Deschooling’s Over!

I’m pleased to report that 18 months after finishing school, M has deschooled!

Various things have happened this week that have made me realise that school could finally be out of her system: most importantly, her love of learning is most definitely back and it’s plentiful; also she has asked me several specific questions to learn about something without smacking into her ‘fear of learning’ wall; and she is soaking up knowledge everywhere and then joyfully telling me, D or J about it.  On the whole, life for M is much more positive.

The other night I got the highest praise a Mum could ever hear when M told me that she loved her life!  However, this was in response to D saying that her life was rubbish compared to Dora’s (she has also crooned out some tear-inducing songs on this subject).  Of course, all explanations from me about how Dora’s life is unrealistic; you only get to see one part of it; her best friend is a talking monkey; yadda yadda yadda… all fall on deaf ears.  So instead we’ve switched it around so that D gets to BE Dora the Explorer for the day. 🙂

Dora’s first trip was to see St Paul’s Cathedral last week.  This week, Dora visited The Museum of London!  It’s certainly an excellent way of getting D out, as otherwise she would live her life permanently in the lounge.

The museum was fantastic: the girls were fascinated by how London had changed and the terrible things it had been through.  There was almost too much information in there for one trip so we will definitely be going again.

M is just starting to dip her toes into history.  I tried to set up a history time line a while ago and they did enjoy it but ultimately there was very little understanding as neither of them had a concept of time.  We have just started discussing the number of years this week and then there were lots of time periods to look at in the museum so she’s had a good start at it.

We’ve also been a bit ‘sciencey’ this week:

The other morning I could hear the sausages chatting in bed so I went up to say good morning.  When I walked in, M said ‘we have just been discussing why some planets take longer to go around the sun that others’!!!  What a way to start the day.

J and I watched a glass of water trick on QI the other night and J showed it to the girls on Sunday morning.  There was A LOT of water on the kitchen floor but it was funny. 🙂

I put up a new poster in the kitchen which was linked to the Wild Weather BBC series on telly recently.  It has sooo much information on it, it makes me realise how little I know about my own planet.  D asked me to read it to her, and we talked about storm couds, tornadoes, the temperature of the Earth and hailstones.  Funnily enough, we had a hailstorm later that day and J went out in it to entertain the girls: D was shouting at him to get back inside as she had read that people can be killed by them!

We also attempted to make periscopes but they didn’t work very well so we need to have another go at it.  While we were searching for the periscope mirrors through the science box, I came across some packs of PH strips that I bought a while back.  I showed the girls how they worked and they feverishly dipped them into anything they could get their hands on!

Spanish continues as the sausages continue to teach themselves.  They have been counting Smarties in Spanish and then saying all their colours in Spanish too!  They can both roll their ‘r’s impressively too.  They learnt ‘Te Amo’ from Dora this week and D made a treasure hunt for M: the treasure was a piece of paper with ‘Te Amo’ written on it. 🙂

We also went to a home ed social group last Friday and the girls absolutely loved it.  We met some old friends and made new ones too and we will definitely be returning soon.

That night, D wanted to put on a concert and so sang 3 of her own compositions to me and M.  I was reminded a little of Victoria Wood. 🙂

And lastly, D finished her painting at the girls’ art class today.  I am absolutely in awe of how good this is!  It was an exercise in parallel drawing so she was instructed how to copy the shapes in the picture bit by bit and then chose what colours to paint it herself.  If you want to see the original, click here.