Twenty year anniversary of my home education site, and a new book

Ten years ago exactly, I wrote a post about the ten year anniversary of my home education website. I described its gradual evolution from a few pages on a long-gone platform to a site with over a hundred pages, and around 500-600 visitors each day. I even found old versions of the site and uploaded screenshots on that early blog post. I wondered, then, how much it would change in the next ten years.

Those years have raced past, and today, is the site's twentieth anniversary. I haven't made so many radical design changes, but I did - with Richard's help - move it to being powered by wordpress.org a few years ago. This makes updating it so much easier.  Here, for what it's worth, is what it looks like now:

Perhaps a little more modern-looking, but not, I think, so very different from the 2009 version:

I still update the site when people ask me to include suitable resources, or links to local home educators' groups, or when I spot a relevant article from an online news site. And occasionally I write a new subject-oriented page. From time to time I re-write a sentence or two and check for broken links, but on the whole it doesn't need much maintenance.

However, back in the early days of the site, several people asked me to write it in book form. I didn't have the time or inclination then but the idea never went away.  About five years ago I downloaded the entire site onto my computer and tried organising it, but quickly realised that there was far too much content which could not possibly work in book format, such as pages of links to resources. And I didn't know quite what to do with the specific subject pages, which would need considerable expansion to be included in a book.

Eventually I decided that the focus would be an introduction to home education for people starting out: the kind of book I would like to have read when we were unsure, worried about how it could work, and trying to look at all the options.  I edited it down from over 100,000 words to slightly over 50,000.

It's taken me years to get this far, but when I realised the site's 20th anniversary was coming up, I decided that this would be a suitable occasion to produce the book. Richard has published quite a number of books on Amazon's CreateSpace system, both his own and other people's, and said he was happy to create a cover and do the layout. CreateSpace has moved to Amazon's own 'KDP' site, which previously only published Kindle books, so there was something of a learning curve.

But we finalised it a few days ago, and uploaded it for approval, both in paperback and Kindle form. And today, on the 20th anniversary of the home-ed.info website, my book is available. It won't be of any interest to seasoned or long-term home educators, or to those who are strongly committed to just one style of home learning. But to anyone who is interested in learning about the subject, or how it can work, then this book aims to answer some pertinent questions. 

Not, after all, a beach picnic for the Cyprus home educators

Last summer, some of the Cyprus home educators met regularly at the beach during the summer months. Several of us thought it would be a good idea to do this again, now the weather's getting warmer. It was difficult to find a suitable evening, but eventually June 26th was proposed for the first gathering.

In Cyprus, the end of June is warm, and guaranteed sunny. Right?

Wrong.

During the afternoon, there were a few spots of rain. By about 4pm, it was raining quite significantly. I didn't worry... the odd summer shower usually dries up very quickly in Cyprus.

By 4.30, I wondered if the event would be cancelled. Richard called the friends who organised it and they said they were packing up to go, and that two other families were there already.

So we put our picnic together, and found our beach chairs and mats. We also found several kagoules and an umbrella since we couldn't see any sign of the rain abating.

Indeed, as we drove the couple of miles or so to McKenzie beach, it started tipping it down:


At least it had given Richard the opportunity to wear the new lightweight (but very waterproof) sailing jacket he bought with last year's birthday money:


When we got there, we found just one family; not the three we were expecting. They told us that the other two families had decided to go back to one of their homes to have their picnic there. But the remaining family was determined to swim:


Since I had my kagoule, and the rain did ease somewhat as we arrived, I thought I would at least wade out a little way into the water to see how warm it was:


It wasn't too bad, actually. Although I would not have wanted to swim!


Daniel and Becky had no problem staying warm:


We stayed for about fifteen minutes, I suppose. It was still raining, albeit fairly lightly by this time, and was definitely too wet to picnic on the beach. So we piled back into the car, and took our picnic to Jörn and Sheila's, where, with the other visiting family, we ate our picnic in their living room.

Katie asked me to comb her hair, and then put a clip in it. It wasn't a very thick clip, so I just put it at the back, and then took a photo so she could see what it looked like:


Daniel, meanwhile, had got hold of the dictionary. He and Marie were having fun finding some fascinating new words, which he then wrote in a sentence for her (although I have totally forgotten what they were).


Katie asked Becky to read her a book, and then produced a 'Magic School Bus' book, describing - as far as I could tell - the circulation system of the human body. It was quite a long book, and Lukas enjoyed it too.


Jacob then leaned over Daniel's shoulder, interested in yet more definitions in the dictionary:


Although we're no longer home educating, one never stops being a home educator. And it's so reassuring to see these moments when home educated children are happily doing what might be classed as English language (or biology, in the case of Lukas and Katie) for fun on a Saturday evening, and not because anybody has scheduled it for them.

Not to be outdone, Helen 'read' a book to Daniel:


Meanwhile, our friend Chris had picked up Marie's maths book, and was discussing something in it. So Marie joined him, and they had a fairly involved discussion about quadratic equations. Yes, even algebra comes into unschooling from time to time.


After much discussion, some of us then played a single round of Balderdash (seven turns) which I suppose could be classed as linguistics, language, and of course creative writing:

A birthday party in Cyprus

Probably not a typical Cypriot birthday party. But yesterday, our friend Jacob was 11. He had an outdoor afternoon party for some of his friends around his own age on Wednesday afternoon. Since it mainly involved water balloons, and a great deal of noise and running around, we gracefully (I hope) declined the invitation to attend.

However, we were delighted to be asked to dinner and a game on the evening of his actual birthday. Had the weather been less windy, Richard might have taken Jacob out sailing for an hour, as he did last year, but unfortunately it wasn't possible.

However, when we arrived it was cooler outside than in, so we sat outside for a while and chatted. Daniel and Becky have only met the family two or three times since arriving, but the younger children are not shy... (that's an example of the Great British Understatement):


We had an excellent meal provided by Jacob's father, followed by birthday cake:


(There was another, larger cake too, which I shall write about at some point in the future)

Being a typical home educators' gathering, the dictionary came out during the meal, as various people discussed the difference between a tidal wave and a tsunami. I have no idea what the context was since there were several conversations running concurrently.

