Greece 2015, Part One

Home education is going well, though it's going to come to an end in early September. E has a place at an outstanding local school starting in September. We're hoping C will get a place there as well. In the meantime, she'll attend the school around the corner (on the way to E's school). She's finishing up her year of part time Nursery. We were offered full time but I did not accept. They're only young once.

Because we're home educating, travel during term time is possible. (If you try to take a holiday during term time if your child is enrolled in school, the government can, and often does, fine you. Which is ridiculous, but is not the topic of this particular blog post.) So, a few weeks ago, we traveled to Greece.

First stop was Athens. We got there late, went to the hotel across the street from the airport, and spent a few hours there in bed. Flight delays didn't help! Early early, around 5:45am, we got into a cab and headed for Athens. Saw the sunrise from the cab. Our destination was Piraeus, where many ferries call. We were able to board almost immediately, and set up camp in a comfortable area near the front of the boat. Keep in mind we were all running on about 3, maybe 4 hours of sleep, so finding a good area was vital.

The kids were initially Too Excited to snuggle up/chill out, so we went onto deck and watched Athens slip by...

Then, as we drew further into the Aegean, we withdrew indoors for a different perspective:

The ferry ride lasted for a little over six hours, during which E was able to take a short nap. Although it sounds a long time, it was thoroughly pleasant, with good toilets nearby, and several cafes to choose from. Also, one could go out on deck and enjoy the breeze and warm weather. I chatted to a passenger who was on her honeymoon, heading to Santorini. I took her photo, with the Aegean as a backdrop.

The ferry called at Paros, and then there was the excitement of pulling into the port of Naxos. Our first view of the island:

We traversed the gangplank and found a cab. "Welcome on the island!" said the cabbie, who was very surprised to discover that B had been there thirty years ago. He told us the island had been very different then, with his father having been called out to help people push vehicles that had gotten stuck on the dirt tracks that had once passed as "roads" back then. Now, many roads are paved and vehicular access is pretty widespread.

We stayed at a lovely little apartment off the beaten track (almost literally, since the roads nearby were not paved!). It had a small play area that we could see from our patio, and a nice swimming pool. It was also about a 45 second walk to the beach.

Above, E and I test out the pool. It was a nice surprise to see that E is swimming, properly, with absolutely no floaties or assistance. Just a doggy-paddle, but a fairly strong one, and certainly it grew stronger as the holiday progressed.

The beach. Well, what can I say...

...that pictures don't say better? Sandy, warm, light waves, cool ocean, warm sun, mitigating breeze. Happy children in the sunset.

There were many local tavernas to choose from, plus the option of a local market where we could buy light food items and eat in our own apartment. I lost track of how many times I ordered moussaka. Great stuff.

One day, we headed into Naxos Town (Chora) to do a bit of sightseeing. We waited for the bus...

...enjoyed lunch in town...

..and headed off sightseeing around the backstreets of the Old Town.

Along the way, we found some spigots that dispensed cool water, which the children enjoyed splashing over their hot little faces. By popular request, we stopped for ice cream before walking out to the islet that hosts the two thousand year old Portara.

The waves were wilder out here! E points a particularly large one out...about ten seconds before it delightfully soaked all three of them! (Aftermath not pictured. Photographer may have been laughing too hard.)

This post is getting quite long, so I will stop for now. Next time, I will post about our adventures in the interior of the island.

Ketchup

It's April already! I'm behind on photos. Here's some backlog.

Lovely afternoon tea at the Landmark to celebrate my birthday.

February snow!

After a history lesson one morning, E and I started putting together a Meccano airplane. 'Scuse the laundry in the background. I was sorting; he was building.

Holding a cacao plant at a Home Ed chocolate-making workshop in Covent Garden.

Making truffles.

Rainy day homemade slide fun.

Winding up his Spitfire plane for a test flight at Kenwood.

C taking a little break from rolling down the hill. E in the background still rolling.

E's second pony ride ever, at a nearby city farm.

C's very first pony ride.

Peck, peck. Who's there? A photobombing goose.

Petting the big horse.

Funfair today on Hampstead Heath. E did an even larger slide twelve times in a row.

Trampoline funhouse.

Bungee trampolining.

Don't mess with this biker girl.

If you squint, you can just about see the kids and me on the roller coaster here.

And that's all for now! It's been busy here.

CA, Part Two

Uncle Howard, his wife Nii, and son Jack (7) arrived late at night on July 4. Dad and I waited up for a phone call, but the phone booth was broken at Manzanita, so they walked! Tell you what, in this day and age where seemingly everybody is tracked, and informs you of their littlest movement, it's almost surreal to have people... just show up! Very refreshing, too.

So, we coped with our respective jet lag. Our first foray out was an early morning walk to the local playground. We started heading to Safeway afterward, and Howard points into the distance: "That looks a lot like Derek's recumbent bike."

"That's because it is his bike," I said. Which was great, because the kids were starting to flag, and small rides on the bike really pepped them up.

Anyhoodle... pictures. We went to the Marin Headlands in two different cars, aiming for a Pt. Bonita lighthouse visit. Unfortunately, we got the timing wrong, but we did get a great little explore out of the trip, even if it was foggy.

Dad and C hanging out on a foggy Hawk Hill.

Visiting a foggy Rodeo Beach after our hike. This cooler weather arrived just in time for Uncle Howard's family to feel extra cold after flying from summertime in Thailand.

The next trip out was into San Francisco, via the ferry.

