Flopsy likes workbooks - she’s got the bug from her children’s magazines she enjoys so much - so my mum bought her some for writing, numbers and reading. I don’t think she needs them, but she enjoys them so we go for it. Today she demonstrated twice to us why it is so much better that she’s learning at home, rather than in school.

1. One page was full of little circles and letters down each side of the page. The instructions were to draw a line from one letter, across the page, to the same letter on the other side, making sure that you didn’t touch any circles ie. ending up with a wiggly, but controlled line. We explained the exercise to Flopsy - she replied “but why, Grandma?”. Hmmm, why indeed? Our reply was “that’s what the book wants you to do, but you can do it however you like - I think it’s so you can practice getting your pencil to do what you want it to do” - she settled for following the instructions to the letter and did a grand job of it.

2. Another workbook, about numbers, gave her a page of numbers jumbled up. She was supposed to draw a circle around all the number 3s. She counted them, told us there were only three of them, and drew a circle around the first one. Then she noticed a number 8: “I want to draw a puddle (I think she must recognise her circles are more puddle-like than circle-like!) around the 8 too”. Of course, we said, ok, go on then. She did the rest of the 3s like the book wanted her to.

My question is: Would they have given her the option of doing it how she wanted in a school? I doubt it, somehow, and if she had decided to do what she wanted, she’d probably have been ‘marked down’ as there would be no proof that she was able to do the exercise. We, however, living and being with her all the time, know perfectly well that she has the pen control to do the line-through-the-circles exercise, and wouldn’t really mind one way or the other anyway! We also know that she can recognise all of her numbers up to 10 and most of her numbers up to 20. Again, however, we’re not that fussed if she can or she can’t - as long as she’s happy. Unlike a lot of teachers, we appreciate her need to follow her own free will. We don’t ask her to do exercises so we can see that our ‘teaching’ is effective, or to reinforce our ‘teaching’. We don’t ask her to do exercises at all! She asks us if she can do them. She is motivated to learn to read, write and to learn more about numbers and how they work and that’s lovely - it’s lovely that we’re not sending her to school so that we’re not under pressure to stop her learning these things in case she learns them the ‘wrong’ way. She’s allowed to learn when and how she wants and it truly is a joy to be around to see. I think I’d find it heartbreaking if I knew she wasn’t being allowed to do it her way if she were in school. It’s not about how effective it is (although I do think she’ll learn all these things better if she does it her way), it’s about how fulfilling she finds it all and about how much she feels respected and accepted however she wants to do things.