End of term report?

English. We do that monthly reading group, so are wading our deliberate, slow way through the canon, with as much loud reading as I can manage. Audio disks help. As do movies. Also, leaving the offspring alone for days so they can sink properly, deeply, into eighteenth century airs, raising their heads only for beans on toast. Suffice to say, this approach can raise bibliophiles. I murmur, half to myself and half to Squirrel, 'Sense and Sensibility? We should read that'. She answers, 'I already did. Twice'.

Maths. Don't know. Dig has paid money for a new computer resource bank, and he has been gamely teaching programming to the Gritties Jnrs. It all sounds logical and procedural, so I'm counting it as maths. Shark surprised me the other night by saying she found statistics easier than she expected. Statistics? I have no idea what she's on about.

Latin. Lingua Latina keeps us in order. She manages fortnightly homework, makes us all play games, and comments on the appallingness that is Shark's handwriting. This week it is the Latin Christmas Party, which involves cake, cake, Latin and cake. Otherwise, I support the Classics endeavour; Shark, Squirrel and Tiger have begun reading Homer's Odyssey in all its variations, tellings, and retellings. And you can bet I shall be soon getting out Kirk Douglas and Anthony Quinn.

Geography. Cake all the way on that one.

Chemistry. Thank goodness I farmed out that one! It's so relieving and relaxing to be an administrator; I am almost totally relieved of the pressure of responsibility. The fear of failing to be entertaining and informative with a bag of caustic soda and a pint of vinegar has almost totally left me.

Do the Gritties do any other subjects? Maybe they do, but they mix the day in a seamless segue of many disciplines, skiving off to watch Horrible Histories, then commenting loudly on Henry VII or Vlad the Impaler. Sub-aqua diving, weekly, if it counts as sport for Shark, and then wide games for them all. Wide games is coming along brilliantly; it involves running about trees trying to pick off an enemy.

Everyone is doing splendidly. (Apart from the handwriting. Spelling. General organisation. Physics. And time-keeping.) Now, what else can I say, but gold stars, all round.

Probably out of step with the nation

Repeating the Christmas nativity story. In Latin.


(Ignore the one with the metal detector. He cannot keep his trumpet aloft.)

Thursdays probably drive me to it

Had a minor breakdown last Thursday (denting and crumpling variety), and only now got round to remembering it.

But I would just like to say, it bothered nobody much at all, which is how I want it. All good friends went into efficient auto parent-teacher mode, taking Shark, Squirrel and Tiger off me and commanding me to put my feet up: within hours Peepah had the juniors away to the afternoon's STEM lecture, then fed them, wrapped them up warm, and took them on a stargazing night at Bedford Observatory.

Within a day I was back to normal. Well, normal enough to read To Kill a Mockingbird before going round to San's house to watch Gregory Peck in the film of the same.

See? An education in life goes on as normal. Home ed need not stop because the parent-teacher starts the day flat out on the floor, snivelling. There are people who help, truly help, with big hearts and practical hands.

I am not repeating the same crumpling today, but I note that it is Thursday, and I did manage to wangle events well enough to get Dig to take the little grits off me yet again. They went to the Galapagos while I stayed in Jamaica.

ON WITH OUR INVISIBILITY CLOAKS

Thank you, Richard Garner, thank you. I have material for months.

A load of seals and some spit

Take a boat trip round Blakeney, north Norfolk. We are not here to watch 500 cwt of seal blubber flop about on beaches with white fluffy seal pups, oh no we're not. We're here to observe the development of a sand and shingle coastal feature aka a spit.

Cute huh?

Go during the school term, that's my strong advice.

Coastal engineering

Let's call it that, yes, let's call this day A Study of Coastal Engineering (hard or soft) for a Geography IGCSE curriculum.

Otherwise, the day might look suspiciously like enjoying a walk along part of England's south coast path, exploring mud, playing in Lyme Regis, adding to Shark's seaweed collection, and picking apart the beach at Charmouth to find pyritised ammonites. And that doesn't sound like a Geography syllabus at all, at all.

Off to the coast!

Yes, geography is ongoing, as always. But in home ed land, geography must be very practical, and experience-based, otherwise we aren't doing it.

Oh dear. Chapter 2 is coastal features.

We haven't got a coast. And it's an awful long drive to one.

Instead! We have a local river! We can make the coast come to us!

(Be prepared to use your imagination. A LOT.)

Task: Imagine you are very, very tiny. Create a river from source to mouth. 

You have 45 minutes to do that because it's going to rain. 

The Grit parent will meanwhile come along and give you challenges, like a national policy to build a power station, 

or a local demand that soft engineering is installed, or a controversial decision to give all the coast to the RSPB. 

Stuff like that. 

Then you must tell the complete story of your river and coastline features to all the group.

(p.s. water may flow uphill for the purposes of this activity.)

