Author: vibeke

Where is the best place to homeschool?

We have been homeschooling for 13 years now in Denmark’s capital – Copenhagen. Recently we moved out into the countryside. This has made me want to write a piece on, how where you are situated, when you Home School, affects your children’s learning.

Homeschooling in the city.
Homeschooling in the country.

Generally I would say that it doesn’t matter where you are located, it depends on your set of mind, how well your home school works. But your location does give you different opportunities. It is how open and how well, you are able to grasp these opportunities that matters.

When you Home School in the city, you often have theaters, libraries, playgrounds, other Home Schoolers, spare-time activities and museums near by.

When you live in the country you have nature near by, more space for creative projects, opportunities to keep animals, less distractions and you can be self-sufficient. Often people around you have more time to talk to you and you can develop close relationships with you neighbors.

Generally learning and Home Schooling is all about grasping the opportunities that come along in life. Keeping a positive outlook and trying to get the best out of life. Remembering that learning is not just for children aged a specific age – but that you learn from the day you are born until the day that you leave this earth. Hopefully. What gives life meaning is all the time learning and understanding new about being alive and what it is all about. Moving a bit around is refreshing and can renew your understanding of life.

We did a Minstrel Show

We have done quite a few shows now, through the years we have been homeschooling. First we did a Shakespeare play, then “Jack and the bean stalk” as a play, then we did a Circus performance and then a musical that my oldest child wrote.

Around a year ago we met a Minstrel, who inspired us to do a Minstrel Show. He even agreed to take part in our show, which we greatly appreciated. Another homeschooling family also took part in the show and we trained together for 8 months.

It is always a great way to make new friends and bond with other like-minded people, working on these projects.

The children and the adults all worked together on writing the individual parts of the show and then on making the costumes, scenery, props.

Performing at The Cube

When you homeschool you decide for yourself what you want to use your time on. You can plan your own day, week, month and year. You have the opportunity to be impulsive and take the chances that pass you by.

You can dive into the children’s interests and offer an interest based learning that turns on their enthusiasm. Most interest based learning brings around multiple areas of learning and often touches basic areas such as math, reading, writing and languages.

In our homeschool, the pupils are very creative, artistic, physical and likes to perform. When we met a doctor who is fighting against censorship in the media, we were offered a chance to be a part of a new TV channel called “Danmarks Frie Fjernsyn” and create our own channel on that TV channel.

The TV channel set up a studio for recording and streaming live TV from Nytorv in Copenhagen (the studio has now moved to Israels Plads). At that studio (which is called “Cuben”) we have performed live 3 times now.

It has involved a lot of learning. Our goal is to spread a positive idea with children and youths, that learning is fun and what makes people grow. There is too much focus on fear and negative news in the media and no solutions offered. We want to focus on how wonderful a gift life is and how grateful we can be every day that we are alive and experiencing this wonderful world.

If you want to see more, have a look at Danmarks Frie Fjernsyns website:

Schousernes Verden, din børne & unge TV kanal!

We have our own Political Party

When you homeschool, you have the opportunity to be engaged in real life projects.

I have many talks with the children about what they would like to change in our society, so I said that we have democracy in Denmark, so we can just make our own party and sit down and think about how we would like our world to look like.

So we sat down and wrote down all the things that was important to us and set up a website, where we have stated our political programme.

We applied to get our party name accepted by the authorities and now it is up and running for signatures to take part in the next election.

https://personligfrihed.dk/

One of our kids came to us and asked if we could set up a demonstration to save the peoples money – cash. So we arranged a demonstration in front of the Parliament and it was great to feel the power of doing something to change the world we are living in.

We have our own TV channel

We set ourselves the goal many years ago, to make a you tube channel to show that learning is fun and exiting. It is called “videnskanalen”. We have played around with it for many years and have been learning how to make films. Then a new TV channel started in Denmark and we got the opportunity to make TV together with them. The channel is called “Danmarks Frie Fjernsyn” and we have a channel called “Schouserne” which is a channel about how wonderfully exiting life is. It is about DIY, science, stories, biology, stop motion, animation and much more. Have a look here: https://www.danmarksfriefjernsyn.dk/velkommen-til-bu-tv/

This april the TV company got a permit to build an art installation with a studio inside on Nytorv by Strøget in Copenhagen. We have been performing there and making TV the past few weeks. It has been a lot of fun and a good chance to get the positive message about life out to young people.

