In my pre-GCSE group we have been doing some algebra and today we were dealing with substitution and simplifying. I love card sort activities and today we managed two of them one for each topic.

 

Spot the error in the organised work below:

 

 

And look who photo bombed:

It’s been a while since I did a day in the life type post (or indeed any post) so for anyone who may be interested here is what one day in our life looks like now we just have one teenager being autonomously educated at home.

A fairly typical start to the day as I need to drag Jonathan out of bed (he’d had a late night with a friend over the night before out at local church clubs followed by chippy chips and playing on the computer) because we had an activity to get to. If we hadn’t been heading out I’d have just let him sleep – for me one of the many advantages of home education (and no it doesn’t mean they’ll never be able to get up for a job – I had the same approach with the older two and amazingly they get up for work when they need to).

It’s the day after the general election so in the car Jonathan and I discuss the result – purposive conversation – it’s been the mainstay of our home education for as long as I can remember.

We arrive at Yaverland Beach for a fossil hunt and one of the home-ed mums shows us some fossils and talks about the local geology.

One of the things I love about home education is the mixed age activities we can do, we had children here from 1 to 16 and a mix of mums and dads too.

We had a gap between the fossil hunt and horse riding so as a treat Jonathan got to choose lunch. He opted for paninis at Blaze in Ryde – My sister and my mum had taken us there and we’d loved it and I’d promised him we’d get lunch there one day so this was the day. The car Journey is filled with election talk on the Jeremy Vine show and we end up discussing the Single Transferable Vote system – which we realised he has learned about from one of the guys from the Hello Internet Podcasts after Ruth asked what it was and he explained very clearly. I haven’t watched that one but the one on Scandinavia which Jonathan sent to me was fascinating.

Anyway the paninis were lovely and we both managed to get a bit of reading done while we were waiting for them, Jonathan wasn’t so impressed with the chips!

 

Time to head back over to the other side of the island and go horse riding with some other members of our home ed group. Jonathan is pleased with his ride today as he got to canter which is his favourite bit!

A not so quick trip to Aldi on the way home – Jonathan must be bored waiting in the car as I discovered these arty shots on my camera when I look at the memory card.

Then he wanted to edit a video for youtube and do a bit of maths (homework for his GCSE group) and computer studies (slowly working through the IGCSE book).

 

Then he managed to draw something, scan it to the computer and do something to it in Paint – Ruth helped him a bit to suggest how he could do it but they both sounded like they were talking gobbledegook to me!

 

And that was pretty much it except for the obligatory time spent on Dota.

This is not a typical day – we don’t really have those – our weeks tend to follow a bit of a pattern based on when external activities occur but these are often subject to change.

Monday: Usually D and D day plus a bit of maths homework and some video making and computing but this week a visit to Seaview Wildlife Encounter as we had my mum and sister visiting. Jonathan mostly wanted to keep a wallaby – in fact as soon as we got home he was looking up how much space they needed and measuring up the garden!

 

 

Tuesday was spent doing volunteer falconry and then Karate – with a hasty dash home to pick up gear and grab a bite to eat between the two (the pics are from a previous week).

 

 

 

Wednesday was spent with a lazy morning – probably watching TV or youtube, then maths GCSE group, then off to the park with a couple of fellow GCSErs back home to spend some time writing song parodies or playing on the Wii with his friends followed by more recording, editing and gaming.

Thursday starts off slowly and gets progressively busier as the day goes on – some maths and computing in the morning, listening to podcasts, drawing for uploading to something on the computer and some time spent on his DS during the afternoon. heading off with a friend to a couple of after-school groups at the local church followed by friend coming home with him and playing on the computer.

Not a typical week but it gives a flavour of our life now there is just one of them at home – things are certainly different from when I wrote this blog post at the same time of year in 2011 and they were all home still.