Shark immediately sets about making a delta and a salt marsh.

 Squirrel makes a volcanic island barely able to stay above the water

Monster digs a limestone cave

And Tiger builds all of Cambridgeshire, complete with drainage ditches that look like claw marks.

Industry wants to colonise Shark's salt marsh (the plastic cone), which she negotiates very well by examining water flows, run-off, industrial waste, and installs a person who comes round and takes water readings to ensure the eco system (the green foam) is able to maintain its SSSI status. Well done, Shark!

Squirrel spends most of her time defending her island against the sea. 

She doesn't move from this defensive position for quite some time. I can, so I am told, go away with my power station 

and plans for national development for her island because it is not up for grabs. It is a private island, now clear off.

 Monster incorporates agricultural land, an industrial complex, a beach, settlement, roads and everything.

As I said, we have to use our imagination. A lot.

 Tiger creates an impressive deep-water harbour with heavy-duty coastline engineering, plus industrial units, power plants, high-rise settlements and road infrastructure but says no to off-shore wind power and I am not arguing. She has become threatening with Cambridgeshire and is ordering everyone off her county or else.

This is Lincoln and don't you forget it.

There! Off we go home happy from our morning's study, before it tips down. And I think I shall count this as another triumph for an active interpretation of a Geography IGCSE syllabus, coastal features.

Bunk off school! Take kids to woods!

One of the kazillion reasons why home educators piss everyone off? We don't just talk the talk.

We wrangle the kids from that nice, waffly, aspirational, wouldn't-it-be-nice dinner-table chattering, pull on wellington boots and old coats from Help the Aged charity shops, and create a practical, outdoors, risk-greeting learning. With fights, mud, and blood. Every freakshow day.

And, while Tinkertop's up to her neck in muck and mire - with her crappy maths, appalling handwriting and inability to understand Year 3 Goal Assessed Focused Target Approach - we still defiantly call it all an education.

Now I expect the nation will tutty-tut and shake heads sorrowfully at the way of the world, before asking whether anyone would like another serving of terrine of duck foie gras? And how imperative it is that Tinkertop leaves school with 10 A*s! We hope she's grateful. Just think of the sacrifices we made on her behalf.

Call me Stringy Midden, Bottle Red Devil, Angel's Curse, and Piper's Piss

Spotter's walk, taken with ID botany guides, back-up flora books, home ed kids and dog.

I am totally inept at plant identification, messing up my pinnate with my pappus and my adaxial with my areole. I am, however, completely captivated by lovely, lovely botany words and would go live in a flower just to hear the gentle passers-by murmur Shepherd's Purse and Enchanter's Nightshade. I want those names, I want them all, and then some more; even where they don't exist, they should. What's in your neighbourhood? Old lady's bonnet, Creeping lady's tresses, Sow thistle, or Brandy bottle.

Three Plays at the Globe

One of the bestest, ever, really, bestest enjoyments of choosing to teach your own, is that you can choose your own curriculum.

Instance: the trilogy of Henry VI at Shakespeare's Globe.

Fantastic, all 1,2,3.

But I can choose, right? I decided that Shark, Squirrel and Tiger needed to think about the agendas - petty, personal, political and powerful - that swill about at a time of war. I thought, if they are going to be active, thinking citizens and (hopefully) a damn nuisance to someone when the politics of their time inevitably turn to war mongering, then this type of stuff should be high up on their toolkit of essential knowledge.

Or I'm told I could send them to school. I guess so they don't miss out on the essential knowledge their peers are now learning... hmm, what is it essential for the average school child to know? Ahem. The flavours that condoms can come in.

Hello, Mumsnetters

As the entire world approaches that calender date on which children wait to be sacrificed to Gove's Global Datasheets of Branded Academic Performance Structures Phase I, I know from the secret statcounter that some of you parents are considering alternatives. (There is always a spike about August.)

Geology walk to Coombs Quarry

To wit: 'making the most disastrous mistake of your life', 'setting up your child to fail', and 'beginning on a path that will deny Tinkertop her life chances, remove from her opportunities of a professional career, and separate her from her friends forever'. Probably also she will become an anarchist member of that evil underground network bent on destroying all humanity, and led by our hero, Grimly Feendish, aka Home Educators.

Thornborough Bridge, built in the 14th century, 

the only surviving medieval bridge in Bucks! 

Imagine the travellers who crossed this way.

I cannot help you take your decision. All children are different, la? If Tinkertop threatens to go bonkers, breakdown, or chuck herself under a bus on September 4, in the absence of her rational thinking, then it is you, responsible parent, who weighs the options, costs, benefits, and consequences.

 WTF? Who signed off this repair?

Time to become the nit-picking little building nerd 

I truly am, and send a note to English Heritage.

