for scooting, although you obviously cant take them on the beach, there are smooth path's everywhere and it is one of the fastest ways to get from one side of the island to the other, from the harbour all the way over to the impressive sand dunes.

The few hours of scooting, skimming stones and searching through rockpools really shattered Opeie out so there was no watching the sun go down on the beach that night. We were woken by rain belting off the side of the tent the following morning and I had to get the tent down wet, but we still managed to squeeze in a (very wet) walk along the beach, searching for stones and shells before heading home. It was the perfect two nights camping with my favourite little companion and it has got us both talking about going away again mid-September so watch this space.