Home Education Stories UK

A typical day with two girls aged 6 and 1

2008-12-02T20:40:00.001Z

The following is an excerpt from a home educating family's weblog:

somewhat late, and I didn't get started with the camera quite at the
begining, but hey ho, that is probably what my typical day is!
Obviously, this wasn't entirely a typical day, as it was bank hols and
both parents at home. Full photos on flickr.

Oh, and Happy Birthday Little Nanny!

Started with SB and BB playing with the happy street at
too early o clock, and then by the eime I got up, SB had moved onto
Sindy's and BB was rarring about. I fed her and she
settled down to playing with the bricks.

So, 10:00 and SB starts with explode the
code - 4 pages. SHe's quite good at doing this mostly on her
own. I did need to remind her that there is a double l at the end of
words such as sell and spell etc. Also, it took a while to convince her
that there was a st sound and how it was made.

So that was 10 mintues - I happen to know because thats when she
decided to play nursery with BB, who was being the baby
in the baby room. BB took it all in good part, and I do like seeing SB
playing games specifically with BB, rather than just moaning when BB
ruins things.

11 -ish, and we did some maths. SB chose to do some
from the miquon book - something that I find more
dificult, as I have to sit there with the instructors guide to work out
what we are supposed to be doing. mostly counting and adding, as we do
it so rarely she is on 'easy' pages.

12-ish BB had an early lunch and fell asleep. Chris
and SB looked at rocks
and minerals with enchanted learning, moving on to
the cretaceous period - and quite a bit of discussion on
extinction and then to continental drift
on the 'puter. SB then looked at the new webland.I went
out and did a spot of gardening, coming in for lunch -
by which time BB had woken up and had a second lunch!
13-ish!

14:00 I read to BB, and SB did lots of dot to
dotting - going up to 50, and then looked at a thomas the tank
book. She then disappeared to her bedroom to play some more with
sindy's

15:30 We all got ready and went out to the
park and stayed there until nearly 17:00. SB
loves the park, and clambered happily about. BB did lots of climbing
practice - antother Know No Fear daughter! So we took lots of pictures
of BB, as its the first time she has had all this fun. Although heart in
my mouth, was proud of her climbing skills!

when we got back, SB played with the ballerina candleholders and various
kinder egg bits for a while. TBH, I have no idea what we did then! BB
drew on herself.

18:00 ish teatime -in which SB was trying to
remember all the countries she had heard of - second one was indonesia!,
then tidyup and pyjamas on 19:00 we watched the
deep on DVD and the 20:00 bedtime stories and
finally sleep!

http://petitsharicots.org.uk/weblog/

A typical day - girls aged 6 and 2

2008-12-02T20:37:00.002Z

The following is an excerpt from a home educating family's weblog:

Actually, in many respects it was. We forgot about it to start with
[fairly typical!] BB woke up way to early [fairly typical] Chris
eventually went down with her leaving me to have a lie in [fairly
typical for the weekend!] An brought me breakfast in bed of croissants -
not at all typical! Bored now with saying the typical bits!

Errr, its amazing how much you can forget. Have got flic
kr uploading wildly. Honestly Chris P, I put up too many photos even
for me, but its much quicker than sorting them out! One day I will, I
promise!!!!

Anyway, at sometime after 11 we started taking photos, and not at all
sure what went on before that, as that was with Chris whilst I was
reading the paper! But when I was surfaced enough to remember we were
taking photos and also to interact, we played who's
who. BB insists on playing, so not exactly to
the rules, but enjoyed! BB and I then spent some time hammering baby
toys and playing with the rainbow blocks to make lots of noise, and then
constructing brio and making the trains chug around
[always a baby train and a mummy train with BB!]. We also did a bit of
looking after and watering the plants in the conservatory.

I had suggested to SB that she might do some education
city as we have paid for it and she hasn't done any for ages and ages.
SHe fancied webland, so whilst chris got the next edition downloaded, I
read a story from the barefoot book of mothers and daughters
- the persephone and demeter story which SB knows well, having
had a mad love affair with greek myths and legends. SB then spent HOURS
on webland! Not very interesting to photo! We had also missed april's
edition, so she did all of May followed by all of April. BB also did
some poisson rouge. In a moment of pure inspiration I
have put a hand sticker on the left click of all our mice! She now knows
which bit to click - hooray! Also getting more controlled with the mouse
movt. Does have her mother's patience though. wiggling it wildly when it
didn't go where she wanted.

