mr curious and miss delightful : Hackschooling in UK

Hackschooling in our home, has taken shape, as we have explored different educational philosophies, books and text books and we have taken what suited each child at the particular stage of development and based on their particular interests and learning style and amalgamated the content to make our 'curriculum'. We have also incorporated interests like music, sports, foreign languages and Sunday school, for which Mr Curious attends classes. He has also had the opportunity to attend enrichment classes at

http://www.tomorrowsachievers.co.uk/ and http://www.artsawardinitiative.co.uk/whats-on-near-you.php which he has greatly enjoyed and which we hope to continue in 2014.

Mr Curious who is 7 year old does a mixture of academics, music, reading, chores and an abundance of free time during which he draws, paint, do junk modelling, do lego / meccano / k'nex structures, role play, run outside or simply dawdle. He takes various classes each week and the bulk, of his out of the home activities, is mostly scheduled during the weekends, which therefore, enables him to work at a slow but sure pace during the week. A working style that suits him, as he likes to ponder over his work and at other times, he prefers to immerse himself in a particular topic of interest or a book, so much so ,that all other work loose importance.

Mr Curious digging at an archaeological site.

His passion for history has seen, us going on various visits to museums and historic sites, him reading about particular events and watching documentaries, attending history events and talks in our community and even going on an archaeological dig in Oxford.

His love of nature and ecology and the knowledge he has gained through reading and observation , surpasses mine and sometimes even his dad's. During the summer of 2013, both Mr Curious and Miss Delightful, have enjoyed their visits to the Ecology Centre situated at Carshalton pond park

Mr Curious and Miss Delightful at sutton ecology centre.

https://www.sutton.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=1627 and are looking forward to this year's visits. Miss Delightful has been learning about insects by listening to her older brother's talks and tagging along, when he goes out armed with magnifying glasses to observe ant and flies, although they have recently both developed a fear of spiders !

Miss Delightful chooses to work according to her own tempo. Like her older brother, she also tends to get absorbed in her work and gets engrossed in a particular activity, which she then chooses to do over and over, over a week or two and then decides to move on to something completely different. In 2013 she went through phases of doing 1 or 2 puzzles everyday, to colouring-in pictures, to tracing letters, to role play, to drawing, to painting, to junk modelling, to playing with modelling clay or play dough, to watching cbeebies, to learning to read, to playing on http://readingeggs.co.uk/ .