Month: February 2018

Sunday reflections

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Another week, another Sunday.  How time flies.  This past week has passed in the blink of an eye, mainly because my husband (a teacher) has been on half-term holiday, and so it’s been a little break from our normal life.  I didn’t bother to plan like usual; instead I classify all of this time as family time and we just enjoy it as we please.  For us, that meant trips to the sandpark, gymnastics and pony riding, amongst other things.

Of course, now it’s back to reality – although thankfully, reality isn’t really that different.  The main difference is that it’s me on my own again. One thing that I really enjoyed about having my husband around this week was how his play with Bella was so different than mine.  He showed me that she was really interested in throwing (and in fact has a great underarm throw!), and while she often seems to mix up blue and red (which made me think that she wasn’t quite into colours yet), she adored running around trying to find objects that matched in colour.

So what’s the plan for this week?

The main aim is to get back in the routine of just being the two of us, and one of the main things that defines it for me is Bengali.  We’re going to go back to the mornings of late: lazing about in bed reading books in Bengali, and I’m going to really make a point of noting down when I slip back into English and which phrases I’m lacking.  Bella doesn’t get frustrated at all when I speak it now, which is great, and she understands an awful lot of what I say.  It’s clear to me that the limiting factor is me, so I need to step things up.  Thankfully my mum will be visiting us every week in March, so I plan to ask her to only speak Bengali too.

Other than that, my foci for this week are music and art.  I’m going to remember to put music on regularly (we’re loving the Maestro Classics series), play the bells at least once a day, and think about how to integrate our playsilks into music.  We’re also going to draw using a different medium every day (watercolours, tempura paint, crayons, colouring pencils, markers).  For some reason, we didn’t do any art this week and it makes me a bit sad.  Obviously, if Bella asks to use a certain tool then we’ll use that – but I kind of want to remind her of all the different options that exist.  She does use the chalkboard on her easel most days, though!

In addition, I’m going to be thinking about Sensorial a bit this week.  We have a set of mini knobbed cylinders arriving, and I’m keen to make up a couple more mystery bags.  Bella’s also clearly in a sensitive phase for matching (a blog post with more info to come soon), so I’d like to keep a matching activity available to her at all times, as well as playing matching games with her.

DIY Montessori Number Rods

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Today I made Montessori number rods!  Bella’s still a bit young for it, but we don’t go to the hardware shop often, so we figured we’d do it while we could.  I find that so much of home educating is like that for me – I’m the type to plan ahead, so I buy (or “stash”) things in advance when they’re on sale, I make lists of things I’d like to do in the future, or I make things that I know we’re far too early for.

The point isn’t to rush Bella into anything.  The point is that when Bella shows interest – there’s no delay!  I can pull out the material or take us on a day trip to the right place.  I like that.  I don’t like feeling like I’m one step behind, so it works for me.

So today we made number rods.  It was really easy.  £2.50 for a bit of wood from B&Q, £1 for a red tester paint pot, and £1 for the blue one.  It’s much cheaper than buying a set, but the obviously corollary is that I have to spend the time making it.

And you know what?  That’s the best bit.  I’m not an obviously arty person, but like many people, there’s an underlying creativity.  Making materials is part of practical life for me: I love learning how to do new things, and I love producing something tangible that Bella gets visible benefit from.  I also really like that Bella gets to watch us doing these things, so she sees Daddy sawing away and me painting.  I have people ask why I don’t just buy the materials when I can afford them, but it’s not always about the money.  I need fulfilment in my life too.  This is a major reason why home educating works for me.

Red paint on

Blue paint on

It was surprisingly easy.  As I said, buy a bit of wood and cut each piece to size.  The traditional classroom material goes from the initial 10cm piece up to the large 1m piece.  We sized down to 4cm increments because of the size of the wood we could get, as well as storage requirements.  Then I put masking tape on the “blue” segments and painted the red ones, and when the paint dried, moved the masking tape on the red segments and painted the blue bits.  Take off all the masking tape at the end, and ta-da!

Ta-da!

Learning time

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Last week my homeschooling course consisted of a lot of discussion about routine and rhythm.  This was a great exercise, because I got to analyse what we actually do and what I wanted to do, and make some concrete steps towards bridging the gap.

The main thing I realised was that we have a lot of free play.  And that’s great!  We’re looking at three hours of free play on a busy day, i.e. one where we have an activity on for a couple hours in the morning.  I feel really good about that, because while we do have a lot of activities on, that’s still a lot of self-directed play time.  Bella’s great at independent play and that has immediately answered some of my own questions about why that’s the case.

The thing that keeps coming up now is learning.  We’re at the age (21 months, approaching that second birthday) where people start talking about formal learning.  I have friends eagerly teaching numbers, letters, etc.  I’m one of them – every morning I work hard to get our Bengali time in.  But fundamentally, I don’t want our days to be full of lessons. I just want to make sure that Bella has the opportunity to explore activities with certain outcomes.  If she’s not interested, fine, but if she is – well, we’ll never know if we don’t give her the chance first!

