Back To Work

So, after a couple of weeks of dreaming about being on holiday, planning being on holiday, being on holiday and the aftermath of being on holiday, Emily has today been "back to work" as she puts it.

We really do need to get more organised on the education front. I loathe living from day to day with no clue about what we're going to do next. We're very untidy so we can never find the right resources on the spur of the moment anyway. Think I've finally given in and admitted that autonomous education, much as I can see the appeal, simply doesn't work for us. There's no such thing as free time for the adults in this household - which means that if we're not "with Emily", we're "working". When left entirely to her own devices, Emily will do the usual mixture of playing and having fabulous ideas for things to do - but she either needs or wants help and/or company with a lot of them, and while she's doing her own thing, we're working....and it's impossible to suddenly drop the grown-up work to facilitate the idea she's come up with that minute, on the spot. That leads to frustration and disappointment for Emily and massive guilt trips for us. So, the penny has finally dropped that we do indeed need some structure. Quite a bit of structure, in fact. For all of our sakes.

Anyway: today. This morning Emily did some extremely basic year 2 level subtraction. Under extreme protest. 2 pages of which took the best part of an hour. Why is it that stuff she can whizz through without thinking one day becomes a major source of trauma a few weeks later?? Eventually, tears dried and tantrums calmed (and Emily was feeling better too!) we moved onto history and spent a long time looking at the Celts and Boudicca. Emily did that home educated "thing" again and stunned me with how much she already knew about the topic at hand despite our total lack of formal attention to it so far. After our historical detour, we boarded the train back to Hogwarts with some English, Harry Potter style. Emily wrote some character descriptions from HP & Stone and started working on the Diagon Alley chapter for her project, specifically writing about Gringotts Bank and its goblins and designing an advertising poster for the bank.

This afternoon, Jon and Emily went off to the library and community centre for a local history seminar. The librarian had specifically asked Jon a few weeks ago if Emily would like to come as she felt it would be right up her street. Yet again Emily was the only child present, obviously enough, I suppose, as she's the "Only HE Child in the Village" (add your own welsh accents) and she thoroughly enjoyed it. The focus was on finding resources and materials for local history research and Emily came home beaming with pages of notes she'd made along with ISBN and catalogue numbers of books she wants to go back to at a later date.

I've just dragged myself away from the Hope Catalogue site having firmly convinced myself that we don't actually need any more "stuff". Only went there to look at clay. Sigh. Shoes, handbags, clothes, make up? Nah, not interested. Give me a good old education supplies catalogue any time! Having pooled ideas with Emily and Jon, we're bubbling over with "things we want to do" - but where's the time going to come from??