New Interview of Kat on National Podcast

In 2016, my family was featured in a national UK newspaper about our homeschooling journey (see this link here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/family/hating-the-new-sats-meet-the-mums-who-chose-home-education-over/)

Today, I appear on a national podcast in the US, focusing on the differences and changes when homeschooling in the UK and now US.

Please share the link to it - Vicki Tillman and the gang at 7sistershomeschool.com offer a wonderful support group for homeschoolers at all stages, being veterans with many years of experience under their belts.

You can even subscribe to their podcasts, and their recent series about reading and writing for high schoolers was very interesting.

http://ultimateradioshow.com/hshsp-ep-65-homeschooling-in-uk-and-us/

Hosting a Foreign Bear for Easter

A bundle arrived in the post from New Zealand, the contents of which included a little teddy bear, a selection of souvenirs from the Far East, Hawaii, and New Zealand, and a letter which requested we show him a good time in our country before posting him back to his homeland of San Diego, California.

Isaac arrives in Britain:
Notice the red phone box in the background,
and all the cars driving on "the wrong side".

Isaac Bear is part of a project for an elementary school in the US, and we were very excited to take part in it. He joined us for everything: our homeschooling co-op with the Aberkats, swimming training, meals out, cinema trips -- it was a great time for him to be with us, as it was our Easter holidays.

Aberkats Co-op

We especially enjoyed bringing him along to the various Easter celebrations: Good Friday walk around Banbury, doing the stations of the cross, and an Easter sunrise service in the fields of the Cotswolds, not to mention an all-you-can-eat Thai buffet with our friends.

Stations of the Cross

Sorry, Isaac -- a sunrise service
in England doesn't always mean
there will be sun!

The piece de resistance was taking him to the Castle Inn at Edgehill on Easter night, looking out over the hills where Charles I had begun the English Civil War in October of1642. Too bad it was really foggy!

Isaac's such a ham, he forgot to look at the view!

As per instructions, we sent him packing on the 22nd, hoping he'll make it back to his headquarters by the May 1st deadline.

Bon voyage, Isaac.
(Banbury Cross in the background)

For me, the best part of the project was that we received our bear from a homeschooling family in New Zealand, some of whom are currently my students for the Dreaming Spires literature courses I run. It's making global connections like these that are the future of homeschooling, so I liked showing how it works in practice to my kids.

RSC Richard II Homeschooling Viewing

We were so fortunate that the Royal Shakespeare Company allowed us to be a venue for free web-streaming of its latest play, Richard II, starring David Tennant of Dr Who fame.

A scene from the RSC Richard II

Nearly thirty homeschooled students and their parents met at the Charlbury Baptist church on a nippy Friday morning, some coming from as far away as Bristol and northern Wales.

Warm and Cosy while a King is deposed.

It was a great opportunity to see Shakespeare performed like this, and such accomplished actors.  Too bad they changed the script, though, and lost some of the ambiguity surrounding Richard's death and Henry's complicity in it.

We hear they're going to broadcast Henry IV Part 1 next year in the same way, and I'm getting my name on that waiting list to offer the opportunity to local homeschoolers again.

My question makes the board -- I'm famous!