Home Ed update

Hello All!
Well I just read a awesome blog written by another Tga home-edder (try finding that in the dictionary!!) and I am feeling all inspired and motivated. I have been looking for a good way to record what we do for our family and friends as well as ERO when the come and see us and this could be it!
I prefer the term home educating instead of home school because to me 'home school' implies that we do all our learning at home.
We try to utilise time spent travelling by doing 'quick fire questions' and it is amazing how many topics we can cover! Te Reo, Math, Spelling etc as well as general knowlege questions. The kids love it and because they're not under pressure it is fun way of learning as well as providing a bit of competition. We also have Ten pin on Tuesday with the TGA Home Sch group, horse riding for Tui on Wednesdays and Swimming for all 3 on Thursdays.
We're not 'unschoolers' we have set activities each day such as math and hand writing but I try to be flexible and to do them in different ways for example, yesterday we did math work using crayon and dye instead of pen and paper and today we used Dora the Explorer to make maths a bit more interesting. Last week we made cards for some up coming birthdays and Jacob wanted to try paper weaving which led to us talking about 'the olden days before sewing machines...' It was great fun though I am glad we didn't have to make a whole cloak!
I think it's important to follow their interests and to allow them extra time to continue an activity they are enjoying instead of 'turning them off' learning because they don't see the relevance or find it boring but structure and rules also have their place or we would never get anything done!

Obviously not everything we do will make it on to the blog spot but I have big ideas about updating this weekly, though in reality I am already far to busy so Tui will be able to show off some of her computer skills too and make posts on behalf of every one.

Don't forget to leave comments- we will look forward to them!