Sunday, 14 December 2025
Saturday, 13 December 2025
Friday, 12 December 2025
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Awkward old hippy wearing widow weeds.
Home ed style: Secular, philosophical, eclectic, autonomous.
Just Everyday.
The end of the road, or the beginning of the field?
ithinkitneedsearrings
home educator, now idler
it's a grit's life
Awkward old hippy wearing widow weeds.
2020 and that photo needs updating. I'm now an embittered old hag wrapped in a dressing gown and shuffling around the house shod in a pair of worn-out Uggs I wrestled from a skip.
Other stuff
This was a home ed blog.
Now it's just a blog.
But if you want to skinnydip the past: a popular post. And the home ed film Captain Fantastic, which is TRUE.
We educated triplet girls to age 16 by never sending them to school.
If you are trying to work out the names, I am Grit, the father unit was Dig and the triplets are Shark, Tiger and Squirrel.
One triplet is now on a degree course studying Physics. Another is studying Shhh secret stuff. The third is heading up for Philosophy and English Lit.
Home ed did it!
Home ed style: Secular, philosophical, eclectic, autonomous.
Just Everyday.
The end of the road, or the beginning of the field?
Yer avrage home ed character list.
Stuff your SATs.
Home educators deal with this.
One day they'll catch us up.
Homeschool Ryan Gosling. The perfect man.
The OU LearningSpace
Wales here.
Report from Bridgend.
Stuff your SATs.
Home educators deal with this.
One day they'll catch us up.
Homeschool Ryan Gosling. The perfect man.
The OU LearningSpace
Wales here.
Report from Bridgend.
About this blog
More about this blog!
For my convenience
You should read the damn blog, really
You STILL want to advertise on grit's day?
Take a step back
Those grudges are all mine
The Grit character
Ed yourself
Learn something
And buy home ed books
Can you advertise on this blog? No
Can you submit links/posts to this blog? No
Can you make money from this blog? No
Can you swap Grit's soul for an education? Yes
More about this blog!
For my convenience
You should read the damn blog, really
You STILL want to advertise on grit's day?
Take a step back
Those grudges are all mine
The Grit character
Ed yourself
Learn something
And buy home ed books
Can you advertise on this blog? No
Can you submit links/posts to this blog? No
Can you make money from this blog? No
Can you swap Grit's soul for an education? Yes
Where can you find an education?
- In your location
- Alongside other kids
- With the eccentrics
- In every castle
- And all museums
- Northumberland
- 1485
- With the Buddhists from Japan
- Kent
- Under your feet
- Suffolk
- In the sky
- England's fields
- With old ladies
- Down with the Anglo Saxons
- On impulse
- In a tin mine
- Northamptonshire
- In the Royal Albert Hall
- At the sewage farm
- Cornwall
- Science museums everywhere
- In a Benedictine abbey in the middle of a field
- Now don't ask, DO YOU EVER GO OUT?
gritsday@gmail.com
where is everybody?
Tiger's animation here.
The art exhibition here.
Latin verbs illustrated
This blog is a record of a home education
writ for parents thinking about home ed
writ for the LA who need an education about home ed
writ for Grit's friends and relations who drop in once a year
and writ for Grit's sane and lovely mind.
But maybe you were right all along.
Your client wants good PR? Yes! I can help.
Eek. Let's learn how to kill imagination.
We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever. Philip Pullman.
The art exhibition here.
Latin verbs illustrated
This blog is a record of a home education
writ for parents thinking about home ed
writ for the LA who need an education about home ed
writ for Grit's friends and relations who drop in once a year
and writ for Grit's sane and lovely mind.
But maybe you were right all along.
Your client wants good PR? Yes! I can help.
Eek. Let's learn how to kill imagination.
We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever. Philip Pullman.
What's done today
Writing about
- home education
- Hong Kong
- random label applied
- thinking grit
- fields
- triplets
- travel
- art
- home ed is an extension of parenting
- hazards
- No/Achievement
- museums and stuff
- lovely lovely notebooks
- history
- food
- no bad day
- science
- christmas at grit's
- reasons to home educate
- Tiger
- Dig
- Shark
- What did you do innocently today that will be made guilty tomorrow?
- Shakespeare
- Squirrel
- England
- books
- Grit's Top Ten Tips
- isn't this just the problem with home educators?
