Lessons from Last Year

January 10, 2014 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

Have a plan for the full twelve months sorted out.
In advance.

Don’t try to do a few months at a time because small people and life in general will interfere with any feeble attempts to catch up and plan as you go. And then your head can begin to spin.

If you’ve been doing this home ed thing for a while, please don’t laugh at me, I’ve learned my lesson. What we need around here is some background structure, with associated goals and aims but not rigid “at school” days. Otherwise I’m as well to send them packing to the local primary school.

In fairness, I did have a set of goals, but they weren’t easily visible and revised by me every day, or week. Eeek!
Don’t fret about my kids though, they still learned heaps. Miss Oh is definitely on a par with her schooled peers in both mathematics and reading – while spending much less time on it. Master Oh is now happily counting up to 20* and beyond to 100 after showing no interest at all. He also loves to use Reading Eggs. I’m sure a fair amount of his progress is guessing until he gets it right, but at least he’s doing it as often as I will let him and the repetition will get him in the end. He is only just four after all and I have no intention of forcing him onwards beyond his interest. He has even recently shown signs of actual writing. This is something akin to a miracle. He rarely does any art other than some swirly scribbles and the odd splotchy painting and then over our Christmas break he produces writing. A 4 year old’s style, of course, but writing nonetheless. And with not one jot of prompting from us. Goodness me!

So, over the next few days I shall be tackling the annual plan. A guide for each area we want to help them develop, with backup extras listed at the end just in case they whiz through it in no time. I’ve already got the year-at-a-glance spreadsheet underway, so that can be printed out and pinned up where I can see it each. and. every. morning.** And since I’ve created it, I can alter it whenever I want or need to.
I may even do a monthly plan broken down in to weeks with some ideas for activities to reinforce any concepts or ideas we are currently learning. At the very least, if I do it, it will be there should my head start to spin at any point in the year.

Finding the balance between formal learning and informal learning is something of a learning curve for all of us. Can you tell?

There’s much more to share of the things the kids have been up to, but that will have to wait until next time, and for me to fossick out any associated photographs for you.

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* with a missing 15. Apparently my kids don’t like 13 or 15 since they both have skipped one or the other when learning to initially count in sequence !?!

** yes, I might just have a need for constant reminders. Tell me you wouldn’t when you have two kids wanting your undivided (and indivisible) attention all of the time. (Note to self: encourage more self-sufficiency this year.)

National Council of Home Educators New Zealand

October 4, 2013 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

I thought I would share a great resource if you happen to be a home educator in New Zealand. It is the National Council of Home Educators New Zealand.

If you click through on the logo to the left you will be taken to a wealth of information on all aspects of home education in New Zealand.

It’s really great stuff if you are in the contemplation stage as there are plenty of links to a large number of resources, both physical and online. And if you are already under way there is still plenty there for you to brush up on, especially in the regulation and review areas.

Even better, it is being continually updated, and is totally free to join as an individual. Simply fill out the form and you will be invited in to the community and will gain access to some excellent resources at NCHENZ prices.

So what are you waiting for? Head over and sign up! Join the community.

Disclaimer: I’ve recently joined the NCHENZ committee, so I am slightly biased. From now on when there are any significant issues or information of use to the home education community, I will probably be posting about it here under the Category NCHENZ.

Orakei Korako

September 30, 2013 / Ms Oh Waily / 2 Comments

A few days after our visit to The Bath House and the Redwoods, I took the Oh Waily kids off to pick up their Nana from Matamata (aka Hobbiton). Then we took to the highway and headed towards Taupo.

Just before the great lake we took a left turn, and another, then headed up into the hidden valley that ends at Orakei Korako. It was a pretty misty and grey morning, and for most of the journey it rained on our outing. When we made it to the end of the valley the rain faded away, but left us with a dull and overcast day. Still, it didn’t deter us from our walk.

First stop, the boat that takes you across the water. What a fabulous way to start an adventure. With a buzzer to gain retrieval when your walk is through.
Next up, the walk through the geothermal area. Lots of interesting things to see and a surprise for the kids, what with all the steam wafting around us. It also made photography a bit of a hit and miss affair, as I’m still figuring it all out.

