Day One in the Big Broth-sorry-Home Schooling House!

Golly. Well, we've started, and I have to say it went very well. A very early start to the day (thank you Master Samuel, 5am really isn't the best part of the day) and a morning full of Isobel saying "when are we going to home-school" and "I want to do some work" in the manner of the stereotypical kids TV school swot, led to a day full of us trying to keep everyone happy, busy, thinking, questioning and working. And it wasn't that hard.
For the time being we are taking a route that involves loosely mimicking their school timetable. It is familiar to them and gives them a structure they can work well within. However we have left plenty of room for flexibility, and hopefully an eventual route to fully autonomous learning (ie. child-led) will present itself. As it is, the kids seem happy with the structure, and it gives Rachel's organisational streak a chance to shine.
Our chosen topic for January is 'Castles' - nice and vague, gives the kids a chance to explore lots of areas that tickle their fancy. Today we started with a story we found online called 'The Littlest Knight' which they really liked. We discussed which parts of it they enjoyed and will use feedback like this to plan their studies. Preferred subjects so far include Knights, Dragons and Royalty, so we will probably go into those near the end of the week. For today we covered the basics - we talked about what castles were for, who lived there, what was inside them and what certain parts of them were called (the keep, bailey, battlements etc.). We also told the kids of our field trip plans - next week we will be off to Skipton Castle, which will be nice because we've never been, and because my best friend, and best man at our wedding lives in Skipton, and he's practically an uncle to the kids and they love him to bits, so he'll be joining us. Then at the end of the month, armed with our castle knowledge, we will be visiting our local castle remains in Hapton, which are apparently a very well guarded secret round here. It is literally a 10 minute walk off the main road, but you wouldn't know it.
Along with castle stuff we spent a while on basic reading, writing and maths (NOT literacy and numeracy...grrr). Rach had lots of, erm, fun helping Issy read. Bless her, she tries, but she gets really confused with phonics. Later on I read with her and she recognised lots of words just from repetitive reading at school (ball, kite, umbrella) so I think we'll have to develop a certain strategy in teaching her to read. Her maths was no problem though, and I overheard her teaching Alex to count to 25 while she was sat waiting for her tea, which was sweet. Cal had no trouble with his worksheets, he managed a maths workbook for 8 yr olds with no trouble, then read Billy Goats Gruff, my Ladybird copy from when I was ickle, perfectly. He also wrote a story about Dr Who travelling to a castle, which he will hopefully finish tomorrow.
We would have gone for a walk, but the weather was super-pants. Seriously. Hailstones from the devil's own quarry. So we did some colouring, Cal labelled a picture of a castle, then we finished off by me reading Chapter 1 of George's Marvellous Medicine, which they all enjoyed very very much. Then Cal ended his day by writing the first entry of his home-school diary, which went like this:

We talked about castle, we coloured castle pictures, we looked at castle books, we learned a lot of things about castles. I enjoyed the story of the littlest knight.

Alex also had a nice day, he did lots of colouring pictures printed from CBeebies website, listened in on stories and tried his best to answer questions and ask his own. All in all, a very positive day, and all of them got on very well indeed, which is quite rare to be honest. Issy and Alex especially fall out a lot, but today when they've played they've done so very nicely.
We're very tired. But optimistic, and feeling good. Looking forward to tomorrow!