Painting planets

We have been very much in the holiday mode the last few days. I got up at about 11 this morning and pottered about for a couple of hours, then the Steiner guilt mechanism kicked in when I realised A had been lying in front of the TV for at least 4 hours. At that point I 'suggested' she turn it off and find something else to do. What she found was
Science Museum - Solar System Mobile Making Kit . Quite a lot of close painting involved, so we worked on it together. After a couple of false starts with me making obviously stupid mistakes about how we should go about the project (these are the moments where I ask myself if I really should be in charge of my child's education!?) we settled down to it and had a lovely afternoon.

We also made up a little story to help us remember the names of the planets in order (from closest to the sun) which was fun. I know very little about the solar system - was never particularly interested as a child and don't remember studying it at any point at school (although maybe I just wasn't paying attention!), so I'm really enjoying the process of learning new things too.

A has been indicating a growing interest in science for a little while now, one of her concerns about home ed was 'will we be able to do science?'. I was really pleased as I'm quite scientifically minded, so have been gathering a few resources in the way of books and web sites. The mobile kit was a Christmas present from my Mum (good old Granny!). A was so impressed with what we did and talked about today she now wants to get a telescope - not sure if my finances would stretch to that, in fact they absolutely wouldn't - but its great to see A so enthusiastic.



I can already see a difference in A's approach to learning, I think being able to take the initiative herself and have a greater control over her education is going to be so positive. I have been struggling to encourage her to read more for a couple of years, she doesn't have any problems with reading, but shows very little interest and doesn't seem to 'get into' any books. I've found this really difficult to understand as I have always loved books, and at her age I always had a book on the go, but I've had to tread very carefully as pushing (ok, nagging) her too much just made her dig her heels in even more. I had stepped back a bit from this concern the last couple of months, figuring she would be doing enough reading at school, but was pondering about how to approach it once she left school. Well, the other morning she produced a mini 'book review' she had sat in bed and written the night before - I had never even mentioned doing anything like that (although had been thinking along those lines). Amazing child!



I'm kind of enjoying the lull and laziness this weekend, as I know next week things will start to get busy again with activities, socialising and more visitors. All good stuff, but we need our occasional duvet days (or duvet weekends!) too. We did attempt to walk down to the park today but by the time we got to the end of the (very long) driveway it started to rain, so we turned back, came home and ate cake. At least we tried though!