What I can do, is give you what I do. Probably across many posts (apologies). Otherwise, I only have wrods of experience for the new-to-home ed:

1. Find local home ed groups; talk to practicing home educators, face to face. Meet as many as possible, all over the place. Yes, you will meet people who are bonkers. Some will be wary of you, some want to sell you tuition services for profit, some happily include you in the panda-themed party they're having that afternoon. That's life, not home ed. Be grateful your first introduction is not being locked in a toilet with the hippy who protests against the exploitation of cotton pickers and passes you her favourite bottom wipe. She knitted it herself from the hair of the family goat.

 Calming, no?

2. Are you suffering for the cause yet? Not enough. A next step is to attend home ed meets, visit the haunts and habitats, and generally discover how they know where to go. It may involve wellies, sticks, and a dog wearing a cardigan. Or tea and Bibles. Or watching a kid see if a pile of salt on the kitchen table can be ignited. Relax, broaden your mind, wait for it all to make sense. It never will. Probably why I enjoy the company of souls in this community. (But I am also comfortable with my own contradictions, denials, excuses and hypocrisies, so I am not much of a judge.)

 The river here would be an excellent place

 for the kids to do a river survey. 

I am all up for that. 

Anyone want to come along?

3. Open your eyes to education in everything, not just what school taught you. You have to do this with grinding relentlessness. Say, when you stand forlorn before a museum display that is basically a pile of old rocks, a joyless mound of dusty plastic fish, and a non-functioning video about newt warts. The lot will be guarded by an elderly woman who wants to do her very best for you. She may pin you down so she can find the worksheet that Doreen made in 1985. She is sure they have a photocopy of it somewhere. But even here we can find an education! There must be something about communities, social values, museum funding, and English politeness formula as you try and beat a path to the tea shop.

 Soil! I like soil.

4. Redefine the word Success. Tinkertop not made it out of bed today? Success. The pom-pom making workshop that ended in vomit? Success. The giddy heights of the stick-and-glue group where there is an almighty fight over the single Pritt Stick? Success.

Ah, woodland.

5. Don't feel bad, even when you feel marginalised. Oh yes, it will happen, even in happy home ed land.  One group may feel all wrong; you sense an ugly bad-tempered truce in another; a third resembles total chaos. The fact you weren't invited to the library group, and now you're sure they're telling you something? Keep with it: you and Tinkertop will be comfortable somewhere. And let's celebrate. Expect these divisions; they are made of ideologies, philosophies, religious beliefs and politics. You wanted to join a community of people who stand up for what they believe, don't do things just because someone tells them to, and rarely agree just for the sake of conflict avoidance, didn't you? Society needs strong minded people, and you'll meet a shed load out here.

In the quarry. 

Here you can find shells from the time 

this land was a tropical beach.

6. You must be prepared to face out the incomprehending others. Like those who think Tinkertop should be at school; assume she has been excluded; or there must be something socially wrong with her. They may make comments about how you must be mad/desperate, or your motives are suspicious. Maybe you are needy and weak. You never knew you were capable of murdering your own family until now, huh? I guess you'll develop your favourite reply which isn't fuck off delivered under your breath.

And the perfect spot for a picnic 

with a bit of ice age art.

7. You may have to get to grips with exam culture. Or not. The illegal flexischool, or not. But educationally, you and Tinkertop can sort out a route that is suited to her, and her specific needs and interests. Like the wise woman said, life is not a race. Tinkertop can find her own way, be inspired by courses for which she needs qualifications, aim to be in the place she wants to be. So what if she does it on her own path? It is for situations like this people invented the expression There is more than one way to skin a cat. (Apologies to Tiddles.) You have to help pick a curriculum, negotiate an exam centre, and pay the invigilator. For info, join the high volume, informed and intelligent home ed exams yahoo group.

 I love this gate. 

Whoever made it, I thank you.

8. You have to know the law. At some point, it will be unavoidable, maybe when you need to articulate your philosophy, choose whether to have visits, or avoid court. I could give you a quick legal thingummy, in case you fear an EWO will test your knowledge of English Educational Law 1947-2009, and you don't have the gibbering Tinkertop on hand to demonstrate the mess made by conventional schooling, but the law is not my first interest and anyway, other sites give you the gem.

The sort of day a girl needs. 

Equipped with knife, sticks, ancient shells and soil, 

what could be a better way to footle through a Sunday?

9. It may be of no use to anyone else, but fortune cookie philosophy keeps me upright. Be imaginative to think of the choices; be brave enough to carry them out. Leave the life you planned; embrace the life you have. Eat more prawn crackers; why resist their crunchy charms? And always look for the easy laugh. There will be times when you need it.

Burial mound.

10. You have to be prepared to drive a car where you hope the police never have cause to look in the boot.

Now you could say, Do you know what? Having thought about it, let's not do it.