Today,  we went with Stephanie went to see “How to Train Your Dragon” at the cinema. It is a really good film. Jacqueline went to see “Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang” with a home-educated friend – all at half price, courtesy of Orange Wednesdays!

As a home educator you can receive free film resources from www.filmeducation.org .There are lots of ideas on using various films to cover different areas of your curriculum.

We downloaded some activities on Nanny McPhee and also had a disc with other activities on Dragon Training and Vikings sent to us.

You can also get free tickets to films which are shown to school children during the film festival later in the year. You do have to book as soon as you can for those because the places go quickly.  There are films geared towards all age groups.

Whilst on the subject of free tickets, a lot of theatres offer free tickets to y9oung people under 24, on selected performances. This is supported by the Arts council and is designed to encourage young people to go to the theatre.  It is called ” A Night Less Ordinary” and You can find vmore information from the website – http://www.anightlessordinary.org.uk/

This is open to all.

Stephanie is going to see  the show “Wicked” again in London in a couple of weeks. We are looking forward to the open air theatre season starting again soon, with our favourites, Heartbreak Productions and Illyria having a good line up for this summer.

With abundant blessings.

Amanda Goldston

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The Pottery classes seem to have now expanded into other Arts as well. At the last pottery class, Jacqueline made a mug, which I am looking forward to seeing and to testing out the firmness of it, as I drink my tea out of it!

She recently did some glass painting and the result was absolutley stunning!

Amanda Goldston

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Today we received a book in the post called “Forward Press Poets 2009 – The North and Midlands” and on page 200 is a poem written  by Jacqueline to celebrate 100 years of Girl Guiding.

This is a collection that was put together by Forward Press to celebrate their 21st birthday.

Here is Jacqueline’s poem that was published.

Guides

100 years on

and still going strong.

Can you guess what it is?

It’s Girl Guiding of course!

It was 1909 when everything began,

with a man called Robert Baden-Powell,

He started the scouts for boys only,

which made the girls very angry!

They thought they should be included too,

so they went up to him

and demanded something for girls.

He thought over this for a while,

And he thought and thought and eventually,

the idea of Guides came to his mind

And the Girl Guiding organization was born!

And in 2010 girl guiding will be 100 years old!

I have been involved with guiding since I was seven years old,

from when I first joined Brownies

And since then

I have learned lots of different things,

Such as cooking, teamwork and more,

I have also made some great friends through Girl Guiding

And I love Guiding-

So much!!

Well done, Jacqueline, we are really proud of you.

Amanda Goldston

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We had another terrific day at Blackwell Court. The latest activity was Archery and I was very impressed!

Both Stephanie and Jacqueline scored a Bullseye and both of them managed to get their arrows in virtually the same hole on the board. Overall Stephanie came top of the group with 22 points and Jacqueline was joint 2nd with 18 points.

They have done archery previously when they have been on PGL holidays, so it was not totally new to them.

The next activity is the zip-wire, which is apparently one of the longest in Europe, so that should be FUN!

Amanda Goldston

Tags: children, fun // 1 Comment »

At the moment in the UK, there is, quite understandably, a lot of bad feeling about the proposed new legislation for licensing, monitoring and generally interfering in the lives of home educating families. There is also a huge amount of incensed outrage at home education being blamed for the cruel death of Kyra Ishaq in Birmingham a couple of years ago.

In my view it is important to make our voices of protest heard, as best as we can. However, it is also my personal belief that our biggest weapon is to simply SAY NO, on an individual basis, when some interfering busy-body wants to come into our homes and interview our children on their own. We DO NOT have to comply with their requests, orders, threats or whatever else they may throw at us.

In my opinion, one of the greatest weapons we have in our armoury is to shout the SUCCESS STORIES of our home educated children from the rooftops.

In the US, there have been long term studies conducted over 25 years, which show that home- educated (or home schooled) children score consistently better in national tests, at every level, than their counterparts in school; they go on to have successful careers in all fields; they contribute to their communities and are generally well-balanced, happy individuals.

In the UK, we get accused of abusing and neglecting our children, of not providing a suitable education (according to a recent Times Education Supplement, 45% of home educated children are ot receiving a suitable education) and are told that "high percentages"; of 16-19  year old home educated children are NEETS (Not in Education, Employment and Training) and as families we are harassed and threatened.

In other words, home education does not work, is the most  dreadful thing imaginable for children and should therefore be immediately banned and all children returned to school.

This is the drivel that is fed to the media by the government and they are happy to fill their newspapers, radio and television slots with every bit of negative, dramatic rubbish they can find.

We have been home educating for 3 years now and we have met so many families with success stories in every imaginable area, from exam success, to going to College or University, to success in Drama, Music, Art, Writing, Science, Sport, to awards like Duke of Edinburgh and Arts Award and just about everything you can think of.

I have got so fed up with hearing all the negative about home education that I have decided to set up a new area on this site to record SUCCESS stories of home educated children.

You can find the SUCCESS Stories by clicking the link below.

http://goldstonacademyfortheinsane.com/success/

If you have a success story, I would love to hear it and be able to put in on the website.  The only criteria is that is must be true. The definition of Success is simply a home-educated child accomplishing something they set out to do.

Home Education DOES work for the vast majority of families who undertake it. Instead of defending ourselves by attacking the attackers, lets follow the idea that the "Best form of REVENGE is MASSIVE SUCCESS", let’s tell the world about our SUCCESS stories.

