How We Homeschooled Today #55

Poetry, Jesus, junk food

Pen pal notes

Denis Degioanni via Unsplash

If you’re in the US, have asked for a pen pal, but haven’t been matched yet, I haven’t forgotten you. I’ve had more requests from the US than anywhere else and if possible I’d like to match children from different countries. You’re on my list. (If you’d be happy with a pen pal from the same country, that’s fine! Just let me know.)

On Notes I shared a story from The Week UK. After 55 years of writing to each other, Patsy Gregory, from the UK, and Carol-Ann Krause, from the US, finally met for an 80th birthday present. They started writing to each other as 12 year old Girl Guides.

When I posted this, reader Andrew Kitching went one better: His mother has a 77-year connection with a friend she’s been writing to since she was 11, in 1946, when the Methodist Church put them in touch. They’ve travelled to meet each other several times. I wonder if any of our budding pen pals will still be in touch by 2100, 77 years from now…!

If your child would like a pen pal, send me an e-mail or leave a comment with their age and home country, and I’ll get to work. All children welcome. And please share with your friends, groups etc.

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How we homeschooled today

(My daughter is 7 and my son is 5. I feel about 90.)

It’s hot. I’m tired and a bit under the weather. It didn’t feel like our best day, but that’s ok. By definition some days have to be a bit average.

• Lots of independent reading this morning: Animals at War, various books from our Mysteries in Time history subscription, and more Illustrated Norse Myths (is this book coated in some kind of addictive substance?).

• My daughter did some nice work in her Jolly Phonics workbook before we all went out to a playground.

• At the playground we had an eye-opening experience. We met a lady from Iraq, who is currently living in a single room in a hostel, with her husband and two young children. They share one bed. She has no friends here, and no family. She speaks only a little English. Her husband is Iranian and can’t go back home because he will be arrested, and no doubt worse. I asked if she’d like to come back for coffee and cake, but she very politely declined (possibly because not many people in London invite you home for coffee after a random meeting in the park!). I found her the details of a community group who can introduce her to more Kurdish speakers, and help with her English. The children asked why I had invited her home, so we talked about what she had told me and about how challenging her life must be at the moment.

• Back at home, my daughter asked me to read to her from The Week Junior: Science and Nature magazine. We read about junk food and went into the kitchen looking for all the weird ingredients on ultra-processed food labels. The article explained that humans are the only animals who are able to modify and process their foods, and how this has benefits as well as downsides. The magazine is good; I’ve done a 3-month trial for £5 but I’ve decided not to renew. I like the content but it’s a bit too wordy and complex for my children to read to themselves at the moment. I will definitely consider a subscription in a year or so.

• Multiplication by Heart (which was only one card today).

• I read from the Encyclopedia of World History about the life of Jesus. This is travelling slightly backwards for us because we are about to read about the Barbarians and the subsequent return of Christianity to Europe, which doesn’t make much sense if you haven’t learnt about the initial rise and spread of the religion first. Then I encouraged them to begin labelling an outline map of medieval Europe and/or add a page to their history folders. But they were very resistant, and instead they ended up playing imaginary games, with occasional outbreaks of squabbling.

• The children made an attempt at learning The Porcupine by Ogden Nash. It was rendered even funnier by my daughter identifying the author as ‘Ogden And Mash’, who I imagine as a folksy guitar duo:

  Any hound a porcupine nudges
  Can’t be blamed for harboring grudges.
  I know one hound that laughed all winter
  At a porcupine that sat on a splinter.

• Somehow we found the focus to play a game from Tiny Polka Dot, a variation on matching pairs with mental maths. There was then another imaginary game, with much hilarity verging on delirium.

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