I’ve been prompted by a post on Sometimes It’s Peaceful to post about what we’ve been ‘working on’ this last week.  One of the strangest things about autonomous learning, I’ve found, is the frequency with which children actually ask (beg, sometimes!) to do things that most of us autonomous home educators would steer well clear 0f - real ’schooly’ things.  But then is the reason because they have never been put off schooly things because they’re done on their own terms - when and how they like, for as long or as little as they like?  I think so, and I love the freedom of being able to say ‘ok, you don’t want to finish?  that’s fine - do you want to finish it another time, or do you want me to finish it for you?’.  There’s no pressure - it can just be fun.

Anyway, Flopsy has been asking to make an alphabet frieze for sometime now - she doesn’t like having to ask things and is very into writing little notes and lists at the moment but fed up of asking us, not only how to spell words, but also if we can write the letters for her to copy (she’s not confident enough to get the letters the right way round etc. yet).  So she wants something on the wall she can refer to whenever she wants (we already have a number line used for similar purposes!).  Mopsy hasn’t outright said she wants to learn her letters, but seems to be very interested in letters at the moment and loves projects with a passion.  So we’ve made this:

I printed all the letters out off the computer for them to colour in and cut out (they love cutting and colouring at the moment) and then my cousin (who’s staying with us at the moment) drew them pictures requested by them that began with the letters they were in charge of colouring in.  So Flopsy has done the posters with ABC, JKL, STU and VWX, each time thinking up pictures what she wanted drawn for her letters.  Mopsy did DEF, GHI, MNO, PQR and YZ and chose from a selection of pictures that Flopsy had thought up for her.  Flopsy wasn’t interested in doing any writing for under the pictures, but Mopsy wanted to so I wrote them for her to copy and she’s done an incredible job!  You might be able to just about read her ’pig’ and ‘queen’ but she also had a go at ‘mouse’ and ‘net’.     

Flopsy, our little butterfly, didn’t have the stamina to do much of it, and only did one poster per session (it took about three sessions, but my cousin and I kept saying we were happy to finish it for them if they got tired) whereas Mopsy, our attention span queen, did two and then only stopped because Flopsy had started doing something more interesting to her!  She (Mopsy) was disappointed when it was all finished and wanted to do another one, but we’ve run out of wall space so she made a poster with her name on it and lots of other things that start with A:

She seems to see ‘A’ as her name, so I was keen on the poster idea to help her realise that there’s more to her name than just ‘A’ and also that there are other words that start with ‘her letter’.  I know she would work this out anyway, given time, but she wanted to do the poster, so we did it!  She also, as you can see, had a go at writing some of the words herself and has done a fantastic job :-) 

This still isn’t enough though, so she’s now working on an alphabet book, along the same lines as the frieze and has nearly coloured all the pictures and is moving onto the letters.  She’s made books like this before and will spend, quite literally, hours on them at a time, so I’m fairly certain it will get finished.  Flopsy’s not really a project person so it makes for a pleasant change to work with a child who learns in such a different way.

Flopsy has been spending a lot of time looking at the frieze and then persuading us all to sing the ABC song with her - she obviously knows it very well, but Mopsy doesn’t so is automatically getting a lot of practice at the names of the letters and the order they come in.  All on their terms, in their own time, in their own way, when they want and for as long or as little as they want.  And most people in our culture don’t believe children will learn anything if they’re not taught it - pah!