The penny dropped

So this morning I was watching this video by a young man. An articulate, engaging, funny and intelligent young man. Who also happens to be home schooled.

It led me onto watching this video, by Sir Ken Robinson. Everyone should watch both videos, it's really eye opening.

Some things Ken said really resonated with me.

"Creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status."

"Every education system on Earth has the same hierarchy of subjects: at the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and the bottom are the arts." 

This honestly was a penny drop moment for me. Yes! Yes it is as important, and yes we focus too much on the reading and maths, and not enough on the artistic subjects. And here is me, the new home schooling mum, who is still stuck in mainstream school thoughts to some degree.

I have a 7 year old, who struggles with reading. He struggles and struggles, I get annoyed sometimes, he cries over it a LOT. We have really been working hard on it but it's just not clicking! It's got to the point where any free time is no longer spent doing whatever he pleases, it's spend on Reading Eggs, or practising his blended sounds, or phonics. But still, even after all these hours spent, it is still not clicking. He's improved, slightly. It's barely noticeable  So I've been very worried. In the cross fire, is his creativity. He's artistic, sporty, and artistic. He loves art, and the computer, and art, and also art, and did I mention art? But we've been doing maths, reading, reading, reading, science, sport, reading reading reading and maybe a little art.

I use my 9 year old as a marker for where he should be this year, as they are only a year behind each other with schooling. But he's no where near. Jaidan was reading chapter books last year, Chase struggles with pre primary readers and can read about 30 of the 220 sight words he should know. He can't read the 30 confidently, and it often takes him a while to read each one too, having to sound it out over and over. It's not for lack of trying, he tries so hard. He often ends up in tears. It's heartbreaking.

So as of today, his reading will go back to the no stress pile. We will do our daily reading, and Reading Eggs, and our fun with words activities, but we will no longer put all of the focus on reading. In fact, I will no longer worry at all about it. Hopefully as this year progresses his upset over it will stop and he'll start to pick it up. In the mean time, we will do lots of art like we normally do, and we will go to the paediatrician to make sure there is no underlying issue like dyslexia.

Hopefully by the end of the year I can link back to this blog with a new post about how much he's improved over the year.

Making reading fun with the first 100 Dolch sight words and Duplo.