With abundant blessings.

Amanda Goldston

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World Maths Day

There is a great challenge called the “World Math(s) Day”, where children from all over the world can enter and do up to 500 timed, Maths puzzles over a 48 hour period.

It starts on March 3rd 2010.

And yes, it is open to home-schoolers! Well, it is an american site, so that would be the reason for the inclusion!

Times Table Multiplication and Division Printable Worksheet Generator

My very clever husband, Greg, has created a fantastic tool for generating Multiplication and Division Worksheets.

It is a very simple programme. All you do is enter the Maths tables you would like to go up to, e.g. 5, 12, 25 or whatever number you want.

Select whether you would like a greater number multiplication or division sums, click to generate the sheets and print them off.

Each sheet contains 100 sums- and answers!

Our record for 100 correct answers with positive numbers up to 12 x 12 is 90 seconds.

You can also work with multiplication and division of negative numbers, if you really want to give your brain a work out!

When you want another sheet, it will generate a completely new one with another 100 questions.

Use it as often as you like.

It is an EXCEL programme and requires Microsoft EXCEL to be installed on your computer in order to run. It is a simple download and you can be stretching your brain in minutes.

It is FREE.

Click Here to Download

Please let us know how you get on with it. If you have any questions about the software, please email us.

With abundant blessings.
Amanda Goldston

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We have finally finished Jacqueline’s Baden Powell Challenge, which is the highest award that a Girl Guide can obtain.

All that is left is an adventure weekend, which Jacqueline will do over the next couple of months.

We have covered all sorts of things with this badge, including World Issues, different Cultures, Recycling, Fair Trade, learning about Independent Living and Water Safety, Cooking all sorts of things including a full family meal, running a Ready Steady Cook Night with the Guides, going to a Nature Reserve and creating a campfire songbook using ICT skills.

Last week at Guides, we had a challenge night and one of the challenges was to build the tallest free-standing tower out of dry spaghetti and jelly babies- it is not as easy as it looks! There were some incredibly creative inventions.

Over time we have worked our way through a good number of the Guide badges, as they offer a huge range of interesting subjects to explore and present in numerous different ways.

Jacqueline has done all of it herself and in her own style.  Some things we have explored in much more depth than others as a particular topic has really caught her imagination, but then I suppose that is the joy of home education.

Well done, Jacqueline.  We are really proud of you!

Amanda Goldston

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Well, we are back into the swing of a “new term” with exam preparations. Stephanie has 3 IGCSE subjects under her belt  (Maths, Chemistry and Physics – all Higher Extended Level) and we are preparing for the next ones in the Summer.

It is very interesting to compare the papers to the equivalent GCSE papers. The Sciences are considerably harder. In one Home Ed forum someone commented that the CIE (Cambridge International Exams) Chemistry syllabus was virtually identical to the O-Level that he took 30 years before and still has the notes for.

For anyone considering IGCSEs, the content pf the syllabus, as well as past exam papers and mark schemes are available from the examination boards.

You can take most subjects without coursework. Some subjects have an “alternative to practical” paper, which is where you need an understanding of the procedures that you would perform in laboratory situations.

ICT and Languages can be a bit tricky to take the actual exams because they have practical papers  and/or  oral exams and there are fewer centres that can or will accommodate students for that aspects.

We have used CIE for all our subjects, as it is so much easier to arrange exams centres than it is through Edexcel. That is just our personal experience, although others have found ways to do that.

Another great source of exam papers and make schemes is www.freeexampapers.com - they have just about every subject in every qualification from every exam board that you can think of.

It is fairly easy to obtain course books for most subjects, as Amazon stock most of them.

The English is a completely different syllabus to GCSE and consists of reading, comprehension and writing, including summary writing and writing in several different styles.

Most colleges now require 5 or 6 GCSEs or equivalent, including Maths and English, depending on the course. Universities generally recognise IGCSEs as do most 6th form and further education colleges.

I have heard lots of 2nd and 3rd hand stories of home-educated children getting into college or university without any qualifications at 16 or 18, and I have no doubt they are true. However, we prefer to be on the safe side with it!

If you are interested in exams for Home Educated children, there is a fantastic forum that I would highly recommend. There are plenty of people with experience of taking exams and are very helpful.

Have a great day.

Amanda Goldston

Tags: home education // 1 Comment »

Last week it started to snow, just as Jacqueline got home from making her Christmas wreath, so everything was dropped on the table and Jacqueline, Stephanie, Dom (Stephanie’s boyfriend) and George (Rottweiler) were straight out into the garden for a fairly serious snow-ball fight!

Of course, both Stephanie and Jacqueline ended up on top of the trampoline as a serious amount of snow had gathered up there!

The dog thought it was wonderful fun, although he was not very keen on being dried before he came in the house!

Amanda Goldston

Tags: children, fun, home education // 1 Comment »

Jacqueline made a really beautiful Christmas wreath to hang over the front door. This was actually the last of the pottery classes before Christmas and the pottery teacher had brought in another lady to show the children how to make the Christmas wreath.

Jacqueline’s is really beautiful and is now proudly hanging over our front door. I have to say, I was a bit dubious about hanging it up, however it has survived both rain and snow so far!

She has made some really lovely things this term.

We are looking into her doing the Arts Award next term. I am really so glad we have found people who appreciate creativity for its own sake and can make Art fun!

Amanda Goldston

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