Busy days

My great idea of timetabling is not holding up under pressure! However, that said, the boys have followed it loosely, which is better than not at all!

I was very pleased today though that Samuel - of his own accord - came in from the garden and sat down at the table to finish his science workbook. On the revision test at the end (key stage 2) he got full marks, which was very encouraging to him.

The family at our church who homeschool had us over to lunch yesterday. It is so helpful to be able to pick the brains of an "old timer" (sorry Kathy!) as she has been homeschooling for 10 years. She has lent me loads of teacher books and workbooks which I am now working through and photocopying. We are also hoping to work on some project together, as her two boys are almost the same age as Joshua and Samuel.

William again spent half and hour working with Nan on his number and letter workbook. He seems to find 4s and 6s very easy to write, with 5 being the tough one at the moment. His ability to recognise the starting letter/sound of a word is coming on in leaps and bounds.

Joshua spent the morning with his Hot Wires set. I love the set as it is teaching him so many things at once - he can certainly read a circuit diagram easier than me now!

Our new group, the Home Education Twinning Project, is slowly growing. We need more international groups to join - we have lots of UK groups eager to link up with others around the world to share, so please please promote it wherever you are! The next step is the website.

Yesterday we took things slowly as we were all recovering from the day before. Roarke had also been called out in the middle of the night: a family that have become involved with out church through the outreach needed assistance. The mum was taken into hospital bleeding heavily and expected to have an emergency caesarean so he had taken the dad in to see her (he didn't drive) after cell group last night. We then had a phone call in the middle of the night to say that mum and baby were now fine, and that dad needed a lift home again!

Somehow - perhaps in reaching for the phone in a hurry - Roarke pulled a muscle in his shoulder. The pain developed during the day and I ended up taking an hour and a half out to drive over to meet him on his break at work and put pain relieving gel on his shoulder!

More worrying, this morning he is showing his sarcoid/gout symptoms. It has happened before that a minor trauma/injury has triggered a sarcoid epidsode, so I would really value prayer that that would not happen. It would be devastating.

I received notification today that I have been confirmed as the North West Kent Local Contact for Education Otherwise, which is great. I'm looking forward to being able to get involved even more with the local home education community. I hope that the relationships I am creating with the LAs will prove beneficial. Talking of which, I have another one tomorrow, so prayers for that too please!

On a national note, the Pupil Registration Regulations that have been causing so much concern to the HE community here in England and Wales have finally been put forward. It appears that the delay that we feared (between sending a dereg letter and having a pupils name removed by the LA) is not there, along with the right of schools to delay notifying theLEA of a deregistration for 10 days. They must now notify immediately a deregistration occurs and the deregistration must occur as soon as the letter is received.

However, as Mike Fortune-Wood has said "There are good and bad bits here. While a deregistration is not delayed as the DfES apparently wanted it does potentially mean that the LEA could arrive sooner than before as they will know earlier on that a dereg has happened. "

And there are other issues: "One is that there may be some confusion about who can register a child. It might be (and this is just might be) possible for an LEA to do this. Then again that might not be the case...... Whatever the case the new regs seem to have muddied the water and there will probably be confusion in the minds of LEAs as to what their powers might be. It also seems that this may cause problems for statemented children. "

I will bear all this in mind at my meeting tomorrow with another LA.

On a brighter note, I'm hoping that the weather will hold for Monday, when our Group is hosting the South East HE Beach Day!

Link for today - the electricity calculator from the BBC . The electricity calculator gives you the opportunity to choose how you would like the UK’s electricity to be generated in 2020.
Once you have made your choice, the calculator will work out the possible impact in terms of carbon emissions, whether you managed to keep the lights on and how it will affect people’s annual bills.