We were expecting to play a game of Settlers after the meal. But then Jacob's mother mentioned a maths problem that her oldest daughter had been having trouble with. It involved a cyclist travelling for 7 3/4 hours, at two different speeds, and needing to determine the distance. I was aware that I should easily be able to solve it, but I'm not an evening person and can't easily concentrate on maths when there are several other people around. So I didn't even attempt to solve it; I resolved to think about it the following day.

However, for some reason the problem caught the minds of all present. Becky borrowed a notebook from Daniel, and started seeing if she could figure it out:


Then Jacob, who's pretty good at maths, wondered if he could solve the problem:


Richard, who doesn't even like maths, also got intrigued... so he pulled out his phone, which does just about everything other than make coffee, jotted down notes, came up with formulae, and started to work on it too... watched by Katie and Lukas:


Sheila looked at Jacob's notes, and explained that he wasn't on quite the right track:


Daniel and Jacob got into a discussion about averages, which weren't really relevant to the problem:


Even Katie started doing some writing....


However, nobody got to the solution. And time was getting on. Jacob really wanted to play a game of Settlers - he and Marie were staying up late specially. So, reluctantly, everyone put away their notebooks and calculators, and we set up the game.

Then, when others were discussing who would play on which team, Helen - who will probably be the youngest Catan player ever - thought she might help me placing my initial settlements:

(And if anyone is remotely interested in the details of the game, you can find it here on my Settlers of Catan blog. Suffice it to say that Jacob won, which was a very good end to his birthday).

Pervolia beach in Larnaka

It's nearly twelve years since we moved to Cyprus. And while we haven't exactly explored the island widely, we thought we knew Larnaka reasonably well. Or, at least, the available beaches.

Apparently not. The local informal group of home educators has decided to meet every Wednesday evening during July and August for a beach get-together. We gather around 5pm, armed with swim-suits, towels, picnics, spades, beach games and whatever else anyone wishes to bring. We swim, or dig, or just hang out and chat. The children do their own thing, and then - when we start to feel hungry - out come the various styles of picnic, mostly salads and/or sandwiches.

Each week, a different family chooses a beach. And so far, two of three have been new to us. Last week we went to one of the Pervolia beaches, and this week another, slightly closer to Larnaka. I had actually been, a couple of weeks before, with friends - but Richard had never seen this one before. It had both sand and stones, and - of course - warm water which was pretty shallow for a long way out.

So we swam a little, and chatted, and ate, and enjoyed the relative cool, fresh feeling of being by the sea. I forgot to take any photos until the end, when we had packed up and were leaving, around 8.15 pm as the sun was setting:

By the time we'd packed the cars and said our goodbyes, only about ten minutes later, the sun had almost gone:

.. and I took a final photo, looking towards the lights of Larnaka:

Ten year anniversary for my home education website!

Ten years have gone by since I launched my first website at Geocities. It was a few pages about home education in the UK. The only reason I started it was that Daniel, who was 12, wanted to build a site; but it had to be in a parent's name before he was 13. So I registered, and then thought I might as well make a web site too... and since, at the time, there was almost nothing online about home education in the UK (despite hundreds of American homeschooling sites) that was my topic.

The site has gone through many changes in the past ten years. I delved into the 'Wayback archive' which has snapshots of websites over the years, to see how it used to look. The original URL of my site was http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Lake/3262, which isn't exactly intuitive, but I must have used it so many times that I had no trouble remembering it!

The earliest mention I could find was June 1999 If anyone doesn't want to wait for the archive to load, but would like to see how it looked, here's a quick screenshot I took:


- I remember the blue background, a Frontpage theme that I quite liked. I had forgotten the ugly banner, though. It looks very dated now!

I wrote quite a few new pages over the months, then in 2001 decided on a radical - but much simpler - design. I kept the clip-art of the clarinet player and the boy reading - supposedly Daniel and Tim - but made the background light rather than dark. I did have one or two people email me to say they liked the blue, but I stuck with the new design. Here's how it looked in 2001, and here's a screenshot:



There was a 'contents' section if you scrolled down, but it wasn't very obvious, and although I liked the look of it, it wasn't very navigable.

I was getting a bit fed up with FrontPage as an editor, and had been given free the program Adobe PageMill with some hardware, so I changed to using that. I learned about HTML tables... and redesigned the whole site to this in 2002. Here's the screen shot:



- lots of links down each side, which people told me made them more likely to explore other pages. (For some reason the picture of the boy reading didn't load when I did the screenshot, but it was still there).

I stayed with this design for some time, making only minor adjustments - here's a 2004 version from the archive, with its corresponding screen shot:



Geocities had opted for easier-to-remember URLs by then, so my site was also known by my username of the time, sueincyprus, which replaced the Heartland/Lake/3262 part of the address.

The problem I had with the navigational tables was that every time I added a new page, I had to change the links on several others in order that people would find them. And as the number of pages increased well beyond 100, it became more and more unweildy. And as this combined with our home educating years drawing to a close, I did very little to the site for some time.

Then in 2006 someone suggested I register a suitable domain, move it from Geocities to a host, and instal some kind of advertising myself. I was still getting a few emails from people who liked the site, and seeing around 200 visitors per day, so I thought this could be an interesting project.

Richard provided some server space, and I registered home-ed.info, moving the site there in May 2006. I got rid of the tables and all the clip-art, which by now was looking distinctly old-fashioned, and tried to include text links on the front page. Initially, it looked like this - here's the screen shot:



I still wanted some kind of navigational structure, though, and I wanted to give the site fully 'clean' code. So I switched to using the open source (free) software KompoZer, and experimented with this style in early 2007 - here's a screen shot:



But I was never happy with it. So in Spring of 2008, I searched for some CSS templates, and learned a bit more about how to adjust the designs, and finally, with advice from family and friends, produced the home-ed.info site as it is today.



I still add to it, from time to time, and include extra links when they seem relevant. It now receives around 500-600 visitors per day, mostly via search engines. I get two or three emails per month from people who have found it helpful, often asking further questions, which I try to answer.

I hope the site will still be around in another ten years, but have no idea whether it will go through so many design changes in the next decade. I suppose it depends on website trends, and whether dark text on a light background suddenly starts to look terribly old fashioned in a year or two...