- drama
- holiday
- Aunty Dee
- woods
- SuffolkandNorfolk
- Smalltown
- film
- house
- garden
- survival/celebration
- Northumberland
- parks
- birds
- horse riding
- clothes
- water
- who knows what the kids are doing? let's call their experience an experiment in independent living
- PGL
- rockwatchers
- I am helpful
- abuse and psychological damage
- worn out
- Elizabeth Hurley
- Really badly pissed off now
- The random shouting is back
- swimming
- work
- Independent newspaper
- au pair
- cheer up grit you miserable bastard
- grit family
- examples of futility
- geography
- Milton Keynes
- suburban ballet
- the S word
- Aunty Dee is visiting Hong Kong
- Australia
- politics
- Grit clothes
- I hated Labour but I hate the Tories too
- home education politics is very interesting
- late
- library
- list
- music
- pointing the finger at unimaginative morons
- Don't expect me to draw any conclusions
- Independent diet
- Tiger rage
- birthdays
- maths
- Buddhist
- exams
- medical misery
- self improvement
- HesFes
- No way out
- camping
- religions
- shut up about the dog
- Cornwall
- It is either this or put my head in my hands and howl.
- John Lewis
- the year of hysteria
- unicorns
- vacuum cleaner
- I am doomed
- I have to get 3 kids on a plane
- London
- Oo
- bathrooms
- dollies
- fantasy
- jol
- let's party
- Dinner date
- Hitler
- I love the Grit Mobile
- I will regret this
- IoW
- Kent
- Liverpool
- PR at your peril
- Pontins
- Travelodge
- frenzied house cleaning
- hair
- making an exhibition of ourselves
- Becoming unstable and erratic
- Cairo
- I tried a photoblog before and it didn't work then
- Jobsworth
- Lisbon
- Smacks of desperation
- architecture
- neighbours
- play
- probably not working for the tourist board anytime soon
- rat
- shut up Grit just SHUT UP
- the piano makes a dramatic entrance (or exit)
- woodcraft
- Cheshire
- I am very brave
- Latin
- Philippines
- Seven days with elephants and other curiosities
- The Hat
- The TES cheers me up
- cars are otherwise not very interesting
- funeral party
- gate
- pre-teen pain
- spring
- tennis
- theme park
- waste in Hong Kong
- Chemistry
- How we laughed
- I confess
- I hate the television set
- Lamma Island
- Madrid
- Xian
- albatross
- beginning of the field
- bribes
- happy birthday miserable grit
- head lice
- homesick moment
- kentwell hall
- name day
- office
- parenting
- skiing
- smokescreen
- someone got your dander up
- time
- underground
- war
- we're stuffed
- woodcarving
- Big Kate
- Gas
- Khyra Ishaq
- Olney
- Playmobil
- Premier Inn
- San
- Singapore
- The National Trust may be up to something
- This post won't make any sense at all unless you suffered Badman and Balls
- all home education ends in cake
- becoming impatient with Hong Kong
- can you believe I once worked in advertising? Mind you I did get sacked
- damn I have fallen in love with the idea of a nightingale
- get rich quick scheme
- hamster
- madness
- no we are not having a pet hedgehog
- oh no we have to go shopping again
- poxy authors
- put the money in a used plastic bag behind the waterpipes
- this weather is killing me
- we are normal
- what the hell
- Aunty Dee is visiting
- Delyth Morgan
- Grit is busy
- I am brilliant
- Innocent smoothies and Guilty pleasures
- May day
- Messing with Dig's office floor is probably grounds for divorce
- No we don't have a TV they're on the computer
- Ooer Grit
- Proving what a bizarre family we are
- Steampunk
- Sunday Times
- advertising success
- allgoingbellyup
- bikes
- blogs
- end of the road
- enterprise
- housebound
- hysteria
- if you want any sense out of this
- many doors were slammed in the making of this post
- read yesterday
- smug bastard
- the fridge
- they deserve it
- toaster
- uncontrolled use of font styles
- village halls
- you never know what to expect next round at grit's
- Anglesey
- Call it panda love
- Dear God please don't let there be any more
- Every inch a lady
- Grit Lit Crits
- Grit is not very helpful
- I am very green
- I answered this one enough
- I know I said I wouldn't write about it again but I lied
- I may have been drinking
- I need to import 450 Chinglish schedulers into the UK
- I won't get any sympathy for this dilemma but I'd like some
- It doesn't snow in Hong Kong
- Never fear I shall be manky again tomorrow
- Ofsted
- Seven Deadly Sins range
- all is lost
- another reason to spend another year blogging
- axe to grind
- bete noire
- cuddles are free
- damn foot hurts
- don't call it anything like the big society
- dreaming
- geocaching
- get your hands off my pleasures
- grit is humbled
- isn't it?
