Prestwich Home-Education Group meets up once a week in Heaton Park. The group has gone from strength to strength with more and more families joining in each week which is fabulous for the children involved.
If you had walked into the classroom yesterday you would have found a bustling, busy room of children happilly playing, talking and making things together with parents chatting away. Many of the families who regularly attend were away at the Home-Education Camp in Yorkshire (HECY) having a wonderful time camped out on a farm in the sunshine and because of their absence I had wondered if the numbers this week might be a little low - they certainly weren't.
It was lovely to have a couple of families arrive who we hadn't seen for a while - their experience and gorgeous children have been sorely missed. One of these families has an absolutely gorgeous new addition and I was so happy to meet him. I was only a little dismayed because had I known that they would be attending I would have made a bit of a fuss - balloons, cake and baby themed lovliness. I was like so many, totally distracted by the beautiful little bundle - babies have an adorable way of doing this don't they?
A lady who visited the group last week enquiring about home-ed and the group came back with one of her sons which was fabulous. He is an intelligent, eloquent and well mannered eleven year old who I was delighted to meet. It was as is often the case in new environments, a little awkward for him to 'make friends' with my eldest and the other slightly older group members but I'm sure that after yesterday's initial conversations lasting friendships will be formed. His enthusiasm for science and especially chemistry has excited my eldest as he will have another willing participant to carry out experiments with. There are two other families with older children who will hopefully be coming along next week for the first time. With the numbers of older children increasing it means that we can introduce more experiments and practical learning opportunities which is very exciting.
Another lady visited who had heard about home-education from one of the very experienced mums, recently. She is currently researching the idea but I am hoping that she was pleasantly suprised by the number of local home-educators and that she also had many of her questions answered by the other parents at the group yesterday. It really was nice to make her acquaintance and I wish her luck with her journey - she is welcome to visit whenever she likes and we all welcome her questions. Incidentally that goes for anyone pondering home-education as a serious option - if you fancy popping along to one of the sessions to find out more just email me or comment at the end of this post and I will get back to you.
The children had fun yesterday playing with the toys and games, making kites and flappy butterflies and just being together. They tested their kites in the courtyard by running around as fast as they could - they didn't seem to mind that there was no wind. After the classroom session ended everyone headed to the play area where we remained for over an hour. I had a brilliant time playing with the children and want to thank them all for letting me join in with the fairy game - I was honoured to be the mum fairy helping the other blue tooth fairies release the trapped boys from the terrible, spinny-around place - it was great fun. I never tire of being included in the amazingly imaginative worlds children invent, well perhaps a little but that's age related.
What had been a very warm, intensely sunny afternoon quickly transformed to rain which served as our cue to leave the park after an enormously fun day. My boys topped off the perfect afternoon by eating ice creams in the rain and counting bunny rabbits as they dashed for cover in the undergrowth.
I want to thank all the mums and children who came along and I do hope that they enjoyed it as much as we did. It was such fun socialising in the sunshine.
Next week we will be looking more closely at the farm animals (weather permitting) and I think that we might carry out a very simple but fun experiment as well. The group will be running over the school summer holidays.
No comments:
Post a Comment