later that same day ......

After rounding off the trip to the Ashcroft Centre with a trip to the playground and then dropping Susie & Hannah off at the train station, we headed for home.

Tess got the microscope out and she and Brodie looked at leaves, a feather, bread and hair....

The feather was the most successful item .....

Then we did a bit of classic music, dancing to The Beatles. We started with Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, which we had sung in assembly at Inwoods on Friday, and moved on through the collection (including many repeats of Yellow Submarine, as you can imagine!) ......

I attempted to organise our making things/recycling stocks into a temporary home to make it all more accessible for Tess & Brodie .......

But as quickly as I was sorting things into different drawers, they were pulling them out again and coming up with things to make with them ......

Finally, Brodie sat himself down and wrote/drew a story in his notebook, narrating to himself as he went .....

..... apparently it was about 4 people called Coolee, Bongee, Wongee and Boolee (I think!), who went camping .......

Not to be outdone, Tess raided the making things supplies again and made a scene and a story: 'The little girl had a grandma and a mummy. The little girl had a secret garden. The End' ......

ashcroft arts centre open day

We spent a lovely day with our friends Susie & Hannah at an open day at the local Ashcroft Arts Centre in Fareham. The Centre puts on shows, films, exhibitions and classes/workshops across a variety of arts for both children and adults. Today, they were running free workshops in a few of their disciplines plus arts & crafts activities. As well as a fun day out, we thought it would be a good opportunity for Tess to try out some activity workshops to see if she would like to do any regular classes (in these or other fields).

Tess, Brodie & Hannah started with a street dance workshop. It was a little worrying how naturally they struck their 'street poses' and I'm not sure that they needed to learn the phrase 'whatever' at 3 and 5, but they thoroughly enjoyed the session! ......

Their second workshop was drama, and Tess amazed us all by being a very vocal participant in the class. Here she is practising a 4-line dialogue with Hannah .....

.... and performing it on stage !!!!! .........

Finishing off with a game of Grandmother's Footsteps ....

Tess & Brodie listening to a story about a dragon from Lyminster, near Arundel .....

Brodie getting painted as a dinosaur (the first time he has wanted to be face painted in a public session like this ) ......

... and the end result, complete with ferocious roar .....

Tess & Hannah with butterflies and flowers .....

.... but watch out girls, there's a dinosaur behind you!!!!!! ......

Tess & Hannah colouring in Rangoli designs (traditional Indian geometrical patterns, used to ward off evil spirits) ....

Tess's Rangoli pattern .....

Brodie made a finger puppet frog ....

Tess & Brodie with their finger puppet mice and Brodie's frog ....

Tess's penny monster - she had to draw around a penny and then add features, limbs etc to create an individual monster. Tess's monster was a very lucky monster, as it got a full landscape to live in! .....

this week at inwoods

This week at Inwoods, Tess decorated a mug and did some artwork using chalks and paint. In cooking, she made some delicious bread, which she later devoured. In dance & movement, the group started to learn the cha cha cha, which Tess really enjoyed.

Tess allowing Brodie to taste a tiny (and I mean tiny!) morsel of the bread that she baked.....

In the morning, the whole school walks the three-quarters of a mile to Inwoods from the affiliated Brockwood Park school site. We had left the campervan at Brockwood Park during the day, and I was slightly dreading the walk back at the end of the day, with 2 tired children. However, we had a lovely time - Tess & Brodie stopped at every single blackberry bush and got their fill of vitamin C! .......

... and we collected some lovely golden leaves and a seed head to use as part of our Autumn display (we found the conkers at the Not Back to School picnic earlier in the week) ....

Tess is loving her day at Inwoods each week, but has not felt confident enough so far to spend time there without me being close by. If over the coming weeks, she doesn't feel that she can do that, then we will have to change our plan for her to spend Fridays there. This will be a shame as it's a lovely place and she does enjoy it. However, if she's not ready for it yet, then it would be better to stop and revisit the idea in a year or so.

sept art group

This month at art group, we looked at Paul Klee's fish paintings and used these as inspiration for the group's artwork. The children firstly used oil pastels to draw their fish etc. Then they used watered down paint over the top to create an underwater feel, with the pastel drawings showing through.

Paul Klee's 'The Golden Fish' (1925)

Klee's 'Fish Magic' (1925)

Brodie's 'Very Large Shark that has Eaten All the People for Lunch' (2009) .....

Tess's 'Mummy & Baby Goldfish with Mummy & Baby Shark' (2009) ......

not back to school picnic

Last Wednesday, home educating groups up and down the country held 'Not Back to School' picnics, to celebrate the start of the new school year and to draw attention to/object to the proposals currently being considered by government to substantially increase the monitoring of home educating families (see my 16 August post).

Interestingly, the consultation that resulted in these recent proposals was initiated because of concerns for the welfare and safety of home educated children; the review found no evidence that home education was being used as a cover for abuse or arranged marriage, which were the specific concerns, but still proceeded to make a long list of recommendations for significant monitoring of all home educating families. The government is now conducting a further consultation to see which of the recommendations to implement and to assess the implications of doing so; as part of this, the man (the wonderfully named Graham Badman) who led the first consultation is currently desperately trying to dig up further evidence from local authorities about 'vulnerable children who are home educated' because the initial consultation was based on 'a small sample', so they are trying to provide the government with 'more statistically rigorous information'. It doesn't exactly give one much faith in those setting the policies that they plough on with these heavy handed tactics regardless of lack of evidence and using statistically unreliable information.