As we walked over the first boardwalk we began to see all of the colours of the terrace. Unfortunately the overcast conditions didn’t manage to do justice to the colours and this was the best I could do to capture them.
It was great fun looking at all the algae as we walked along, but I think the kids were just as interested in the boardwalk as they were in the colours.

Here they are, admiring the Golden Fleece Terrace. Or, at least, posing for another one of my photographs.

After this it became a taniwha hunt as there was a story to be told and a rock to be found. Instead we found the Elephant Rock, and naturally Miss Oh’s constant companion (Lumpy) had to be compared and contrasted to the rock in question. Quite the family likeness, I’d say.

After this we were able to admire the view back down on to one of the rather amazing terraces.

We stopped and admired Ruatapu cave and then headed on for the rest of the walk around the grounds. And what visit to a geothermal park is complete without the obligatory boiling mud pools? So we were able to see a few of those too. One being particularly extensive.

After all the steamy walking, then the sun coming out, we headed back to the jetty to find the boat had just arrived and was picking up a number of other passengers. This was rather surprising because up until the last small part of the walk we had seen and heard pretty much no one. Yet here were at least half a dozen people!

To finish off our trip we had snacks and drinks in their little cafe before heading homewards. It was a really long, but nice day. A huge thanks to Nana Oh Waily for being my second pair of hands in a potentially iffy outing location – small children and steaming hot water, what could go wrong?

I’m looking forward to our next trip north when I think we may take on another geothermal wonderland, either Waimangu Valley or Wai-O-Tapu, and hopefully expand the little people’s knowledge of the earth and it’s sciences. All while having fun, of course.

The Bath House

September 28, 2013 / Ms Oh Waily / 1 Comment

Last month the Oh Waily kids and I went for a visit to their grandparents in Tauranga. On this trip I finally decided that we would do some day trips while we visited instead of spending most of the time locally.

To that end we headed to Rotorua for the day. We started with a gentle stroll along the lakefront, a run around in the lovely playground before refueling with morning tea in a local cafe. We reinforced our recognition of the Scaup from our visit to Nga Manu as there was a huge number of them floating around the jetty.

We then drove around to The Bath House, which now houses Rotorua’s museum. On the way we stopped and admired the beautiful waka on the lakefront. You can’t help but love the prow, can you?

Unfortunately I can’t show you any photographs of the wonderful inside of the Bath House building as you aren’t allowed to take any. But I can recommend a visit. It is a small museum, but it is very modern and very nicely presented. It was especially fun to see the restored and excavated sections of the original bath house stalls. It was even more fun when we got to walk under the building, hard hats and all, to see all the underground workings involved in “taking the cure”.
Then I took the kids to the top viewing platform, through the attic, looking out for the ghost all the way. It was a very nice experience all around.

After this we headed out to the Redwoods on the outskirts of Rotorua, stopping for a late lunch on the way. I’ve driven past this area so many times in the last three years and had no idea that this existed. What a waste!
So, we started by getting the kiddie’s questionnaire to encourage them to observe their surroundings and then set off for the short walk, Redwood Memorial Grove track. It’s two kilometres of mostly easy walking, and it takes you through some beautiful parts of the forest. Here’s a couple of photographs I took along the way.

And when we reached the end, we had to stop and say hello to the Redwood Family. Apparently one of them might have had a bit of a headache the day we visited. Maybe they’d spent all day trailing around after small people?

If you are visiting the central North Island, or just passing through, I can recommend visiting both the Bath House and the Redwoods. By the time we had visited these two spots we were pretty done for the day, with an hour and a bit drive each way from the Oh Waily grandparents’ house to bookend our day.

Following on from our successful trip to Rotorua, we headed out on one more day trip a little later in our stay, this time to a hidden valley just outside Taupo.

Nga Manu Nature Reserve

August 10, 2013 / Ms Oh Waily / 1 Comment

Back in July I took the two Oh Waily kids for a drive up the coast to Kapiti and the Nga Manu Nature Reserve. We went mid-morning in order to join the feed out tour, in which visitors get to meet some of the birds up close and help feed them.

