Let's Go Fly A Kite

The three of us have had great fun in Normanby Hall today. Although we're all at home, it's not that often that work committments allow us the luxury of a family trip out all together, so today's picnic/kite flying frenzy was an absolute pleasure.

Normanby was absolutely crawling with school trips, but fortunately we found somewhere shady for our picnice before the riot began. We've come to have a pretty low opinion of most school outings, and they usually back up our preconceived notions pretty nicely, sad to say.

We were treated to an amazing flying display by both swallows and house martins, several of each constantly doing acrobatic swirls inches from the ground, right next to us.

After our lunch we went off to visit the lake - we didn't even know this bit existed until we went pond dipping with Hazel and Romy a few weeks ago, and Jon had never seen it, so of course he had to be shown. There were still a few tadpoles in the water, but nothing like when we went before - the water was absolutely black with them then. Lots of stunning dragonflies today, but no sign of the frogs. Yet another school party then arrived to do pond dipping - it was amusing listening in, I must say. They spent far longer being lectured than they did "doing" anything.

We bought Emily a new kite from ebay the other day, mainly because we can't find either of the ones we did have. It was due for its maiden flight today, and after a few false starts Emily was flying it like a pro, much to the jealousy of the school party, so it seems. We'd taken our wildflower guide with us, so she also had fun finding and identifying all kinds of plants, and reading out which ones could have been used in which kind of herbal cure.

All that just left time for a quick trip round the farm museum before home. It's been absolutely scorching all day - fortunately I'd remembered to put sun cream on Emily before we left, but forgotten it for me and Jon, so there's some sore skin round here this evening!

Seeing all the school parties today reminded me - it's just about a year ago that we first found out about home education. I'd started helping in Emily's reception class with swimming lessons once a week - it was what I saw there that was the catalyst for "all this" that we're doing now. We knew things weren't rosy at the school, but it wasn't until I saw at first hand the disgraceful behaviour of the staff that it really dawned on us that we had to do *something*. I'll never forget watching in a mixture of shock, horror and anguish the way things went in that classroom. The quieter, shy or distressed children were at best ignored, if not humiliated - there was zero attempt to support, soothe or encourage, and anyone upset was belittled and further demeaned - yes, even in front of parents. The less popular children like our daughter were left in virtual panic mode during the ritual "find a partner" rubbish, and passed over *every single time* when it came to putting hands up to answer a question, or being chosen for this or chosen for that.

Witnessing that kind of stuff, on top of what we already knew about the school, and on top of Emily constantly coming home upset, bruised from yet another "accident", bored stiff and matter of factly explaining that her teacher didn't like her and had made that quite plain.....not to mention incidents like when Emily (who has asthma) was left with vomit all over her clothes one whole afternoon after an asthma attack and nobody even TOLD us, the only way we found out was seeing the state of her clothes....like when she was shouted at for not making it to a toilet in time to be sick....well, I'll stop now, because it still makes me so angry. At least partly, I'm angry with us, full of guilt and sadness, because looking back we tolerated far too much and should have removed her sooner. But we didn't know about HE, you see. Like so many parents, we were in the dark.

But here we are, a year down the line - and we, especially Emily, are flying. :-)