We went to tie and dye

Last week, we discovered  some amazing courses organised for families by Lewisham Council and after an exchange of email with the curriculum leader, we decided to start our adventure with the Tie and Dye course. Our next course, cushion cover making, scheduled to start in 4 weeks, would need the dyed materials made on this course.

Yesterday (18 January 2016) was about the traditional tie and dye method; we had a full-on practical time and brought home our transformed handkerchiefs.

Over the next 3 sessions, we will be trying block printing and other dyeing methods. In the final session, we will be doing (hippy) t-shirts! I’m looking forward to introducing my sons to the batik days of my youth.

For my home educating family, these soft-skill courses are so important because I have no arts and crafts knowledge and this Lewisham initiative allows us to experiment without the usual tuition or workshop financial layouts.

The locations are not too far from home, there are ample parking spaces and the members of staff are superb. As we all know, little things count for a lot.

Oh, forgot to mention that the instructor was an Italian Home Educator (yay!!) so she had that inimitable home ed style with an excellent flow. My sons said they were looking forward to the next one and believe me, that’s saying a hell of a lot.

All the information required for exploring and hopefully, attending these courses can be found HERE.

I will be exploring family courses in Bromley over the next few weeks. There must be something in the borough for families that enjoy learning together.

Maths Club – Now over-subscribed

Hi All

I’m thinking of starting a Maths Club for kids aged 7+.

My idea is to have a group of about 10 kids following a similar maths syllabus and meeting up weekly or fortnightly for a tutorial hour or two in order to go over what they find difficult or easy. Just to be clear, this is not a teaching project. As much as I like maths, I’m not looking to teach it but from experience, I know learners remember and probably assimilate more during informal interactive tutorials.

I’m guessing the kids will need a lot of help but I expect them to be fully independent learners in a couple of years’ time.

Here are the logistics:

• I’m looking for kids (and parents) able and happy to embark on a maths journey starting Jan 6 2014 from primary to IGCSE and beyond.
• The syllabus we are following is the Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching’s specs (CIMT) because it’s the best I’ve come across. It’s free and it covers reception years to A Level.
• We are looking to start from Year 3A in January and hoping to complete the initial ones between now and end of 2013
• CIMT materials can either be freely printed off the website or ordered for a nominal cost.
• When the club commences, I’m hoping the participating kids can cover a minimum of 2 pages a day so that if we meet up weekly, there’ll be at least 10 pages to munch over. As time goes on, I’ll be calling on some maths gurus to cover some problematic areas.
• I will be setting up a private GOOGLE group to discuss problems, solutions, best practices, maths links, etc

[Like others using books, we also supplement it with the  conquer maths and study ladder software programs but these are just to break the monotony at these early stages. To really kill maths, nothing beats pen and paper.]

As already mentioned, this is not a maths tuition class. I’m happy to guide the kids but I have no interest in teaching on a weekly basis so I will expect other parents to chip in as well. In any case, I’m so confident the kids will need minimal adult assistance as time goes on. I’ll like to continue to believe that private paid-for tuition is not needed for maths.

The relevant CIMT link is here.

For the moment, if anyone wants to embark on this amazing Maths journey with us, please show your hands offlist. A max of 10 kids altogether are needed. I already have 2.

Cheers All

Pxx