What makes a city, a city?

This was the interesting lunchtime discussion point which led us to do some research. We thought that City status was based on population and if there was a cathedral. Turns out that this is outdated and just plain wrong!

Most people think they know what a city is – a large, densely-populated, distinct urban area. And a lovely old cathedral is a must.

But when it comes to the UK’s official city status, the cathedral requirement is long defunct, ending in the 19th Century. And size does not matter.

The bounds of city status throw up a plethora of quirks.

There aren’t too many people who would deny that London was a city but in the UK it is not an official one, although it contains two of them – the City of London and City of Westminster.

A place can also stop being a city overnight. Rochester lost its city status in 1998 due to a technical oversight when the local government structure was reorganised. It took four years for them to realise they had lost it.

The definition of a city in the UK is a place which has been granted city status by the monarch. There are 66 cities in the UK – 50 in England, five in Wales, six in Scotland and five in Northern Ireland.

We found that the current population of Reading is an estimated 318,011 but is not a city. Hereford, where we are moving to, has 55,800 and is a city.

After much discussion, we could decide what if any benefit there is to being a city. MasterF believes it is just adult-ish bragging rights!

Little Triumphs

This morning saw us have a nostalgia filled play sesh with MasterF’s old Transformer collection. This gave us chance to talk about memories of play time in our last house. This is helpful as we are just about to move again and change can sometimes be challenging for us. It helped to realise that even if where we live changes, the memories we hold still remain.

This afternoon we worked on Nessy Spelling and our lad was pleased to find that he had gone up a level again and is over halfway through the course. He commented that he is beginning to make progress, which is a huge step forward in itself, what with self confidence being a challenge for much of the time.

Doodlemaths also went well with today’s new topic being graded at 100% when MasterF was questioned.

Finally we chipped into a new topic on JAM. Our lad has chosen to start the Lego course and is pleased to find that he is at least as good as his peers. He almost posted up one of his own designs today. So confidence is slowly building there too.

So I will take today’s little triumphs and shout them loudly, as they are not just learning milestones, but the beginning of the confidence boost our lad needs after leaving behind the bullies and regime of his last school setting.

MrsDTB is a very happy mummy-tutor right now!

Highs and Lows

One thing I realise I love about home educating our son is that we can go where the mood and focus takes us. When MasterF gets really interested in something, he finds it hard to come away, as do I funnily enough. Equally when something is challenging, it makes us want to run and hide. Today was a classic example of this.

The morning was focused on Creative writing using a game called Unknown to give us our framework. It’s a way of setting out a story, or in this case, an episode for a TV series.

We created characters, the setting for the episode, devised five scenes and plotted the actions, outcomes and reactions along with some speech too.

MasterF was having so much fun that we spent three solid hours working on this with me mainly writing and reading out the instructions to help move through the game. I was in awe of the creativity, humour and eloquence of our lad. It was a joy to behold. The result is here if you want to have a read.

The afternoon went well in that his session on Nessy which focuses on spelling and grammar went well but Doodlemaths did not. MasterF quickly became frustrated and anxious to the point that I knew no learning would stick, so we stopped and focused on his emotions.

To be able to do this, to focus on what’s most important in that moment, change tack when I need to and not be bogged down with targets and pressure, means I hope, that he is learning and more importantly, is enjoying doing so.

Fly bee free bee free

So a good start to our Tuesday. We covered off our usual numeracy and literacy sessions and found that MasterF is almost half way through his Nessy Spelling course after only 6 weeks. Not only that but his Doodlemaths grade has increased to 9.9 years from 9.3 last month.

To top it off though, the bee we rescued earlier yesterday had flown this morning having had a good night’s sleep.

On we go then this afternoon with our first session of Physics/Astronomy followed up with some free play this afternoon as the deck will be in the shade.

Individual Thinking Versus Hive Mind.

“One of the essential problems for education is that most countries subject their schools to the fast-food model of quality assurance when they should be adopting the Michelin model instead. The future for education is not in standardizing but in customizing; not in promoting groupthink and “deindividuation” but in cultivating the real depth and dynamism of human abilities of every sort.” 
― Ken RobinsonThe Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

I found this quote today as I was setting up the website; a place where we can store all the wonderful things we encounter on our journey. It rings true. Funnily enough it came up in conversation today as my boy and me went about rescuing a bumble bee from the path outside our garden. It was flagging in the heat, just needing a cool place to rest and a drink which we gave it. The process of rescue and recovery prompted a discussion about different types of bees and how they live in hives, or not as is the case with a bumble! 

I am a big believer in going your own way, which is just as well because that is the preferred learning style of our wonderful son. Being able to turn on a sixpence and learn about the world all around us and how we can impact it for the good is a joy and I worry that its something he would not be able to access in the rigidity of a school setting. As Ken said “The future for education is not in standardizing but in customizing; not in promoting groupthink and “deindividuation” but in cultivating the real depth and dynamism of human abilities of every sort.” 

Our Learning Journey Blog Begins

Welcome and thanks for stopping by!

After a while to give us time to adjust from a very structured school setting, we wanted to create a place where we can store our learning journey, achievements, project work and fun stuff. Primarily the idea is to log the journey for our son, but its possible that the parents may decide to crash the party and post some tales of their own journeys too. Either way we hope it will be interesting and useful to anyone who decides to drop by and spend some time having a look around.