Surf and stuff.....

Highlight of the year.......the boys have joined Surf Club!! 2 hours of madness on a Sunday evening. It's what they've been waiting for ever since we moved to Pembrokeshire. And what a fantastic evening for their first surf lesson! Incidentally it was off of the very same beach where they recently filmed scenes for the next Harry Potter movie "The Deathly Hallows" - but that is irrelevant really! The only magic today was in the moment!

Apart from that we've been having an odd sort of time where I don't feel we are "getting much done" in the way of HE. But maybe those are the times when we achieve the most! Here are a couple of things that happen when "nothing happens".......

Jo has been studying the laws of physics!


Rhiannon continues to explore creative possibilities....this time with silk.

Oh yes, and when I don't interfere they just read alot....................they'd much rather read than empty the dishwasher - then again, come to think of it.........so would I!

Bliss!

Just wallowing in the pleasure of having spent a glorious summer evening barbequeing on the beach, the children just enjoying being and doing their own thing.....sand art, rock balancing, sand castles. paddling.....the perfect end to an otherwise pretty rubbish day!!!!

Building "Minas Tirith"

Sand Art

Oh no, not again!

I can't believe it - another Quail dead.  We have been keeping them inside but the male likes to have a fly around - stretch his wings so to speak.  So we put him in the run during the day for a couple of hours thinking he'd be fine as long as we brought him in by nightfall.  

Three hours later we found him dead.  A friend of mine suggested a stoat the likely culprit and that it would have been able to get in through the chicken wire!

So now we only have 2.  A sad day.

We need a very big rethink on how to house our quails...............sounds like an opportunity for a design project!  Back to the drawing board................

Promise to try to post something more cheerful next time.

Quail crisis!

Bit of a traumatic day today - two of our quails were attacked and killed in the night.  We have no idea how anything could have got into the run.  We assume it was a rat.  Since we don't know how it got in we don't know how to keep it out, so now we have three quails in the conservatory!  Our poor quails seem to have been facing calamity after calamity over the past few weeks.  We've had a couple lost to rat attacks recently - we tried to reinforce the run but obviously we're missing something.  Then one of Rhiannon's baby quails died of some infection a few weeks back.  I think poor Rhiannon is feeling a bit defeated.  She does everything she can to look after her quails as far as I can see.  Things just aren't going too well at the moment.  Not really sure where we go from here.

Serious need for a mega-update!

Oh dear, I really need to work on this blogging. The trouble is the longer you leave it the harder it gets and since I haven't posted since February I need to take a very deep breath and dive in!

We've had a few visits from friends and family over the past couple of months.

Just after my last post we had a lovely visit from our good HE friends from Oxfordshire. It was amazing to see how 7 children could get on so beautifully in the same house over 5 days without a cross word! Had great fun jumping off sand dunes, cooking sausages on the beach and our friends shared their woodcraft skills with the children. Thanks! A very special time - we hope they will be back soon for another visit!


At Easter we had a lovely visit from some of our other friends in Oxfordshire. The weather was great and the children really enjoyed spending time with old friends as did I. The hardest thing about moving to Pembrokshire has been missing close friends....we've all felt that over the past six months.....but it is always great to spend quality time with them when they visit.




My sister and family managed their first visit (its a heck of a long way from Yorkshire!) last week. It was so nice to share a bit of our beloved Pembrokeshire with them. The highlight (for me anyway) was our visit to Skomer to see the puffins, but I think Uncle P found it all a bit strenuous! Here are a couple of Rhiannons pictures...


When we have been without visitors life has been a mixture of house hunting, hospital visits to investigate my dh's dicky stomach, spending time enjoying our new surroundings (i.e. Pembrokeshire) and ....oh yes, HE! To be honest it's been a bit of a barren time on that score. I think we have all felt unsettled not having a house of our own - I don't think its being in rented accomodation as such that has been the problem. More the fact that we know we want to move on....and we have looked at alot of houses.....frankly we're all sick of it. I have found it difficult to focus on working with the children and as much as I would LOVE to work in a fully autonomous way, the children increasingly want more input from me. But then again if that's their choice I guess that's still autonomy?! I always had this vision of autonomously educated children floating around the house all day contentedly exploring and asking questions and me being there just at the right moment..............................oh dear - need a rethink!

Having said all that, I do think we have turned a corner as a family with regards to HE in just the last couple of weeks. At last we seem to have found our feet..its only taken 2 and a half years. Its difficult to explain but things are calmer and more fun. For example the other day we were talking about atomic structure - I never thought that could be enjoyable but it was (or am I getting too old?) It was something about the way we were able to share ideas, ask questions, think about the concepts that felt so constructive. I don't think I ever experienced that feeling through my entire education. It felt really important - not the subject matter - but the process we were going through, the way we were helping eachother discover new things. I don't think that would happen at school - there just wouldn't be time. Don't get me wrong - I have no illusions that all will be hunky-dorey from now on, but something has changed that feels more right. (Of course I may be eating my words by the next time I post!)

Anyway, off my soap box. Here are a few other things we have been up to.

We painted rocks.........

Rhiannon hatched more quails.........