Had lunch and SB returned to do some more webland. I was bored with
this, and checked the mail - hooray her new sports sunglasses arrived.
[should stay on as she twizzles about on swings and cycles]. The low
start of ebay price was completely overmade up by postage - 6 times the
cost!!! i did factor that in though.

BB desperate to do some painting, and SB wanted to make
a princess hat, so combined the 2 activities. At least
half our paints were put into pots though - gradually getting SB to take
responsibility for setting out and tidying away crafts. hmm She did sort
of set out, I totally tidied! Anyway, she and BB painted the hats, and
then carried on with further painting. SB did a particularly beautifully
coloured handprint. Eventually they declared themselves painted out, and
a quick hose down and they went outside to play.

SB and BB scootered/triked about for a bit, but SB hurt
her poorly
knee, so I re-dressed it, and she read a book about
food through the ages with intermittent waily patches.
I made them some popcorn to eat. BB played Bob the
Builder, moving dirt around the garden, and generally enjoyed
rampaging about, playing hide and seek etc.

SB got fed up reading the book, and wanted to make the egyptian
breads we have made in the past from the 120 history
projects book. it was sold to BB as a snail cake - the word
cake enticing her in from the garden to join in! SO we added mess onto
mess in the kitchen, and all enjoyed making the egyptian sweet bread. BB
and SB enjoyed competitive flour and butter rubbing, so there was a fair
bit of loss!!

Daddy had been to the shops btw as we were all out of food. He returned
as the egyptian breads were put in the oven, and didn't blanch too much
at the appearance of the kitchen. BB being up for over 12 hours was
swept off to a bath, and SB has been outside again while I have done
this and put flickrs onto the uploader. We do plant to perhaps sellotape
the hats up before bed, and SB has promised a violin
practice of frere jaques - she will moan when she has to do it
after tea, but it has been the only non-negotiable thing to do today! SO
since we have done all the autonomy, its time to do the violin! I will
obviously be adding photos after the girls gone to bed!

follow up! Well, I had set that up, but chris rebooted 'puter
without checking whether I was doing anything! SB did the violin with
enthusiasm - and very pleased that a nearly recognisable tune coming!
read britannia, and she read a young usborne
readers book [and is in fact still reading it]. Joining up the
hats will need to wait till tomorrow, as will eating the egyptian
breads!

http://petitsharicots.org.uk/weblog/

A typical HE day with two girls aged 7 and 3

2008-12-02T20:26:00.003Z

The following is an excerpt from a home educating family's weblog:

I am going to nominate today as the home-ed day in photos meme [please
see previous in sidebar!], and will hopefully get the photos up! it is
atypical, because i was at home, because i bailed out of a group today
and declared duvet, and rainbows was cancelled. maybe chris will do one
as well! thing is, i prob need the photos to remember what we did

8:00 they were both up with chris, so they prob watched
something! had breakfast

9:00 I'm up! BB is doing alphabetting
[using alphabet stencils to write the letters] SB is colouring
in a rainbows picture, and then looking at the difference
between the roman alphabet and ours. i read some
dinodoor books with BB, we all do family members in
french.

10:00 getting dressed and cleaning teeth. i look round
at house and decided to spend the day in the garden! [ in fact t-bird
gave me the idea with her tent-ed] SB makes a great go at
putting up mini-tent [with BB being not too unhelpful,
and even nearly helping on occasion!] . I shew them my bag of selected
options [not exclusive, they could have gone and got somethig else], and
both started with colouring. BB with crayons in a bible
book [bought by chris's parents] and SB in pencil on nice paper. She
drew the garden first, and then started drawing my portrait.BB did some
before the code.

11:00 sees us discussing the weather in
french - well, learning some of the weather words and
popping them into saying it is hot and sunny. we read part of a book
about food chains, and then had a fruit break. SB chose
the ladybird book about the spanish armada [no I'm
arder!] for me to read to her. BB liked the guns, and then went off to
play in the garden. [I am concerned about her!]

12:00 sees SB doing singapore maths 2B
[halfway through] and BB and i looking at the extremely greedy
starlings eating all the fat balls, and deciding to have a go
at making our own. with a break for a who has the silliest face
competition. SB finishes her maths and does it with us.

13:00 mostly lunchtime. SB made lunch
whilst i put lard [yuk what a truly awful smell, but the birds have
never eaten them when made with veggie fat] over our nut, fruit, seed
and mealworm mix. SB made peanut butter sarnies for BB, avocado
sandwiches for me [using same knife, so slightly unusual!] and cheese
for her [fresh knife!] and we watched some nina and the
neurons. About now i thought, ooh, we have done alot today,
lets make it our photoblog day! luckily i always take a lot of photo
when i am at home to prove i was there. BB did some fab
geomags - she wanted to make a square [cube]

14:00 BB did a short violin practice -
mostly just enjoying making noise. chris and BB went off to get some
pallets from the orchard down the road to use to make an ad hoc empty
compost bin [we have filled all of ours] . SB was going to do violin,
but took rather a long time getting organised about it! we did do a
violin practice too.