What does that really mean?  How do you do this in a child-led way?

farm animal matching

Here’s an example.  Today, after breakfast, we settled into the living room and Bella naturally started playing with the toys on her shelves.  One shelf has her farm animals, and laminated photos of those same animals.  Before we knew it, we were matching the wooden farm animals with their photos.  Object-to-picture matching is one of those pre-numeracy skills, and a fun one for toddlers too.  That’s the reason that Montessori shelves are so popular: it’s the ease of having these lovely invitations to work available for children to choose independently.

After further playtime (which included a tea party with a china set, also on a shelf – not sure if that one can stay out; I worry about it breaking an awful lot!) we headed out to the swimming pool.  And then I spied my second opportunity for a bit of learning. Bella normally demands songs to be sung to her in the car, but I thought I’d try to entertain her in a different way, as I had the opportunity to sit in the backseat while my husband drove.

I introduced these Emotions cards to Bella a couple weeks ago, and she loooooved them.  Most children love seeing photos of other children, and the fun expressions just add to the enjoyment.  Bella has a couple that she’ll copy, and there are a couple others that clearly still thwart her.  It’s a great way to introduce vocabulary, and also discuss those big feelings that toddlers often have.  Bella already says “baby sad” when she’s feeling upset, which is great, but I’d love it if we could work on angry, surprised, etc.

So I brought the cards along, and for 20 minutes we chatted our way through them.  It was a lovely way to spend a car journey, and a great 20 minute so-called learning session that may not have occurred otherwise in our day.

The moments are often there – it’s just a matter of being able to grab them when they come up.

Trampolining

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Today we went to the trampoline park with friends.  Long story short: it was amazing.

It’s actually part of a larger venue which is a full-on leisure centre, from swimming pool to gym to cafe to soft play for the tots.  The ticket we purchased gave us entry to soft play as well as the tots trampoline session.

I wasn’t fussed about going to soft play.  Something about it has never appealed to me.  It feels like the opposite of real life: it’s a sterile, baby proofed environment that children are encouraged to go into because the parents are guaranteed that there are no risks inside.  I have friends that spend their days going from one soft play to another, never setting foot outside.

I’d much rather be out in nature, letting Bella walk on uneven ground, stepping on stones that have somehow formed a path, dealing with the elements and having as much fun, if not more, on the journey.  Of course there are more risks, but the reward is that much greater too.

But I had no choice today, if I wanted to go trampolining.  And I did really want to do that, because Bella has taken a real shine to the trampolines at the gymnastics session we go to.  I thought it would be a nice way to do something new, while engaging in a familiar activity.

The best thing about the trampolines was that there was nothing else there, save for a couple balls that had snuck in.  There were 18 trampolines all attached to one another, and literally nothing else.  The girls ran from one end to another, bouncing up and down, falling over, laughing, giggling, tugging on ours arms to join them, and they spent three quarters of an hour doing this over and over again.  There was literally nothing else there to amuse them, and it did not matter in the slightest.

I loved it.  I loved watching these girls, all just under two years old, have fun learning how these strange new ‘floors’ worked.  I loved watching them explore how things changed when there was more than one of them on a trampoline.  Their curiosity and energy never abated.

People often think that you need so many bells and whistles to engage children.  It’s not true.  At this age, they’re still figuring out how their own bodies work.  It’s time for us to let them get down to that important business and get out of the way.

The first week of February

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Time for a new ritual: on Sundays, I’m going to spend some time reflecting on the week just gone, and the week to come.  I want to be a touch more thoughtful, more deliberate, more aware before the week is upon us.  I want to be clear in my own objectives and priorities.

Our weekly routine

What does this week hold for us?  

I think my main priority is routine and rhythm.  Last week wasn’t a good one for Bella in many ways.  We were only just settling in back at home after two months of caring for my mother-in-law, and we didn’t quite get things right.  I prioritised going out and seeing people because she was so lacking in peer interaction and outdoor time, and instead naps and our daily rhythm suffered.  I’m going to try to find the right balance this week.

That means that every day, we’ll be home by 12.45pm and heading for a nap by 1.30pm at the latest.  We’ve also had a bad few days in terms of the night time toilet learning, so I’m hoping that getting to bed at the right time will help her wake up refreshed and of sound enough mind to hold her wee until we get to a potty.

I’m also keen to make post-nap time more pleasant as I often struggle to fill the time left in the afternoon.  I have great plans to introduce afternoon tea, where we drink actual tea (and have all the fun of pouring!), eat some nice treats or light sandwiches, and chat about art.  I just got a set of the Usborne 50 famous paintings cards, and hope to be able to use them at that time.

And finally, I want to observe Bella more.  I did some of this last week, and there were some beautiful moments as a result, but I need to do more.  I’m setting the hopefully achievable goal of observing Bella for 30 minutes every day, ideally each time at a different time of day.  You can only follow the child if you know where the child is going!

Is anything special happening this week?

