more de-schooling coming up!

Stylish spent the night with a friend of her Grandmother's who has this idea that homeschool is sitting at a table for 6hrs a day doing boring stuff like everyone at school does. It raised several things for her. Firstly it made her angry, secondly it made her fearful.

The anger is at one of the friends who has lost the charm bracelet that her Grandma bought for her 10th birthday, one week before she died. Stylish took off the bracelet at this person's house after her grandma's funeral and it has never been seen again. She is heart broken, I am heartbroken for her! They claim to have had some younger visitors over, and they blame them for it's disappearance. Personally I am so livid about this entire series of events that I am -and this rarely happens - speechless.  

The second thing - the fear - is based on the friend quizzing her about what she's learning. Stylish told her that she's learning lots about lots, but avoided details. It left her feeling very very worried about what she IS learning. She has requested more structure, and some more lists to help her feel like she is "learning". 

Instead of arguing I said that we could definitely do that. Today we went to the museum. I gave her the task of learning about The Stolen Generation. She went through the Indigenous Australia exhibit with a fine tooth comb, and learnt so much. She learnt about traditional living from pre white settlers, colonisation, black deaths in custody vs traditions indigenous community justice, and the Stolen Generation. I think it really moved her. Spikee enjoyed the dot paintings, which is good in keeping with this weeks art projects. 

Spikee also enjoyed the skeleton room, and spent a good deal of time looking at the different bones and guessing what they were from. then he went to the dinosaur room and played on the computer that lets children choose what type of dinosaur they want to create, and how to colour it. Then we went to the play area and played for a while, while Stylish went to the Search and Discover area and got some stick insects in a plastic take away container.

And one more thing that we did today .... we had Malaysian for lunch, Stylish and I had laksa, chicken and prawn respectively, and Spikee had a bowl of rice which he rubbed into his clothes and face like some sort of beauty therapy. 

All up it was a great day! I took pics to prove it, they'll be forthcoming.