.....and some chickens for a local HE friend who has a smallholding.

Keira cut, stuck and painted.........

The boys did lots of exercise.....

And we all played on the beach!

Its a tough life but somebodys got to live it!!

Nomads and Musicians

My dh is always complaining that because of his work he feels like a Nomad! Well this week we've been thinking about the Nomads who were kicking around in about 10,000BC. So we thought that in true home ed style we should have a go at building a shelter in the paddock and cooking up a feast over a roaring fire! This is the moment when I realised that home ed has really transported me into a kind of parallel universe....never before in my well ordered life would I have even considered such a thing! The children say that I'm "coming on" and "showing signs of improvement" though I must admit the control freak in me keeps trying to get out.

Well the children set to constructing a somewhat precarious shelter and covered part of it with animal skins (...... old dust sheets actually, but you get the point!) Then they made a fire pit whilst I "foraged" at the local farm shop for roots and funghi and "hunted" for a nice rump steak.

Well it was all going rather well until we tried to get the fire going and actually cook on it! In my optimism I had placed a large bucket of water next to the fire pit, but I needn't have worried. It took about 2 hours and a whole box of matches (I mean flints ) to get some thing like a fire going!! Oh the shame of it..........we have HE friends who are experts at such things!

Finally managed to produce something edible but the children concluded that even the Rayburn cooked faster than this and they really didn't fancy the idea of being Nomads! They certainly got an inkling of how hard life must have been for the Nomads compared with our own comfy way of life...........mind you, I'm sure the Nomads were more competent than us at surviving in the "wild" !!! Next time (if there is a next time) we are resolved to make a bigger fire pit so we can actually get some heat into it!! We all stink of smoke now................

Keira continues to demonstrate the natural desire to learn that all young children seem to have. For example she often watches Rhiannon and Jo practising their violins. Yesterday she got a music stand, music (a rather tricky Double Concerto by Bach) and her ukele, perched under her chin as best she could, and she began to play. After a minute she stopped and turned to me saying "can you help me Mummy, I don't know how to learn it!" So we let her have a go with Jo's violin.............here is a pic - doesn't she look serious!


She so much wants to play like Rhiannon and Jo. I sometimes wonder what to do when children have such big ambitions - surely she is too young to tackle something so challenging (my natural instinct is to get out a recorder ). But at the same time I don't want to limit her through my own preconceived ideas. Perhaps there is a danger that just as we often expect too much of our children, maybe there are other times when we may inadvertently squash their enthusiasm because we think something may be beyond them. As for Keira, it is probably a phase that will pass - but maybe not. Why do I assume that she is incapable of extraordinary things?

One thing I have learned today..........I'm rubbish at building fires.

I'm not a one to rush into things but.........

......I have been trying to set up this blog for the past 4 months! Oh well. I never pretended to be great with technology.

So why the title "Six Quails in Wales" - perhaps I should begin by explaining myself. I have been home educating our 4 children for the past 2 and a half years. When we started out, we just wanted a different lifestyle - I didn't like the pressure my children were continually under at school. It seemed to be all about SATS and league tables - not about education at all. So we took the plunge and deregistered them - quite a leap for someone like me who had spent her life playing by the rules! Perhaps it was a mid life crisis!

I don't think I really knew what I was expecting home education to be like. Its a bit like being on a roller coaster ride, with emotions ranging from exhilaration to total blind panic. But for all the highs and lows it just feels right. Its nothing like school - I want the children to follow their own interests. Trusting them in this way has been something I have not found easy - but I'm learning! And that's the point. Home education is a journey of discovery for the whole family - we are ALL learning, about the world, about maths, about eachother, about everything and anything that comes our way. I am learning so much about myself and about my children - stuff that I know I just would have missed if we had continued in that crazy treadmill that we were all on before. We still do the maths, science, history and so on, but there is so much more to educating young people than learning facts. They need to be equipped to cope with an ever changing world - that is the real challenge.

But I digress..... back to the title of this blog!

There have been many special moments since we began home educating, but for me one of the highlights was when my teenage daughter asked if she could hatch some quails in her bedroom! To her total surprise (and mine) I agreed! She researched the subject and thanks to the kind loan of an incubator and heat lamp from another home ed friend (thanks) she managed to hatch 8 chicks from 21 eggs.



It was such a simple thing, nothing earth-shattering at all really, yet it was symbolic of how home ed had changed our lives. Coming from an Essex council estate where the only livestock consisted of cats and budgies, it felt like a real trip into the unknown for me! I don't believe we would ever have done such a thing had the children remained in school - it was a product of my daughter having time to develop an interest in birds, a product of all the wonderful new people we have been meeting all from different backgrounds, with different interests and experiences, and in a small way, a product of how I have learned to view the world differently now. It was a life enriching experience for all of us. And that's what home education is more than anything - a life enriching daily experience that has become a natural part of our lives.

As for the quails, we sadly lost 2 of them so we are left with 6 - just as we are a family of 6! They have moved with us to West Wales where we are looking forward to enjoying the surf, the wildlife and the landscape (well perhaps not the quails!)..............and the next chapter of our home educating life.