e-petition on Pilot Safety

We're really concerned about the governments new proposals regarding the hours a pilot is allowed to fly.  Please have a look at this you tube video made by BALPA the pilot's union and think about signing the e-petition.  We need to stop this from happening!

Trying again...............:-S

No one ever keeps to New Years Resolutions do they!

Anyway, I just wanted to draw your attention to the blog my eldest daughter has just set up.  I thought it may be of interest to all those intrepid Home Edders out there.  Rhiannon was home educated for 5 years and took a determinedly unconventional approach to her learning!  Despite my efforts at encouraging something different, she insisted on taking only 2 IGCSE's which got her into college to do a Level 2 diploma in Art and Design.  She found the course unchallenging but achieved a Distinction*.  She was then advised by one of her art tutors to "skip" A levels and go straight on to an Art Foundation course.  This was a big leap - the course is intensive and is designed to prepare students for Uni.  At the same time she is busy with violin, drama and opera, so her days are full to bursting.

She is now applying to university to do Theatre Design.  Obviously we don't know if her unconventional background and lack of qualifications will be a problem.  We don't know if she'll get any offers.  But it will be interesting.  And I thought it may be of interest to other home educating parents who are perhaps worrying, as I did (and still do), that home education may not always provide our children with the same opportunities as they would have had if they had gone through school.

http://artstudentmind.blogspot.com/

New Years Resolutions............

....yes, I know it's a bit late but I never was one to be on time.  I can't believe my last post was last May - that's pretty awful even for me!  But the children are often saying "...oh perhaps you could put this on the blog...." so guilt has finally got the better of me and I thought I'd try again.  It's also nice to look back at things we've done, so....here goes!

I'm sure you can imagine that alot has happened in the past 8 months (oops, is it really that long).  Don't worry, I won't ramble on for long..............

Rhiannon got through her exams (despite everything) and is now at college.  A shock to all of our systems. Despite the colleges somewhat snobby attitude to her when she went to interview, the course is way below her abilities and has been somewhat unstimulating.  It makes me realise just how much our children progress and flourish at home.  She is not at all disadvantged by lack of formal teaching over the past years.  On the contrary........  So I am determined not to underestimate the talents of my children in the future.  I will be pushing to get R onto the course she wants, irrespective of whether she has the formal entry requirements.  As long as she believes it is right for her.  She knows her own limits - because she has learnt to know them.  Having said all that she is still trying to extract as much as possible from the course, especially with respect to putting together a really good portfolio of work for the future.

And what about some other stuff....  Well, Rhiannon, Sam and Jo are now all members of the Clarbeston Road players and performed in this years panto "Snow White and the Six Giants".

                                                          Rhiannon as "Snow White"
                                                        

                                                        
                                                                       Jo as "Grumpy"!

They always have a great time at drama!
They are just starting work on a one act play "The Hard Yards" that they will be performing in April, so watch this space!  It's a play about the difficulties a bright 17 year old boy faces and it covers difficult themes like parental pressure, peer pressure, teenage pregnancy, depression, promiscuity...........I'm exhausted!  And all in less than an hour!!  The point is, Jo is too young for this one so it's just Rhiannon and Sam involved.  Sam will also be in the adult groups play "Chain Reaction" which I think is a comedy about house selling (if that could ever be conceived of as funny!)

So, what else?   Well......we enjoyed the pre-Christmas snow..................really not too bad for us compared to January 2010!

Made lots of our christmas pressies including soap (from scratch....interesting piece of chemistry), felt, lavender bags and calendars.

                                                         Detail of Rhiannon's felt cockerel....


Keira took her first ballet exam (!)

We hatched some Bantum eggs for our eglu......

Built scarecrows..........

Painted rocks.......

Went to Fiddle Festivals (well, one anyway...)

.....to name but a few things (8 months is definitely too long!)..............

