Cookworthy Forest

October 12th, 2007 by Sarah

I am going to gloss over the fact that today is going *really* badly, the boy is in his room and I feel that blogging about the lovely day we had yesterday will be a much better idea than paying any more attention to today.

So, we went on a home ed group trip to Cookworthy Forest yesterday, where they have a Celtic Roundhouse and run educational stuff as well as the working forest, and had a fantastic time.

The morning activities consisted of: leaf/tree identification, an un-nature trail, pretending to be bugs with ‘sky eyes’. Then came lunch, including cooking over the fire for some people – bacon, dampers, and marshmallows.

In the roundhouse looking at leaves On the Un Nature trail Lining up in height order Have you ever seen a home ed group in such a straight line?! Sky Eyes Looking up at leaves Sharpening sticks Celtic round house Celtic Round house Cooking in the roundhouse Roasting marshmallows Lunch in the roundhouse Cooking in the roundhouse

After lunch we went back into the forest for the ‘meet a tree’ activity, and then making micro-nature trails in the deer meadow.

Demonstration of the 'Meet a Tree' game Playing meet a tree Playing meet a tree Playing meet a tree Playing meet a tree Boys and tree Meet a tree Looking at deer tracks in the mud We found deer poo! Examining Deer poo! Demonstration of a micro-nature trail Making a micro-nature trail Making a micro-nature trail Micro Nature trail Micro Nature trail

All in all it was a great day out, as usual tinged with slight regret for me that the girls were stuck in a classroom rather than enjoying it with us, while on a normal day I still struggle with Josiah being on his own, I really don’t know how much longer I can carry on with both approaches to education at the same time in our family, roll on half term.

7 Responses to “Cookworthy Forest”

  1. SallyM Says:

    Are the girls still really enjoying school though and does Josiah mind being alone? My trouble would be the opposite, of the two kids that would enjoy HE (DS1 and 3, DS2 was bored being off for 24hrs after being sick!) they would both want to do it alone but I couldn’t do it for one and not the other! I have to say that every time I have read the name of where you went I’m reading “cockworthy”, my mind is obviously elsewhere today!

  2. Sarah Says:

    Ha ha ;)

    Yeah, the girls are both happy, and Josiah’s problem is that he is a royal pita when on his own. And I’m not even sure I want to go back to full blown HE any more, if I’m quite honest about it. But being half and half is just rubbish, I’d prefer them to be all in or all out. We’ll see which way it goes.

  3. Clare Says:

    Ugh! Hate really bad days. I can really sympathise! Glad you had a good day yesterday though.

    Cx

  4. Ruth Says:

    Looks a great day out!

  5. Allie Says:

    I can understand the difficulties involved in having two in school and one out. We did one year when we’d decided to HE Leo and P chose to stay in school. I found the practical side difficult (mornings and rushing home from interesting trips to pick her up from school) and struggled with the whole school thing more and more. I breathed a sigh of relief when P chose to come out.

    But, if your girls choose school and J really didn’t like it, then what can you do?

  6. Ruth Says:

    Tricky one, but most children don’t get a choice because their parents for whatever reason chose not to offer HE as a possibility for their kids. My girls would have to be HE’d but I knew it wouldn’t work for us a family. So school has always had to work for them. Fortunately it does.

  7. Lucy Says:

    It is amazing and wonderful that your kids know they have the choice… I can imagine it would be hard though in some ways. It was bad enough having two ages coming out of school at different times and buildings…

    We have also had a spectacularly bad day and I am debating whether to blog it or not!!

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