Tag Archives: scout hut

Education, Home Education, Self-led learning

Fabulous Fridays

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We’ve had a couple of fantastic Fridays recently. The first was at the Scout hut we go to with our home education group and resulted in a pretty impressive musical instrument.

Making amazing music from junk
Making amazing music from junk

 

 

 

 

 

 

The chap who ran the session was brilliant, he brought the guitar shapes and stems ready, then the kids had to glue on the frets (or get adults to, because we ended up having to use superglue due to time constraints!!!!!… yes I was careful, but still almost managed to glue my fingers together!!), then string it.

There was a lot of excellent physics covered easily, and the electric guitar the man had made himself from a Roses chocolate tin was very impressive.

There was also the usual playing in the woods and getting muddy and having lots of fun.

The other Friday was a trip to a Food bank. We shown around, split into groups and given useful things to do. The kids really got into the challenge of labelling the donations with dates and sorting them into the correct piles. It was such a lovely set up with tables set out for tea and biscuits, all done really nicely for anyone coming in, and the volunteers were all so nice. So easy for anyone to need a food bank when things go wrong for them.

We learned all about how the system works, and actually how few times people are allowed to come in… 3 times a year… though if people are really desperate they will do more. They ask people’s preferences, are careful about allergies, religious beliefs and vegetarians etc. Some excellent discussions came up and we also had such a laugh with everyone, a really happy place.

We found out that they often have far too many baked beans, and would prefer tinned tomatoes, toiletries, sanitary items, tinned custard, tinned rice pudding, loo rolls and the boxes of laundry tablets, so they can be split and shared out in smaller bags.

Food bank trip

We then went to the local supermarket and got some donations with the children picking useful things to donate.

 

 

We’re so lucky to belong to such a lovely home ed group, there always seems to be something exciting to go to.

Shame the Government yet again seems to be stirring up ready to hassle home educators again.

 

 

 

 

 

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Education

Genetics and Evolution

We had an amazing session at our home ed group this week. A friend of one of the parents came in and gave us a talk about genetics and evolution, and mapping the human genome.

It was the best explanation of Evolution I’ve had and cleared up some of the things that I wasn’t sure about too. So much recent science… a relatively new field.. of mapping the human genome, and now other animals too and the comparison of those and how important technology has been in this, needing fast computing speeds to help analyse so much data, but how even that is still not fast enough for the amount of data and how long it takes to plough through looking for patterns and changes in the chains of DNA. (My biology knowledge is appalling, so excuse me if I haven’t used a correct term!!)

Having said how bad my biology knowledge is though, I was inspired by his passion and found it very interesting. I’m much more a chemistry and physics fan, but I could see the fascination of his subject.

He works at Southampton University and is researching motor neurones disease, so as well as a run down of evolution and genetics, he also explained what they know about motor neurones disease and what they don’t know. It was all fascinating and what was going to be a 45min talk turned into 1.5 hrs of discussion and questions because everyone was so engaged. Apparently he was very nervous and doesn’t have much to do with children… you wouldn’t have known it!!

I’ve not even  mentioned R. I was hooked and engrossed, at the end it looked like she was too. Usually the lure of the woods outside calls to her, but she was there asking lots of questions at the end too.

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Education

Home Ed Group Meet up at Scout hut.

Our home ed group hires a scout hut about once a month for the day where parents take it in turns to run or organise sessions.

Today we had one parent run a music / vocal coaching session, which many of the older kids prepared a piece of music for in advance (they could if they wanted to)

What I think is so lovely about the sessions at scout hut is that none of them is compulsory, children don’t have to take part if they don’t want to, and if they aren’t enjoying a session they can leave. They are usually encouraged to have a look what is on offer, and if they choose not to join in then they do not disrupt the others. R didn’t want to join the music session today (not her thing), so she played in the woods instead. Activities sometimes have a guideline age group but in general children classify themselves as big enough for activities, so it isn’t unusual to have smaller children joining in something if they are keen or interested.

We then had a lawyer come in to talk about the Magna Carta (there was a trip to Salisbury last week to see the Magna Carta), which led on to a discussion where the children had to put forward ideas for their own Magna Carta.

It was a really good activity, and there were some very interesting suggestions put forward. A few funny ones, like unlimited ice-cream for children, but most were serious and there were a lot to do with children’s rights. It was suggested that it should be made law that children be treated with respect, especially by teachers and parents. Also, how children should have more say in decision making, and that children should not be forced into school against their will (alternative childcare would be a different issue). Some children also wanted to only have electric cars, to reduce carbon emissions. Another one that came up was a total ban on smoking. It was a large age range 6-14 and some of the youngest ones had the most idealistic suggestions. The older ones were more realistic about the idea of scrapping all cars apart from electric cars for instance.

There was a school nurse session next about alcohol… which a big group of kids did go in for but R wanted more Wolf game in the woods (an ongoing group game for all ages which happens regularly at scout hut… and has probably been running for over a year or more.)

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