Home School Mentor Function

When starting out Home Schooling, it can be hard to find your own feet. When we started out Home Schooling, we had a lot of resistance from some people around us. People asked many critical questions. Some people find it very hard to accept, when you choose to live your life in a way that is lived by a minority of people. In an ideal world, everyone would be supportive and offer their help and positive curiosity. But unfortunately that is not reality.

At the beginning you also have so many questions and for some the fear of taking responsibility for your own children learning. What should a day look like? Is there a wrong and a right way to do it? We have gotten so far away from taking responsibility and relying on our own gut feeling, that some people feel like floating and near drowning, when taking the step to Home School.

When we started out Home Schooling, our greatest fear was not being able to manage economically. So I also started out teaching 2-4 evenings a week, seasonally. This was pretty tough with a 1, 2 and 5-year old at home. But our new free life just felt so good and the children were thriving.

But there were very few Home Schoolers in Denmark in 2009, so it was hard getting play dates and the current friends quickly left us, as they started in the local School. So we slowly had to rebuild our social life. We enrolled in a weekly play group and started contacting the other home schoolers we could find on the internet and met up with them.

But our first year was hard. Actually the first few years were hard finding our feet. But I had tried major changes in my life before, so I just fought my way through it, as we had such a great every day life.

Through the years, the number of Home Schoolers has increased and I have played a mentor role for many of them. I have invited them into our house and talked to them about all their concerns and helped them as well as I could. If I could avoid them having to go through the feeling of being all on your own with these many questions, I would see it as a great way to spend my time. I often also would acquire new great friends and play mates for my children.

Home School meeting 2018-08-12 at Streyf Nature Cabine.

We have, and still do, arrange meetings and activities where old and new Home Schoolers can meet, ask questions and make friends. This is also one of the main reasons why I have set up this website – to help new Home Schoolers, not feel so alone.

Home School meeting at our house 2018-10-18.

Home School meeting 2016-07-02.

 

 

Nature is everything 2018-10-17

One thing we always seem to be in deficit with, is going to the forest and to the sea. You just can never do those things enough. It brings on tranquility and peace of mind. It makes you high on life and brings on so many questions about our Mother Earth. The seasons changing, the change in weather. The change in the surroundings. And it always gives you free exercise.

Photo from Hareskoven 2018-10-17.

Photo from Bagsværd sø 2018-10-17.

Often Home Schooling 4 children and trying to do your best all the time for everyone, can turn into just to high a speed. Then we go to the forest or sea and chill out and try to live life slowly and feel time in another way. Today we spend 5 hours in the forest just doing what ever came up. I had my knitting with me. My oldest daughter had her book of Survival with her, which had a peculiar collection of advice in many weird situations. They had a long role play where invisible dragons fought on the lake. We had lunch. They set up a play, which they acted out with me as audience. We did gymnastics and yoga together by the water. Some of us tipped our toes in the water and splashed a bit. We observed the leaves falling from the trees. But most of all, we talked and talked. Sometimes I think that home school really is about talking to your kids and listening to your kids. We spend just so much time doing just that every day. It is wonderful to get to know what goes on inside their heads.

Native American Project 2010-08-27

When we first started out Home Schooling 1st of April 2009, one of our intentions was to follow the children interests as much as possible. For history, geography and social science, that meant taking a lot of interest in
indigenous peoples and past cultures. Particular Native American, Eskimos, Asian and Egyptian culture. The project shown, is a tipi that we build out of 4 poles, 4 meters long and a half circle that we sewed and painted to complete a huge tipi in our garden. We also designed and made Native American costumes for the children to live out their Native American dream. We had this tipi for many years in our garden. It is my largest sewing project until now.

How dangerous is a Christmas Tree, when it has been inside drying for 3 weeks?

My Husband is against having real candles on our Christmas tree. I always had real candles on our Christmas tree when I was a child, so I have been complaining about my loss of atmosphere at Christmas, by having to live with artificial lights on our tree.

So he needed arguments, to defend his opinion. So as usual, he watched a million youtube movies and read a million articles about the subject.

And of course he came to the decision, that we had to try out the fire threat ourselves. We had to do an experiment. So this year we would not go to a workshop and make things out of the tree trunk, but set fire to it, and see how quickly it would burn. Real quickly, was the answer. With 5 m high flames.

Density, water + salt with an egg

Put an egg in water and observ that it does not float.

Put salt in the water and see the egg start to float on the water. Mix more water in, and see it sink again.

This is an easy experiment to do in the kitchen, but such a great part of how density works.

When we swim in the ocean we will find it easier to float or swim, than in freshwater. This is because the water density is higher in saltwater, than in freshwater.

If we would try to swim in oil, which has a lower density than freshwater and saltwater, we would find it very hard to stay above the surface.

The Medical Museion – The Body Collected

For a few years we have wanted to go to The Medical Museion. They have actual body parts in formaldehyde, you can see close up.

Biology and Chemistry is a great interest of our children, and they had so many questions to the guide.