Piano exam result

Tim was fascinated by pianos - or anything remotely piano-shaped - from an early age. Here he is at eleven months old, doing a 'Schroeder' impression:


.. and eighteen years later here he is, a couple of months ago, confident and competent as the musician at St Helena's Church (playing here with Daniel on clarinet, on Easter Sunday 2008) :


When we moved to Cyprus, we were concerned about music lessons. Neither Richard nor I are musical, and we knew we were going to home educate. In Birmingham in the UK, they learned the recorder at school, Daniel learned clarinet and Tim would probably have started a band instrument the term we left. They sang in the school choir, and also the Bournville Children's Choir, and both took piano lessons from the Children's Choir leader, who lived not far away.

When we said goodbye to the church we belonged to in Birmingham, we were all asked what they could pray for, as we started our life in Cyprus. Daniel and Tim said they were worried that we wouldn't be able to get (or afford) a piano. So the congregation said they would pray...

Even before we found somewhere to live in Larnaka, we heard of an elderly lady who was moving out of her house to a small flat, and needed someone to look after her niece's piano for a few years. It was old, and needed gentle handling, but was a lot better than the very cheap piano we had in the UK.

We just wished we'd also asked the congregation to pray for beds and tables and chairs....!

So all we needed was lessons. Two of Richard's colleagues turned out to be piano teachers, so one of them taught the boys for a couple of years, then when she left the other one took over. Neither of them would ever accept any payment.

Daniel stopped piano lessons a few years ago, but Tim continued and took over as organist at St Helena's a couple of years ago. He's also been the keyboard player for the youth group band. He played mostly for fun, not doing any exams until in 2006 he realised that Grade 5 could count as an elective option in the home education program he was doing. So he took Grade 5, although he was probably well beyond that level, and passed with Merit. He also took music theory grade 5, and - much to his surprise - passed with Distinction.

However his teacher was retiring. We didn't know of many teachers who would teach piano beyond Grade 5 level in Larnaka, which is rather lacking in pianists. But a friend recommended her teacher... who turned out to be ideal.

Last week he took the Grade 8 piano exam. Today, he learned that he passed with Merit.

New year in Cyprus

We didn't do anything for New Year's Eve. Well... we had some friends for lunch, so we took the opportunity of starting our second Christmas pudding. In the evening we then watched the DVD of Nanny McPhee, which we thought was fun, with an all-star cast and some interesting extras. But we didn't go out, or even stay up till midnight.

Everything was closed yesterday, of course. And much of it today, too, but the church mother-and-toddler group started again due to popular request, so I went along to help. Only three or four mothers turned up but I think they had a good time. Richard decided to go back to work after taking all last week off, and Monday, although his colleague is probably off for the rest of this week too. But Richard always has a lot to catch up with.

But on the whole it's a very quiet week, with almost everything (including schools) starting up again next Monday, after Epiphany. It's cold, too. Lovely out in the sun during the daytime, but most buildings feel a bit chilly, and overnight it's distinctly cold.

What of 2007?

Well, the two major stresses of last year won't be happening. Daniel can't leave again - indeed, he's nearly half-way through his stint on the Doulos - and we won't be moving house again, or going through the difficult stages of selling in another country.

So it's the first new year in our own house in Cyprus; it's also the first new year without Daniel here, and the first with no 'children' in the home, since Tim is now 18. It may be the year when Tim learns to drive (a scary thought, but most parents seem to cope...). Perhaps most significantly for me, it's the first new year when we're not home educating any longer. Tim's done the first couple of months on his theology degree course, and is very much enjoying it - so far, anyway.

We're not really into 'resolutions' - they seem to be made only to be broken. But looking ahead, we have quite a lot of guests expected in the first six months of the year, so we hope to repaint the downstairs guest flat during January, in readiness for the first family who are coming for February half-term. We hope to have the outside of the house painted too - someone at one of the local churches is a British decorator who should be giving us a quote some time soon.

We'll have to think what to do about the carports too. We had planned to dig up some of the pavement to make a mini-garden one side, but are not sure entirely how to go about that - or whether we actually need both the carports, since we currently have two cars. We have some plants in pots which are doing quite well, but the citrus trees at least probably need to be planted in the earth as they get bigger.

I'm not entirely sure what I shall be doing long-term, so perhaps 2007 will reveal that. I'll be helping two mornings per week at the mother-and-toddler group now, and also hope to spend more time working on my home education site - the statistics show that most of the people who find it are looking for help with maths concepts of some kind, so there's a lot more I can write on that topic.

It would be nice to get to know some of our neighbours a bit better, and - connected with this - to make an effort to learn more Greek. Almost everyone has such good English that it's hard to be motivated to learn more than the basics, but now we've settled here it seems like a good idea to be able to communicate with the people who don't have English.

But beyond that, I've no idea...

Happy New Year to anyone who reads this!

Another change in our family...

It's been quite a year of change for our family. Daniel leaving home in January to join the Doulos. Selling our house in the UK, and buying in Cyprus. Tim having his 18th birthday, and Daniel his 20th.

But as far as I'm concerned, this weekend has also been a big turning point. My main role has been home educator for the past nine years, and although in the past year or two the role has been diminished, mainly that of co-ordinator and organiser of resources, it didn't stop. But finally, on Friday, Tim did the very last of his NCSC tests, and I packaged up the final documents and course completion form for my mother to post when she returned to the UK. It's rather dragged out... all Tim had left to complete in June was a few DVD 'lab tests' and some so-called 'literature' work - not that the required books were of great literary standard - where he had to read and answer a lot of comprehension questions. Simple for someone who reads as much as Tim, perhaps, but he found some of the books annoying and it got put off.

But finally he finished. And today, as he described in this post, he received - at last - the full modules and other paperwork for the first semester of his degree course with the Open Theological College. Other than paying for it and ordering a few text books, I won't have any responsibility at all for this. Tim will study on his own, for 6-8 hours a day, and communicate via email with a tutor who will mark his assignments. There are even some online seminars and discussion groups. We'll probably discuss things a bit, since we tend to discuss quite a lot as a family, but Tim is now a university student, albeit by long distance (and he STILL hasn't received his student ID!) Even though I suppose he is still technically home educated.

