Life Based Learning

Friday morning was time for a family visit to the library. They seem to be used to us down there now! I had some posters left over from a collection that I received from Penguin books, so I was able to share them with the library, which was nice.

It's amazing the ways that you can open your child's eyes to the wonders of learning: paying for the car parking ticket involved ds2 (7) working out how much one hour's parking would be, then sorting out the right coins to make 60p, then feeding them in to the machine - doing the subtraction each time to find out how much more he needed.

The afternoon saw a visit to the supermarket - another opportunity! We have recently covered fair trade, and ds1 (10) was sent off to search for bananas with the logo on them. I have also taught them how to look at the price per 100g for products so that they can compare large with small packets etc and still work out best value for money.

So today was a rather laid back day, educationally. There was no "formal" sitting down to learn - everything was based in the real world - with just some work on the pc in the evening. Both boys find writing difficult, for very different reasons, so working online is a great benefit for us.

Now our thoughts are on Advent, and most of our learning in the coming weeks will be focused around that. Every day we are each writing on a paper holly leaf something that we are thankful to God for and then sticking them on a plastic circle. By Christmas day we'll have a beautiful thanksgiving wreath.

I must say, it is proving a real insight to see what each child choses. Especially ds3 (3). So far, when asked what makes him happy that he wants to thank God for, we've had "frogs" and "puppies"!