"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. 

"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. 

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...

"What you are as a person is far more important than what you are as a basketball player."

You've got to love those amazing neighbours that are more than happy to let you help themselves to their stuff. Our neighbours are AWESOME and seeing as the sun has been out, we have been making the most of their basketball hoop. Seth has been attending basketball club at school so clearly he now thinks he's Patrick Ewing and Opeie has become quite the expert at the scaled down 'Three point line' shot.

Now that the nights are getting lighter, Shooting hoops has become a great way for Mrs M to shut off a little from work when she finishes for the day. Shes still not loving the temperature outside at the moment (but that's what my winter coat is for).

One of the things I love about homeschooling (especially for Opeie's age) is that pretty much any activity we are doing during the day can be turned in to fun learning. Supermarkets are great for spelling and numeracy activities and visiting ANYWHERE can lead to none stop educational questions if you have an interested student. Playing basketball outside is no different. Last week we spent almost two hours playing basketball, using it as a spelling, writing and maths activity.

First Opeie spelt basketball related words (Basket, hoop, Dunk, Dribble etc) covering writing and spelling. Then we took shots and used the number of shots and subtracted the amount of times we scored to come up with how many times we had missed, simple and fun.

12 shots - 7 scored = 5 missed

A maths lesson in the sun.

With Opeie's birthday approaching next week this new love of basketball in the street has got us thinking about other sports we can play out there as a family, its going to be a great summer.

“The thing all writers do best is find ways to avoid writing.”

I'd love to have time during the day to sit and plough through blog posts but with two demanding and adventure seeking children its just not on the cards. When everyone is in bed though (Mrs M included), I curl up on the sofa with my laptop and write. I don't generally like writing in silence so Netflix has been a great friend on these quiet lonely nights. I do try my best to pick something that isn't going to grab my attention too much, if I have work I desperately need to get done I will opt for something I love that Ive seen many times as it wont distract me and is just noise in the background. Sometimes though I click on shows I have never seen before and I get transported to another plane, where absolutely no writing gets done at all.

Here's my top 5 Netflix shows for binge watching (and getting minimal work done)...

1. 'Lie to Me' dragged me in by the title picture, I thought to myself 'there's that guy off of the Hulk movie, I like him' and BANG! that was a good few weeks of my evenings taken up with minimum work completed! Cal Lightman as a character won me over from the first episode. The show is about a deception expert who can read all manner of facial expressions and works with the police and private clients, it is extremely clever and well written and Tim Roths character is just the right amount of crazy.

2. Its really hard to find a show that me and Mrs M can sit down and watch together. I love action and gritty drama but Mrs M has a very nervous disposition and things tend to play on her mind so its usually the Carebears or Spongebob for us! (Seriously, if there is anything that Mrs M cant stand more than violence on TV its Spongbob). If Mrs M had it her way we would watch Gavin and Stacey or Sex and the City episodes each night. One evening though (again while I was trying to write) we came across 'White Collar', a show about a convicted conman working for a white collar division of the FBI to shave time off of his sentence. I'm not sure if it was the episode content or just the main character that hooked Mrs M but it was 5 seasons that took up many of my working evenings. It was great to have something to watch with Mrs M, who doesn't love snuggley sofa time!

3, From the list so far (and including this one) it seems that my top 5 is going to be police/crime heavy. I'd  actually not thought about it until I started writing this but I guess that must be what I like. 'Person of interest' was a great show for having on that had my attention but I still managed to get a little work done. The thought that we are being watched continuously is something that concerns me all the time. Im surprised this show didn't freak me out but I loved every minute of it and I am hoping the next series pops up on Netflix very soon.

4. Oops! another crime related show has jumped in. I wasn't impressed by the movie years back and I thought Ben Affleck had made a complete douche of the character but the Netfix Original series Daredevil was amazing. Being an enormous Marvel fan, the show really did the character of Matt Murdock justice. I debated putting Gotham in here as it was also and amazingly well written story line but for me Daredevil definitely came out on top.

5. I suppose I better put in something a little lighter and with less police presence despite going to add 'Prison break' in next. I was going for a show that me and Mrs M sat and watched together in its entirety but sadly 'Californication' is no longer on Netflix (such a shame as it was a great show). hmmmmm.... something funny??? Me and Mrs M have watched a few funny shows together. 'The unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt' was a great show and I loved 'The Fuzz' as it appealed to my very childish side but seeing as I've had to replace 'Californication', 'Benidorm' solely on the fact of the amount of time it has taken up while I have attempted to write. The show is cliche british humour at its best and I think thats what I love about it most.  Plus despite trying my best most nights to write, I'd take curling up with Mrs M on the sofa for a giggle any day.

