Money Week 2014

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Yes, in this part of the world it is time to reflect on things financial.

We’ve been doing things to induce some financial literacy in the Oh Waily kids for a while now, mostly around basic mathematics and learning about handling cash through pocket money.  Along with this we have amongst our board game collection a couple of useful items for understanding the use and misuse of money.  Admittedly the games are as much luck as they are strategy, but it does go some way to understanding decision making around money.  The first is one of my very old games, Pay Day.  This is a fairly simple game based around random bills that you get by landing on the Mail squares and investments you can buy or borrow money to buy when you land on Deals.

The other game, and currently Miss Oh Waily’s favourite, is Cashflow which seems to have had a bit of a spruce up into an application too.  This one is another step along in financial literacy terms as it introduces the idea of assets, liabilities and a balance sheet.  Here your goal is to get out of ‘the Rat race’.  In a nice touch the counters are little ‘rats’ and your ultimate goal is marked by a ‘wedge of cheese’ counter.  It is actually very cute.  The serious side of this is understanding that not only do you earn money and pay bills, but you can accrue assets that generate income for you to live off as well.  The goal being to earn more passive income than you have expenses – that means you get out of the rat race and can chase your dream piece of cheese.

Miss Oh often asks to play it, but because it can take quite some time to play (a couple of hours) I tend to say “no” more to that request than I say “yes”.  This week though, we set it out and played the game.  It involves quite a bit of work on my part at the moment, but I can see that with an increase in playing time and as she gets older, it will become possible for her to take more control over her own Balance Sheet.  Right now she’s pretty content to be the ‘bankster’ (banker in Miss Oh-speak) dealing with some very large numbers.

I’m now also contemplating creating a home-made passbook for their pocket money boxes that they can fill in each month as they receive their money.  I just need to put some more thought into how to do this so it’s an attractive and compelling addition to our financial literacy tools.

I’m sure there are plenty of other ideas to encourage an understanding about how money works, but I think at this age and stage we are covering all the basics plus a little bit extra.  However, I am open to more ideas, so what do you do to encourage financial literacy with your kids?

Travels – Rotorua & surrounds

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We have been quiet at the Patch since Master Oh’s birthday because we have been away.
We went to stay with my parents for about a week.  While there we took some field trips and did some walks.

I’ve finally taken some of the photographs off the camera and have started editing them, so there will be a stream of image laden posts in the next little while, as I make my way through them all.

Today I bring you a few images from our day trip to Rotorua and surrounds.  There will probably be more.

We start first with a photograph of Miss Oh wading in Tikitapu.  A stunning Spring day to have been doing this.

Tikitapu

And just what Master Oh thinks of having his photograph taken…

Pokey Tongue2

And now a look at another spot we stopped off at, a view of Lake Tarawera.

Tarawera Jetty
There was even learning to do – about erupting volcanoes and how lakes get their colour.

It was a really tough job, but someone had to do it.

Techno-planning at the Patch

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evernoteI came across a very timely blog post at These Temporary Tents today about using Evernote as both a planning tool and a recording tool for home education.

I have been rethinking how I go about some aspects of our home educating, especially around how I track things for my benefit and for referring back to.  This has nothing to do with and won’t change how we go about our home ed.  It’s purely a parental tool to keep on top of and value the progress that my not-so-little people are making.

Did I mention that Miss Oh turned 7 on the weekend?  She did.  And I can’t think for the life of me where that time has disappeared to.

Anyway, I have had a recording system for a while – it’s a little bit of this and that, though.  A diary that for a long while I entered notes in each day, and then transferred to a private blog for ease of long-term storage on a monthly basis.  My planning system, such as it was, was based around a few forms that I had laminated. One for capturing ideas, one for making sure I tried to hit all the learning areas and one that gave a rough layout to topics on a month-by-month basis.
All of these were intended to be very fluid to match the kids’ interests, but by the nature of their design meant that changing details was laborious and tedious.  A million forms to do one or two jobs.

So along comes this blog post about using Evernote for planning and recording in a home education setting, and I was totally hooked by the idea.  I had signed up to Evernote about 4 years ago, but never really investigated nor worked out just how helpful it could be.  Today I have revisited my old stuff and cleaned it out, and also set up a new notebook or two to take care of some areas I can clearly see it working in.  One of which is our home ed.

To start off with, I plan to follow the same layout that Aadel uses in her video example, but will modify it to reflect how we do things.  I’m also going to add in a few extra sections for idea capturing, an overview and some outcomes or goals I’d like us to work towards.

Hopefully this will fulfill all my inner organisational needs to have more of a user-friendly, easy-to-use way of planning and tracking what we’ve been up to.

I can see it becoming quite a bit of a scrapbook as I get more hands on with it.  Photographs, videos, and blog links can all be integrated in to each note, therefore bringing the words alive with imagery and depth of information.  I’m finding myself quite excited about the idea.  I may have finally found a way that works…fingers crossed.

Do you use technology to track your home ed?  If so, what do you choose and why?

 

Kids can learn by themselves? Really?

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knowledge ahead
Well, apparently they can.  Who knew?  😉

Any home educating parent, that’s who.   Especially those who follow an unschooling or natural learning style in their homes.  The rest of the world is slowly, ever so slowly, cottoning on to the idea that kids can learn just the same way as adults – through following their interests and being self-motivated and self-directed.

Today’s article comes from the USA.

http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/07/18/students-teach-themselves

And if you are in any doubt that this is possible, take a wander across to YouTube and do a search for Sugata Mitra and his marvellous experiments in the slums of India.  There are a few, so perhaps starting with his TED Talk.

 

Learn Nothing Day

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We are joining the ranks of homeschooling families who are attempting, and failing, to have a day on which we Learn Nothing.

It is a bit of a mocking of the authorities who want to know that our children are learning “as regularly” as those in school.

Like I could possibly stop them, frankly.

So, here is what Miss Oh Waily did today… and clearly I failed miserably in my efforts to discourage her from doing anything new, interesting and learning in the process.

 

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House 2

Miss Oh’s hinged house closed

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House 1

Miss Oh’s hinged house interior

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Young Master Oh Waily has also failed miserably in his attempts to learn nothing.  He has been working on the strategy required to progress on another iPad app/game, and also had to sit through a bit of geography as we watched the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games this morning.
He also ended up helping to make a lego house of his own.  The canoe was all his own work.

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M's House 1

Master Oh’s canoeist’s log cabin

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M's house 2

Roast chicken on a spit

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Did you and your family attempt to learn nothing today?
If so, feel free to leave a comment and a link to any posts about your non-learning activity.  😉

 

Saying goodbye to “Good job!”

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Yellow PerilThis is another yellow car post, on a parenting theme.

This morning I came across this nice post about alternatives to ‘good job’-ing your kids over at Picklebums.

I know from personal experience that it is really hard to change an ingrained habit without having some idea of what your new habit should look like.  In this case it sounds all very good to reduce or remove value judgements when you encourage your kids, but if that’s all you’ve ever known, it can be daunting to figure out what you should be saying instead.

Posts and printables, like the Picklebum’s one, and great suggestions from books like How to Talk So Kids will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish, go a very long way to giving you some ideas that you can put into immediate effect.  They offer practical ways to make changes, not just explaining the whys of changing.

At first the new phrases may feel a bit awkward and false, but over time these alternatives begin to feel normal and ‘good job’ starts to feel like the foreign language.  Even if you are a few steps further along the track to saying goodbye to ‘good job’, sometimes visual reminders are a great helpmate.

Personally I will be printing it out and putting it up somewhere I can see it every day.