Mapping it out

So yes, meanwhile, hello. Grit's day is a home education blog.

It is Story of our journey. Proof of something that happens when you don't send the kids to school.

Look at it this way. Home ed doesn't mean you have to put your alien bat monsters under the patio by Day Two. Your home ed approach won't (necessarily) end in court. The week need not conclude with you stretched out in the morgue. Even though this option sometimes feels preferable.

And I know that saying these things can be helpful. I see how Grit's day is occasionally passed round the home ed circuit like well-thumbed cheap porn. Especially when I say something rude, provocative, or super practical useful.

Useful stuff like, Just relax! Go with the kid flow! When the kid flow is against you, bite your knuckles, find strength where you can, and beat the crap out of Mr Fluffles the toy otter, or whatever proxy you keep for that purpose. Do not be ashamed of anger, frustration, and resentment. Go about the objective in another way.

See? Super useful wisdoms; empathy borne from practical experience.

In that vein, while I'm here, and if you're new, my advice is always the same. Find your local home ed groups. Suss them out. They probably divide into Godly, school-at-home, philosofikals and, increasingly, the educational services support company, bringing in tutors at a higher rate than you could supply them, and run at a profit.

Choose which suits your family or pass yourself around all groups, if they'll let you. And remember. Tribal allegiances are just the same in home ed land as at the school gates, only with added fury and the occasional madness. You'll meet people who make you feel sorry for the local authority staff, and you'll meet people you're itching to punch in the face.

Anyway, now I have laid out my territory in my helpful way, Grit's day serves another purpose. The most important to me. It exists because it is my damn strong arm righteous evidence, compiled for when the local authority woman demands sight of an education.

Na na na na na. No you're not coming in. No you're not seeing Squirrel, Tiger, or Shark, not unless they ask to see you. I'm showing our education this way. By a map of Scandinavia, from our fortnightly mapping group.

Otherwise, we're busy. Shark is off with her sub aqua buddies, slogging her way through maths, Latin, geography, camping and fish, with her eyes on university. Don't cross her unless you want your face tongue-lashed off with her particular brand of fish-based contempt.

Tiger is a bag of nervosa, barely unable to function in a crowd, so home ed hasn't changed her. Stay away, that's my advice. Unless you look like a horse. She is determined to thrash Shark with the Latin and enjoys the art, film studies and horse-end that the kind mama grudgingly pays for on a fortnightly basis. Better than mama is horse, horse, horse.

Squirrel is Squirrel. She has a pet rock and ignores me. She will ignore you as well. Along with the Latin that Lingua Latina tries to insert into her brain, the Astronomy I have paid for, and the Maths I insist on. She will ignore it all and pursue her own Squirrelly tendencies which probably include sorting gravel and sieving soil. One day it will all come good. Either that or no good.

So there. Grit's day is helpful, cheap, and always educational.