On arrival we were met by some friendly locals. Perhaps they look a little familiar.

Once we headed off on the tour with our lovely guide, we were able to enter enclosures and offer food to a variety of native bird species. Robyn was very patient with my fidgety pair and explained about each of the birds as we met them. By the time we had visited the first two enclosures I knew I wasn’t going to be able to take photographs, corral children, feed birds and listen to Robyn. So the photography was ditched. The only native that I got a shot of before realising this was a kaka. It was fabulous getting to see them all up close for the first time.

Along with the kaka, there were kereru, morepork, kiwi, swans, ducks of all stripes including a group of scaup, and the world famous kea. Who really are just as cheeky and smart as their reputation suggests.

We got to watch the whirlpool effect of the scaup’s webbed feet as they dove for food, and saw the kiwi snuggled up in their nesting box. We learned that pukeko are the worst predators of other native birds and that the resident head kea has a rather understandable penchant for creamed rice and will try to sneak it at every opportunity.

After we had made our way around the feeding route we then headed off to explore the lovely bush walk.

And enjoyed the bright undergrowth that was fallen and aged ferns. It was rather spectacularly bright and cheery. And unexpected.

And then there was the view from the tower.

Very well worth the couple or so hours we spent there. The only thing I would do different next time is to take a second pair of hands to wrangle the kids on the feeding tour. They needed to be lifted to reach many of the birds so were ever so slightly too young to get full value out of it.

If you just wanted to see the birds and have a nice picnic and walk in an easy setting then this is a great option for a few hours.

Exemption III

July 26, 2013 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

So, on the 15th of July the local MoE office wrote us a letter.

We now have our exemption to homeschool Miss Oh Waily.

I will not tell you that it went smoothly, as it didn’t. We were requested to provide more information, and frankly I think a little better training in public relations around the manner in which concepts are communicated would not go amiss.

While I thought that our original exemption was pretty thorough, and we received very positive feedback from exemption-writing veterans, we still had a gap or so to fill apparently. So fill it we did.

However, I must say that the letter writer should perhaps re-take English and work on the tone of her communication. Seriously, the phrase “There appears to be little academic learning occurring…” is not the most polite way in which to approach the issue of being unable to assess a regularity statement that does not involve a timetable.
Frankly both Mr Oh and I were more than a little miffed about that. And even more so when we received back the email clarification of what was meant by “academic learning”. Slightly gobsmacked actually. Especially in light of the statements made throughout the application regarding the eclectic approach we are taking. (i.e. we do “formal teaching” of some areas as well as integrated learning of ALL areas.)

Here is the definition as received:

“By this we mean structured lessons where there is formal teaching, particularly in the core curriculum areas of English, Mathematics, Science and Social Sciences.”

To heck with the Arts then! (And don’t get me started on the Sciences!)
As I said to some friends following the receipt of this:
Poor old Mozart then, eh? Don’t waste your time learning to tinkle on that harpischord boy! It won’t get you a job in the real world!

Personally my kids aren’t overly musical (in a practical “playing it” way) but they love to listen, dance and sing. And we do that regularly. It’s called having fun and your Mum subjecting you to more than nursery music. You get to hear new languages and sometimes use them, you get to integrate different cultures or historical eras (you know, those pesky social sciences we’re not teaching) into your knowledge bank. Yeah, I knew my love of jazz, blues and pretty much all sorts of music would come in useful some time.

I have to be honest and say that I find that definition narrow-minded and outdated. I can’t imagine my life without those whose talents are to be found in the Fine Arts. What of musicians, artists, actors and their ilk. Heaven forfend that children be exposed to the full idea of a liberal education from an early age. What was I thinking?

Oh yes, that I must not teach my kids to read or do maths. Come on. Really? We choose to follow the national curriculum of one of the top 5 countries in the world (for mathematics results) and you think we might be disinterested in teaching academic subjects? Between us the Oh Waily parents have three degrees and two post-graduate diplomas. We really couldn’t give a flying toss about academia then. Or continual learning. Or following your interests.

