WORLD BOOK DAY: home-schooled kids entitled to request special book vouchers!

Just to let you know that World Book Day falls THIS week - Thursday March 1st - and I have found out, by looking at the World Book Day site that home educated kids are entitled to the special £1 book vouchers that school children get. That's a refreshing change, isn't it? Here are some FAQs from their site which may interest UK home educators ...


World Book Day Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. When is World Book Day 2007?
A. World Book Day is on Thursday 1st March 2007.

Q2. Is World Book Day a government initiative?
A. No - World Book Day Ltd is a registered charity that has in the past been awarded a small amount of DfES funding to support the creation of improved Schools’ Pack material.

Q6. My children are educated at home. Are they entitled to receive WBD £1 Book Tokens?
A. Yes. Please supply your details, including the number of children in your care and they will be despatched to you by the WBD Helpline. There is no charge for this service.

Q7. Are pre-school children entitled to World Book Day Book Tokens?
A. In 2004 we extended the reach of the World Book Day initiative into the preschool sector; this was so successful we are continuing and increasing activity in 2007. For further information on this activity please visit the pre-school section of this site where establishments can download a form to register their details.

NB: I advise you to visit the site yourself when contacting the WBD team. I tried their email address at blueyonder and it didn't work. Will keep you updated on whether I get a reply using one of their other addresses.

Home Schoolers Meeting!

Just a short blog post to say that we went to our first ever home schoolers meeting in Rugby Library today (our nearest town) and met up with other people like ourselves who, for one reason or another, have decided to sidestep the usual school-based education system in this country and go it alone. It's a weekly meeting of about five or six families, usually, with parents taking it in turns to present the groups with activities based around a theme of some kind. This week's theme was New Zealand, with local games, arts and crafts, and various picture displays to see or get involved with.

The boys thoroughly enjoyed themselves at the meeting, joining in with various colouring and pattern-making activities, and even little Indi, only three, seemed to be making friends with the other younger kids. There was a bad moment when we thought she'd actually wandered out of the library, but luckily our new friends discovered her playing in a small storage room (!) nearby. It can be a hard task, looking after three such young children, especially when they are all excited by a new experience, but the Rugby group of home schoolers seemed pretty relaxed about the way our three kept running about and climbing under the tables!

There's a group swimming session at the local pool on Friday; I've invested in some new swimming shorts for the two boys and they'll be trying that out too. They've never swum before, so I'm a little apprehensive about how they'll cope with the noise and physical experience, especially M., who has a problem with noise, but I'll let you know how they can get on.

The Week the Snow Came ...

Shake those maracas! The kids making music - or just plain noise - while it's too cold to play outside. Though having just seen a programme about a Swedish pre-school nursery where the babies sleep in prams outside at up to -10 degrees, I'm now wondering whether I'm too soft with my three. "Go on, get outside for some lovely fresh air ... just watch out for that ice floe!"



The Play Shed: excellent for rainy days, the playshed provides a tiny but okay-to-mess-up space for the kids which belongs to them alone and is decorated with their own pictures and posters.





These are the Plate People, apparently, from an alien planet. Don't ask.


Before these alien beings were created, however, there was a slight hiccup which had me seething. M. had one of his 'moments' - the ones which remind me he has special needs, something that it's possible to forget on his better days. Having watched me tidy up the playshed after a winter of being locked up against the elements, with many forgotten toys strewn about the floor, he took about fifteen seconds to empty the gigantic toybox onto the floor again.

And why did he do that? Well, who knows?

I made him tidy them all up, of course. But it took a l-o-n-g time, with M. looking up at me with a sulky face throughout. Silly sausage!



Whist may be beyond their capabilities, but a game of Underground Ernie snap - from one of this month's crop of children's comics, presumably connected in some way to CBeebies - provides hours of fun. You cut out the rows of identical piccies provided, clue them to some card, leave to dry and then cut into individual pictures. Hey presto, a game of snap! I expect older kids could make their own set of snap cards in the same way, using home-drawn photocopied pictures or maybe even family snaps printed off the computer.



The Joy of Mini Whiteboards: where bog-standard paper worksheets may bore at times, the thrill of one's own individual whiteboard, complete with marker pens in various colours and a rubbing-out cloth (i.e. one of mum's old tea-towels), cannot be overstated. Just look at this relaxed body language ... and it's a literacy task! Go on, invest in one today.



And to round off the week - snow! Just right for teenagers who don't appear to mind the freezing temperatures.


Arctic Explorer returns from the Play Shed.