I'm allowed to Home Educate in Sweden....

Myself, that is! I've just started an online Uni course in Creative Writing (in English)- no compulsory attendance, no need for social training (I'm supposed to have passed that unit by now, I assume)
So there you have it, home education is allowed in Sweden, as long as you have done your 9 years school-duty first.

 It's actually a pretty enjoyable course, no rights or wrongs really. This used to put me off English in a way, maths was either right or wrong and so less 'mysterious'. Now I've overcome that, may be through looking at education through different spectacles.
And if anyone's interested, if you're from the EU it's free and can be done entirely online- I think the basic requirement may be English GCSE, although maybe any A-level done in the English language. I got on with my British Uni degree, but they kept asking me for evidence of my A-levels done in the UK. (the Swedes who apply have to have an Advanced level in English (typically achieved at the end of sixth form college)- but that's not he same as a British A-level English, that's why I wrote about GCSE English being enough).

Good teaching doesn't mean good learning

Another interesting article if you can understand the Google translate. Some researchers,headed by an American neuroscientist basically did some experiments and found that college students taught by researchers  inexperienced at teaching learnt more than those taught by experienced teachers. Also study techniques where the students test themselves came out tops
'What is felt that good teaching need not necessarily be the best way to learn'

I am not surprised..

Swedish kids learn more English outside of school than in the lessons, according to this article .
(Google translate mistranslated a sentence, it should be 'the school is not good at exploiting' .  
I expect if they look at a lot of the Maths e.g. money, division (sharing) they will find a similar result!

So Biryani isn't just memorising books

Biryani was in a very kind mood and actually carried out my suggestion to read poor, ill S, a story. She read a 'Spot' book straight through, and I thought maybe she'd memorised it. Then I tried her with some basic 'Kathy and Mark' books, similar to Peter and Jane . I was quite shocked, she read some books from the first two levels almost error-free and managed level 3 with a bit of help. By this time S had dropped off to sleep, much needed and Biryani was as pleased with herself as I was. I think my surprise comes after having gone through 3 boys learning to read. However they all get there in the end, don't they?

A snippet of conventional education stuff..

I've been doing a bit of English work with the boys: S doing spellings along with word meanings when they come up. I take words from the series of Unforunate events books he's been reading. Last year or maybe it was the year before, these were recommended to me, but he found them too wordy. Now they're about right for him. We've been doing words like 'mischief' 'orphan' 'assume'. M seems to have the greatest difficulty spelling dipthong vowels (like many children I expect) and their various spelling, e.g. 'ow' 'ay'. This ends up being a difficulty with homophones e.g plane, plain.
H is really needing to practice his writing, and I can see the effect that left handedness has on it (ie makes it harder) He's never been keen on putting pen to paper, drawing etc. Funny, he' s just asked me if he can do some drawing, did he read what I was writing from across the room?
Today H has just asked me how cement is made and can we make some! After looking it up, it seems little chance of this being possible as we need a stone crusher, and an oven that goes above 1000C (mine only does 250C) so maybe we'll head out to the sandpit and make some pretend cement.

Thoughts, if rather incoherent at times..

Taking the car or walking? There’s not much competition in my book. Walking gets the blood circulating, saves petrol money, helps environment, you get to notice small things along the way e.g. a blackbird deciding how close it’ll let me come to it before flying off. It also gives me time to think. I was thinking about the irony of authorities wanting us to stick kids in school. If all the home educated children in the UK were suddenly turning up at their local schools to be ‘schooled’ could the authorities cope? This led me on to thinking that whether schools could be seen as being more ‘efficient’ as one teacher is teaching maybe 30 kids. If home educating that could be potentially 30 adults out of ‘gainful employment’. The recent snow has shown the reliance of parents on schools as child-care providers. But is it efficient? From my experience not at all, the amount of studies they do a day could be achieved in a fraction of the time at home.
Then I see H at nursery doing activities I might not have thought of/ had energy to do/ equipment/ resources to carry out. I think I’m happy with the situation at the moment, S still moans, and I still find it hard to believe that nearly all the boys his age or thereabouts are so poorly behaved that he doesn’t want to hang around with them, but it is true. Social skills being learnt? Well maybe more like sabr and putting up boredom at break time, and being hassled in class.
Note, since I initially scribbled the above, S has had quite a bad experience at school involving the perennial shower after P.E: problem. So I am not so happy actually.

Woo Hoo, some photos!

I am now sharing DH's camera as the battery in mine packed up. It's the end of the holidays and nothing amazing is happening. Hz is almost better, lots of pomegranates are being consumed. My MIL has shown me a technique which is a lot quicker to remove the fruit, you just cut it up in to quarters, hold it downwards in a cupped hand and bang the skin with a spoon. Needless to say, when she does it this does work, when I try I still end up having to pick out many of the pieces.

The picture with the phone is an example of how this short lifespan can be wasted so much. Being on hold to the Social Insurance office in order to tell them we will pay back some money is so frustrating. Especially as Hz has only 2 fairly short naps a day, in which I have to decide whether to:

sleep,

give some one to one attention to the kids with their work,

things I can't do holding a baby e.g. clean bathroom,

go on computer,

make important phone calls.

DH trying to be kind when I mentioned this one day said I should always choose the first option, but things just have to be done.

Anyhow if you want to learn Swedish numbers then being on hold for 20 minutes may be a good way as you are told how many minutes you will have to wait, your position in the queue and how many assistants are apparently trying to help you. I need one, only one! The local office closed down recently and there had been a lovely Portuguese girl who helped me out with all the Parental benefit applications etc but she went on sick leave. So I have to phone them up, the Internet site is limited when it comes to queries.

Anyhow, the cheesecake recipe I've been drooling over has become reality, and is sitting in the kitchen, cooling down. I managed to make it while Hz was awake, although I almost added some of his baby porridge as he was hungry half way through and needed a meal. Talking of drool, Hz is very into blowing raspberries at the moment. he can sit a while now before toppling and is a proficient roller.

Something educationally-related that I have been noticing about M's reading of Arabic; It's following a similar pattern to the English, and Swedish. He has started by having a lot of trouble blending the sounds into words. Now with the Arabic, it's OK as long as the words are short (max 3 letters with vowels), otherwise it just seems too much for his working memory. I remember before the summer it was the same for the Swedish and sometime last year (maybe the year before)it was similar for the English. That's why I'm hoping it will eventually click as it did with the other languages. On the other hand his spoken Arabic sentences sound almost identical to the Rosetta Stone pronunciations, and he does seem to remember the meanings, and aural learner I think.

The boys in the photo are having a rare, prolonged break from the computer to play with the 'Monster cards'. This game went on for ages, well after bedtime (whatever that is at the moment), but I was happy for them to be playing quietly in their room, and I was actually able to hear the reporters giving us continuing horrific news on Jazeera and Press TV.