Managed to pack quite a lot into yesterday, which always feels good, especially if its different and inspiring.
Started off in the morning by Fran effortlessly doing her normals in order to win her weeks pocket money, which she then spent on Beanies 🙄 Wizard Whimstaff was again instructing us on something new, right angles this time. Found it slightly hard to know where to start explaining it, so may try to do a bit more on that fairly sharpish. She was enjoying it anyway. She’d spent lots of time on Neopets as well, learning to copy and paste and navigate the Shop Wizard. She deserves a bit more time being spent with her on her computing skills really as she’s getting quite competent and could use some more stuff to explore.
After that we made “Hunter Gatherer Stone Age Food” from the 120 projects for History book (1 down, 119 to go). This was a huge success, for kids who don’t like jam (!) and after we’d boiled up raspberries, blueberries, hazelnuts and honey, they ate it for lunch with hunks of nutty, wholemeal bread (from Sainsbury’s 😉 )
After that it was time to go to MuddlePuddle group. i contributed clay scarabs but they weren’t as appealing as a lot of what was on offer. I’ve got photos of the various pyramids and so on being done but need to go through them first to make sure i haven’t inadvertantly got in any children who aren’t supposed to be. Added to the “don’t put my child on the web” care that its only right to take, lots of the group is Muslim and i’m very conscious of Islams rules over images of people so have to be extra careful to not include some chiildren – meaning the photos are not that representative!
Its becoming an excellent little group though; there were a good 10 families yesterday, and not all the regulars were there – more than 20 kids who paid (not including toddlers) and 5 babies. And for me, that is great. If we are going to make the point that “school age” becomes a stupid cut-off if you are never going to use school, if people are going to say they HE as a lifestyle choice, then its lovely to have an available group and space that can accommodate people with children of lots of ages. It offers support to people who become entranced by the idea and want to throw themselves into it at once. And i think that means those people are more likely to actually end up HEing, rather than become disheartened or unsupported and fall into school. I feel as if MP here is building a future community of young people who will never have been to school as a positive choice.
I just profoundly don’t agree with the notion of “come back when you are school age” but perhaps that is because i knew i was going to HE when Fran was only 3 and i know i needed support to become an “HEer” and not feel like a lunatic everywhere i went. One of the first things people say, when the familiar cry of “how do i start???” comes up on lists is “just carry on as you have for the last 4 years.” If we are going to say that it figures, to me, that we need to be equally clued up to providing a welcoming environment for children who’s parents really do decide to HE them from when they are babies. There doesn’t seem to me to be much difference between a 2 year old who is going to be HEed and a 2 year old who is at a group because of an older sibling. I know from my own experience anyway, that as soon as i decided to HE, i immediately felt a pariah among the toddler group world of “how soon can i get them in playgroup/nursery/school.”
Anyway, there’s my answering opinion, its been knocking around in my head for a while 🙂 No offence to anyone who thinks differently, different circs do mean different things are important.
After that it was off to Activity World to meet T and her Dad. Lovely to spend some time with T again and to get to know her Dad. Girls all seemed to get on very well and keen to play again soon. Hated AW with school kids there though, what a bear pit! All round a good get together; felt sad and a bit guilty to know that i have been, for the intervening years we’ve not known each other, held somewhat responsible for what occurred. Its probably justified, although i wasn’t in much of a position to actually do much, but a shock nonetheless. I had to walk away at the time, not that it made me feel good to do so, but of course, i was guilty by omission because of it – and i can’t change that.
