Misadventure

Yesterday my younger son got angry with his older brother and pushed him off a wall onto the back lawn. It hurt. Elder son retired inside and waited for the pain to go away. It didn't. Gentle inspection convinced me that it was probably a cracked collarbone. Off to the after hours surgery went we, and I was surprised to find how little the pain was affecting him, so long as he had somebody to talk to. A lovely lady in the waiting room listened as he regaled her with stories about his baby sister, and our cats, and his grandparents, and the paint we just bought from the paint shop to paint a big rock in our yard.... it seems that a busy mind is a happy mind for our 5-year-old. The doctor was quite surprised at how chipper and chatty he was, considering the severity of the break.

Today was a very quiet day. We have not had a very quiet day since A. was taken away for the day to a family bach up the coast at Waikawa. He spent most of the day today on the couch watching cartoons and on the computer playing games (although he did help me with some gardening).

Most recently he has been using a site online called Busy Things to which we have access through our Christchurch City Library membership. It's something that both the boys enjoy and one is generally happy to observe while the other plays. It has a lot of literacy, numeracy, problem solving and so forth and one of the better activities for our elder son is an art sandbox, which allows him to putter and play in a fairly unrestricted way. He has a tendency to avoid artistic pass-times if they are too complex, difficult to get the results he wants, or just too fiddly.

Our younger boy has been enjoying singing along with alphabet songs while his brother plays. He doesn't know all his letters yet, but he recites the last part of the alphabet fairly well, and knows that "zed" comes after "wye". He can find an A for his brother, and S for himself, an M for his sister, and "K for Mummy!"
He seems to think that both 6 and 9 are called "six!" and that counting goes: "1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 4, 6, 4, 2, 3, 6..." He also likes "eleven", "fourteen", "sixteen" and occasionally "one hundred!"

I've spoken to my younger boy about what happened to A. I asked him if it was scary and he said it was, and that he had gotten angry and pushed him. In such situations he normally says "I not going to do that ANY more!" but this time he told me that he might push his brother again on a different day. We'll have further dialogue on this subject, I am sure, but I'm not going to try and make him feel sorry for something he doesn't regret. The more he sees his brother in pain the more he will get an understanding of what happened and I'm sure empathy will come in time. Whether this translates into actual remorse remains to be seen. Sounds like he was pretty ticked off at the time and may well feel justified.

With one son walking wounded we may have a lot more screen time that we had planned for.. but we also have a huge pile of library books too - some stories, some interesting non-fiction stuff, and some in other languages... so that should be fun, if it's distracting enough.

Brainstorm Game

Every now and then when A is getting a little unruly and wants some one-on-one time with me I pull out the whiteboard and we play games. One game that he likes is brainstorming things with a theme. These brainstorms generally keep him occupied for half an hour to an hour, and get added too for the next week or so. Every now and then he will encounter something weeks later, that would have fit in a previous brainstorm, and will say "Hey!! That should have gone on our list!!" On previous days it has been anything beginning with a certain letter or sound.
Today it was "Mammals".

One of our previous efforts: Words beginning with "B"

He knows that mammals have fur or hair, and claws or nails, and teeth, and make milk for their babies. Today he was playing with these ideas and figured out that fish don't count, and neither do dinosaurs or things with feathers... even though he really really wanted dinosaurs and sharks and peacocks on his list. I was pleasantly surprised that "people... because they have hair" was the fourth one he came up with, and dolphins were the fifth, even though I was suggesting that mammals have hair and claws.

When we started running out of ideas I suggested places where he might find mammals, and what they might do - sea, farm, zoo, ice, forests, pet shops, deserts... be predators, or prey, or something you ride, or awake at night, or something that gets killed by cars...

This is the list we came up with:
squirrel, whale, rhinoceros, horse (pony), koala, human, mouse, leopard, cheetah, lion, fox (which he told me how to spell), meerkat, tiger, camel, hedgehog, elephant, gorilla, cat (kitten), warthog, pika, sheep (lamb), possum, dog (puppy), kangaroo, goat, hippopotamus, dolphin, rat, cow, jaguar, wolf, pig, orca, polar bear, walrus, giraffe, sea lion, racoon, monkey (capuchin), zebra, llama, deer (fawn), donkey, skunk, bunny rabbit, guinea pig, porcupine....

I'm sure he'll add to this list in the coming days!

Hello World

Hello and welcome to the first post of the Rushworth family learners' blog. I cannot promise that I will be posting frequently but I hope to be including snippets of what we do, where and how and why. I will also most likely comment on interactions that I have had with other learners, parents, educators and so forth.

We are a family of 5 living in Wellington, New Zealand. I am lucky enough to have a husband who is happy to be a sole income earner, allowing me the privilege of following my passion for home education. My children attend Playcentre 3 days a week.

Today I had the frustrating experience of going out to buy a replacement camera cable, and not being able to find one the right size. My camera has just run out of batteries and seeing as I have a 6 month old who has just started crawling, this is a particularly frustrating time to not be able to record things.

Cooperative play. Home made play dough.

The children were home from Playcentre today because of an stomach upset, and so they needed some quiet activities to enjoy. We decided to make Playdough. (this image is from the last time we made it). Today's effort included adding turmeric to make a vivid yellow colour, eucalyptus oil for fragrance that wouldn't be too appealingly delicious, and glitter.. just for a little something special.

A. has a tendency to create whatever we have cookie cutters for (today it was gingerbread men, cookies, and butterflies). He seems more focused on learning how to use the cutters and rolling pin, than creating something new, whereas S. wants to make things. This morning he was squishing a whole pile of the dough flat with his fingers. When I asked him what he was doing he said "I making a race-track!". This seems to be a recurring element in his creative play at the moment, a motif that he has experimented with from time to time in the past, but which may have been reawakened recently when he saw the movie "Wreck-It Ralph".

In the early afternoon the boys were going a bit stir crazy so we took them to the park. There a kindly elderly lady informed me that my son is old enough to be enrolled in school... so I should do that. She was qualified to give me this opinion because she used to be a teacher back in India. I smiled and nodded and said that if that was a good option for us that I would take it, but not right now, and she smiled and nodded when I pointed out that the teacher student ratio in home education (in my case 1:3) was a lot better than the 1:30 in public schools, so my children could learn through what interests them... we smiled and nodded and stated our opinions, and ignored each other's.

Sometimes when you have completely different experiences and cultural precepts, you just aren't going to see eye-to-eye. Thankfully I have the freedom to do what I hope is best for my children, and not everyone is going to agree with me, but at least I have the freedom to do so.