This top 5 came about because as of tomorrow with the release of the Netflix original Marvel show 'Jessica Jones', I know that all writing will be on standby. There's nothing that is going to get in the way of a new marvel show and with Netflix doing such an amazing job with Daredevil I am expecting Jessica Jones to have me hooked within the first five minutes.

"You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news, or just what's in your heart."

A couple of weeks ago we were having one of those relaxing weekends where we had nothing to do but play and take it easy. I was pottering about tidying up and I could hear Opeie and Mrs M chatting excitedly so I went to have a look what they were up to. They had come up with the idea of writing their own newspaper. They were using Opeie's toys and making up news stories like 'Mr Broccoli wins strong man competition'. Mrs M had bought us a Polaroid Pogo printer a few years back which was coming in really handy for printing out stickers for their paper and she was writing the words in pencil for Opeie to go over, to practice his writing. I loved watching how excited he was so as with everything in our house 'if they love it, we embrace it'.

 Since that afternoon me and Opeie have continued to write the first edition of his new monthly paper 'Happy Times', documenting some of the things that we get up to, which has been so much fun. Opeie likes to think of it as his own blog which I think is adorable. We scrapped the drawing over penciled letters though and have changed it to me writing the words, explaining the sounds and structure of the sentence and then him copying it in his very best handwriting. The outcome has turned in to an insight in to the things that Opeie loves, If only all papers were this happy.

I have found this new way of learning for Opeie fascinating and it has made me realise even more that home education was the right thing for us to do. Most days Opeie is motivated and really excited by what he is doing but every now and again he really isn't in the mood and really who can blame him. One afternoon he wrote the letter 'C' wrong and got really worked up about it and was adamant that he was incapable of ever writing it. We stopped writing, put on our helmets and went out scooting and he was fine, when we got home we wrote the word 'confidence' and I explained what it means (he didn't even mention the two 'C's').  We all have off days, but in state education if a child has one of these days, in many cases they are branded the naughty child and made an example of through lack of awards or special time at the end of the day to do their own thing.

I love that we have effortlessly managed to create this in a few weeks despite all the other things we do throughout our days, but then with no distractions and fun 1 to 1 learning I guess its no surprise.  So many people have commented over the years at how switched on Opeie is for a 4 year old and it is clear to see the impact mine and Mrs M's way of educating is having on his development, especially his emotional development.

The great thing about the newspaper aside from the literacy and numeracy side of things is the confidence that is building up and the pride he has in his work. Opeie is so excited about what he has achieved that he wants to show everyone that visits the house. Which has now got me thinking about an extension for this fun activity, so watch this space.

As we finished off our final page (the sports section) a few days back, I was so proud of Opeie's sentence 'we did exercise at the park' the letters were clear, the same size and he wrote confidently in a straight line. It was a great end to the first edition of Happy times...

and now our excited mini journalist is eager to get the ball rolling on issue 2, stay tuned!

"Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier."

Me and Mrs M have never celebrated Valentine's Day as we are always doing nice things for each other throughout the year. I do try though to make the effort for the other ladies in our life, Nanny Roo and Auntie Lottie. Last year we took a trip to build a bear and made valentines bears for them both which they loved. This year I wanted to make sure they put their card making skills to good use. Of course mommy needed a card too.

We're always drawing, painting or colouring but it's nice sometimes to have a special reason for it and someone to give the finished piece too. Making cards is also great because it gives us a fun excuse to get Opeie practising his writing. He seems to be more in to the whole activity when he's creating something for someone he loves too.

Opeie's a big fan of cutting and pasting he loves getting the glue out. We made Mommy a Miffy card using a dog eared book from a charity shop and Opeie wanted to make the most of the packaging from his Paddington Bear he got last week for sleeping in his own bed, as Nanny had taken him to see the movie recently he wanted Nanny's card to be all about Paddington.

Seth drew a lovely picture of mommy for his card and Opeie went on a heart drawing rampage for auntie Lottie's card to show her how much he loves her.

The boys were excited about putting question marks in their creations and although they were written out to 'Nanny' and 'Auntie Lottie' I suspect they had absolutely no idea who their secret admirers actually where.