The snapshot!

The first term of homeschooling with Jet is done and partially dusted.

It has been a good learning experience for us both.

Snapshots of my learning.

#plan a more end in mind planning structure for the term so we work with the whole picture in mind. This is indeed the most tricky thing for me as I am not necessarily a big picture thinking, yet.

I sat down yesterday and planned ahead with the end in  mind so that we can know where we need to get to. 

# . I have gathered a far wider understanding of the history of our country. Thank you Footprints and also the beautiful Platinum  Caps textbooks. ( yes I do love these!) They are designed for kids to read and so are full of colour and good information as well as excellent pictures and activities to build on.

# a renewed respect for teachers who have a classroom of kids to get much work done with.

# it has been a joy and an absolute pleasure to work with this kiddo. we are having enormous fun learning about microbes in our science group and about Barty Dias in History as well as working through some great geography lessons on South Africa. 

Maths and English are simply full and exciting. 

These photographs are all from our outing to the Slave Lodge in Cape Town . The art is from the wall in the section on democracy. The photograph is of a man whose heritage is from slavery. His surname gives this away. He is named after the month of one of the ships bringing slaves arrival at the Cape.

Snapshots of Jethro's learning include...

# what it feels like to be happy in learning and to enjoy school

# seeing that he actually can learn something he thought was just too difficult

# finding out his strengths and areas of "yet" for himself.

Thoughts

My head is just full of thoughts. Trying to reconcile what we are actually trying to achieve for Jet in education and thinking of the bigger picture, which to my mind is.....

Given where we are in history and given the unknown world we are creating, how can we best educate our children so that they can function well and not only that but contribute successfully in this unknown world?

This is a gigantic question. It is one that I allne do not have the answer to but there are many who are sharing their ideas on this topic. Helping to deconstruct my own educational framework and thus reconstruct something that works is an incredibly painful process. My thinking is in chaos. I am torn between that which ,as an educationalist, I know to be true and yet seeing in reality that something new has come along and is taking its place.

I am wrestling with myself.

This morning Jet and I have revisited maths ,touching on a concept that he was struggling with. Here is the wrestle. If you watch the Ted talk called build a school in the cloud by Suguta Mitra  , you will notice that the notition that we should actually write out long division sums is rediculous. That we can do them is of course a given for me, in that good neurological connections are made in thinking  it all through. Figuring things out and joining the dots seems far more worthy a lesson given that problem solving is going to be the order of the new world. Indeed it is already the order.
So, after maths Jet asks if he can continue on his Khan programming course. For the past hour he has been busy learning to code using functions. A worthy hour.... indeed... on the curiculum ... not really. And so my inner chaos reins on,

What are we to do because we are straddling two worlds. The world of the old and obselete and the new , misty world. Our kids are pioneers and adventurers. They will be exploring the new. Are we giving them the right tools to do this well?

The more I think about it, the more I thknk the Finish approach to education is spot on. Inquiry based, real life learning makkng ALL subjects relevant to actual life so that it all makes sence.