A good Day

Had a good today. A very good day.  After taking J to Sue’s we almost finished emptying the house ready to rent out as it is on the market already.

Then went to OC's to get a fabulous bacon and egg butty to share with K, along with four huge portions of different cakes to share at Gill's house. The cakes are homemade and are unbelievably good and too big to eat in one go without feeling ill!

We went to Gill's so I could play at dry-stone walling with Alix whilst K played with the girls.  K disappeared and played happily all day, though I got a hug and "I'm hungry" when Alix and I went in to eat dinner.  A bit of V's homemade soup and she was off again.

The wall seemed to go quite slowly before we ate, though it was big enough to sit behind and have a cup of coffee and a chat out of the wind. After some soup, cake and tea we finished getting the wall level and got a lot done. We removed some of the stones on the existing sections that weren't correct and by the end of the day we had just about got all the flats on and had put some top stones on as well. Before we started I had hoped to do more, but at the end of the day I was very pleased with what we had achieved.

The wall we are repairing is a double skin, using mainly sandstone. When the wall is at the desired height it should have been tapered up to allow a single flat stone to go across both skins to stop water going down the middle. In this area the flats then have top stones, roughly triangular or trapezoidal, to help shed water.

If you are interested, have a look at the Dry Stone Walling Society web site.

Unfortunately K and myself were enjoying ourselves so much neither of us drank enough and both have headaches and are exhausted! One of K's last comments before going to sleep was "Daddy, can we have a calmer day tomorrow?"

Apart from swimming and a couple of jobs at her grandparents, we may be able to manage that. I hope!

I like home schooling. J

Home schooling begins

K has been thinking about home schooling for the last few weeks, as soon as her last day of nursery was over. She has decided that she wants school holidays. Then she said she wanted to learn about countries first. V and I both have sisters living abroad and parents who have worked abroad and travelled. K has taken all that in and wants to know more.  This is my introduction to autonomous learning!  in brief the learner leads their own education.

We have already looked at a very small globe and yesterday bought a Childs atlas, which looks surprisingly good.

For the last few days we have been looking at a Top Gear "where's Stig?" book I got for Christmas. Lots of questions I don't want to answer! But plenty of country questions and clues to find things.

Child driven learning is real full time education, it doesn’t run from 9 till 3 five days a week. It is hard work for me, much harder than going to work, but great fun.  It is so nice spending time with her when she is full of energy and interest.

When V gets home she asks K what she has learned.  So far she has always responded “Not much” or “Nothing”.  And I have to point out everything that she has done, today that included making muffins in the morning.  In the afternoon she told Sue the ingredients and method used.  Fabulous!

At the start of the week K had been saying she wanted to learn about countries, starting with Turkey as we ate at the Turkish bistro in Hebden Bridge last week and my parents worked in Turkey for a couple of years and were showing her some photos.  So I prepared myself and found recipes and other stuff to do.  In the morning she decided she would rather copy some photos.  A former teacher who is home educating said this used to happen to her, and she found it easier now to look online when her son decides what he wants to do.

The wonderful thing is that copying the photos involved so many different things, including counting, reading and hand-eye coordination.  Doing what interests her should be good fun for both of us as well as providing her with a good education.

i wonder what she will want to do tomorrow?