- junk monkey sundays
- lists
- much squealing with delight at the pigeons we can gut in January
- off the path
- one more scowl and I call in the social workers
- pimping might be my next business plan
- probably insulting every witch in England
- probably not doing my own market any good at all
- school
- sometimes I feel like an alien in my own land
- stargazing
- thank you lovely reader
- the advertising world loves me
- unspeakable
- we are alive
- who in their right minds wouldn't want to live with grit
- woolly-minded? I keep an entire (non-denominational) flock up there
taking the long way home
2009-10 home ed politics
I have this problem. Just as I throw something away, I need it again the very next day. It's almost like the disposal created the need.
I don't want to need the links below. They are part of the former Labour government's attempt to vilify, inspect, and criminalise home education in the UK. So I'd better not throw them away.
I don't want to need the links below. They are part of the former Labour government's attempt to vilify, inspect, and criminalise home education in the UK. So I'd better not throw them away.
On the Ishaq case, the BBC are out of step.
Media watch
The responses are thorough, aware, and non-compromising.
Media watch
The responses are thorough, aware, and non-compromising.
A snooper's charter
Intense and engaging discussion follows.
Thank you to Graham Stuart and the Guardian.
Intense and engaging discussion follows.
Thank you to Graham Stuart and the Guardian.
The internal DCSF Consultation Report, made public 23 January. (pdf)
In Annex A, 94% of respondents disagreed that the local authority should have the power to interview a home educated child alone.
When this comes out Ed Balls' mouth in the Second Reading Debate, 94% against turns to:
'The vast majority of parents would be happy to let that happen'
(Hansard 11.01.10, Children, Schools and Families Bill, col 437.)
In Annex A, 94% of respondents disagreed that the local authority should have the power to interview a home educated child alone.
When this comes out Ed Balls' mouth in the Second Reading Debate, 94% against turns to:
'The vast majority of parents would be happy to let that happen'
(Hansard 11.01.10, Children, Schools and Families Bill, col 437.)
Love it or loathe it? The petition still broke a record.
Press release in the Mirror, Channel4 news, the Guardian.
Press release in the Mirror, Channel4 news, the Guardian.
'Even if you don't currently see yourself home educating, you never know what the future might hold, and if a time comes when you find yourself needing to pull your child out of school, I hope the option is still available to you, and you don't regret thinking *it's nothing to do with me*.'
http://freedomineducationunderthreat.blogspot.com/
http://freedomineducationunderthreat.blogspot.com/
Read the Right to Reply
'Home educators are renowned for their strong opinions and independent spirit. They come from all faiths and none. They have as many approaches to education as there are children. They rarely agree on anything. And yet they are remarkably united in their opposition to these proposals. There is great concern that their way of life will be legislated out of existence.'
--Response to the Badman Review of Elective Home Education in England and reaction to the Select Committee hearing.
'Home educators are renowned for their strong opinions and independent spirit. They come from all faiths and none. They have as many approaches to education as there are children. They rarely agree on anything. And yet they are remarkably united in their opposition to these proposals. There is great concern that their way of life will be legislated out of existence.'
--Response to the Badman Review of Elective Home Education in England and reaction to the Select Committee hearing.
Another young person speaks out. Rant, it is not.
The problem with home educators is that they are impossible to define. The only things that links them is respect for their children. And did the state just stagger foolishly across that line?
Are we sandal wearing tree huggers who let our kids run wild or control mad Jesus freaks who don't want them learning about sex and evolution? Are we hot housing or leaving them to watch TV and play computer games all day? -Firebird.
The UK government suggested that we home educate our children to cover up our abuse.
On that issue, would you like some statistics?
'The Department [for Children, Schools and Families] is aware that attempts are being made on the Internet to vilify and harass the author of the review. It is the Department's view that, whilst dealing with each request on its merits, this situation will have to be taken into account in dealing with any relevant FOI requests. ... we anticipate the need to consider whether it is in the public interest to release information likely to intensify any such campaign, or to lead to harassment or distress to individuals.'
Hello DCSF. Vilify: to make vicious and defamatory statements about.
Like putting it about that home educated children are abused by their parents? Isolated? Unsocialised? Denied an education?