15:00 has us back out in the garden.
BB in the sandpit and SB drawing with fabric pens on a
white t-shirt. both then did lots of playing in
sandpit, with water, on slide etc. chris made compost
bin, i played hide and seek, and took some flower photos.

16:00 children happily playing, SB did some pot
watering and had an icecream. i potted up the yard long
beans and put into greenhouse [oops, forgot to say that in the
garden blog - must put that right!]

17:00 no more photos. both girls in desperate need of
a bath!! after that some tidying up in the garden by me, whilst they
watched pingu. a recap on french words we have looked
at today.
18:30 judo for SB, i read bob the
builder books to BB, we had tea and I put BB to bed.

19:30 SB home and fed, a short look at zoo
tycoon for DS and then also to bed [by chris] whilst i potted
up toms and cucurbits.

21:00 with the binging of the church bells, the tv
switched on and we watch the apprentice and blog. the
end of atypical home ed day. with thanks to katy for being understanding
of me need to duvet, as we should have been doing science and latin in
the morning, which we do all really enjoy. i just needed some home time.

http://petitsharicots.org.uk/weblog/

Home educating a gifted child

2008-12-02T20:18:00.002Z

Our son was always slightly different to his peers in development and interests. Whilst at the crawling stage he would be busy playing with pram wheels and a pudding basin and his visitors sat with their teddies. He always found the toddler groups a nightmare and often screamed. I was told to persevere, but inwardly felt he just didn’t’ want to be there. At nursery he became so unhappy that he stopped singing, something he had always done, and eventually stopped talking. It took several months and a number of Thomas trains to coax him back to talking and singing.

From nursery/prep school traumas we moved onto reception at a local state school where I would have to go out to buy books to put into the library so he could bring something suitable home. He was an able reader at this time and made no progress in that year, coming top of the class. After several discussions and initial promises to accommodate him, it became clear that no help was on offer. In fact the only help came from the children, who at the end of the year, still had no grasp of the alphabet! Moving on, we tried a further three schools over the years until he was finally removed by us after Year 5.

In each school, be it state or private, his differences were not identified, and he was bullied and mis-understood instead. I was labelled an over-protective mummy, but he was so miserable at school and happy at home. Every summer holiday was a nightmare where he constantly asked ‘how many days until school?’. At school he struggled to cope with noises, lights and the buzz of classroom life. He felt isolated and friendless, unable to fit into their system.

One area of interest that kept him going was music. From the age of 6 he took up piano, followed by cello, then singing and viola and music theory. To date, he has achieved Grad 8 singing and Grade 5 viola with distinction, and is preparing for Grade 7 piano, Grade 6 cello, and Grade 6 theory. We have had some patient teachers over the years and some that perhaps couldn’t cope!

As with all his academic subjects, he fires off questions relentlessly, and has an uncanny knack of discovering a weakness a teacher my have in their subject. He has to verbalise everything he is learning, it is his way of reinforcing what he has learnt. Worksheets are just a frustrating repetition of what he already knows.

By the end of Year 5 the Head finally agreed that maybe there ‘was something going on there’ and we saw and Educational Psychologist who assessed that he was very bright and had Asperger’s Syndrome. This came at the time he also had a diagnosis of Chronic Fatigue Syndrom (CFS) and Myalgic Encephalopathy (ME), which the Educational Psychologist could not agree with at all. We felt very let down at the joint meeting with her and the Head, and gave our notice to remove him from the school after persevering for a further term. At this time our son one day said that life was not worth living, and this broke my heart. Some of the incidents that occurred in school are perhaps best not mentioned; abuse is not too strong a word.

I spent that summer holiday researching home education, and we took the step to register him with the then LEA on the first day of the new school year. That was three years ago, and I wish that I had had the confidence to never have sent him to school and kept him at home to find out how he learnt best.

From the start, there was a joint sense of relief, no more screaming at the start of term; or tears in the morning; no more uneaten lunches because he was too stressed to eat; no more bullying. My husband now goes to work without having the pantomime of getting him into the car on time to dash into the city, to double back to his own work through heavy traffic. Because of his CFS my son is usually unresponsive or tired until 10 o’clock, or sometimes later, so we start working when he is ready.

