See inside your body

This book is currently one of Reuben's favourites, it's from Usborne Publishing (http://www.usborne.com) a great source of resources for us.

Reuben likes to look through it and lift the flaps, but it works best when he notices something in "real life" like when he drinks something and it goes the wrong way or if he can feel his heart beat quickly, and he can run to the book and find the corresponding part of the body to see inside and understand what's going on.

You can find it on Amazon (where we got our copy) or on the publisher's website
http://www.usborne.com/catalogue/catalogue.aspx?id=1927

Home Education and the law

It is of course perfectly legal to home educate our children in the UK, when researching legal issues I found these websites useful:

http://www.education-otherwise.net (extensive resources and information)
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Parents/Schoolslearninganddevelopment/ChoosingASchool/DG_4016124 (the government's website)
http://www.home-education.biz (home education forums)

But probably the best source of information are other parents, we meet them regularly on facebook, yahoo groups and in real life! The Education Otherwise website can help find local and online groups

Home Education Awareness Campaign video

This is a collection of photos of home educated children from all over the UK put together by a home educating parent, in her words:

A video created with the purpose of dispelling the myths surrounding Home Education, especially the ideas that children are only able to learn in the environment provided by school and that home educated children live very isolated lives - this of course is untrue. The pictures you will see have been collected from Home Educating families from all over the UK, from different backgrounds and all with different learning styles.



By Cheryl Moy, music by George Barnett (home educated!)

Animal lovers

My boys, like most children I suppose, are fascinated by animals. My youngest loves them in a cuddly/excited to see them sort of way, and my eldest is more interested in them in a David Attenborough sort of way (what does it eat? Is it poisonous?). Whenever we go to a zoo/rescue centre/nature reserve/farm I am always amazed at how much they know, so I was asking myself: if I have never sat down with them and done an "animal lesson" where did they get all this information from?
You will be surprised to know that a lot comes from a cartoon called Diego!

Not the most accurate of programmes (Diego works in animal rescue despite being about 9 years old, and has rescued creatures like mermaids and dinosaurs...) but when dealing with real animals, my boys soak up all the information like sponges. They know about Lamas, Anacondas and Macaws, they can recognise them when they see them for real and know what they eat and where they originally come from, so thank you Diego!

Next, we must include another cartoon, Octonauts! When we visit aquariums or play in rock pools, the boys are a fountain of knowledge: sharks (especially whale sharks which Isaac is very fond of), seals, crabs, you name it. I think that the Octonauts are involved in more animal rescue, or they are a sort of underwater vets, but the boys are fascinated.

We have a lot of animal based books, but the boys tend to like factual ones more than stories, a favourite is Eye See You, a poster book they can look at while guessing the name of the animal and trying to remember as much as they can about them (a favourite is the red eyed tree frog!)

But of course nothing beats the real life experience: we have tropical fish and chickens at home, we live in the country so farm animals are a common sight, and we very much like to visit animal related places. We have been to zoos here in Leicestershire, London and Rome, endless farms, various Sea Life Centres and Aquariums (the latest being the one in Newquay), the Seal rescue centre in Cornwall (Reuben was very impressed by the hospital) and as many nature reserves and woodland areas as we can fit in. I do feel a little uneasy about the boys seeing so many animals in captivity though and I hope that in the future we can all travel to see them in their natural habitat.

Related websites we like are National Geographic for kids
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids
and the Panda challenge from the Smithsonian National Zoological Park http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Education/ConservationCentral/challenge/default.cfm
but I'm sure there must be 100s!

The happy scientist

We LOVE this guy!!! http://thehappyscientist.com

Hunting with an umbrella...

Science videos and experiments galore from the American science educator Rob Krampf, mainly for older children but Reuben enjoys the videos, which are sorted into study units as well so you can either mix and match or follow progressively.

Cuisenaire Rods

I used the rods in primary school in Italy while learning Maths and I was really fond of them, they made numbers come alive and using them for homework was something I actually looked forward to. We used them for basic operations and fractions, I also remember them making a reappearance for algebra years later, as well as finding they are used in language teaching to symbolise the different elements of a sentence.

They were created by a Belgian primary school teacher, Georges Cuisenaire, but were made popular by the educator Caleb Gattegno in the 1950s. John Holt saw Gattegno in action and used the rods himself extensively (although he found that using them in the prescribed way did not really help his "problem" students understand numbers any better...).

These are the ones we have, but the wooden version

So what are they? Ten coloured rods each representing a number, so 1 is the white cube, 2 is the red rod as long as 2 whites, and so on. If you have a structured approach, there are many many manuals and ideas on how to use them (the rods we bought came with a list of activities). If, like us, you are autonomous, the rods can just be left on a table or a shelf for the children to pick up and make sense of, my two year old makes very long rows of them or likes to sort them into colour/length.
Another way we use them is when my eldest is trying to work something out and gets stuck, if he asks for help we get the rods out and work out the problem "hands on".
For example: he was trying to do some sums on the ipad today and was having trouble so we pulled out the white (number 1) cubes, 9-3=6 suddenly became much clearer (line up nine white cubes and take three away, how many are left?) and the next step will be to replace the nine white cubes with one black one which is just as long (the 9 rod), use the 3 rod and the 6 rod to show the result without having to count the units one by one.

More Maths ideas

Whyzz website, children's why questions

This website is really useful, I get why questions daily (and what/when/who/where/how...) so on my many google searches I came across this website http://www.whyzz.com/index/home
Rather simply, you type the question and it gives you a simple answer plus some activity/further research ideas on the subject. If you join the site you can contribute, comment and share. There is also a phone app that goes with it and I must confess I have used it a few times!