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the stuff M makes at school gets better and better. oh and she can write all of a sudden, after just one term. when she was small i thought long and hard about home education, it seemed to make sense in so many ways. i envied the lifestyle it brought friends who HE, the freedom from timetables and restrictions, the chance to follow a child's natural interests and inclinations and not force them into an institutionally-determined mould. but once she hit 3 or so i realised that spending all day every day together just wouldn't work for me, i didn't have the patience or ingenuity to keep her entertained and me sane at the same time.

so she started preschool on a see-how-she-gets-on basis and a year on she's really blossoming. her school is fantastic, they have kids from such diverse backgrounds they can't fall back to a lazy one-size-fits-all approach. there is a genuine community within and around the school, M already knows kids outside her year group. her teachers are kind and caring and the whole school has a very open policy, we can always get to talk to someone with the smallest problem, which so far have been very quickly resolved. they're not overrun with rules and regulations, which seems to be the bane of many schools. my first impression of friendly, relaxed and slightly chaotic has turned out to be spot on, and that suits us perfectly.

while i'd always consider the possibility of home ed again if things weren't working, the leaps M is making socially and academically are a testament to how well it suits her right now.

hmm funny how this 365 thing goes. sometimes i take a picture to illustrate a point, this was just something, anything, to take a picture of at 11 o'clock last night, i never intended to write all this about it.