This week!

This week we have started something new.

Each week one of the children will pick a topic to learn about and everyone else will join in and see what we can find out. Idea being that the person whose idea it is gets to explore something they are interested in and the others will hopefully find out something new too! We have to enter into the topic with open minds and when its not our choice, had to add this stipulation as the boys were worried in case Mia chose Barbies or similar! But when we thought about that possibility we realised that we could explore lots of avenues within a topic. so for Barbie it could be about design and manufacture processes, developments in plastic, social aspects and views of women.

We didn't have to battle too much this week as Mia was first on the list and chose Polar Bears!

Cue lots of DVD time watching the BBC Life series about ice worlds and the Poles. Environmental discussion, story writing and crafting and fact finding. We actually saw some Polar bears in a zoo in Germany last month while visiting family and we were not very happy with how it made us feel so this has led to further debate about animal welfare and the value of zoos or wildlife parks.

We only had one dissenter in the bunch, but I have to say it has been one of the best things about this week. Oliver has been reading, alone! Yay, and its a big old Harry Potter to boot. its this sort of thing makes me feel our decision to home educate has been the right one for us. Its been a long time coming but without force he has done it himself and discovered a love of reading again. It started slowly with fact books and easy reads to Mia but all week we have found him curled up all over the house quietly reading away. Wonderful!!!