We had pre-ordered a children friendly tour of the exhibition “The Body Collected”.

They have a large collection of bones affected by different illnesses.

We try to show our children all aspects of life, so that they do not grow up with tabus, shame or go around wondering about things, that they do not dare to ask us. They have become very good judges of what they are uncomfortable with and say:”I do not want to see that” and just go on.  It is healthy to learn to question “that is just how it is” when the doctor orders you antibiotica or other situations in life, where you do not think you have a choice.

 

 

 

 

 

After the tour, we went around in the museum on our own. The cellar had a very exiting exhibition “Min the Gut” where you could read about the importance of the stomachs bacteria flora and the research done during the past few hundred years.

There also was a Pill Machine where you could answer a line of emotional and dietary questions, to go to a machine where it would give you the right amount of medicine and guidelines to treat your ailments. It was a way to show you the combination of medical and holistic treatment.

On the other floor, just by the entrance, there was a game, where you could play roulette, gambling with your age. You could get good or bad body parts and we had a lot of fun. I managed to turn 101 years old, so I won.

In remembrance of Jane

For 9 years we went to a playgroup in a Church. It was only intended to be for 2-6 year olds, but the group was managed by a very nice lady called Jane. When we started in the group our children fitted very well into that category, with a 5, 2 and 1 year old. Then they grew older. But Jane still made us feel welcome in the play group. She did not care much about age groups or rules generally. What mattered to her was the overall feeling in the group and if the children knew how to behave well towards each other. You would always get a loving hug and a truly personal concern and interest into your life from Jane. She was open and loving. Jane had not had an easy life before she came to the church. Many people had not treated her with the respect everybody deserves. But she had found her love and meaning in God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. She gave that love on to us all.

As our youngest child turned 5 this year, we decided to stop in the play ground this year. As Jane was become more like a grandmother to our children than just a friend, we made plans with her to meet up with her and also for her to become a part of our home school network and arrangements.

But sadly, she died quite suddenly from cancer, during the summer break from the playground. We managed to meet her once at the hospice and we also attended her funeral. At the funeral they said that one of her sayings was:”Always stay honest in your heart”. I will never forget that. She was a person who gave so much. You felt understood and energized from her company. We will never forget her.

In the play ground there was a meeting once a week where we would start out sitting in a circle. Then all the children would get to choose a song from song books she had put together through the years, with songs the families had brought. She had a lot of toys that fitted the different songs. Then she would often bless us all. We also had a dice the children could throw, with blessings on. Then there would be an activity. It could be that she would tell a bible story that fitted that season of the year, or there could be a creative activity.

At the start of every year we had a paper we could write an activity on, that we would like to do during that year. Usually “look at a fish” would be put on it, as a popular activity. Every year Jane managed to find a new interesting sea creature to dissect, fry and then we would eat it.

Every year we would have a ceremony in the church at christmas, where Jane would make a christmas play with children from the local kindergarden. We would then every year receive some kind of angel figure, to remember Gods love for us.

Every year we would celebrate “Fastelavn” in the play group. Jane would put sweets in a brown paperbag the children had painted. Then the children got to hit the bag, one by one, until it broke. One year Jane had put oranges in the bag. They all were completely smashed up, so she didn’t repeat that treat 🙂

Easter. Usually spend with a bible story. Then Easter Egg hunt in the church.

We did a lot of creative activities in the play group. Often we would paint, sculpt, build things. On this picture we could paint on caps, shoppingbags or T-shirts.

Jane. We miss you and will never forget you.

Learning about PI – the hands on way

Learning about math, the hands on way, is often a lot more understandable by the children. It is also a lot more fun.

In the video we made a large round flower bed without using a calculator. 22/7 is almost the same as PI.

To understand the relationship between the circles diameter and circumference, we first put 7 tiles as the diameter, then 22 tiles around them in a circle.

The relationship between a circles diameter and circumference is 𝛑, which is very close to 22/7, or around 3.14 in decimals. The fraction 22/7 is not exactly  𝛑, but 0.4‰ greater, but when you are making a flower bed it will still work out, even with this imprecision.

Maker Space with glory to workmanship and reuse 2018-09-30

A very important part of learning, is to be exposed to different things. As a child, you do not know all the different possibilities there is in life. We try to expose our children to as many different areas of learning as possible. Then they will have a greater opportunity to choose for themselves what to engage in. To find out what interests them.

In the past few years there has come a lot of offers to children, regarding learning about electronics, which is more and more palatable. One of these offers is Maker Space Copenhagen. There the children can see a fusion of methods used in craftmanship fused with electronics.

On the picture above, the children could see a 3D printer and examples of what it could produce and how it worked.

On the picture is shown a selection of trash that the children could use to create new things with.

On the picture above, a dolls house was build out of cardboard and then some electronic gimmicks was applied to the house.

Often Maker Space also takes the environmentally outlook on how we consume. It is all about reusing.

At this Maker Space there also was a section on biological aspects of creating. You could for example make your own mushrooms growing kit and many other growth projects to learn about biology.