Sam especially spends alot of time modelling, designing and building stuff.........last week he built a replica piston engine out of K'nex...powered by a drill.  Must show you that one when I get around to it!

Life is full of things we do that seem unimportant and ordinary at the time...but then you look back and think "wow, we did OK didn't we?"  Or at least we hope we do.  I won't promise anyone, least of all myself, that I will start blogging regularly, but I will try........for us it seems to be more about creating some king of log of our home ed achievements.  To remind us that it is in the little everyday experiences and discoveries that we actually achieve so much without really noticing.

So what do you reckon.......anyone gonna' take bets.............I wouldn't if I were you!

And Then There Were Three...

At last I have managed to get hold of a few photos of the one act play that Rhiannon recently took part in with the Clarbeston Road players.  Here is the cast - all teenagers except for one who was just 9!  Don't they look cool!

The play was about a group of young people trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world where no adults remain alive.  The events of the play are tragic and leave only three of them alive at the end.




Scenes from the dress rehearsal.  The play was performed at the Torch Theatre in Milford Haven which has a large stage.  Because of this they were unable to rehearse on the small stage at the hall where they usually rehearse and perform, so they had to rehearse in the hall to get used to the space that they would have available on the day.



Rhiannon wielding a stick............



Publicity photos for the local paper.

More art.....

.........from Rhiannon.  Another fantasy piece in pen and ink.  She wasn't too happy with the girl or the background.

If any of you are into the "Skulduggery Pleasant" books, the characters are Tanith (that's the girl brandishing a sword) and the Torment (I think that's the spider).

Although the characters are from a book, there were no illustrations of them so they are her own interpretation of them.  

She's definitely getting more confident with using colour and is now moving away from copying other people's work or photographic images - I think that's quite a leap, and one that is happening even though she does not have alot of time for art at the moment, whilst preparing for exams. (Sigh!)

In which we are amazed and delighted at the product of a humble Tescos egg.....

With just a week to go until Rhiannon's first exam life is truly hectic - especially since we will have to travel to my sister's house in Wetherby so she can sit her exams in Harrogate!  It's always a major operation going anywhere with my lot - even if it's just for a day.  Trying to help Rhiannon in her last phases of exam preparation is hard work enough without having to get packed and organised for a week and a half away.

We enjoyed a lighter moment over the weekend though when our duck egg finally hatched!

The duckling is huge!  He/she is fit and healthy and has now moved to be with the lad who didn't believe a supermarket egg would hatch!  Don't worry, he does have a proper home to go to once he is old enough -we wouldn't have agreed to incubate the egg purely for experimental purposes!

In which we wonder what is the purpose of exams, and why there's so much slate in my garden....

Well spring has finally sprung here in Pembrokeshire and life is as busy as ever.  Thought it was about time (or perhaps a bit overdue) to sit down and have a quick update on some of the things we have been up to!

With the good weather I've been trying to get our little garden going, and it really does seem to be taking up a disproportionate amount of time.  Trying to create something attractive but also productive is pretty tricky in such a small space but we have a cunning plan!  Rhiannon (of course) came up with a design as she said she didn't want it looking like an allotment!  I quite like the allotment look but I will bend to her superior sense of style!  Trouble is the digging is hard work because the ground is very compacted and full of slate.  The boys have helped me quite a bit and Derek when he is around, but Keira is only interested in the fun bits like sowing seeds (who can blame her!)  We've managed to dig a couple of beds but I've got loads of stuff to go in and more beds to dig.  Each bed, although only small is taking over a week to double dig.  Then we go off with our squeaky wheelbarrow to raid a pile of well rotted manure that no one else wants (the neighbours already think we're eccentric).  Then because the soil was so compacted there's not enough room in the hole for our soil to go.  So now we have piles of unwanted soil and slate rubble which is really making the garden look attractive (sigh!)  It's all looking a bit of a mess at the moment but at least it's nice to see some produce popping out of the ground.....so long as we can keep the armies of slugs at bay!

