just another morning here

Yesterday actually turned out to be really nice. The journalist was lovely, and I get the impression that the feature will be very positive. Having said that, I did think that she maybe should have informed herself a bit better on the legal position on home education before trying to conduct an interview, because it was marginally annoying to have to explain it, and to explain why the Children’s Bill has implications for home educators, that sort of thing. That was before we got on to the topic of LEA involvement. I hope I handled it all well enough.

Why did we do it? I guess I agree to do these things simply because I’d rather someone relatively normal did an interview than they had to scrabble around and end up finding someone way out who might not be very good at communicating the whys and wherefores of home ed, or who was doing it for such a particular reason that it might give a skewed impression of home education. If I didn’t do it, someone else would. It’s interesting, I like meeting people, I like thinking through what we do, why we do it, the advantages and disadvantages of it, and while being able to communicate those to the rest of the world isn’t vitally important to me, if an opportunity comes my way I don’t mind agreeing to it. I don’t think there’s anything in it for us, really, either – I don’t particularly like that sort of publicity, but then again I don’t dislike it enough to not do these things in the first place! I sincerely hope that it will be okay, I’m expecting it to be good, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Anyway, the kids also enjoyed being part of things – first thing in the morning we had a look at this website and discussed the platonic solids and why they are a special group of solids, then they set about constructing them from Geomags. Anna made little labels for a display, and by the end of it they were happily counting vertices (balls), edges (rods), and faces (panels), and using that language correctly. They also got the hama beads out, and games like Connect 4 and Downfall, which are both strategic and therefore very educational, imo! I was really proud of Anna having an interview, too, and being articulate about home education – for once she didn’t say that she’d rather be at school! Instead she said that sometimes she feels like going back to school but that most of the time she likes being home educated. This is progress, and I’m pleased about it – because while we’re happy that we’ve made the right choice for our family at the moment, I’ve always kind of wanted her to agree with us! It’s taken two years to get to that! She was really proud to show off her Different Life video, too.

We took the reporter with us in the afternoon to our HE dance session, so she was able to interview some other parents there, as well as observing us socialising, and then she left from there. We carried on to Anna’s cello lesson, shopping at Sainsbury’s, then home for a quick tea before dashing out to Miscarriage Support Group in the evening.

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