Just to make life more complicated, we're going away for three weeks on Saturday, to visit Daniel in Singapore. So Tim's had to figure out where he can get wireless networking access (preferably free) while we're there, as he should theoretically have started his degree course four weeks ago, and is thus somewhat behind schedule. Since this applies to several other students too, they've extended the assignment deadline, but he can't really take three weeks off after only one week of serious studying!

Phoning Dan....

We try and phone Daniel about once a month. The Doulos now has satellite technology, meaning we dial a number in the USA to speak to him, and the cost is minimal. He had a day off today, which he spent reading and hanging out with some friends. He had something of a cold so hadn't gone out in the evening with a crowd of others, and was enjoying the peace on the ship when hardly anyone was around. (They're five hours ahead of us currently, so early afternoon here is evening there).

Dan was recently appointed as the second 'waterman' on board, quite a responsible job. He didn't really want it, but (thankfully) is enjoying it very much. Because it's not quite full-time, he also has other jobs such as making keys and mending shoes, both of which he's also enjoyed learning. And he's picking up some knowledge about engines, and spending a bit of time in the engine-room.

In the course of the conversation, he was talking about the water tests that have to be done, explaining what they did, and how there was a problem with excess bacteria at this port. He sounded very knowledgeable.

One of the things that had slightly worried me about home educating the boys as teenagers was that I know almost nothing about science of any sort (despite getting grade A in O-level physics-and-chemistry). The correspondence course they did was heavily theoretical as far as science went, with no lab work at all - just a few demonstrations to watch on DVD.

We did have a rather nice 'chemistry set' when they were younger, full of white powders and instructions, but we never got very far with it. It all seemed rather pointless, and - as Dan pointed out - all we were doing was trusting what the book said. How did we KNOW that each powder was in fact what it claimed to be?

'So,' I said to Dan this afternoon. 'It hasn't been a huge disadvantage that you've never really done any chemistry, then?'

'Oh no,' he said, and I could almost hear the shrug. 'No problem at all. In fact, I knew more chemistry than one of my friends here who did chemistry GCSE at school.'

'Oh, good....'

'Also, there's a guy here who's done an entire degree in chemistry, or biochemistry or something of the sort. He's a real expert, and working in the engine room. So if I do have any queries, I just go and ask him and he's always happy to explain.'

I'm glad we trusted our instincts. Someone educated at home picks up a huge amount of general knowledge, it seems. Particularly in conversations, and books, and on the Internet. They know that there's no limit to learning, and that lack of knowledge at any point is not a disadvantage. It's never too late to learn something new. Moreover, because there's no competition or one-upmanship, they don't mind asking other people who know more than they do.

Also, they seem to share their own knowledge with others, without being condescending about it. Later on in the conversation, Dan mentioned that he was chatting to a guitarist, who was worried that something he was playing was too high.

'So,' said Dan, 'Let's transpose it.'

'Huh?' said the guitarist. 'How do you do that? Isn't it really difficult?'

'Not really,' Dan assured him. Then spent a few minutes drawing out a chart to explain how to transpose on guitar. Dan isn't really a guitarist, although he plays a bit. His main instrument is clarinet, and his second one is drums. He's studied music theory and picked up a fair bit from general reading and discussion. Since he's never HAD to sit down and work (well, not since he was 11), he's always enjoyed learning.

He and the guitarist spent ten minutes transposing the music. Then the guitarist asked how a capo works, and Dan showed him, explaining the theory behind that. He said it was wonderful, he could almost see things clicking into place in the guy's head as he fit in this new (to him) information along with the guitar playing and techniques he knew already.

So Dan asked if we could find him an advanced music theory book, to take out when we hope to visit him later in the year. And perhaps one about jazz theory.

Then he started talking about all the things he still wants to learn. Maybe there is a problem with home education, after all - there's no motivation to specialise, because everything seems like fun. Dan was pondering whether he could do a course in marine engineering, to qualify him fully to work on a ship in future - either back on the Doulos in specialist role, or on an ordinary ship as a paid job. The Doulos always needs marine engineers, apparently.

But then he said that he's also realised he'd like to study drama more seriously. He's done up to Grade 8 in drama, and worked for a year in the local Antidote Theatre company. But he''d like to take a proper course about mime, for instance, and other aspects of drama.

Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any college courses that combine marine engineering with drama....

Then he said he thought it would also be wonderful to study music seriously for a few years. He was chatting to a student taking a music degree, who took a year out to work on the Doulos. Dan said he realised just how much he doesn't know, and how much more there is to learn.

But he doesn't think it would be right to be a perpetual student. So he's pondering what path to take in the future - whether to spend more time learning about engineering on board, or move (as he had planned originally) more towards the creative side. At present he's doing both, which of course is ideal, but he feels that he has so much more to learn in both, and isn't sure which would be of more use.

Apparently the phone call was 81 minutes.... a very long time for me, since I don't much like the phone. But it's so good to chat to Dan. I'm very glad we're in the 21st century with technology like satellite phones (and instant messaging on the computer) making it easy and inexpensive to communicate with our son as he travels around the Far East.

Busy, busy, busy...

.. no, not me but Tim! He's trying very hard to finish his home education coursework, and has arranged his three final tests tomorrow. Next week he'll have to do some art and watch some science lab-tests on DVD, and he's doing two music exams, but at least there won't be any more written academic tests. In the Autumn he hopes to be starting an 'open learning' theology degree by correspondence, from the University of Gloucestershire, so he'll still be educated at home, but with the end of his high school correspondence course, it's the end of an era. Odd that the end of his school-age home education should correspond with the end of renting this house. And that it's happening only five months after Dan finished his home education and left for a couple of years on the Doulos.

However this isn't all that Tim's doing currently. The inter-church youth group has a camp in the mountains at the end of June, and tomorrow night is doing their annual 'variety night' in aid of some funds towards the camp. For some reason, Tim has ended up the main organiser of this. One of the adult leaders will be the MC, but he's been out of the country until this week. Another of the adult leaders is organising the refreshments. But Tim has been working out the schedule of acts, and seems to be taking part in at least six different items. Simply drawing up a programme on the computer doesn't sound too hard, but he's had to negotiate, and advise. Last night Tim and one of his friends spent about two hours working out what exactly they would be doing. Today one of the younger members of the group was here checking that his song would go with the sound-track (which Tim did something technical to, to enable it to work).

