Homeschooling...

I know that there quite a lot of homeschoolers *out there* & I'm wondering if any of you might take the time to give me some general advice. 

I so want to give my children a Montessori education & the only viable way I can see is to do it in the home. But... I don't know if we're right for it. I don't know if Hug would be happy if the person (me) who is asking him to brush his teeth before bed is the same person (me) who is giving him lessons and asking him to stay at the kitchen table concentrate on his work. Everyday. With little brother in tow. 

This year he has been enrolled in his Montessori preschool enough days that I haven't actually done any actual lessons with him. We mainly do art and cultural projects together, and I found that it's been working quite well - he never took too well to my lessons. Or maybe I never got my confidence up. Who knows?

Anyway, if anyone has some advice I would really like to hear it :)

p.s. This is a lovely blog that I read just before I posted.

p.p.s  For a little extra background information... The other options that I am considering (our local primary school is too large for my liking) is a small country school close by that is government run. I'm not so confident about a public education but the money I saved on school fees could be spent on Montessori materials that we could have at home & I would use the Hainstock book (which I already have) to use in our own out-of-school learning time... or a beautiful private Waldorf-Steiner school. I like so much about this school, but I don't know if I can fully commit to the principals. It's like Steiner and Montessori are the Ying and Yang of Holistic education - a very similar purpose but with widely opposing practices & I know that I am a Montessorian at heart. Hmmm....

{image - media files from AMI}

Picasso and his collection

Our fun trip started with a night in the city (the last post showed the beautiful sunset as we arrived into town) and then arriving at a great river/city view apartment.

This is what we woke up to... Moon still lingering over the buildings being lit up by the reflection of the sunrise :)

T had to leave early (6am - eeek!) for the work he had to do but the boys and I were able to start our day a bit slower. Once we were packed up and out of our apartment we walked down to the river to catch the ferry & came across this fun kids park. Is it ever possible to say no?!

The ferry took us almost all of the way to the Gallery of Modern Art - & to our destination -  the Picasso exhibition!

Here is Pablo Picasso teaching his own children to draw. The exhibition was great. I had the pram & both boys used it (it's a Phil + Teds stacker-style) so that made life a lot easier. Hug and I talked about a lot of the paintings while L mostly chilled out and soaked it all up in his babyish way :) The exhibition was quite large and split into 2 areas so we went for lunch in the middle and Lovely slept in the pram for the second half.

That print of Picasso with his children was a huge backlit print in the kids area called "Yo Picasso!" where there were staff to facilite differnt craft projects. Here Hug is making a mask.

Downstairs in the gallery there was another great area with these cool silver turntables & touchscreens for mixing music. Aimed at teens I guess but fun for us all the same!

Here are the boys grooving out in a music-mixing 'pod'.

This is an area where you can draw on the walls with chalk (Oh God, I love modern art galleries!) & here is Hug channeling his freshly-Picasso-influenced best.

I let him choose postcards of 3 of his favourite artworks (which I think will be good to look back at later) and then we found this brilliant colouring book of patterns (mandalas really) in the gallery store & he was in heaven! I had brought this art set along with us. It's a little kit that folds out into 4 sections: paints, oil pastels, pencils and textas. It was a few hours drive that afternoon to our next stop and he barely said a word during the whole drive, he was so immersed in his art. I haven't photographed my favourite one he did but I might add it to this post later :)

So, our Picasso experience was a great success and one of Hug's teachers was planning on taking her daughters over the weekend and then they'll kick off a few weeks with Picasso as their artist in focus at preschool. Love it!

On The road!

We have been away this week - having lot of fun in the *big smoke* (Picasso exhibition included!) and the beach & the countryside. A complete whirlwind. And now - home & an amazingly fantastic, soulful and happy weekend :) I will post more...

En plein air

I really like the idea of getting outside or en plein air & being creative. We were invited to visit friends yesterday who told us at the last minute to bring our painting gear - sounded like a great idea! My friend, K, had bought 3 small canvases for my boys & her little guy & set them up outside on the grass in the sunshine.

I quickly became obsessed with how beautiful the paint looked on the palette as it all started to get mixed together with messy brushes.. I'm a bit like that!... I took about a million macro photos... until I got a bit too close to a 2-year-olds paintbrush & got my camera totally gooped! It was worth it (even if my lens cover still won't work ;)

So cute

Don't you just love these gorgeous bird balloons?! I think I bought them at the supermarket a while back & forgot about them until Hug stumbled upon them yesterday. Little red one popped just moments after these photo's were taken but the others are proudly perched by the window in the boys room now :)

p.s. I was trying to think about what I could do with these... I did have them 'nibbling' their own coloured squares off a multi-coloured rug - kinda random! - so any suggestions as to how I could use them in a learning-esque way would be greatly appreciated. I'm sure there are lots of things I'm not thinking of!

The art of getting dressed

I really love Tim Seldin's book: How to Raise an amazing child: The Montessori Way. He talks about (and shows with some really beautiful images) how important it is to organise your child's bedroom so that everything is within their reach, giving them independence and freedom of choice.

My boys share a bedroom which has built-in shelves. This is how it was when we bought the house & in an old house with very little other storage I'm so thankful! At first, of course I dreamed of an actual built-in closet, but this really works well - because they can both see & get (& in *theory* put away) their own clothes.

Hug's clothes are all on the left & Lovely's are on the right. Long pants are on the bottom shelf, shorts on the next shelf up, then long tops, then t-shirts and, finally, vests & occasional things. They each have a basket which holds their underwear and socks.

The shelves above here hold the soft toys that they don't use everyday. Coats & dress-shirts and that type of thing hang from a simple rack on the back of the door. There is a dresser between their beds that has drawers which hold their pj's.

It's a little hard to see in this photo but I made little labels for each shelf / each boy. Maybe I can photograph these & add them later? Basically, each is a laminated circle made of card with a drawing of the item (e.g. shorts) with the child's initial in the middle. That's H or L in this case.

Now, it doesn't always look quite this tidy but not far off ;)

EDIT: After Lovely's nap I went in and took some pix of the shelf labels. Please excuse the sketches - all very 'organic'  ;)

And here is the hanging rack on the back of the door. I have another of these in the playroom to hold the dress-ups. Please note that the only reason that it's relatively easy to keep these clothes under control is that I only have out the clothes that fit / are in season / that I like (which basically means - no logos or characters). This means there isn't too much stuff to mess up & that I pretty much don't mind what they choose to wear! They mostly choose their own clothes (esp. Hug) & I think they always look pretty sweet:)