I now feel much more confident knowing that others have tackled big subjects at young ages - I worry all the time that I’m either not meeting Flopsy’s needs, or am getting over-excited and way ahead of myself. I’m thinking about doing some moon/stars paintings - must get some black paper! - and, I’ll get prepared for a torch/ball/box demonstration and a making session to make a solar system mobile; then if she asks about the different shapes of the moon again, I’ll be ready for her! I guess it really doesn’t matter if she has any concept at all of the idea of different planets - as one commentor said, it’ll all sink in bit-by-bit during the many discussions we have about the many different subjects she’s interested in. And as someone else said - who care’s if it sinks in or not, as long as it satisfies her curiosity at the time, that’s all that really counts. I feel a bit daunted as well, simply because it’s clear my children are both quite bright - it makes me even more determined not to send them to school so they don’t get bored and dumbed down, but I’m terrified that I will also not be able to meet their needs and will let them down by not meeting their needs. Still, there’s clearly a wonderful support network out there - thanks all those who commented, I really appreciate it.

Someone reassure me I *can* be an effective signpost for my children when they’re trying to learn about things! 

Flopsy’s so interested in the moon at the moment, and, when looking at photos of it on the internet with DH, was very intrigued by the different photos of the different moon phases and tried very hard to get her head around the idea that they were all photos of one moon.  So…where do I start???  There are no books about the moon or space or astonomy aimed at pre-schoolers in our local bookshop and I am struggling to find appropriate websites too.  I just don’t know where to start about explaining anything about this…it all seems way too complicated, when I don’t even know if she understands the concept of different towns, let alone different countries, or planets.  Should I not start there at all?  How do I explain these things?  Is it worth getting a ball and shining a light on it so she can see why the moon looks different at different times?  Or is that way over her head?  Or does it even matter if it goes over her head - it’ll stick there somewhere if she’s interested won’t it?  Or should I not bother doing anything?  Am I going too fast?  Or not meeting her needs by being too scared to try to explain these huge concepts to her?  She’s only 3 for goodness sakes!  But how and when do schools/other families introduce the subject/theme of space, whether they’re aiming for unschooling or not?  If their very young children have shown an interest in a ‘big’ subject…how do you tackle it???

I’d really appreciate some help from more experienced home educators (and my mum!).  I can tell you, I’ve rather shaken my confidence about this whole non-mainstream education malarky!

When Flopsy was learning the words for these three things, she got them rather mixed up and despite how long ago it was she learnt them, she still says ‘elbowhead’ for eyebrows and foreheads :-)  Must be just habit now - I wonder how long it will be before the correct names are the first ones that come out of her mouth!  Hopefully a very long time as I love the word ‘elbowhead’ - makes me smile everytime.  And she says ‘could aft’ for ‘look after’ - she’s so lovely!

I’ve made a couple of these now and the firm favourites seem to be ‘matching’ ones.  I made this butterfly one for Flopsy first (sorry, don’t have the energy to take photos and Flickr them right now!), which she found ridiculously easy.  Mum suggested finding one with much more similar patterns, but I’ve yet to discover one - any ideas, experienced file-folder makers?  Come to that, I’m on the search for any pattern activities for her to do at the moment, as she’s really keen on them.  She’s also keen on shapes, but she keeps asking me for harder games, so a simple shape matching one would bore her quite quickly I think.  I offered Mopsy to have a go with the butterfly one, but she didn’t get the idea at all, so I made her a simpler one - this colour matching one.  It was a real joy to watch her do it the first time - she very carefully looked at each one in her hand, and then looked back at the folder, then again at the one in her hand, and sometimes did this a few times before she decided where it was meant to go.  She got every one right.  Although it took her a while to do the first time, I don’t think it’s going to hold her for very much longer as it simply won’t be a challenge - something made very clear to us when she got hold of Flopsy’s butterfly one again and did it perfectly.  It took her far longer than the colours one, obviously, and she had to hold each butterfly close to the ones in the folder before she decided where to place them, but this game is clearly going to amuse her for much longer than the colours one.  (Interestingly, although she can obviously see the different colours, she doesn’t yet know their names - but that might be just because she hasn’t heard them often enough now.  Flopsy’s suddenly got very keen on teaching her them, so I don’t expect it will be long now before she knows them).  So, I’m also going to make Mopsy some more games - maybe a shapes matching one, with all the shapes the same colour to see if that stretches her a bit more.  But if anyone can point me in the right direction for some (free!) complicated pattern matching file folder games, I’d be very grateful indeed!

Linda Hirschman is (apparently) meant to be an important feminist, so how on earth can she answer a question like this???:

FARABEE: What about those who say raising children is the most important job a person can do?HIRSHMAN: I have no idea what they mean by that. If, in fact, it were the most important thing a human being could do, then why are no men doing it?

Wouldn’t a feminist argue against the idea that jobs are only important if men do them too?  Or have I got the wrong idea about feminism?  Read the whole article here.  I just don’t understand how people can think that society and, therefore, the world will continue if people don’t choose to spend their time parenting.  We can already see the disasterous consequences of so many children being farmed out way too young to day-care, and yet people still refuse to recognise that parents are the best people to bring up the next generation.  If we continue this way, society will collapse because it is parents who instill morals into their children, *not* nursery nurses (childminders/nannies etc.).  And anyway, as one commenter on the Hathor’s blog quite rightly says, women do most of the parenting because it’s women who have uteruses and breasts, not because men consider it beneath them!  (ok, I’m sure a lot of men do, but there are more and more men choosing to become stay-at-home-dads so it’s clearly not all men who think parenting is ‘womens’ work’!).

 HT: Hathor