Gardening isn't the only thing we've been doing though.

We've started to get out and about again - back to the beach, fab walks and trips to the Botanic Gardens of Wales and the Centre for Alternative Technology.  We normally manage to get out more throughout the winter but it was just so relentlessly wet and windy, there was little pleasure to be had in it.

Guess where!

Rhiannon took part in a one Act Play festival at the Torch Theatre in Milford Haven.  They put on a challenging post-apocalyptic play called "And Then there were Three".    It was about 6 children trying to survive without adults following a global catastrophe in which all adults over the age of 18 had died of a deadly virus.  Sounds a bit hard going I know,  but it was fantastic and surprisingly entertaining, given the subject matter!  It won't be too long before its' back to Panto rehearsals for a bit of light relief!!

Jo with Derek at his book signing!

Jo helped to publicise a new book called "Is" by Derek Webb.  It's about a girl who believes herself to be the reincarnation of Isenbard Kingdom Brunel.  Jo took part in a dramatisation of parts of the book which took place in Haverfordwest Library and the Waterfront Museum in Swansea.  He really enjoyed it and as a bonus, it triggered an interest in Brunel and we have been watching some documentaries about his life and work as a result.

We had an "eggy" time over easter, having our first go at painting eggs.

We also began incubating some duck eggs!  There is a lad in the village who simply couldn't believe that we'd successfully hatched quail eggs that had come from a shop.  So he found someone who wanted some ducks and bought some duck eggs from Tescos.  He put 6 eggs in a make shift incubator he'd thrown together in his bedroom and gave the other 6 to Rhiannon to put in her proper incubator.  Needless to say, none of his eggs developed, but one of Rhiannon's is doing well!  It shoud hatch in under 2 weeks now, so we'll keep you posted!  Still it's a bit sad there's only one.......

We hope it won't be long before we begin incubating some bantum eggs for our own garden.  We will be getting our eggs from a local breeder who specialises in wynadotte bantums.  We are told they are good layers (for bantums) and something smaller seems better suited to our pokey little garden!  The only thing that's holding us back is that we will be away for Rhiannon's exams and then again for HESFES and there's no one here we know well enough to ask to look after young hatchlings.  Apart from anything else we don't want to miss any of that part anyway!  So we'll probably pop some eggs in the incubator before going off to HESFES  (it turns the eggs automatically).

Oh yes....those exams.  Rhiannon is just over three weeks away from her first exam.  It really has been an eye opener.  We spend more time talking about how to interpret a question to work out what the examiners want to hear than anything else!  Learning how to jump through the hoops in the right way is critical to success!  What happened to learning something in a meaningful way?  Frankly it all seems a bit of a waste of time - but it is so frustrating because society at large places so much emphasis on acquiring these pieces of paper.  It's hard work to find a different way through - yet I'm more than ever convinced that it would be worth the effort.

An example - Rhiannon is turning into a fine creative writer..............yet she finds it almost impossible to write anything worth reading in a time frame of 40 minutes.  So she may not do too well in the exam.  How then is a future employer/college or whatever supposed to judge her literacy skills fairly on the basis of this exam?

The boys too will be greatful when exams are over, since the work is tying us to the house somewhat.  Most days, after doing maths, they read, play chess, play physics games on the computer, whittle pieces of wood, make models, play guitar, cook,do some art and play with Keira.  I feel pretty guilty that they are not getting to do more of the many things on their lists of stuff they want to do, but Rhiannon needs so much support on the final run up to the exams - marking exam papers, discusssing answers, testing her on word definitions and so on.  It's amazing how time consuming it all is.  All I can say is thank goodness she's not sitting 10 subjects!!!!

And here's one of R's latest creations done in pen and ink and very much from her own imagination.

More pictures to  add but will try to do that tommorow.  I am reeling from the shock that I've actually posted something at all!  Time for a strong cup of coffee me thinks.