Over the three years at home we have tried and discarded various forms of learning. The way our son learns is quite different to school methods where there is a lot of repetition and reinforcing. When we commenced home education he would have been finishing KS2 if at school, so I picked up from there and came up against a brick wall. My son wanted nothing to do with this material, he was bored, so we moved onto KS3 for Maths, and other subjects. In time after the tutors we were using had left, we hit the road for IGCSEs. We have gone down the route of tutors from a reputable agency, which has caused us grief; we have tried the famous CGP workbooks and written on perhaps three pages. We have also tried their study books, which were deemed unhelpful by my son.

Correspondence courses and on-line school have all been tried with varying degrees of success. Audiocassettes for language got a big thumbs down because there is no visual element to the presentation, he favoured the BBC Learning First Steps courses followed by their Ma France and a German course from a news site in Germany.

We have found that he learns best when he is relaxed, and mostly from just reading the textbook. Generally, he retains about 85% of the material in this way; the rest is covered when we revise. He dislikes writing out exercises so we discuss most subjects, but he does have to do some maths on paper (under protest). He now reads some subjects for himself, usually kneeling on the sofa, arms draped over my footstool with the textbook on the floor. He enjoys learning from well-structured CD ROMs that are interactive, when he was smaller he loved the Jump Ahead software followed by the Learning Ladder series, for maths we used the maths2x1 for KS3 and 4. This was topped up with an IGCSE text and CD ROM in preparation for the exam this May. All in all my son’s learning experience has been an experience for us too. I wouldn’t like to say how much we have spent on aborted courses and textbooks.

In three years he has progressed from KS2 (almost) to IGCSE and beyond, he has just sat IGCSE Maths and Chemistry at 13. He still struggles with times tables and has no grasp of the size of numbers, but really enjoys Differential Calculus, and can’t wait to get to grips with Complex Numbers. This from a child who struggled with KS2. Peculiarly, his real strength lies in the literary field; he has a desire to be a writer.

We have a hospital Consultant’s letter requesting his Access requirements, which has helped enormously with his coping with the exams. He is allowed a break halfway through to ‘chill’ and also 25% extra time to help with the slowness of writing, along with a keyboard for essay-based exams, since writing in volume is too painful to his joints.

We anticipate that he will sit a few exams at a time to spread the stress/workload. One big advantage of being at home is that we get to decide which subjects he sits and when. On the downside it is a big headache for most home educating families to find a local exam centre that will let candidates sit their particular exam subjects and exam boards.

We are trying to avoid specialising him too early, we want him to have a broad-based education, and be free to choose later. We hope he takes around 13 IGCSE/GCSEs, sitting a few at a time. He needs time to recover from his health problems, time to catch up on his emotional development and time to decide what he really wants to do.

A common comment aimed at home educators in general (and we have had our fill of it) is the big question of socialisation. Our son has some friends not many, but that is partly due to being on the 99.7 percentile and thinking on a different level so much of the time, and other children find him hard work. HE is great with small children, very caring and kind, and happily engages with adults and will hold forth on the political situation if allowed. He does sing in a local small choir, which has taken a while for him to cope with.

We have seen him maturing with his social skills over the last three years, and with the help of some acting lesions when he is well, we expect that he will be fine in the end. A retired vicar suggest acting skills as he, like our son, had Asperger’s Syndrome and had to learn how to portray himself as a caring person although he already was inside.

For us it is always difficult gauging the right balance of time spent with friends and time resting. With his CFS life is quite unpredictable, he can suddenly have frail spells with no warning, only to pick up and seem almost well again. Coupling this with the stress he suffers going out, mixing in a crowd or just visiting a friend, it is almost impossible to gauge how much is too much. It’s always the days after a visit that show how well he has coped.

My one big ‘if only’ is if only I had had the confidence to stand my ground when he was small and follow my instincts to keep him at home, then we would have spared him a lot of pain and trauma. As it is, we have learnt from our experiences. He hopes to get to Oxford, although he is unsure which Degree to go for – will it be English Literature, or Latin, or History, or maybe Music, or maybe even Maths?

For further information and support:

www.nagcbritain.org.uk
0845 4500295

www.nas.org.uk
0845 0704004

www.meassociation.org.uk
01280 818968

What is unschooling?

2008-12-02T20:11:00.001Z

To me, autonomous education or unschooling is all about learning together with my son.

