Just cruising through some old photos looking for something and found this.
In June 2017 we had made the decision to go travelling for a year and take the kids out of school. The plan was in place, the flights were booked and the kids were finishing off the summer term.
THIS was the moment I realised what Home schooling or Home Educating REALLY means.
It is NOT all about workbooks, apps and constant online programmes, althought these are hugely helpful.
It is about real life learning and experiences. Seeing and doing and then researching and understanding.
Repeat.
This was the moment my son Tom, who has now turned 7 and still hasn't gone to school, fell in LOVE with nature.
We were on a muddy wet walk in some woods and were just in time to see the tiny frogs head out of a pond.
He was totally fascinated.
We watched them for ages. Then we talked about frogs, the lifecycle of a frog, looked for frogspawn, made up names for them, dropped into a friend on the way home who had some frogspawn to see what stage that was like.
At home we then looked it up, drew pictures, found videos of the lifecycle... etc etc etc. That love of nature has just grown and grown since that moment and pretty much everything he does is loosely based around some animal or bird either real or created by him.
We can't do the things we would normally do at the moment BUT try and let things evolve. Everything is potentially a learning experience. Making cakes, gardening, shopping and budgeting, even the actual pandemic itself for the older kids.
We are setting up a fundraising arm with The HOW People so I am going to get the bigger kids to help me with the set up, design etc.
All life lessons.
