"Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud."

Back in November I wrote about Opeie's news paper 'Happy Times', which started out as a fun activity one afternoon, thought up by Mrs M. They took photos of Opeie's toys and came up with funny stories to go with the pictures. Opeie got so excited making it that we decided to incorporate it in to his homeschooling and back in Decemeber we started the second edition which Opeie decided was going to be titled "The rainbow edition".

The news paper has been great for both Opeie's reading and writing, we've used this for all sorts of different activities and it has really helped with keeping him motivated with this side of learning. On top of all the other positives its great for keeping me coming up with new places to go, its all about the experiences.

When I asked him a few days back why he loved writing Happy Times? He told me that he thought it was like the blog, but on paper which I thought was really lovely. Its great to see Opeie so confident with what he is creating too. Whenever we have people over he is eager to get it out and show it off.

I'm really hoping that when he is older this will be something great to look back on, to show him all of the great things that we got up to during this homeschooling adventure. It has been interesting for me as we have gone through the pages to see the clear development in the penmanship and the confidence in his writing.

'Happy Times' is here to stay and as his writing progresses I'll look more in to the structure of the sentences he is writing to help him further with creative writing. Even though I am loving the home education I still have days where I worry that I am maybe not doing enough but then I see him producing work like this that he is excited about doing and it completely backs up our decision to keep Opeie home and educated in a way that is suited to his needs and development.