We did some walking around, some shopping... and it was so windy coming back that the kids giggled and danced for ten minutes straight. They were having so much fun. (Also, I love that E and J have the same missing-top-teeth smiles!)

Next time: B arrives! More adventures.

Home education is going well. We did two museum visits: the British Museum, and on Friday E and I went to the Science Museum, where I was pleasantly surprised to find that even on term-time weekdays, they run shows! So we went to "Flash, Bang, Wallop!" where he got to see some explosions/flames and learn that fire needs three things: oxygen, fuel, and heat. He also learned that dry ice can "sublime" from a solid straight into a gas, bypassing the liquid phase. We've hit a few workbooks this week, couple pages out of each one: Math, Spelling, Handwriting, and Science. We finished "Danny, Champion of the World" and are now halfway through a nonfiction moon landing book.

C and I are doing "Teach Your Monster to Read" which is a free, interactive online game that is a) fun and b) teaches your CHILD to read. We've been reading a book a night, lately - "Each Peach Pear Plum," and other short books she chooses daily from Nursery. During my last library visit I got her a short chapter book and read it to her in a cafe while E did some workbook pages and we all drank nice, hot drinks. It's a fun way to do things.

I have 67,000 words on the novel. Plan to put in some more time in the evenings since my time during the day is a bit eaten up by home edding.

Tomorrow we all go to S's (cousin's) 5th birthday party, which will be science-themed. We are in a cold snap but two years ago I remember at this very time (when S turned 3) everything was covered in at least a foot of snow and we went to his party with heavy snowflakes falling outside!

Home Education

Proving that life is what happens when you're making other plans, we're now home educating E. In his particular situation, this is because the school we have been sending him to since September is, shall we say, not a match for him. A few of our complaints? Things like being forced to miss five minutes of break if he needs the bathroom during lessons. He is a fairly rule-abiding little boy, and one day he waited until break, and was told he couldn't go back inside to use the facilities. HE IS SIX. Miscommunication, perhaps, I'll never know, but when I approached someone in-the-know, I wasn't given sympathy/apology, but rather a "your-son-wasn't-listening" kind of spiel.

There is no trust between the powers-that-be and parents. Children are punished by losing their entire break time if a parent doesn't sign their reading book every night (and I do mean every night, that's seven times a week. Last I checked, school ended on Friday and began on Monday. Now they dictate what I must do on a weekend with my child?). Homework is make-work and there's a ton of it, too much for age six--probably about an hour a week, which eats into family/weekend time. And then he comes home and I ask him about his day... and I get a little boy talking about who's misbehaved and gotten a red form, and his misery at the boy who doesn't speak English and rips down the other children's belongings, and the fact that he can't leave anything unattended or it will be thrown away or taken, and his sadness at not being able to go to the 100% attendance party, and having to sit through a school-wide assembly on the same, because he was genuinely sick last term and didn't go to school. Yet he was never late, never missed school without a "good" reason, but got caught by the luck of the draw. And yes, I have seen vomit on the way to school because a child has been so caught up in the 100% attendance party! fervor and went to be counted as present/not late, then gone home vomiting, only to rinse and repeat. Once, a child borked all over the classroom floor. BUT GUYS, AT LEAST HE CAME TO SCHOOL TO BE COUNTED AS PRESENT, THANK YOU BOX-TICKING CULTURE. And hello, germ spreading!

NB: I was given a form stating that he'd attended all but two of the forty one days of the half-term. Attendance was wrongly calculated as 94.29% And I was trusting this school to educate my son? Certainly the trust doesn't go both ways--children who don't do their homework are forced to sit in school and do it!

There are other issues, social ones being the main, that prompted us to finally home ed. E was miserable, going to school. He'd walk in like he was going to a funeral, not bouncy and cheerful and already talking to other kids like he was at his other school. Since we told him on Saturday that he didn't have to go back to school, his attitude has been amazing, and the questions have been coming thick and fast.

"Did dodos go extinct during the reign of Queen Victoria, or before?"
"If tornadoes have no debris in them, if they're just pure air, how can you tell if it's a tornado?"
"If that cafe serves hamburgers, why isn't it called a bistro instead?"

And so on, and so on.

On Monday, we pulled out a dusty magnetic science kit that I'd been meaning to get to during weekends or after-school, and never did because of all the daily life getting in the way. We learned how to magnetize a compass. We learned that metal with iron in it is attracted to magnets. We learned about the fundamentals of a mag-lev train by doing an experiment ourselves. After I picked C up from nursery (she's still going five mornings a week. We were offered full days but I declined.) we trundled off to the British Museum where we explored the Egypt section, looking at thousand year old statues and seeing hieroglyphs up close and personal. And real granite, which he's been mining in Minecraft.

Today we walked a bit over three miles, broken up by 45 minutes in a cafe where we had lunch and he did some pages in several workbooks (math and handwriting). Then we went shopping where he was the lookout for discounted items, and helped me add up the cost of everything in our basket. I'm on several lists, FB groups, on the hunt for local groups to meet friends, and am already discovering home ed stuff in this area.

We didn't go into this intending to home ed for the long term, but I feel strongly right now that this has been the correct decision. I feel relieved not to drop him off at school every morning. And I know he feels that way too. He is on the waiting list for several good local schools, so we'll see where we're at in the next few months.

Why home ed? Here's a post that I mainly agree with, one I wish I could link in real life when question are asked.

Now I have to go. The four year old has requested frogs-on-snail-toast, with rubbish flowers on the side. Side effect of me Calvin and Hobbesing her into eating her lunch. It's much more fun to eat pretend crunched up cars than a fried egg, don't ya know?