To unschool him would means to allow him to be himself. To allow him to be the master of his life. Many a times I wished and itched to step in and rein in his obsession; but I've learnt that to impose any restrictions on my son would mean him rebelling against it. So my philosophy is why create a battle when we can resolve this amiacably? Not that I am being a bad parent by allowing him to do whatever he wants, but instead I am being a good parent by allowing him to learn how to make good decisions, by making bad decisions. DS know should he need an opinion, he can seek counsel with me. By allowing him all the space he wants, he will soon get to the bottom of whatever he is obsess with, and will move onto newer pastures. By not focusing on controlling DS, I am free to concentrate on what I want to do, and get on with it. And DS will learn to moderate himself if he wants to aligned himself to my routine.

All of the above have made my child believe nothing is too small, too big, too silly, too serious, too difficult, too impossible to explore and everything can be discussed.

Now that all mental barrier to learning is remove, it is my job then to bridge any handicap that my child presents, mentally or physically. If he cannot spell, I will spell for him. If he cannot draw, I will draw for him. If he doesn't want to write, I will scribe for him. If he cannot stop for food, I will feed him.

The objective is to help him reach his goal and accomplish that he will, despite any mental handicaps place there, either by himself or society.

Example:-My son will read any book from a very early age, despite the fact some of the books he picked is too mature and deep for him. But nevertheless, it never stopped him from picking up a very thick and heavy book to take home. Because he knows I WILL help him carry this book home, and I WILL read this book to him. Hence, he knows, no book is too difficult and too heavy to access into.
Nowadays, he'll read anything on his own. His reading level is of a 15 or 16 years old. Infact he is reading books meant for teenagers.

Our unschooling means to dis-regard all the conventional thinking and follow our own instinct. Only by unschooling, can we feel free enough to break away from all those chains imposed onto us, and finally see sense in learning about living and life, in it's natural order.

Which is why we believe in learning thru play instead of workbooks. My son's life is all about Lego, ps2, psp, nintendo DS and his laptop. Because for now, this is what his interest is all about. It is thru these magnificent inventions that my son finds his preferred learning method. It is thru these mediums, many lessons has been spawned.

For instance, the most recent one is about mental maths and spellings. Me and Hubby and DS is competing against each other on the Nintendo DS Brain Training game. I have to say tho DS is consistently in 3rd place, don't forget, he is competing on a software based on an adult's capabilities. So the fact that he can complete all his trials, from mental maths to spellings to memory games, means he is really really good, for an 8 yr old. Infact some parts of the trials especially the memory bits, he's come up 1st!!

This Brain Training Game has also gave him a reason to practise his writing for it is his bad handwriting that is letting him down.

We went to Scotland recently and had the opportunity to sit in the planetarium. It was magnificent and DS was surprisingly well informed. He pointed out and named the various constellation, an evidence of learning just by playing on his Jumpstart pc educational game.

What else...? Urrgh...at this stage of our 2nd year unschooling, with my full confidence knowing my child is learning all the time, has made it hard for me to cite evidence of learning. This is because I am no longer keeping track and looking for evidence of learning in order to convince and comfort myself. But it does seems like, whatever is the "favourite game or interest" of the moment, there is where evidence of learning can be seen.

So for now, his focus is on the Ninetendo DS Brain Training game(because the winner gets the money pot), Xmas, continue adding onto his Lego City which seems to have dominate the living room floor, and playing his Nintendo DS Transformer WiFi.

Unschooling (other than breast feeding) was the best parenting decision we ever make for our son, and ourselves. It allowed us the freedom from any constraints, and endless opportunity to allow our child to grow and become the confident, happy, wise, kind, gentle, considerate and articulate young boy he is today. No words can describe how proud me and hubby is of DS's accomplishment, so far; and we are relax and confident knowing that he will grow up to be a happy and confident young man, in his own right.

What about college and uni, incase you're asking. Well, if University is what he wants, then he'll have to back track and do college, won't he? If he wants university that badly, he WILL willingly do college, without any co-ercion and pain.

Happiness and Hugs to AllSharonBugs, unschooling 8 yrs old DragonBugshttp://mamagecko.blogspot.com/

Homeschooling an only child

2008-12-02T19:58:00.002Z

We decided to pull the plug and homeschool our child when he was so unhappy and started talking about death, sometime into his 1st term in Year 1. I have to say then, tho I was very aware of my rights to educated him different, and that homeschooling is legal and permitted, i wasn't very sure where and how to start, other than to hand in that de-registration letter and to ask for formal acknowledgement from the headmistress.

