Just thought I’d pop in to discuss the first week back to home education…
For those of us with kids in the UK this week sees our kids going back to their education in whatever form that takes. For us that’s education at home. Now I will be honest we don’t usually take a full summer off, or even term time holidays for that matter, as our learning is mainly tailored around family holidays as and when. This year with eldest heading to college one day a week to do his GCSE’s, the kids decided they wanted “school holidays” like eldest will have from college once he goes. It was a busy summer visiting family and doing DIY projects, so I won’t lie, I jumped at the chance of a little break. In all honesty though I have to admit it feels like a mistake, and we probably won’t take such a long stint off again. Not because of the lack of learning as we pace ourselves anyway, but the general upheaval of starting back again. Do you guys find this? Is it the same for schooled kids? First week back is stressful!
A snippet of our week…
I think it’s a big change going from absolute freedom for 6-8 weeks to being asked to sit and concentrate and absorb stuff. I think this is a problem especially if there’s neurodivergence in the house which is something we have our fair share of. Change! We don’t like it… it upsets the balance! I’ve done my best this week to make it a staggered start back to education. Most of our online classes start back this coming week so we mostly just got to do the more fun and chilled stuff like art, baking, sewing, trips out… but oh my word! The drama when I placed a page of maths down in front of my 12yr old! Thankfully things have got easier as the week has gone on, so I’m hoping that after a few weeks back, calm will decent once again (if you can call it that) on my little wildlings.
On the plus side our week has been pretty busy and generally fun. We started the week with a trip to Malham in North Yorkshire and walked over Malham Cove and along to Gordale Scar and Janet’s Foss (waterfall). Highly recommend it! It’s just shy of 5 miles and some absolutely stunning scenery!
We did more than our fair share of painting this week which surprisingly youngest really enjoyed and concentrated on (he’s not known for sitting still). We started a knitting project, made pom pom apples to decorate with, made banana bread and sticky toffee pudding, and finished the week off with a trip to Souter Lighthouse!
Souter is the first lighthouse in the UK to be designed to be powered by electricity, and it still retains almost all of its original machinery (I believe the original generator is in a museum in London). There’s loads of info to read on the way around and we found it all quite fascinating. There are little activities for the kids to do part way around like sending morse code messages, writing their names in Nautical Code Flags, and a couple of lighthouse themed board games. Then you get to enjoy the 76 steps to the top! Apparently the lighthouse keeper had to do that every hour of the day to re-wind the mechanism to keep the light turning! PHEW! Glad I only had to do it once haha!
Anyway we’re onto week 2… Wish me luck! How did your first week go?
Let me know 🙂
The Wildling Within 
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