The art installation is covered with information about the TV channel and we have designed one side of it and written texts to go with it. I tell about the Cube here:

Learning by doing is the most meaningful way to learn and making TV this way together with a lot of positive, enthusiastic and brave people is very motivating and a great way of learning for the kids.

preservation experiment

A fun simple experiment to do at home. We sliced at tomato in 5 slices and put them in small glasses.

  1. with water
  2. with nothing
  3. with oil
  4. with salt
  5. with vinegar

After 2-3 weeks the two first molded and the last three was preserved in the oil, salt and vinegar.

Water
Nothing
Oil
Salt
Vinegar

Electrolysis and acid and base liquid colour change

We mix cooking salt (NaCl) with water (H₂O). Then add an electric current, more than 1.23volt and the electrolysis starts. There is produced H₂ (hydrogen), O₂ (oxygen), NaOH (Sodium hydroxide) and Cl₂ (chlorine gas). We did not intend to produce chlorine gas, but luckily it was in so small amounts, that no harm was done to us. We have red cabbage as an acid – base indicator, and salt water as a neutral. After the electrolysis there is formed NaOH and the solution becomes base, which is seen by the solution turning green/yellow.

Workplacement as a dentist

One of our children has wanted to a become a dentist, since she was 6 years old. The interest has continued until now, where she is 13 years old. Our dentist had promised us that when she was old enough, she could come and do a work placement with them for a week.

So when she turned 13, she felt ready to try it out. She had already for many years gone with her mum to the dentist there to sit next to her and see the dentist work on her teeth. She had also read every book on teeth we could find for her. So she was ready.

The employees were very nice to her and she was involved in the treatments of the patient all through the day. She sat next to the operating dentist, if the patient allowed it, and most did.

The main thing she found out, was that being a dentist was much more interesting than she had emagined. She thought it would be much of the same work, but she experienced that there was many different jobs and treatments.

So, she even more want’s to become a dentist now after the work placement.

A great way to learn, is in the real world, with real jobs and real people.

Work Placement as a vet

One of our children would like to become a vet. She is now 12 years old and just couldn’t wait any longer to try and get a placement. So she called around herself to a few vets near by and got a few rejections, but it all payed off – she got an offer of a one week placement as a vet. It was even a place really close by.

So she started her placement and found out a lot about what being a vet really is about, and is even more determined now to become one.

The employees really took her under their wings and she was allowed to take place in most of the work. She stood by in operations and even in a dissection of a cat with several deformeties, that resulted in it being put down. She found that most fascinating of all the things, she experienced that week.

Homeschooling makes work placement much more flexible, as you can have as many as you would like during the year and can step in when it suits a company, and are not restricted by school schedules. You can take part in real life learning.

Butchering a Chicken

We like to learn hands on, with real life events. Everything just makes so much more sence that way. That kind of learning also sticks in your mind.

We have a girl who is very fond of animals. Not just the fluffy caretaker way, but she also wants to see what is inside them, know how they function and what they eat. She wants to become a vet.

So we decided to get some chicken. She wanted to have them from small, so she could watch them grow and develop. We have had them for around 5 months now and it turned out that the 5 hens we bought, was actually 3 hens and 2 roosters. Well, we got them to see the miracle of them laying eggs, se we had to reconsider what to do with the 2 rooster.

As the two roosters grew up, they started to fight each other and chase the children around, so they didn’t dare go out in the garden anymore, as they were afraid of their beaks.

Especially one of them was aggressive. So we decided to kill it and eat it. We watched a lot of you tube to learn from others and set a plan for the butchering. We talked to people who we knew had experience with it and learned.

Well, today we were ready and got on with it. We started out early in the morning and got hold of him and chopped his head off. We then put him in the heated water to get the feathers loosened. Two of our kids removed the feathers and after I took out the guts and we all examined them. The children wanted to measure the intestines to see how long they were.

We then cooked the chicken immediately and ate it. Butchering the chicken ourselves, was brave of all of us, and natural. It feelt really good being that close to nature and taking responsibility for our own food. We all need to have our hands on learning more about nature in our world.