I was also aware and prepared for the in-evitable enquiry from the LEA's. We were lucky in a sense that me and my kid is of foreign passport, hence we were able to justify that the LEA's involvement will not be able to support, but possibly obstruct his education. For we could not see how the LEA is able monitor suitability and efficiency of a foreign curriculum and syllabus that will be taught in duo language, English and Malay. It was our intention to part educate our son according to my homeland's syllabus and language, in preparation for our eventual return to my homeland.

So really, the fact that he'll be an only child didn't even register as a problem. I supposed me and hubby already resolved the "only child" question a long time ago when we have decided we will only have 1 kid. To us, the philosophy "less man, more share" applies. With only one kid, we can afford to provide the best of everything from attention and focus to financial matters. So really, "homeschooling only one" is not that different from our philosophy of having only one kid.

When we decided to homeschool DS, we were aware of the fact that we will be financially supporting his education on our own, which made us very glad that we only have 1 kid. From museums visits to homeschooling events and gatherings, movies to books to science kits, we're only paying for one, and not two or three. We are very electronic medium-based learning, so I am glad that I am only paying for 1 child's interest, from pc games to online community games to video games.

On our daily lives, I'm glad I am only homeschooling DS, for I only need to accomdate him, and no one else. We go wherever and whenever we want. I didn't have to play mediator between 2 or 3 children to find common grounds to make everyone happy. Every so often, I read of families with 2 or 3 kids, struggling to find common interest that will make everyone happy. In any homeschooling event, I can focus on helping my child with his chosen activity without having to be worry about the other child. We will stay for as long as we want and leave whenever we want.
Socialising? Well, if your child is the type that thrives on friends and social interaction, there is tons of homeschooling events, from drama to sports to science clubs to reading clubs to join in. And you don't even have to worry about which child does what, or pacifying the other child who hates drama classes but gets dragged along anyway because one of the child loves acting. When you have only one child, you can pick and choose to attend the one's that your child is interested in. My child don't like any structured or sit down events, so I was able to happily skipped alot of these without any guilt of the other child missing out.

My child started out being happy on his own. He had such a difficult time during his schooling years that he actually enjoyed the space and freedom of being left to his own devices. He opt to stay at home alot in the beginning, which was easily accomodated. We went to a few homeschooling gatherings but all he wanted to do was play on his own. He wasn't interested to join in playing with other children. After a few months, he just plainly told me he found the gatherings boring and would rather stay at home doing his own things. Because he was the only child, again it was easy to decide to do just that. During this time, we went out only when he felt like it. We went to places that he decided on, from swimming to movies to museums to bowling or which friend to call upon to visit.

One and a half years later, he's decided that he's had enough of being alone and now needed company, so he requested that we started attending regular homeschooling gatherings near us. Again, when and which gathering to attend is according to his preferance. Because he is the only child, I am aware that if he needs interaction with other kids, we'll have to go seeking it. Not all existing homeschooling groups appeals to my kid. So, if we want more our kind of social events than what's available, we created it, at the places he likes. Hence the occasional playdates in the park, at the local funhouse or even at our house. I'm not good at long term, regular events. I tend to organise "one off" events. We like outdoor, lots of space for high energy running and climbing, "doing what boys should be doing" sort of activities. There weren't many so we organised our own and listed our open-invitation on the local list. We always do end up having a lovely happy day full of fun and interactions with many other families. And because my child is the only child, he is very privilege to have loads of toys. Hence a playdate at our house is always convenient and exciting because he had so many toys to share with everyone. Homeschooling your only child allows you to accomodate your child's education according to his/ her interest, pace and development, and derive the best out of your current circumstances.

Lastly but not least, I have to say my child is diagnosed with Asperger. I strongly believed homeschooling DS alone has provided me the flexibility to accomodate him on all levels comfortably. It allows me plenty of time to focus on how best to facilitate his learning without having to split resources or worry about another child. And the luxury to drop it, chop it or change it, at the drop of a hat, if it doesn't work. Without having to consider the 2nd or 3rd child's needs. So to me, homeschooling an only child in the 21st century is no longer an issue. The invention of the internet has played a huge role in making homeschooling a viable and possible path, no matter where you are. It has provided huge support to many homeschooling families, and connected all of us homeschoolers to each other, at all times of the day. And this is no different to our children, especially our only child. With the invention of telephone and internet, our only child can now be as socially active as they want to be. My kid uses the telephone alot to speak to his friend. He also communicates alot with his online friends over the internet. With the common practise of possessing a family car, we're no longer alone and isolated, for social events can be easily accessible. Even without a car, the availability of public transport can help make it happen.