My homeschooling course is starting this week!  I’m really excited to be doing an 8 week Montessori homeschooling course.  The first week is about Routine & Rhythm so it’s even more important to me to focus on that myself this week.

Also, the Winter Olympics starts on Thursday!  My husband is a big sports fan, and I’m a big travel fan, so when you put us together, you get a crazy couple that plans to take their daughter to every Summer Olympics.  (The Winter ones don’t time well with school.)  That doesn’t mean we’ll ignore them – no, I plan to use it as a way to learn about sports, cultures, competitive activity, etc.  But I haven’t prepared anything yet, so let’s see what I can come up with!

My Vocation

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Educating Bella is my job.

It took me a long time to realise that.  I had a different job, once upon a time, and then I fell pregnant and took a year’s maternity leave.  And then I had the big decision to make, and I made it: to stay at home with Bella.  That was how I said it. But it wasn’t right.  What really happened was that I left my old job for a new one.  I went from being a finance professional to being an educator.

Some of the books we’re currently reading

I treat this job like I have any other.  I learnt my craft.  I learnt by reading books, by exploring various pedagogies and disciplines and choosing a mix of philosophies that best fit my establishment.  I learnt (and obviously am still learning) through experience, through the day to day of life with Bella. I continue to polish my craft, experimenting with different techniques day in and day out.

I’m learning so many things so that I can be the best teacher possible for my daughter.  I’m learning to speak Bengali, learning about music and arts and how perfect pitch is obtained, and how to become better friends with nature.  I’m learning how the human race learns and how best to teach our little ones.

I love raising my daughter.  I believe that I am the best person possible for this job.  I do not believe that a nursery worker, or a childminder, or even my family members can do as good a job as I can.  They don’t know my daughter as well, and they don’t have the interest that I do in doing this job.  Just in the same way that I am not the best person for most other jobs on the face of the planet, this is the one job where I am the best.

Does anyone else feel like that, or is it just me?

So it won’t surprise you that home educating is something that we’re seriously considering.  I never thought about it before.  It’s not part of my strict, narrow-minded Asian culture and heritage.  My husband doesn’t have the same background, but he is a secondary school teacher.  But now, I just think of all the things that I’ve learnt, and how well I know my daughter, and I want to be the person to put all this together to create wonderful years where her curiosity is never sated and she gets to learn about anything and everything she wants.  I want to help her learn to follow her passions, love life, be confident and chase her dreams.  I didn’t have a child so I could hand her over to someone else.

At the moment, my husband and I have agreed to flexi-school Bella: 3 days a week in school and 2 days at home, until she enters Reception (age 4.5).  From that point, her Montessori school requires at least 4 days a week in school, but it’s a private school and I suspect we could get away with 3.5 if we paid for the full 4 (!)  I’m fully aware that we’re extremely lucky to be looking at the situation like that, but I spent my whole pre-baby career working hard to earn lots of money, and this is what that money was for.

The only problem is that the more I think about it, the more I just want to keep her home altogether.  I’m struggling a lot with the idea of sending her to someone else for education.  But school is good – I loved school.  Independence from me is good.  Time for me to recharge is good.  And the Montessori school she’ll be going to is wonderful.  My husband (the aforementioned secondary school teacher), my mother-in-law (a former primary school teacher) and I all fell in love with it when we visited with Bella a few months ago, and I think it’ll be a great place for her to flourish.  So that’s the plan.

Nature and the Outdoors

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I am not an outdoors person.  I have never been an outdoors person.  No, I was a bookworm, the girl who hated bugs and dirt and always wore socks.  But now, I have a child and I want something better for her.  I don’t want her to be scared of the outdoors.  I want her to understand how the world works, through first hand experience of the world.

So how do we do this?

Meeting a horse at the Ada Cole horse rescue sanctuary

The first step is to get outside.  It’s much easier said than done, but it’s all about the baby steps.  This week, we went to the village green on Monday, the park on Tuesday, the back garden on Wednesday, a walk to the shops on Thursday and today, Friday, we went to a horse sanctuary!  Next week, we’re meeting friends in the forest on Monday, and the rest of the week is yet to be determined.

The second step is to have a couple drivers to keep us going when we aren’t feeling motivated.  I bought a copy of Exploring Nature with Children, which gives a year long ‘curriculum’ to guide you through a year of nature study, based on Charlotte Mason’s vision of home education.  This is great for simple activities and doesn’t make me feel bad for not being that nature-loving parent you often see.

The final step is not to let the weather thwart you.  You know the drill.  There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.  So get the right clothes.  Today, it was pretty cold out at the horse sanctuary, but Bella was dressed in wool leggings, fleece trousers, wellies, a long-sleeved top, cardigan, coat and a balaclava-style hat.  She didn’t seem fussed at all.  I’ll be honest, I don’t tend to go outside if it’s really pouring it down, but I know that a light drizzle is fun for the little ones, and we’ll often go into the back garden then.  At least it’s easy to get warm and dry on a moment’s notice if we change our minds!