How we homeschooled today #91

Prime numbers, Shakespeare, Duplo

I was recently asked to share a post with a new online parenting magazine, Remote Family. There are articles on worldschooling, deliberately-risky playgrounds, board games to learn about climate change, and so on. Take a look!

Friday’s guest post from

Dixie Dillon Lane

has generated much love and appreciation. If you haven’t read it yet, I recommend it (obviously!). Dixie also has a response out today to the recent Washington Post piece on homeschooling in the US. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet and am looking forward to it once the house is quiet this evening.

One more suggestion for your browsing:

Ruth Gaskovski

has a lovely new piece out about how to step away from your screens and into the welcoming arms of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol this autumn/winter. I’ve only scanned it so far—another one I’m planning on giving my full attention to later tonight! Perfectly timed because I’d just been wondering about reading the book aloud to the children this year. (And if you’re a new reader, Ruth’s guest post for How We Homeschool is here.)

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(My children are just 6 and nearly 8.)

The children have cast their Lego aside temporarily and are engrossed in the Duplo. It feels like today has been one mammoth Duplo session with small pockets of time dedicated to other activities. Good news: I’m less likely to tread on Duplo than Lego. Bad news: I’m still not allowed to hoover.

Via Unsplash

This morning we did a maths investigation into prime numbers. I taught the children the word ‘factor’ and they marked prime numbers on their wipeable hundred squares. I tried very hard not to tell them anything but to let them discover things themselves—this is a huge weakness of mine so I tried to largely keep my mouth shut! I was amply rewarded because when my daughter worked out that even numbers apart from 2 cannot be primes, she was so excited that she jumped onto the sofa. We used maths cubes to visualise things like 1 x 4 or 2 x 2. We spent around 45 minutes working on this and it felt great.

Then my husband came in and gave the children a history quiz. He is teaching the children their kings and queens of England with dates and all the good stories (I can’t do this because I get a bit stuck after 1066, though I have to say I’m improving with Henry’s determined tutelage.)

The literacy activity today was writing a letter, which I didn’t time but they both spent ages on it and I was pleased to see good progress on things like spelling and handwriting.

More Duplo, and then at lunch my daughter asked me what a ‘spoiled brat’ is. My jaw dropped (I’m easily shocked), but it turns out she read it in the Ramona books. I told her what ‘spoiled’ means and we talked about whether it’s good for a person to have everything they ask for and to never be told ‘no’ or ‘that’s not ok’ etc, which was an interesting discussion. (Ramona’s mother agrees to make her a sheep costume for the Nativity, even though she’s exhausted.) This led on to a discussion about Nativity plays, which led to a discussion about Shakespeare and how women weren’t allowed on stage to perform his plays. So we talked about A Midsummer Night’s Dream and imagined what it would be like with young men playing Titania, Hermia, and Helena. (Side note: One of Henry’s recent posts was about the changing fortunes of Shakespeare’s First Folio, if you’re interested.)

The afternoon was spent racing around a chilly playground with some home-educated friends, before coming home for more Duplo. I felt very virtuous that I’d given the children such a good dose of fresh air; I also felt very cold.

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