SharonBugs, happily and successfully unschooling 8 yrs old DS. http://mamagecko.blogspot.com/

A semi structured approach to home education

2008-11-24T08:46:00.000Z

We had never intended to home educate. In fact, it had never even occurred to us. We sort of fell into it as a last resort.

Our girls (now 14 and 12) were in an independent, fee-paying, girls only school until March 2007.

We withdrew them because of educational and welfare issues that we were unable to resolve with the school. As we looked at our options, the closest independent school was miles away and the local state schools have a very poor record. So I started to research home education and, to be honest, very nearly didn’t do it at all.

It was only when I chatted to someone who told me his daughter was taking some GCSEs that summer that I personally felt more comforted.

Coming from the background we did, I think we had always intended to do something in way of GCSEs or equivalent with a view to potentially opening the doors into further and higher education.

We started out with quite a formal time-table, which soon gave way to a more flexible “semi-structured approach.”

We started working with English, Maths and Science Workbooks for the appropriate age group, which was very useful to see what they had covered in school and where there were some pretty gaping holes in basic knowledge, especially for the younger daughter and her Maths!

This was accompanied by using online resources such as BBC Bitesize http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/revision/ .

I knew we were in no great rush and that we had time to find our feet and to settle into our own routine.

I found some research that had been done on students studying for GCSE subjects and found that each subject consists of approximately 100 hours of study. If they studied one subject for 5 hours a day, 5 days a week they could be up to the standard of passing an exam in 5-6 weeks if they chose to!

I then found a wonderful forum for Home Educating families who are considering GCSEs and alternatives. It was a real god-send to me because I was beginning to think we were the only family who were considering taking exams.

That moved us away from GCSEs to IGCSEs, which are the international version and seem to be a better preparation for A-Level than GCSE, as well as being recognised and liked by most Universities. Additionally there is no coursework.

When the girls left school it was the first time they had really had the time for external activities and they joined Stagecoach (a group for singing, dancing and drama), joined a Pop Music school where one child plays the electric guitar and the other plays the drums, started horse riding and other activities.

Stagecoach has been fantastic for both children and especially for the older one, who has decided she wants to pursue Drama and acting as a career.

Fortunately we had continued with Speech and Drama lessons from leaving school and continue to work towards the LAMDA (London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts) exams. These carry considerable weight in the acting world, as well as contributing towards UCAS points for University.

From that passion, she has found somewhere she would like to go to study at 16 years old and that has given us a clear path to follow. She has been told that she needs 6 GCSEs or equivalent, including Maths and English.

We are working towards IGCSEs with both children, including Maths, English, ICT, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and our older daughter is also studying German.

We are doing this in a mixture of ways. Some subjects, we work at home from books and online resources; we have a tutor for the Speech and Drama; and we are part of a group for the Science, which has been organised by some of the home educating parents we know who have a degree in the subjects and can teach them.

When we started, we adopted a project based approach. We picked our favourite subject- chocolate- and used that to teach across every subject including Maths, Science, ICT, Geography, History and culminating in the obligatory field trip to Cadbury World in Birmingham!

With the younger daughter, she is in the Girl Guides and we have spent most of her first year of home education doing numerous badges because she has responded much better to a more project based approach than to the formal approach, that her older sister seemed quite comfortable with.

Completing the Guide badges has provided her with a huge set of very useful tools, including researching, organising and presenting material in numerous different mediums and setting goals and sticking with them to completion.

The younger daughter is a keen writer and photographer (something we really only discovered when they finished school). She has written 3 full-length books for girls, which we are in the process of self- publishing for her.

Within the first few weeks we had got her photography website up and running, which she built herself, with some help from me. We are working on selling her photographs and creating a business for her out of her writing and photography. You can see her website at www.pawingphotographs.com

For the first year, we did not socialise with other home-educating families at all. I had spoken to a couple of group leaders and felt that most groups seemed to consist of either very young children or people who were taking the totally autonomous route to education. I felt like a fish out of water.

It was only when I met someone in the Home Ed GCSE forum, who was talking about an IGCSE drama group, that we went and started to meet other families who thought in the same way as we did. This led onto the group with the Science IGCSE.

For us it has been very important to help the girls find things they are passionate about, as well as allowing them to try different things and discard the ones they don’t like.

As I know how fast they are absorbing the subjects that we are covering, it also gives us the luxury of being able to go out for the day or for the girls to spend the whole day in bed if they seem particularly tired.

For our family, this has worked best with a “semi-structured” approach, as it gives us a sense of direction. It is a constantly evolving process.

