I can’t believe we spent 8 hours in the park! We arrived at 8.00am for our monthly Co-op. We were planning / hoping to see an Army Band but that didn’t come off so we ended up just gathering at the park for social time though we started with a session on Character and then the kids had an Oral Presentation / Show ‘n Tell session. Then it was free play.
We had a guest speaker call in –i t was arranged the night before! He is an expert in the field of learning difficulties, disabilities and especially with the idea of “inclusions” which is including these children in regular classroom activities. I asked him to come and speak to us mainly because inclusions is based on the idea of multi-level teaching, just as every homeschooling family has to deal with. Several of the families also have children with learning difficulties and since there is a possibility of him coming to town more often, the homeschoolers are a group of the community who may be interested in his services. He won our hearts by introducing himself as a person who has an affinity with the idea that parents are the best teachers for their children and then talking about his research and statistics that would say that each child in a classroom situation gets 7.5minutes of individualized teaching a day. We were left feeling that even on our worst days we could manage that! So he was off to a good start!! The ladies were very encouraged and a couple will no doubt take up some of his services to help their kids.
I was very proud of the big kids, they just took the little kids (and there are a lot more little kids than there are big ones!) and took them off to play down wind so the mums could have this meeting. Their play continued well for another hour and then it was time for the littlies to go home.
The big kids stayed on, had lunch and then we had our next Speak Up lesson. (Public Speaking). The kids did another interpretative speech – some getting it and some not quite. The one thing that is holding most of them back is they are not putting enough time into the memorization. But the important things with this years study on public speaking is that everyone gives it a go and improves on their own ability and they are all doing so very well.
One of the mums came to pick the kids up just before 2.00 so we sat and chatted till I had to drop the other family off for their gym practice and then I came back to the park, and sat and talked for another 1.5hours! During this time the kids ran, played cricket, talked, played a board game, climbed trees, and played imagination games. They had a ball! At 4.00 o’clock we reluctantly gathered up our children, decided to go to the shop for pizza and chocolate for dinner!! Came home and crashed. Though the day was very full-on for me personally (I instructed 2 sessions of character, supervised Oral presentations, kept the meeting with guest speaker rolling, and taught Speak Up) it was a lovely end to the very full day. I still can’t believe we spent 8 hours in the park!
