Readers of gritsday know that we have built an outdoor out-of-school education for our primary age children.
Most days we are out in those fields and open spaces on some flimsy pretext. Perhaps to meet with a home ed group, perhaps to explore an ancient site or battlefield, maybe have maths or geography as the excuse, or just because my head explodes if I stay inside for more than four hours, conscious. But the last place you will find this home educating family is at home round the kitchen table.*
Anyway, our education is to be out, somewhere, everyday.
So this is what we did today, this normal Thursday, when any sane and rational person would not leave the house at all.
Because I can tell you that it rained. Do not imagine pitterpattertinkly rain. Not grey British soaking mist-drizzle either. No. Chucking it down. Serious rain. Business rain. Wearing bullet proof armour and lead tipped rain drops. It penetrated the top of my head for the two hours it took to walk the Art Walk, and diluted my brain. Dissolved, it is now dribbling through my nose.
I would just like to give no plug at all for Daisy's discount store down the road where nothing is over a fiver. Including their Luxury Cagoule (£2). (Don't say, You get what you pay for.)
Anyway, here is the result of the lovely Art Walk, with the obligatory Andy Goldsworthy pieces, all run for we weather-hardened home educating families by the fantastic Parks Trust of Milton Keynes.
I think I just need to say this is the life we chose, kids, come rain or shine, wet or cold, wind or fine. Admittedly we chose this way partly because of my psychosis; that I cannot function normally unless I can see beyond the walls of the house each and every day.
Maybe it's one psychosis I am quite happy to pass onto Shark, Squirrel and Tiger. Although that might make it inconvenient if anyone ever wanted them to work behind a desk from 9am to 6pm Monday to Friday with half an hour for lunch.
But we're not exactly growing children who have that employment in mind, right?
* Except at meal times, obviously, because we are smug bastards who eat together as a family, which in these days makes us more or less perfect. Except for the non-school thing, for which read, we eat babies.
3 comments:
Babies are yummy.
And in our house Andy Goldsworthy is a god.
I'd hate to meet him tho' - I want to picture him as a wild half-man, half-sprite kinda guerilla thing and not a bloke in a cagoule with a notebook in a polythene bag. Please don't disillusion me. I think I saw a picture of him once in a sensible jumper but I'm blocking it, I'm blocking it.
I always think I am such a nature art sprite everytime I go to the beach and create something wonderful. My family soon put me right by using whatever it is for target practice. I'm sure it's their way of appreciating it. I cannot go into a 'proper' art forest for this reason and have to make do with nice big books about it, which they then delight in damaging.
I am not abusing my children - they are abusing me! And my books.
The great outdoors is all well and good but I really do not like getting wet. Cold I can tolerate when appropriately dressed but wet - NO! Fortunately it's generally pretty dry here although we do, on occasion, do WET very thoroughly with WA being prone to the horizontal rainstorm which totally negates any beneficial effect offered by raincoats, hoods, hats and/or umbrellas.
i agree mme sg, and i have slobbered over those goldsworthy pictures too; our own efforts seem sadly to fall short, but we still try.
sharon, i should not have bothered with clothes at all. they merely hindered me with their watery weight. in fact next time i might try it and save the £2.
Post a Comment