Then there's been a problem with the floodlights in the Community church grounds, where the variety night will be held. Previously these have been replaced by electricians at vast cost, and have then broken again soon afterwards. Probably because the electricians didn't realise that these (halogen) bulbs mustn't be touched by the hands. So Tim has found out where to buy them locally and how to change them. This afternoon he's sorting that out, after going with one of the youth group leaders to order tee-shirts for camp (Tim offered a week or two back to find out where tee-shirts could be printed inexpensively... ) then after doing the lightbulbs, which he hopes will work without problem, he has a singing lesson. Rather important, since his singing exam is next Tuesday. Oh, and the music school where he learns singing is having their summer concert/recital on Saturday evening, and Tim's singing a solo item in that. So that also means a couple of extra rehearsals.

Then this evening, he has the chance of practising for an hour or so on the piano at the music school. He learns privately with a friend at our house, but is taking a piano exam on Wednesday through the music school where he learns singing. It's a good idea to try out an exam piano before the actual exam, and this is the only time he could schedule it.

I feel exhausted just thinking about him out and about in the heat, but although he's rather stressed he seems to be coping. I think he'll be so relieved when the variety night is over that he'll find the music school concert relaxing, and barely worry at all about the exams next week!

Packing, day six

Yesterday I spent a lot of time sorting paperwork, finding old magazines to recycle, and then going through our vast amount of music with Tim so he could discard photocopied sheets from past carol services and the like, also for recycling. And their old home education coursework, dating back about five or six years - never looked at since completed, certainly not needed now.

Then I went through a desk drawer filled with old church bulletins, information for the church directory, and other related paperwork. I cut out all surnames, phone numbers and email addresses (and shredded them with scissors for the dustbin) then added the rest to the boxes. We filled four small containers, two medium and two large.

The evenings are beginning to merge together in my mind, and I'm losing track of what's been packed. Last night Richard packed more boxes of books, our Christmas decorations, the remainder of Dan's clothes, and more 'stuff' from the living room. Then we moved all the empty boxes into Dan's room, so at least the house doesn't look quite as cluttered as it did.

So tired....

Sophia (most intelligent, and also chattiest of our cats) has taken to waking me at 5.30 each morning. She used to do that to Daniel during the summer months - now I know why he was often so exhausted. And he would sometimes go back to sleep, whereas I can't once it's light.

I think Sophia thinks it's her duty to organise the household. Around 1pm each day she arrives from wherever she's been, mewing loudly and telling us all to sit down to eat lunch. If Richard isn't back from work, she lets us know we need to phone him.


She likes it when Tim sits at the dining room table doing some of his home education coursework in the mornings - she gives clear mews of approval, and sits with him.

Unfortunately, she also thinks that at least one person should be up and about as soon as it's daylight. That's fine in the winter, but not much fun in the summer. When it was 6.30, I didn't mind. I like being up at that time. But I really don't want to be up an hour before then.

Couldn't we stop her, you might ask? Well... Daniel tried. We've tried. But what can one do?

We could shut her out of the house, and close the bathroom window (which the cats use as a cat-door).

Been there, done that. Sophia then arrives on the sill of one of our bedroom windows, and mews loudly and scratches until we wake up and let her in.

We could shut her out of our room and close the door.

No good either. Sophia mews loudly and throws herself against the door. Very noisy, and we worry that she might do herself an injury.

We could ignore her, and hope she goes back to sleep.

Nope. If mewing doesn't get one of us up, she starts patting our heads. If that doesn't work, she starts patting our heads or arms with her claws slightly extended. If we manage to get completely under the duvet where she can't reach us, she starts knocking things off shelves. Richard had completely cleared a small shelf behind our bed, where we had a few books and other bits and pieces, in order to foil her. All that was left was one small loudspeaker (not working). This morning, she knocked that down. It knocked over a lamp. And there are plenty of other shelves or surfaces in the room with things she could knock down.

Cats - I thought - are supposed to sleep for about 18 hours out of every 24. I'm sure the other three do. But Sophia appears to be wide awake and active for about 18 hours a day... or night. Since Daniel isn't here this year, we're the ones who have to deal with it.

The only solution, it appears, is to go to bed about 9pm, so I've had my eight hours by the time Sophia wakes me up. That's what I shall do tonight, anyway.

As the saying goes, dogs have masters and cats have servants.

May Day

It only happens once a year. The sound of drums played approximately (but not quite) in time, and some rather painful sounds that resemble trumpets - but not closely. For about an hour, off and on. With people parading up and down a street that runs perpendicular to ours, because the Communist Party Headquarters is not far away. It's a terrible din, and poor Cleo (most nervous of our cats) tries to hide, but the rest of us cope. I'm not quite sure what they're trying to prove, but it's all fairly friendly and civilised.

Does Richard take a day off, since it's a public holiday?

No. This morning he had a meeting at 9am, and this afternoon he's trying to sort out a major hardware problem. Typical, as he said at lunch-time, that a fairly new hard drive would fail when all the shops are closed so he can't take it back for a replacement.

He didn't really relax yesterday, either. He spent a lot of time copying my home education web-site to its new destination on one of his servers. Geocities has been a good home for it, and a great introduction to building a web-site. I only ever used their free option, which gave me more than enough space, and very easy ways of uploading files. But, as Leonid pointed out to me, a free web-site like that is probably making money from the adverts they use, and it would be more sensible to have an independent site where I could place Adsense adverts instead.

So after much discussion we registered a domain (home-ed.info) and Richard copied the entire site to his server yesterday morning. He worked out an easy way for me to adapt it to include Adsense (and thus make the site easier to read, since some of the pages had text that was rather too broad for anyone with a high resolution screen) and set me up with statistics and other features, even including a file manager that's very similar to that of Geocities.

I then spent most of the afternoon adjusting and uploading the pages to include Adsense and to leave out the Geocities counter code. And some of this morning editing some of the Geocities site pages to send them to the new site - which I hope will happen seamlessly, since the sites are almost identical. I'll leave the Geocities site, at least for now, since it does get quite a few hits via search engines, and see what happens. But I'll only be making updates to the new site in future.

Dead Mouse

Yes, today's great excitement (?) was the discovery of a large and extremely dead mouse under Richard's desk in our dining room.

