Day 10

18th October 2021

A Beautiful Day

Unschooling – I’m not brave enough. I would like to think I am, but I’m not.

We have decided to schedule a lot less into our day & let Lincoln & Mila lead as much of home school as possible, but we compromised with needing to complete Singapore Maths & The Good & The Beautiful English every day.

We spoke to the kids about our new way of life and explained that while they now enjoy many more freedoms, that there were expectations on them to complete their essential core subjects each day & that I didn’t want any fuss about it.

(Tough mama!)

Surprisingly, this went down well, and they agreed 40 minutes of core is still way better than school.

The Language/Arts books we bought from The Good & The Beautiful (http://thehomeschoolyear.com/Good%20&%20Beautiful) incorporates many subjects & lots of great information through stories & lessons. I’m really happy with it as it’s a complete course, with only 20 min lessons each day in order to complete the course within one year.

Sounds good to me.

Here’s a look at the year 5 course overview. Thorough huh?

Flexibility

The flexibility of home school is never far away from our minds as we move through the days.

Usually, I would set them up at the ‘designated school area’, but as we try to follow unschooling as much as possible, we find ourselves working all over the place.

This morning Mila chose to lay on her bedroom floor & wrap a pale blue ribbon around her leg like a ballerina as she called out her spelling words to me. (I wondered how this would have gone down in the classroom at school?)

Then she lay on her bed with me and finished off her 20 minute English lesson.

It felt cozy.

The sun was streaming in & Pepe was sleeping at the door catching some rays.

It wasn’t even 9am.

Lincolns Turn

I had to log on for work and so Liam took over and made a start with Linc. His lesson today was on poetry.

Poetry is a hard sell to a 10-year-old boy.

So, we rapified it.

Yep, that’s a real word. 😏

We love rap in our house. We even have a kids rap playlist that uses beats from Snoop Dog and Dre so we can enjoy rapping along without the curse words etc. This song is the kids favourite! (http://thehomeschoolyear.com/Dog%20Rap) (You’ll love it too)

When the poetry wasn’t going too well, we realised poetry is just a song without a beat.

So, we added one.

I was not allowed to film, but Liam started rapping the poem, then Linc caught the beat & joined in.

They were so funny!

It was a really sweet father/son moment. 💙

We wondered if this had been done before & looked around YouTube.

We found this! An AMAZING video of Wes Tank rapping Dr Seuss’ One Fish Two Fish Three Fish Blue Fish. (http://thehomeschoolyear.com/Wes%20Tank)

You’ve gotta watch this with your kids!!

It’s THE BEST!!

Lunch Break

We took a break after English. Today was the first day they didn’t run straight to the trampoline.

Mila made some veggie soup and then we found her relaxing in bed with a book.

Linc made a smoothie and sat on the back step & then worked on his skateboard tricks.

The day found a really nice flow with everyone together but doing their own thing. (This doesn’t happen much.)

It was so nice.

Maths & Drawing

Maths went down without any drama today. Maybe it was because I felt calmer after my tough mama speech. The kids knew there would be a certain amount of one on one ‘teaching’ today and they just went with it.

Mila collected some shells on the weekend & we decided to take one shell & use it for art.

We each had to draw a picture of anything we wanted but we had to incorporate the shell. I wish I’d taken a photo of it before it got lost.

It was a black triangular shaped shell with a silver tip.

Mila thought it looked like a dorsal fin. Lincoln did too.

I thought it looked like a large bow you might see on a Japanese Geisha. When we finished, they had lots of Geisha questions and so we did a little research & looked at some real pictures. They were really interested in how different they look from ordinary people.

**Fact – Geisha are not prostitutes. They are schooled from age 6 to 18 by way of dance, performance, musical instruments, drawing and serving. Their virginity was sold by the Geisha house as payment for their training. After this initial transaction they were only ever required to perform. This practice was stopped in the 1950’s. (We didn’t go over this part…I read it & threw it in here just for you 😉)

The Fresh OJ Machine

Liam took them out to run some errands in the afternoon & they stopped off at a new Orange Juice machine we just discovered.

They LOVED watching this thing in action!

When they came home they were talking over each other very excitedly to explain to me the inner workings of the OJ machine.

Watch Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb8NwKI9WR0

Café Shenanigans

Dinner & Rummy-O

The afternoon was spent with the neighbourhood kids, riding bikes & skateboards.

It was the first time we let Lincoln go alone & I felt a stab in my heart.

He would do this all the time now.

3 minutes ago, he was pulling himself up to a stand on the furniture & now he is just one of the street kids.

We heard him come home at the side gate and he walked in, a broad smile on his face. He could feel it too.

Something was different.

He could feel the independence he had been given and he liked it. He suddenly looked enormous as he plonked down on the sofa.

We had the loveliest night eating outside in the garden & playing one of our favourite games Rummy-O!

But Why?

When we tell people we are home schooling as a lifestyle choice, they ask us;

“But why?”

It’s simple.

We love spending time with our kids.

We know we only have a short time to be parents.

Lincoln is in the death rattle of his young childhood.

Very, very soon he will be a teenager and wanting more & more of his freedoms & responsibilities.

We want to spend as much time with him (& Mila) as we can before they begin the first of those last steps.

Leaving us. 😢