Why home educate? (5) Creativity

It's raining. It's raining in bucketfuls, and no-one is interested in attending the fungi spotting wood walk this morning. Mostly because we will be swimming up to our eyeballs in mud while being stabbed in the head by spears of rain and thus unable to distinguish a fungi even when we have crushed it by accident.

So we do what a productive home educating family does. We start work on the various pieces of art that will compose the exhibition that mother, bored and pissed off by a Turner model on a toilet, has rashly announced we will create for next summer down the local community hall.

Well the gritlets are thoroughly enjoying themselves with this project, even though it means the bathroom has been reassembled as an artist's studio for the duration. I have propped up a step ladder over the bath and this serves as an easel. The bathroom shelf stands as a paint store and the paintbrushes can be conveniently ejected into the sink.

This project is going well, except I didn't get my choice of theme so am a bit sulky about that. I wanted rock, on the basis that rocks do not run away. The gritlets wanted animals, including lions, horses, fish and cheetahs, and they won. So we have visited Whipsnade safari park to collect preparatory drawings; we have brought those drawings home and looked at patterns, cropping and colour; we have looked at various art styles from our collection of art books, mostly gathered from second-hand charity shops and the library sale, and we are now committing ourselves to canvas, acquired fairly cheaply down the discount tat shop in a nearby town.

Here we go.


Art art art. This is one of the biggest reasons why I home educate, if not the biggest, most important, and dearest to my heart. I have seen art, craft, dance, music, drama, play, imagination and creativity, all steadily removed from the primary curriculum. That is a loss to children; that is a loss to all our lives. And I know I am not a lone voice in the wilderness shouting that one.

But complaining in a staff room didn't seem to be getting anywhere. Marching right in, taking control to put a creative education in place, changing a state of mind from consumer to producer, imagining ourselves doing, learning for ourselves, and getting out the paints. That's creative.