When I got up this morning, I thought there was a bit of an odd smell. I put it down to making chicken stock last night, and opened several windows. The smell seemed to dissipate, at least in the kitchen.

Then Tim told me he needed to take a couple of tests for his home education coursework. He does these sitting at our dining room table. The smell was really bad in there, and opening windows did not help. It was only then that we thought to check Sophia's usual spot for 'burying' her kill. Usually she eats birds, mice, lizards and so on. She catches them outside, but brings them into the room where we eat, and has a little snack while we're having our meal. Not every day, but often enough during the spring and summer that we've become accustomed to it. Mostly it's lizards, thankfully, and she eats them in their entirety. Generally she manages to eat most of a mouse too, but this time there was what looked like a complete body. Ugh.

Tim and I don't do mouse-moving. Opening windows did not help with the smell.

So we moved through to the kitchen table, closed all the doors, and left all the windows open. Richard wasn't home for lunch today, but got home at 5.30 this afternoon and quickly disposed of it. He said the mouse was so huge it might have been a rat! Shudder. Tim and I didn't get close enough to look, and I'm not sure I'd know the difference anyway. But if it was a rat, perhaps that's why Sophia didn't eat it.

Incidentally, noting a couple of the comments on this post, I should add that the rat wouldn't have been in the house to start with. There are mice in some houses here, but they're intelligent enough to keep out of houses where four cats are living. I haven't heard of rats living in homes at all, although there are some wild outdoors. Not that I've ever seen a live one. However although our other cats eat any 'snacks' they catch outside, Sophia brings hers inside. Either she didn't eat this one because rats are just too disgusting, or it was intended as a present for Richard...

Living in Cyprus is great, but it's not all bougainvillea and beaches...

Flowers, Fruit, .. and Further Frustration

I'm quite pleased with the little border of bedding plants in the front garden:


.. rather more attractive then when I planted them out mid-December, as blogged here with a rather dreary photo.

Our mespila (loquat) tree is about to produce fruit, which is good. These fruit are good for cooking with (albeit rather too full of stones) and delicious when they're just ripe and eaten straight from the tree. We wouldn't choose to plant this particular tree, and never buy the fruit at the supermarket since by the time they've been stored a days or so they're rather tasteless. But there's nothing to beat freshly-picked and fully organic home-grown fruit so we'll make the most of them for the last time.


Well.

We hope it's the last time. Today the buyer of our house in the UK saw her solicitor, and our solicitor spoke to him too. Apparently he (the buyer's solicitor) said that contract exchange is impossible by the end of this week, because he has to deal with three other solicitors - those appointed by our buyer's mortgage company, those of the person I spoke to on Friday who's paying some of the deposit, and ours. But he didn't seem even to have worked out how the mechanics will work - with cheques taking three days to clear, it could take another two weeks even if the first cheques are written tomorrow, since they'd have to pass through three solicitors each.

Unbelievable...

Richard did speak to the guy paying the deposit, who does understand the process and the need for speedy completion, and he'll see what he can do. But I guess we won't be moving by mid-May (sigh).

Oh, and one more thing. I don't fully understand what a blogging carnival is about, but I gather it's a compilation of various posts on a relevant topic. There's a weekly carnival about home education, hosted at various places. I wondered if one of my posts from a year ago would be acceptable so I emailed this week's host to find out - and today had a notification that it was indeed included. I suppose it doesn't matter that my post is out of date from our family perspective, since it's still pertinent to home education.

Anyway, those interested in this subject might like to look through this week's carnival - and maybe folk who are currently home educating in the UK (or anywhere else) could submit posts for future carnivals, to make them a bit more international in flavour.

Weekend

On Saturday morning, Richard and Tim drove to Nicosia to collect some microphones Richard had ordered for his PA system (several weeks ago - but things don't generally happen rapidly in this country). Tim bought a sustain pedal for his keyboard, something he had been looking for, so he was pleased.

Meanwhile I attempted to cut the 'grass' at the back of the house, only to have the lawnmower stop working after about ten minutes.

After an early lunch, Richard went to meet our sailing friends and his mirror dinghy - bought back in September last year - finally had its maiden voyage.

I didn't go, thinking it would be chilly sitting on the shingle and that one of our friends would be in Richard's boat. In the event, Richard started on his own and did so well that our friends simply sailed their boat alongside - and took some photos. It was a pretty calm day, so not too difficult.

In the afternoon Tim was playing his keyboard for a 'ladies' tea' organised by the Greek Evangelical Church at one of the restaurants downtown. A friend from youth group was playing violin with him for half an hour, and he was also accompanying a singer from the GEC. I gather it went well. He got back about 6.30, had a quick bite to eat, then Richard drove him to a friend's house where some of the Youth Group were gathering to play 'Risk'.

Since Tim was out, we went out for a meal - to Alexander's, an open-air restaurant by the sea-front that's inexpensive and usually good quality. Also very quick, and they nearly always give us something 'on the house' at the end. This time we had some hot chocolate as we were feeling distinctly chilly. Partly because of the weather (although we were under a cover with a heater keeping it reasonably warm) and partly because we indulged in some rather delicious ice-creams...

On Sunday was the 'celebration' service for the end of the '40 days of purpose' campaign (which I wrote about in this post). It was the last one in Antidote Theatre, so the last time Richard had to load up his PA system at 8am ready for a 10.30am service. The service wasn't bad - the children did a few items and we were particularly impressed with one or two in a drama sketch who (we happen to know) attend Antidote classes.

Unfortunately the question about the future, church-wise, is still open and rather stressful. I'd pretty much decided it was right for me to continue attending the Community Church, at least for a while. Richard is much more unhappy about all that has been going on, and doesn't want to go there at all. Last night we talked for a long time about the pros and cons, going round in circles as one does in a late-night conversation, and I was horrified to find it was 2am by the time we finally got to sleep. All the worse because Richard had agreed to take some friends to the airport for 5am, so had to set his alarm for 4.30, and naturally I woke up too. Then Sophia, our cat of schedule, insisted on waking me up as usual at about 7am. I suppose I had about three hours sleep in all, so felt pretty exhausted all day.

