Vin's Learning Journey

We had a bit of a rethink and a chat in our recent free choice week. It was starting to feel like we were planning a lot of activities that were feeling more and more like "lessons". More for convenience than anything I think it just crept in and felt like Vin was having less of a decision in it. So we had a good week off and relaxed a bit and then the next week we took things a bit easier. Part of the reason for home educating is because the chop and change nature of school, where things are learned for the sake of "this is what we're learning about" doesn't feel natural to me and it had been feeling like we weren't able to just take our time and see where things took us. Vin seems to learn more when he reads books he's chosen, when he's relaxed and having a nice time and just able to be . as well as to have that balance of listening to your own needs, when you need to rest, when you want to really get into something. I think this leans more tow...

 This week we've been out every morning to explore the new place we live.  We've found woods, an orchard, intriguing pathways, about 8 playgrounds, bluebells, blossoms on trees and bushes, a field full of buttercups, several patches of wild strawberries, loads of daisies, and more pretty things to spot! We spotted lots of tiny snails after it had rained. We made a little play cafe. We wrote a menu and chose some foods to make and used the toy money for the customers to pay with. It seems a lot of the customers seemed to order "off-menu" though..and wear their meals? Vin did his 3 minutes writing every day, he is continuing to practice joined up writing and is doing very well. We had a bit of a "hungry caterpillar" theme for a couple of days. We spotted some leaves on hedges that had been chewed by caterpillars but we couldn't see any real ones. We read the book of the Very Hungry Caterpillar. While we read it, Vin drew the caterpillar's life cycle. W...