Medieval Birthday Madness

Cricket & Fish have been holidaying with their dad so I was very pleased to hear Sir Lucas would be celebrating his birthday at Kryal Castle. When I arrived Fish's shoes, socks and feet were soaked from the puddles in the maze. Fish later showed "sufficient skill with the bow to be of service in protecting King and Country" and was "made an honourary member of the Castle Guard". He is now a Castle Archer.

I couldn't keep up with Cricket, so I took in the Full Flight Birds of Prey display: meeting a peregrine falcon, owls and eagles.

Other home educators ... 1

Someone new joined the autonomous education network at mc2, and diving into the web from his blog (Living in a Deschooling Madhouse) I surfed to Diary of Home Education Nobody. Entry 001 triggered my own awareness of the challenge to provide evidence of Cricket's & Fish's learning. I don't actually 'have' to provide evidence to anyone just now, so the challenge is partly seeing it for myself. I don't want to spoil the boys' enjoyment of their life-learning, so why do I ask them to write about it?

• At the very least, says one of my justifications, some brief note by which they can practice handwriting.
• In the process may be practice at generating written words from thoughts (I'd be content with personal spelling)
• Habits can be helpful: and I am thinking that this kind of writing can help them develop habits of:
  
• reflection on performance/development/process
  
• documenting either objective data of their exploration (like Daniel does in Star Gate) or
  
• deliberate thinking (I'm thinking of showing them deBono's CoRT or at least starting with PMI or Thinking hats)
  
• sometimes writing can help reinforce learning
• Maybe it will help them become aware of what they are learning so that when asked they can answer with more than "I've been playing the computer and watching DVDs"
  
• I feel a need for some sort of documentation, and I don't want to spend my days following them around with notepad and pen.
  

Still, I need to keep requirement to a minimum (to be consistent with my philosophy of autonomy) ... yet I am the guide so maybe for now I need to focus on:

• pointing out the use and practice of various forms of documentation in their areas of interest
• finding reasons that have meaning to them.