Anyway, back to last Wednesday ...... We went along to a Not Back to School picnic in Southampton, organised by the SEEDS home educating group that we belong to. We haven't managed to get along to many SEEDS activities over the last year or more, so it was great to catch up with our friends from that group. Hopefully we will be able to get over to Southampton more often over the coming months. The Southampton picnic was very well organised, with a great turnout from SEEDS members. They had also arranged for the local MP and local paper to come along and find out more about home education and understand the concerns about the Badman report. And someone did a short video about the picnic too (see end of this post).

Ready to leave for the picnic - because of the press coverage, and to make a good visual impact, everyone was asked to wear brightly coloured t-shirts. Many people did t-shirts with slogans about home educating or the SEEDS group. We made some batik ones for Tess & Brodie to wear ........

Tess chose to do a heart ......

It may not show up too well here, but unsurprisingly, Brodie chose to do a train (we used a stencil for the outline) .....

Everybody at all of the picnics around the country blew bubbles as a unified symbol of the campaign (as this was something that had featured in a previous protest in Brighton that received quite a bit of media coverage) .......

Here is the video made at the Southampton picnic.

inwoods

Tess had her 3rd day (including her trial day last term) at Inwoods Small School today. She is really enjoying going there, although is not yet ready to stay on her own (but Brodie and I really enjoy it there too, and the sun always seem to shine at Inwoods, so we're not complaining at the moment!!!!). It's a bit hard to do justice to the place with a camera phone and trying to avoid including other people's children, but these pics will give you an idea ......

Looking across to the Big Barn, where whole school activities, cooking and the older children's lessons & activities take place. [The school divides the children into 3 groups for lessons and activities, based roughly around age. The day starts with everyone meeting together for a sort of assembly, then there is usually an activity within the specific groups. Playtimes, lunches etc are all taken at the same time, and the children play across age ranges, rather than just sticking to their own groups. The group divisions are less important on Fridays, which are less structured than the rest of the week, but the younger children - up to about 7 - generally do several activities together in the Small Barn during the day]. Lunch & snacks are eaten at the tables under the gazebo........

The Small Barn, where the younger children's group activities take place ......

Looking from the back field area towards the house (this is accommodation for the main Brockwood School to which Inwoods is affiliated; Inwoods is based in the grounds of the house). The Small Barn is behind the building on the right, and in the distance, between the two buildings, you can see the huge oak tree that dominates the garden area between the Big Barn and the Small Barn. Underneath the oak tree, there is a wonderful area with log piles, made into a dragon, with a carved head, and stump stepping stones. Tess & Brodie spend most of the playtimes in this area, but just as I was about to take a photo of it, empty at the end of the day, some children came along and started playing on it, so I will have to try again next time ....

Looking the other way, towards the tree house ....

....... and ladder and swing (behind the tree, you can just see the edge of another area, a grassy field, which is used for sports and games, and which has a 'secret' pathway to another natural area at the far end) ......

The children made a clay bread oven a few years ago, and over the summer, the school has built a beautiful shelter for it, to make it easier to use and to provide a nice seating area. This is being finished at the moment, and also there has been quite a bit of other work in the garden over the summer (hence the pile of earth on the left hand side), including demolishing a building that was unusable, in order to ultimately build another classroom area for the school ......

Inside the Small Barn ......

One of the youngest group's activities today was to make paper. The children gathered different natural items from the school grounds to add colour and texture to their paper. As they collected items, they grouped them by colour .........

Tess's paper (top middle). She chose the white bowl, which included some clusters of tiny white flowers from a shrub and some small white flowers growing wild. The paper came out a creamy colour, with lots of flecks in it. It was very beautiful .....

The group is also doing cooking this term, and helped to make lunch. Today, they made cheesy bread snails! Last week, they made pizza, and Tess's was an adventurous mushroom & olive one! She really enjoys the cooking and has been paired with a different boy each week, so it has been useful for her to make new friends. Obviously she has yet to be brave enough to taste the fruits of her labour!

The group also did dance and movement. Brodie jumped up and joined in when they played a traffic lights game - as this involved running as fast as you can on the spot every time the leader called out 'green'!

victorian theatre

Tess & I made a Victorian cardboard theatre today. We bought the kit when we went to the Weald & Downland museum a few weeks ago, and it is similar to sets that were very popular 150 years ago. Initially the kits were made as replicas of real shows and sold from the theatre where the show was on, but later on, they tended to use more classic stories and were popular as a general toy. The pieces are die cut into large sheets of card, and simply push out and are folded and interlinked to create quite a sophisticated and impressive mini theatre. Our set is for the story of Cinderella, and Tess, Brodie & I had lots of fun putting on shows all afternoon (though as I was the only one who could read the script, my voice is a little hoarse from putting on so many different voices!!)

Tess pushing out the pieces ....

All ready to assemble ......

Tess really enjoyed all the folding and slotting to put it together ....

... though we did have to keep stopping to play peek-a-boo at every stage .....

The finished theatre ......

The actors take to the stage .....

.... with help from the stage hands .......