Our Days in the UK

We live among many horses. Some live in a big field right outside our living room window. Rebecca has fallen in love. She was asking and asking for us to buy her a horse. That won't be happening any time soon, but our lovely friends in the village did invite us over to see their pony. Rebecca helped groom her and we watched her warm up and jump a little. After seeing how much work it was to care for her, Rebecca said, "Mama, I don't think I'm ready for a horse yet. I'll just keep my stuffed horse Mint." I think that's a great idea, Rebecca!

Right down the street from us in the neighboring village of Broadway there is an old steam and diesel train line. It was only recently extended to this village, so now it's the second longest heritage railway in the UK (I think?) Anyway, Justin obviously wanted to ride it (on a diesel railcar to be specific) so a few weeks back we went mid-week, when we knew it would be nice and quiet. Everyone there was so nice to us, and they all thought it was very interesting we home educated. I feel like the community here is growing steadily, but it's still maybe more rare than in the United States. I don't actually know the numbers, but that's my guess. So we get a lot more questions here than we did in Boston when I'm out with the kids during the day. Most people initially think we're here on vacation (or "on holiday") but when they find out we live here they ask about school. So one of the volunteers also does a radio show and...

May is bluebell month here in the UK. I have been hearing about bluebells for a while, and how beautiful they are when you find a woods full of them. (We had bluebells in Boston, too, although they were different than these ones.) Anyway, I looked up good places to go see bluebells and last week we picked up Justin's friend and his mom and went to see them. We chose to go to Woodchester Park, which turned out to be a beautiful place about an hour drive away. We did see some bluebells, but the dominant flower was instead a wild white one which we couldn't identify. Later my friend told me it was wild garlic. They also had an adventure trail for kids, with swings, zip lines, and other things for kids to play on as they hiked. The kids liked that. Justin, having inherited his father's and great-great-grandfather's love for climbing things, also enjoyed running up a steep hill. Going downhill and flat he complained the whole time, but as soon as the slope got steep (in ...

We went to London! Actually, we went two weeks ago, but as you can see, I haven't blogged for a while. This is mostly because I have been working out during the kids' computer time, so haven't figured out when to blog since that's when I used to do it. Anyway, we went to London. Justin's highlight was taking buses and trains to get there. We ended up going on a crazy circuitous train route that I unwittingly agreed to so that Justin could ride a particular train he wanted to ride. It took longer than I thought it would, so we didn't have a ton of time afterwards, because we had to meet Eric back in Oxford around 3. Next time we go, we'll stay for a longer day. Here is the iconic Tube sign. Justin informs me this is called a roundel. Here we are on the train. Rebecca and I look happier than we actually were to be on this train. Justin was excited enough for all of us :) After our trains we went to the Natural History Museum. It is famous so y...

How's that title for a little alliteration? I'm sure you all know what wellies are, so this post isn't so much to define the word. Rather, this is about the importance of wellies in everyday life here. I knew wellies were rain boots, but I didn't know we would wear our wellies (almost) every day. We don't actually have proper wellies, to tell the truth. We've been using our Bogs and snow boots from Boston: Given the crazy winter we've had, it's actually been good to have warmer boots. Now that spring is on its way (although we had frost just yesterday...) we'll probably all need a set of proper rain boots. Except Eric, who refuses to wear them. He just wears regular tennis shoes and gets his socks all muddy and wet. This is probably because I'm the one who does the laundry, now that I think about it, so maybe I should shift that chore to him :) Anyway, wellies are definitely a thing here. We hear the word wellie at least once a day. ...

Our little village is rural and, well, little. We have a pub (which we have not yet tried out), we have a playground , and we have a village hall (which is currently being renovated so we haven't actually been inside). And we have a village church. This church serves as church, coffee shop , concert hall, and movie theater. The first Tuesday of every month is village cinema night. The organizers choose one movie per month and it costs three pounds for a ticket to watch it at the church. So far, the movies have looked tempting, but it's usually too late at night for us to go due to sleepy kids. Last month, though, they showed Paddington 2 and since it was a kids' movie, they gave an extra matinee showing at 2 pm. Kids got in free. A movie in our backyard for three pounds? Not a bad deal! We went, and the kids had a good time, although they didn't love the movie due to the suspense. (They get that from me--I hate suspense. I always want to know the ending before I wat...

That's me practicing my old rusty Latin...Anyone know what it means? We have a fairly child-led perspective of home education, and we generally encourage the kids to pursue their interests and try to facilitate that. We also like to avoid segregating learning from life, and instead hope our kids view learning as something that happens everyday, all the time, anywhere, rather than in a classroom (or in our case, at the kitchen table.) But part of letting our kids explore their own interests means exposing them to the great and beautiful things of the world so they know what is out there to be interested in :) I try to do this through the books we read, the places we go, and the ways we spend our time. And when I'm really on the ball (which is not usually) I try to overlap our reading with our exploring so the kids get exposed to a deeper slice of whatever it is I'm trying to expose them to. Recently, I've been ordering a bunch of books on Roman Britain from our libra...