Yesterday's post about homeschooling got me thinking. I tend to forget that learning takes place outside of seat-work. Seventeen years in public education will do that to you.
This morning school began with a listing activity. Both kids got a whiteboard marker and got busy making lists for Saturday's party. We're having a 40th for Yours Truly, just for the immediate family, and so we needed to construct a guest list and a party food list. Chickabid did the guests and the Duchess did the food.
Now this is a pretty bog-standard undertaking when planning a party, but think of the teaching/learning opportunities involved. There was:
* spelling
* handwriting
* maths (counting guests and dishes)
* creative arts (laying out the writing in an attractive way)
* food and nutrition (balancing the quantities of savoury and sweet foods)
* time management (running through the food list and working out what can be prepared ahead of time and what needs to be done right before serving)
* HSIE Celebrations (in context in the natural environment)
Tomorrow we will create a decorations list and then head off on a field trip to source and buy what we need for the party. The kids will have a clipboard with the party needs on a worksheet and then we'll price all the stuff and Mr. Mathematics will add it up for us. (Can I just say it is so useful having a mathematics genius on shopping trips. He's better than a calculator! Remind me to tell you about him and 3 level subtraction some time.) We'll also do the grocery shopping and some necessary health and beauty stuff - read for that that I need a haircut!
Birthdays are, as always, non-school days. We have a cardinal rule: no school on birthdays (don't you LOVE homeschooling) and usually Mister Bear takes a day's annual leave and we spend the day together as a family. As he's just had a week's annual leave we felt it would be greedy to ask for another day off, so he won't be home tomorrow :( But the kids and I will get busy on the business end of party preparations. No school doesn't equal no learning and we will squeeze everything we can out of it.
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