The mind boggles.

Really. It does.

Still, with a bit of a nudge and a bit of standing our ground on the regularity statement (i.e. repeating ourselves with a smidgen more clarity – since clearly the reader didn’t quite pick up on the information first time around) we got there in the end. Essentially without compromise, just a touch more clarity & with a tone of being offended. Which we were.

So there we are. Official homeschoolers from Miss Oh’s next birthday. Yay!

Testing progress

July 11, 2013 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

I have the great fortune of knowing a number of lovely ladies who are willing to help me out on occasion when I want to make sure that we are learning “as well as” Miss Oh’s contemporaries at school.

Usually all I have to do is ask a simple question and I get a great series of replies and conversations about how things work at various schools around the country. It’s a great insight that I would otherwise be missing out on. And I’m very grateful for it.

Just to be clear… we’re not trying to replicate school at home. We’re trying to integrate learning into our daily life instead.
We are also very aware that we chose to homeschool in order to allow our children to learn at their own pace, whatever that happens to be. However, it is an ingrained characteristic that both Mr and Ms Oh Waily like to have empirical evidence of progress. Informal testing helps us ensure that concepts have been learned, and give us a reference point for future learning opportunities. After all, there’s nothing worse than boring your children with things that are too easy or frustrating them with things that are too difficult.

Lately I have been lucky enough to borrow some reading books that give me an indication of the difficulty level of each ‘colour segment’ on the New Zealand curriculum’s reading wheel. It turns out that Miss Oh is probably reading independently somewhere around the green level. I now have an idea of the complexity of the sentence structure and the difficulty of the words introduced. And judging by the sorts of books she’s able to read, we’re doing just fine.

Then this morning I asked her to sit a short maths test just to see how she would go using a test administered in a school that was kindly shared with me. I was pleasantly surprised by her results. I was slightly concerned that she would struggle to keep her focus for the full eight minutes, but she proved my concerns to be unfounded. Now I have another baseline test to help me gauge how well she is doing with mental addition and subtraction. This just adds an objective empirical measure to my arsenal of assessment tools. The main one being observation. I knew she would be able to do the entire first set of problems, but was not sure if she could get through them all in the timeframe of the test. I was wrong. She completed the entire first section (including a short break to run and get her hanky – it’s the start of a cold in the Oh Waily household today) with only one error. I now have my objective evidence backing up my observations.

We have the best of both worlds – daily observations and occasional baseline testing to ensure we are on track.

Mathematics Update

July 10, 2013 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

It has been a while since I last posted any sort of update on the mathematics progression of either of the Oh Waily children, so here it is. Finally.

Miss Oh Waily is making her way through the My Pals Are Here! text and workbooks. We’ve covered the first five sections, which are the Numbers 1 to 10, Number bonds, Addition within 10, Subtraction within 10, and Shapes & Patterns. The latter was quite fun as we cut out paper shapes and made different pictures using them.

We are starting on the ordinal numbers chapter today. We’ve previously worked on these with our home made Disney Fairy maths sheets, so I imagine we will breeze through the two sections of this in short order. About the only issue the little Miss has is remembering to put the “th” at the end of the answer. Hopefully another foray into this section, with a bit more writing and repetition will get this to stick. The concept is already there and well understood, it’s just the method of showing the position that needs attention.

That means we’re still in Textbook 1A with three more chapters after the ordinal numbers to go, but one of those is learning the numbers to 20. Since she already knows them to 100 I’m guessing that this will be a quick run through and reminder session only. But who knows? Sometimes we take a couple of steps back before heading forward again. Anyone who thinks kids learn in a linear fashion are deluded! In our household we definitely have ‘aha’ moments following on from apparently grasping and then losing the concepts & execution of skills.

As for Master Oh, he’s coming along as well. He hasn’t shown the same interest in numbers as his sister did, but he is almost completely right with his counting to 20. He tends to skip fifteen, but so did his sister when she was little too.
We’ve pulled out the old number game from Montessori Print Shop and have started identifying the number of dots (counting them out) and matching them with their number symbol. I must remember to take some photographs the next time we do it.

