What do YOU want to do?

Inspired by a blog post by Jax, I asked Dr John what he wanted to learn about. I phrased it a few ways, and he came up with the following:

What do you want to learn about?

• England - what people do there (?!), especially Gran
  
• North America - the Native Americans and just America
• Egypt (I suspect he means the Ancient Egyptians than anything else)

What do you want to know about?

• Planets, the sun, cows, ducks and dinosaurs

What questions do you want to know the answer to?

• Why does snow melt and why doesn't the sun melt?

Where would you like to visit?

• Bees making honey

A varied collection of things there!

So, of course that has led to one of my favourite pastimes - looking for books!

I'm going to order a couple of books about America in the hope that we can refine the subject a bit more:


We already have a few books on native Americans, Brother Eagle, Sister Sky: A Message from Chief Seattle (Picture Puffin) and More Than Moccasins: A Kid's Activity Guide to Traditional North American Indian Life amongst them.

Ancient Egypt is fairly well covered too, with a fairly good section in Story of the World: History for the Classical Child: Ancient Times: 1
Egypt (See Inside) and Egyptians (Usborne Beginners)

I don't have much on cows or ducks, but have a lot of info on planets, the sun and dinosaurs including a solar system model that needs to be finished.

We plan on going to the bee museum too. I find this a strange one as Dr John is quite vehement in his reluctance to even try honey. I don't think that me explaining that the nectar is turned into honey in the bees stomach and then is regurgitated helped very much!

I did also ask if he wanted to learn to read, to which the reply was "of course!".

At least now, when he wants to do anything on these things I may be able to cover them!

Although it may be a while. At the moment, he is watching The Magic Roundabout for the second time this morning, as this time he is doing the quiz that goes with it. He seems to like quizzes, particularly associated with a film or programme. He discovered the quiz that goes with the Magic School Bus dvds yesterday and enjoyed them. Of course, if I asked him questions about the film, I probably wouldn't get a response!

Yesterday, at Dr John's request, we made some gingerbread men. They were yummy and it was good to see Dr John being a little more interested in food and cooking.

Later we go to the doctors for hopefully a referral to a dermatologist for Dr John's eczema. I get the feeling his paed is more a cure-it doctor rather than a preventative type, so hopefully I won't have to fight too much.

Tomorrow, another home ed get together. Its a shame we'll have to leave early to go to yoga, but its great that people are keen on these meetings. I desparately want them to become regular events. I guess I should think about what we can do in the winter.

Meeting Up

At the risk of sounding like a broken record (or should that now refer to an mp3, or are they obsolete already?) I need to blog more. I have posts in my head, but they just don't make it onto the screen, and they should do, as I'm on the puter enough!

Anyway, we have been meeting up with other home educators! Yes, its true!

We had found a family that we originally met a couple of years ago when S gave up being an Usborne organiser and I bought her stock from her, but we didn't contact each other for a while. Since we met again earlier this year, we have seen each other roughly once every couple of weeks. It is great to have someone to chew the fat with, who 'gets' our HE choice. She has two sons, Thomas and Curly (not their real names, but I feel that I need to start using more than initials!). Thomas is 5, and Curly is 3.5. The three boys get on great together, and as Carrie (blog name for S!) and I can chat for England, its a great relationship.

Carrie organised a home ed get together at her house, which was extremely brave of her, particularly as Thomas is on the autistic spectrum and doesn't cope too well with lots of people. I can't recall how many came, but I just remember that the kids spent all their time outside and the mums (and one dad!) hogged the kitchen. It was great. I had met several families before at the Not Back to School Picnic last Sept, but met a couple of new faces too.
Conversation revolved quite a lot around the standard introductory questions: "why do you it?", "what regulations do you have to follow?", "do you have permission?" etc. Hopefully the more we meet up, the more we can move away from these and get into the nitty gritty of life!

Inspired by this, I organised a meetup down by the lake. I'm aware that Bildung zu Hause, the Swiss Homeschooling organisation is very Swiss German, so invited several French/Swiss Romande families that I had heard about.
We ended up being at least 9 families, 3 of whom were French speaking. We had to leave at 4.30pm to get the van ready for Chris Evans (my blog name for dh!) to take Dr John (used to be M!) away for the night and they were still going strong.

I feel positive. These people do exist, and they seem keen to get together on a regular basis. I had thrown out the idea of a coop, a bit like latinetc (see elsewhere on the blog ring) a few weeks ago and I had a couple of replies, but I think now that it may have been a bit early. I do tend to run away with myself a bit!