I spent much of the weekend working more on my home education site - a time-consuming task trying to ensure all the pages match, and that links are up-to-date. I still have to wade through a couple of years' worth of emails to find those which asked me to include other links or sites... and I haven't finished the basic simplifying yet. I hope later this week...

Friday rolls around again

It's been raining quite a bit this week, and the weather's turned chilly again. Well, that is to say it's up to about 20C in the daytime, but by mid-afternoon I have to close the windows and put on a fleece, so that's pretty chilly for Cyprus in April. I hope it warms up a little next week when the island will probably have an influx of families from the UK, since it will be the first week of the British Easter break. I expect the Cyprus schools will start their break a week later since Greek Easter is April 23rd this year, a week after Western Easter.

With the rain, I haven't been able to do any weeding this week. Instead I've started on a long-overdue upgrade of my home education web-site. I'm shocked to find it's nearly three years since I made any changes at all. I'm simplifying it - removing the rather untidy side-bars and the 1990s style clip-art, doing a few necessary updates, and checking as many links as I can, many of which are now out of date. Having checked the stats, I see that most people find individual pages via Google rather than clicking random links, and since Geocities has changed its style of advert, the side-bars just looked a mess. There's still a long way to go, but in the immortal words of Magnus Magnusson, I've started, so I'll finish.

Tim has also set up a new web-site for his church, St Helena's, after discussion with the PCC. Just one page so far, but a good start. It's about time churches in Cyprus started advertising on the web - in some ways we're still a long way behind the rest of Europe.

We're still waiting for exchange of contracts on our UK house. It's unbelievable how long it's taking. Our buyer is meeting her solicitor on Tuesday, so we're hoping and praying that a date will be fixed, and not delayed by the Easter holidays (both Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays in the UK, and many firms don't work Easter Tuesday either). We would really like to move house here as soon as possible. We had hoped for the last week of April or (at latest) first week of May.

Entering the 21st century...

I caught onto email early on in the Internet revolution, in the Autumn of 1992. With a lot of help from Richard! We were in the USA at the time and it was my lifeline to the UK. Early forms of forums (bulletin boards, or BBS as they were called) introduced me to the concept of online friends, and also helped the settling in process.

I didn't progress to web-sites until after we'd moved to Cyprus, Autumn 1997. I'd tried, but everything was so slow. Then I wanted to research home education, and the boys showed me how to use their computer (which was faster than mine), and slowly I got hooked. I started building my first web-site in 1999, and our family one in 2001, but after that I started trailing behind... it took me until 2005 to begin blogging.

And now, finally, I've started using Instant Messaging. I tried it a couple of years ago but couldn't see the point, although the rest of the family use it regularly to type 'live' to people elsewhere - mostly work contacts for Richard, friends around the world for the boys.

But a couple of weeks ago the Doulos installed satellite technology to allow them faster email connections, cheaper phone calls (including when on voyages between countries) ... and instant messaging. After Richard and Tim had both 'chatted' with Dan twice, I decided I needed to ask the bandwaggon to slow down so I could climb carefully aboard.

In the last four days I've 'chatted' twice to Dan, and as I've been typing this blog entry I also 'chatted' to Richard, who's in Morocco this week. I doubt if I'll ever get as far as using a microphone to talk to the computer, but a 'conversation' in typing with immediate response is pretty good. In moderation, anyway.

Long and rambling post about Home Education

As home education draws to a close in our household, it's hard to remember what a major decision it was when we first moved here, and decided to go for it. Not that we ever really made a long-term decision: we thought we'd find suitable schools for the boys after our first nine months here. Then, when they asked for another year of home education, Tim was sure he'd want to go to secondary school when he was old enough. But he didn't, and we did another year, and another... and now, suddenly, it's almost over. It's been one of the most rewarding and enjoyable phases of my life; I only wish I'd known just how exciting an adventure it was going to be when we started. I also wish that we'd educated Daniel at home when we spent two years in Colorado (in the USA) back in the early 1990s. But that's past history now.

It's still a bit strange having only one son at home, since Dan joined the Doulos. Still, home education and living abroad seem to have stood him in good stead, as he now works hard to help keep the ship in good repair, does music and drama and general outreach, and mixes with 350 other young (and not-so-young!) people from dozens of different countries.

Tim, though only 17, is hoping to finish his home education coursework by the summer. Five or six years ago we decided that we didn't want to go for the standard UK GCSE and A-level exams - studying them at home and finding exam centres isn't straightforward, although they can probably be done at the British Embassy. But academic exams are so artificial, and by the time we started thinking about them, Dan was already wanting to specialise in arts and music, and Tim in computer technical work as well as music.

However we did want to keep open the option of going to university one day in the UK, should either of them wish to do so. I was also concerned to ensure that they did follow at least some standard educational courses (even though I believe strongly that education is something quite individual) because home education in Cyprus isn't actually legal. The authorities don't seem to mind what ex-pats do - and we could have put up a good case for home education, if they had ever challenged us - but it seemed like a good idea to follow some recognised course, at least once the boys were teenagers, rather than the unstructured autonomous style education we did at first.

So after much discussion, we registered them both with the National Christian Schools' Certificate course. It was based, unfortunately, on a rather rigid and strongly right-wing American 'homeschooling' curriculum by ACE (Accelerated Christian Education) but is the only such course which has been validated in Europe, and is thus acceptable as a qualification in European universities. We were encouraged by friends already using it to see it as a tool for getting qualifications. ACE schools have an unusual approach to education - no group work, not even tables set up together, but individual 'offices', and little flags raised to ask questions. We mostly used it informally around the dining room table, and chatted about the contents of the workbooks, often digressing into other topics, or looking at why we disagreed with some of what was taught..

The tests at the end of each workbook have to be taken under careful supervision, marked, and sent back at the end of the year, so we followed the regulations there as it's these that are counted for the certificates. But we were very flexible about the workbooks themselves. Sometimes the boys just read through and took the 'self-test' at the end, if they were too easy. One of the good things about the ACE system is that children are supposed to work at their own level, and at their own speed, but to gain the necessary European certificates they need to complete all the workbooks from the US 'eighth grade' level onwards - and Dan at 13 was way beyond that level in most subjects. He found the workbooks often babyish and boring in the extreme, but was determined to keep going, so he whizzed through the first ones.