And the latest one, that their mothers have Munchhausen's Syndrome by Proxy, and benefit from their child's suffering.
Go and visit Renegade Parent
Are we sandal wearing tree huggers who let our kids run wild or control mad Jesus freaks who don't want them learning about sex and evolution? Are we hot housing or leaving them to watch TV and play computer games all day? -Firebird.
The UK government suggested that we home educate our children to cover up our abuse.
On that issue, would you like some statistics?
'The Department [for Children, Schools and Families] is aware that attempts are being made on the Internet to vilify and harass the author of the review. It is the Department's view that, whilst dealing with each request on its merits, this situation will have to be taken into account in dealing with any relevant FOI requests. ... we anticipate the need to consider whether it is in the public interest to release information likely to intensify any such campaign, or to lead to harassment or distress to individuals.'
Hello DCSF. Vilify: to make vicious and defamatory statements about.
Like putting it about that home educated children are abused by their parents? Isolated? Unsocialised? Denied an education?
And the latest one, that their mothers have Munchhausen's Syndrome by Proxy, and benefit from their child's suffering.
Go and visit Renegade Parent
... compulsory registration, entry to the home, inspection according to external standards, and power to see the child without the parent present.
By implication this applies to anyone who has their child at home with them: particularly parents with under 5s, but also those with school-aged children who are at home in the evenings, over the weekends, and throughout the summer holidays. Think on: the possibility of parental inspection, with or without your presence, based on the very human whim of a local authority officer.
Is that okay with you?
Renegade Parent on the implications for all parents from the Badman review of home education.
By implication this applies to anyone who has their child at home with them: particularly parents with under 5s, but also those with school-aged children who are at home in the evenings, over the weekends, and throughout the summer holidays. Think on: the possibility of parental inspection, with or without your presence, based on the very human whim of a local authority officer.
Is that okay with you?
Renegade Parent on the implications for all parents from the Badman review of home education.
'Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children'.
(Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, Article 26.3)
(Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, Article 26.3)
Photos and text copyright Grit.
This is Grit's blog. The pictures come from her broken phone camera, and they are hers by right.
The words too are Grit's, Grit's, all Grit's. This is not to say you cannot use any words that Grit uses - after all, she is the unhinged woman who once banned SOIL - but you just cannot lift them in the long, complex and lovely arrangements, like the ones Grit has writ.
This is Grit's blog. The pictures come from her broken phone camera, and they are hers by right.
The words too are Grit's, Grit's, all Grit's. This is not to say you cannot use any words that Grit uses - after all, she is the unhinged woman who once banned SOIL - but you just cannot lift them in the long, complex and lovely arrangements, like the ones Grit has writ.
Please ask! If you wish to take images from this site, please send an email to gritsday@gmail.com
ithinkitneedsearrings
Keywords you may need for grit's day
tuttytuttut
old dog clinging to me
squirrel in floorboards
entombed bitter loss
paradise lost with grit
pictures of naked bali men
cricked neck and brain tumour
shut a mouth with tape
make my dog not hate me
things to say to people threatening you
english sexy housing estate
keep mouth away from clothes
naked assault course
great expectations by dickens personality disorder
graham badman bastard
too much dwelling on thought
chain and padlock for fridge
trapped in a nightmare
graham badman wanker
chicken pox for christmas
is using listerine on a horse dangerous
tesco tripelets
xymoglyphic museum
old dog clinging to me
squirrel in floorboards
entombed bitter loss
paradise lost with grit
pictures of naked bali men
cricked neck and brain tumour
shut a mouth with tape
make my dog not hate me
things to say to people threatening you
english sexy housing estate
keep mouth away from clothes
naked assault course
great expectations by dickens personality disorder
graham badman bastard
too much dwelling on thought
chain and padlock for fridge
trapped in a nightmare
graham badman wanker
chicken pox for christmas
is using listerine on a horse dangerous
tesco tripelets
xymoglyphic museum
why does anyone bother with school?
- aljazeera
- art history
- bbc learning zone
- british library online gallery
- documentary source
- dorothy murphy
- eng lang printable sheets
- everyday edits
- history of chemistry
- home ed links
- horrible history monarchs song
- how earth made us
- khan academy
- Marine Bio
- maths
- plan reenactments
- radio
- royal society
- sam martell
- science and technology focus
- terry jones
- walk to do
- waves explained
- worth a search if you can get past the name
- yacapaca