Home Schooling - Taking advantage of opportunities

Padawan and Little Miss are exceptional at making games while we work at the block.  Their imaginations have been so activated in the time that we have been building and sometimes the ideas they come up with to entertain themselves with astounds me.  They will run around outside for hours on end and the majority of the time they get along really well.  

Like all children they have disagreements and get frustrated with each other but, for the most part, they play so beautifully together and it makes me so proud!

This is the kind of thing that the kids get up to when they are unsupervised.  Padawan tied Little Miss up "because she asked me to".  Little Miss was thrilled to bits!

On one particular day my hubby and I had been trying to work out a solution to a problem that presented itself.  I cannot remember the specifics of the problem but we had been pouring over specifications and plans in the shipping container and when we came out we saw Padawan up on the scaffolding winching up a bucket they had filled with toy cars.  They progressively filled the bucket with heavier and heavier objects and, under supervision, learned how the weight of the object they were lifting had an effect on the way that the endless winch worked.  I love that they learn the fundamentals of physics through playing a game!

Building a house has given us many opportunities to provide a natural education for the kids.   We discussed quite early on in Padawan's life that school might not suit him.  He is not one for routine and does not cope well with being constricted.  In anything.  We were happy to follow our children's lead so when he point blank refused to go to kinder we started researching homeschooling in earnest.  Padawan was, like all children, naturally curious and I would take every opportunity to talk to him about things when the opportunity arose.

Padawan is not one to be pushed into anything.  We have spent countless hours trying to change that but have (most of the time) succumbed to the fact that if we work with him we will achieve much more than if we insist he does something in a particular way.  

When Little Miss was born we decided that, like Padawan, it would be her choice as to whether or not she entered the schooling system.  When offered the option of kinder, she declined saying she would be much happier at home learning with Dad and Padawan and informing me that her Dad was the best teacher she would ever get and she only had to share him with Padawan.  With logic like that, who am I to argue?

So, we continue to homeschool our children and will do so until they tell us they no longer want to.  While we are pretty strict about the kids learning to read, write and do maths.  The rest is a little more fluid.  We have structured 'lessons' on weekdays for the kids that cover reading, writing and maths.  Most days there's music theory and practice as well.  The kids and my hubby are learning German as my sister-in-law is fluent and used to work in the foreign language bookstore and managed to get us some brilliant resources.  When the kids and I are talking about things, I generally throw in some Italian here and there as that's what I learned at school and am familiar with.  

The rest of their education is much less formal.  Most of the things they learn are based on conversations we have.   

Building and learning new skills ourselves has presented many opportunities to teach the children things from maths to physics, to swear words - no, I mean practical techniques such as hammering, tying knots, using a hand drill and the importance of having the square set perfectly against the edge of the timber (something I still need to practice from time to time!).

All that learning needs to be hard wired in

Little Miss taking a (very rare) nap at the block