Tim, who started at 11, went a bit more slowly although he too was rather put off by the 'young' styles of some of the workbooks, and the dull repetitive nature of some of the maths and English grammar - very unlike what is taught in UK schools. I gather many of the workbooks have now been revised to become more like British school text books, for UK usage, but we were stuck with the old-fashioned style American ones.

Anyway.. over the years, other activities claimed the boys' attention more and more. One of the ACE mottos is that 'life is education', and we certainly followed that principle. They got involved in church music, Dan took part in local secular drama group plays, they did computer artwork, graphics, programming, and educational games; they read widely; Dan taught himself to juggle, to roller-blade, to speak simple American Sign language; he took Greek lessons, and Karate. Eighteen months ago he started work about half-time at the drama school. And last Summer he went to the Doulos for two months on their short-term programme. He had hoped to get to the end of his ACE work before then, having rather neglected it in the previous year as he was so busy with the drama school and his various music activities, so he didn't manage it. In the event, he completed his last few workbooks in a couple of weeks before he went away for two years in January...!

Tim still has about thirty left, and wants to get them out of the way before the summer, so he can study a degree-level correspondence course in theology. I don't know if he'll succeed, but at present he's spending a couple of hours each morning working hard, and taking about three tests per week. He's also going to take some music exams - singing, theory and piano - in May. His music theory teacher says she likes him as a student, because he's more creative than the other teenagers she teaches. Most of them just repeat back what she's told them, and do their work in the dullest style possible. Tim asks questions, wants to know WHY things are the way they are, and experiments with far more interesting answers. He pointed out that the reason he can think for himself is that he didn't go to secondary school, and the teacher agreed... Cypriot schools allow very little digression, questioning or challenging of assumptions. They don't encourage students to think for themselves or to do their own research. They definitely don't encourage enthusiasm and creativity.

Someone asked me recently if we'd choose home education again if we could go back in time, knowing what we do now. I had no doubts on that one. We would have opted for it in the USA as well, although the boys did enjoy their small, friendly primary school in the UK. I would have worried less, too, and been more flexible from the start. I'm not even sure if we'd have bothered with the NCSC since neither of the boys is currently planning to go to college. If Dan does, it would be for music or drama (or both) and his qualifications in those subjects would then be more relevant than his academic certificates. His experience on the Doulos will probably count for more. Once Tim's studied degree-level theology, that will be more relevant for him to any further academic education. He did consider taking a computer qualification, but those that interested him in subject were too easy. He's learned more on his own at home than he would in most formal computer courses.

All in all, I can highly recommend home education. It enables children and teenagers to avoid the negative forced 'socialisation' that can so often happen in schools - peer pressure, bullying, heirarchies, competitiveness, high fashion-consciousness, despising their parents - and enables them to think for themselves, to work fully at their own speed in subjects that interest them most, and to learn what they need in a tiny fraction of the time it would take in school. They read widely, they're fully computer literate, and they learn good research techniques. Besides all that, they grow up able to communicate with people of all ages (not just those born in the same year) and with time for a wide range of non-academic interests. And of course they can play a full part in the life of the local church, for those who are Christians. Dan and Tim were able to be in the church music group (which practised in a week-day lunchtime) for many years, to go to activities with students or adults in evenings, to help at children's clubs, and to be available to produce artwork (Dan) or help set up computers (Tim).

All in all, I am very thankful that we moved to Cyprus when we did, and found ourselves home educating.

Two months into 2006

It seems as if we only just got over Christmas, and suddenly it's the end of February. What a lot has happened in those two little months: Dan left home to join the Doulos, (now sailing from Qatar to Bahrain) and we've bought a house.... two items quite high on the lists of stressful things to happen.

On Saturday I spent most of the day gardening. The 'lawn' was getting very long, and there were a lot of mosquitoes about. Cutting it is supposed to help, so I did. At least, I cut the parts I'd cut within the last month. Some sections have weeds about 50cm or more high, and the lawnmower can't deal with them, so I pulled lots of weeds - and more on Monday, and more today. Still loads more to go, but at least 80% of the 'lawn' looks reasonably tidy now, and it does seem as if there are fewer mosquitoes around.

This morning we had no Internet connection at all, as CYTA were doing a massive upgrade. So when I switched my computer on an hour before lunch, I did what I usually do at the end of each month: made a CD backup of all this month's documents, digital photos, and Quicken backup files. Then I ran Ad-Aware (which found two nasty cookies), deleted some of my temporary files, and defragmented the hard drive. Actually I hadn't done any of this since the end of December so it was well worth doing.

This afternoon I finished typing book reviews into Bibliophil, and entered another thirty or forty of our books to the database. I had kept hand-written reviews and ratings of every book I had read in the past seven years, so I just needed to type them in... which I've been doing off and on in the last couple of weeks. It was quite satisfying to finish. All I have left to enter now is another four or five hundred books on our shelves which I either haven't yet read at all, or haven't read since before 1999. A great feature of the site is that I can download all the information I've typed into an Excel file, for offline reference.

Tim is plodding through his NCSC course, which he would like to have finished by the summer if possible. But he has a busy life so doesn't have time every day for workbooks. He's helping to get a church computer working, trying to install an old windows hard drive on his and Dan's PC, in the hope of making an elderly scanner work with it, and also doing a lot of music.

He's signed up for three different music exams in May and June... not that any of them will be very difficult. He's been taking singing lessons since the Autumn, and his teacher wants him to take Grade 1 singing as he's working on some of the pieces. That should be an easy exam since he's done so much other music over the years. Cypriots seem to like exams, and music teachers here often get their students to take several; Tim won't do all the grades in singing, though. He'll wait till he's ready for at least Grade 5 before he does another.

Grade 5 seems to be a significant level in music, being roughly equivalent to a GCSE in 'points', and one of the other exams he's doing is Grade 5 music theory. This is necessary before he can take any higher level exams, and he would like to do a Grade 7 or 8 piano accompaniment exam (which Guildhall offers, and we hope will continue to offer when they combine with Trinity) in the next year or two. In the meantime he's decide to take a Grade 5 piano exam even though he's playing music at a much higher level. The NCSC allows Grade 5 or higher music exams to be taken instead of academic electives, and as Tim hasn't taken any music exams since he did piano Grade 1 at the age of 8, he thought he might as well take it this year.