And talking about the old number game has reminded me that it’s time to get out some of the other number games we have too. I see lemons and leaves in his future. I’ll definitely take photographs of him doing those when they hit our shelves.

So what do you do to encourage numeracy with your kids?

Exemption II

June 28, 2013 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

And it is done.

I dropped off our application for Miss Oh’s exemption to attend school this morning.
I’ll let you know how it is received.

Art Detectives

June 20, 2013 / Ms Oh Waily / Leave a comment

Today’s Thursday Adventure Club* outing was to Te Papa Tongarewa, known simply as Te Papa.

I had let my fingers do the walking and found an interesting link on their site, at the bottom of the What’s on for kids page. The Family Trails.
I mean, who could pass up he chance of becoming an Art Detective? Not us.

So this rather soggy Wellington morning saw us in town bright and early. We headed to the Information Desk and were kitted out with our Art Detective bag and gear. What did we get?

a deerstalker hat (what self-respecting detective goes without one?)
a matching cape
a pair of Harry Potter-style spectacles
a magnifying glass
some pipe cleaners
a foldable box
pencils
the Art Detective guide

Once we were all dressed for the occasion, Detective G and Detective M and their guide (me) headed off to Level 5 to work our way through the different galleries and the tasks set out in the AD guide book.

Do they look cute, or do they look cute?

The amount of double takes and smiles the costumes generated was worth it alone. But, in the process of following the art trail they were exposed to a range of artists and artistic styles.

We started off in the Artist In Focus gallery where they did a bit of counting, writing and creating with their pipe cleaners. Then we moved through to the Arts Studio, which we will try to visit again when there isn’t a school class in the galleries, where I helped them make their own small cardboard waka huia to store their treasures in. Then in the same area they had to find and then work out how to use a mystery box to help them with one of the following clues.
Then it was off to the Maori & Pacific Encounters gallery to look at and answer questions about a painting done by John Webber 200 years ago while sailing with James Cook.

Next we headed to the Framing the View gallery where we used the descriptions noted from the Mystery Box to find an art work. We did some more counting here and also a bit of geometry. Miss Oh Waily took over the writing duties from here on. She also drew the geometrical shapes that were used in the art work.
We stayed here and using a set of three clues supplied in our detective bag we had to work out which painting they represented. And Miss Oh then had to make up a story to go with that particular piece of art. I was her secretary here or we would have struggled for space and time.

From here we headed into the gallery Emblems of Identity where we got to see a number of Rita Angus portraits including Rutu which was the subject of this section of the trail. We learned about symbols in art – in this case a white lotus – and made one of our own for our waka huia. Then we did several word clues to identify the next artworks including McCahon’s The Valley of Dry Bones and then the kids got to draw their version of some Angus portraits and added speech bubbles to them. Then we moved on to the Being Modern gallery into the Modern Maori Art gallery where there was more writing and drawing to be done.

Finally we made our way through the Art & Change and Contemporary galleries. This latter one was a bit of a toughie. It houses a couple of interesting works by Ralph Hotere which were the subject of another project in the book. But by this stage they were getting to the end of their attention span (almost an hour and a half of detecting by this time) and the glossy attractions of Michael Parekowhai’s amazing piano was proving a bit much for Detective G. Clearly she is a tactile person (and curious with it) so I had a bit of trouble keeping her hands off it.

We whizzed through the remaining gallery and we were done. A fluffy and biscuit were their rewards for being so good at detecting and keeping on the trail for almost the entire time. They did fabulously well. And I am most definitely going to keep an eye on the Family Trails section for any new options elsewhere in the museum. It’s a great way to make kids this little stop and actually look at art in galleries. It makes it interactive and fun, but not laborious.

A complete Pukeko Patch thumbs up for this activity.

But be aware that they only had four or five detective bags at the information desk. I’d suggest going early on a weekday in order to ensure your little detectives are able to enjoy themselves. Oh, and you do have to be interactive throughout the process (not just reading the guide book) so that they get the most out of it. But well worth it in my opinion.

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* My arbitrary name for our family field trips. Makes it sound flashy for the small ones.