is there much to do?

Time is not my friend very often these days. I have four children, all with activities and interests that take me in four different directions that can make good time keeping a challenge.

Today I was at a group with Shrek that we've been trying out. It's a toddler group meet up but with a great lady who organises activities and crafts which leaves me to just be with him, and have a precious little bit of together.

The lady who runs the group is interested in home education. She asks me a lot of questions, and not in a sneering wanting-to-catch-me-out kind of way, more of a mystified-not-fully-understanding-what-we-do kind of way. Today she asked me what there was to do in home ed land.

Well, in the past month alone the activities on offer near us have been: dinosaur lecture, outer space session, cup cake decorating (with a fancy cake decorating company) sports activities, farm meet ups, forest schools, play rehearsals, mosaic making, maths clubs, robotics, park playing, library meet ups, the setting up of a science club, street dancing and art group. That is only what I know about, and doesn't include all the other things I have no doubt occurred without our knowledge. I explained that we have the freedom to pick and choose what we want to sign up for, and that some are one-offs and some are longer term commitments.

She commented that is must cost me a fortune to do all of these things. When I explained that most are free or hardly more than a few pounds, and that most of them are run either by parents or enthusiasts keen to pass on their love of mushrooms/ maths/ mosaics, she looked utterly confused.

Later she came up to me, as we were putting on our coats to leave and said, slightly bewildered "There's this whole underground world that us school people have no idea about...it's amazing."

On the way home I pondered this further. When I first started this home education journey, I encountered a lot of weird people, and initially I found myself un-nerved by them. Now I actively seek out the nuts in the group. They are by far the most kind hearted and entertaining people in the room. As one (self proclaimed) crazy put it: "Why on earth would you want to be vanilla?"

A while ago I organised an event, it was a nature walk and talk. I arrived early to meet with the speaker, who was quite nervous and had never done the session with home educators. As the families arrived in their dribs and drabs, I saw her eyes widen in alarm as and weird and wonderful came together in the courtyard - the green welly wearing family hooting out loud "Hallo's" to others, and Pagan Witch carefully lifting up her trailing skirts to avoid the muddy puddles.

Lady Speaker started her talk (fifteen minutes late - home educators can never start on time, I've found.) She passed around fossil samples, talked of the natural geology of the area and what we might see on the walk. The talk should have taken 45 minutes, but we were already into the second hour because of the questions being asked. The session itself was supposed to be only two hours.

Half way through the fourth (!) hour - we were out walking by this time - I asked Lady Speaker if she wanted me to rush every one to the end, and she said no, that she hadn't had a group of children so rapt and excited by every discovery in her career, and she had been giving these talks for fifteen years and that seeing children not jaded by school was making her rather emotional. She asked us to come again, as now she knew she didn't have to stick to the national curriculum she had so much more to show us.

This, I think, is proof that there is so, so much to do.