Brilliant couple of days

The last few days have been great. I feel as though unschooling is definitely right for us judging by this week so far.

On Monday and Tuesday Joshua was interested in learning more about castles after building a castle set he got for Christmas last week with Vic and watching the latest 3 Harry Potter Films over the weekend. He has written a little about them too from what he has read in the Usbourne Beginners Castles Book and I didn’t tell him to write anything he decided to do that himself.

Yesterday the weather here was awful. It started with Thunder and Lightning on Tuesday evening that lasted more or less till 6am interspersed with heavy rain and strong winds. When Joshua got up it was hail stones so we stuck our hands outside to catch some hail stones and watched them melt in our hands. Then we stood at the window and watched them bounce as they hit the garden. He wanted to know what caused hail stones so I got out the Usbourne Beginners book on weather and we looked at the page on that and then he sat reading the rest of the book. A little later we had to nip to the shop and whilst we were walking back to the car it began to snow. Unfortunately it didn’t stick as it was so wet from all the rain. When we got back Josh sat with Ellie and was reading the bit about snow to her and about the different types of cloud. He has been really interested in the weather especially as we got up today and it is sunny and bright. He has also wrote a few lines about the weather too.

The last few days have also had some interesting conversations. On the castles subject we talked about the differences between early wooden castles and stone ones and he decided that stone castles were better as the bad guys couldn’t burn them down. We talked about stopping your enemies getting into the castle and he decided that the best way to stop them would be to have a moat and a drawbridge so you could let the good guys in but keep the bad guys out.

We have also had some interesting discussions on the weather and how Cyprus is normally warmer than England but when we spoke to my mum yesterday it was actually quite nice in England as opposed to being really cold here.

Ellie has been reading Ruby the Red Fairy a lot this week and has started writing her own story Ellie the Purple Fairy based on the book. She writes it how she wants and asks for help with spelling when she needs it.

Today they have watched primary history about Henry VIII’s Wives and so Josh is certainly keen to find out more about Henry VIII. We sat down together this afternoon and I read a couple of pages of a Horrible History books to him called The Terrible Tudors which he loved and he has been sat reading it himself all afternoon pausing only to read out a funny excerpt to me. It has been hard biting my tongue and wanting to butt in but it is brilliant seeing him find out more about Henry VIII for himself.

The last few days have helped me a lot too as I have had to keep from interfering in their activities apart from when asked so I don’t put them off learning. I have also learnt that you don’t have to have written proof of learning and that you can see that they have learnt so much on their own just by some of the conversations we have.

So am really pleased with how the last few days have gone - just watch everything fall apart tomorrow now I've said that.