HE- Constantly learning

Constantly learning- yep that's me! Just when you have got yourself comfortable with an approach/ideals etc then you review and plan anew..... Just when you think you are moving forward you realise that underpinning knowledge a little shaky....... One of my great ideals with HE is that you can 'move' at the childs pace and into their areas of interest- which I agree with passionately BUT what happens when the underpinning knowledge doesn't match up?? Do you deliver merely 'what they are interested in'- knowing that they can't get the most out of it or do you say- 'yes we can look at that but first we need to cover x,y &z'- I can't quite get my head around this...... Sometimes the stuff is already there and just need reminding and sometimes it seems that you are currently talking Greek and it as if the word has never been mentioned. I find myself writing lists of concepts to revisit- in an attempt to try to bring them into everyday life- sharing out objects, time, temperature or reading scales- but sometimes there isn't an easy application to bring up and you just have to deal with a stand alone topic. Sometimes 'workbooks' help (and sometimes they are spawn of the devil!) and sometimes third party- such as Education City fills a gap.......
'Workbook' as an activity gets a different reception almost all times suggested- sometimes whoohoo- others 'awwww mum!'- I keep a selection in hand- some glossier than others- some more academic some glittery and gold star ish- this week I have introduced a most basic style ( no gold stars or false situations- merely plain 'sums' with a 'fun activity' ie a dot-to-dot etc on each page - and he is loving it- volunteering to do more pages than suggested- I guess that is a learning curve for me- especially when the dot-to-dot is an apparent WW2 plane- that requires the SJ WW2 'bible' reference book to come out.....

 The peg model of Victory, mentioned in my last post, has rather resurrected his interest- such that he returned from a Playgroup visit with an eggbox model of the same......A Union Jack and a St Andrews flag (!!!) were carefully added today... as well as cotton rigging and signal flags....

We have partly looked at Chinese New Year this week- I say partly as it fell on my 'work days' and we never got around to chinese food- but the big two both enjoyed completing these Chinese Dragons from Activity Village (always a good fall back for activity suggestions)