I have written about our journey on my blog http://www.goldstonacademyfortheinsane.com

Amanda Goldston

A Day of our 'Mix and Match' effort

2008-11-23T13:50:00.004Z

When eldest came out of school at 7 we tried 'school at home' - which was very draining and proved unworkable for us,we tried being 'Autonomous' and I couldn't stand the TV / Playstation / Computer on almost all the time and threw a wobbly about 3 months in and switched all the screens off!

We have since settled to 'mix and match' : Quran, Islamic Studies and Arabic go along with our family plans - non negotiable, but anything and everything else is negotiable!

(Eldest has proved the method works as he has gained many skills eg. Woodland and Survival, Caving experitise, Leadership ( he's a Scout Leader at 15 and has completed many of their adult modules),Camping etc.. Some skills have been self taught from his interest base eg. programming, graphic and website design. Also academically he has tried bits and pieces as the interest took him : eg.sat Maths. English, and Islamic Studies GCSE's at 10 and 12, also completed a 60 point Open University course gaining a Certificate in Natural Science at 14.)

The Journal below was first put on our home education list as many members were sharing how the home ed. day pans out.Boys at this time were 12, 8 and 7.

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Youngest was up first, who re-arranged his bed to look as though he was still in there, so brothers would not follow him down! I was next up and found him in front of the computer playing 'Fate'!(conversation was brief: 'assalmaulikum' , 'waalikumsalaam' : 'washed?' , 'no' : 'had breakfast?' , 'no' : 'read Quran?' , 'no' :'then get your butt back up here!!!!' , 'aaaww!')
Other two up shortly and all washed and dressed. They sorted their own breakfast except younegst who couldn't decide till I said 'Fine, out the kitchen' and then wanted eggs and toast!

Eldest working on Quran with al Qari over the internet while middle son tidied living room.Eldest doing some english work on sites I'd put for him into bookmarks (at this time he was working towards covering the syllabus for the English exam)Youngest onto Quran reading and middle son working on a school express unit on Lions, to be added to his Africa lapbook.

Eldest worked on the english for a while then found this to 'help' ds2 for his Lion lapbook, hilarious!!I'm calling it free delivery : lion lunch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3YJUdChx8s&search=lions(the lapbooks were started after ds2 decided he wanted to record some of the information he found and also when he realised he enjoyed writing stories and summarising the documentaries he watched).

Once Quran lesson over for youngest, ds2 took over for his and youngest started on his explanation of why he didn't need to finish his Spider unit fromschool express, despite the fact he had asked for it, and in fact insisted I print it out immediately!But now, having completed a few pages, he just didn't 'feel like he wanted to' , and could he take his scooter round on the front instead, and he'd hopefully get it 'done in the next few days depending on his schedule'!!Yes, he went scootering!!

Once middle son had finished Quran, youngest also came in and they both helped with the baking,heart shaped cup cakes and a plain sponge for my brother and uncle who were visiitng later in the afternoon.Stayed on to help cook the fish and rice for lunch: lots of sharing, measuring, weighing and recipe reading!

I had a quick tidy up, ocassionally 'commandeering' the odd one for help round the house- (housework comes under life skills for us and as all contribute to the mess so all have a share in the clear-ups)

Everything done, and sat down for a rest, which was the moment ds2 was waiting for as he wanted to read.Book chosen was one we'd got a few days ago from the 'withdrawn' box at the local library.A brillaint story of a young lad named Wesley who creates his own staple crop, and founds a civilization!! all in his own back garden!http://web.syr.edu/~jjvizthu/weslandia.htm

guests arrived, mum busy in chat etc. group prayers, eating together on the floor, all help clear up

older two went off to continue with the garden ( we have had nothing done for months in the garden and kids weren't interested in doing anything tillabout 2 weeks ago when middle son wanted to know, Why didn't plants grow in some parts of Africa? why were all these people starving?so discussion started and we also used the internetrains have failed --http://www.afrol.com/articles/13298 http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=2855governments have failed --http://sify.com/news/fullstory.php?id=13885409and poverty-- because the rich are greedy: in western Kenya, fertilizer costs more than twice what it costs in France... other rich countries have not delivered the promised foreign aid necessaryhttp://www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/crosscutting/poverty.html)

Showing that it wasn't a problem that had just appeared but something that was the result of years of failure was important -actions and consequences is something that must be taught as Islamically we are answerable for what we do... lots more on economics,governments making promises they don't keep, even people failing to pay sadaqa and zakat (poor due) which is a Islamic duty, .............and then back to science and how plants grow!

Final result has been where the science is concerned we have a bunch of seeds which he is going to grow in different locations and under different conditions to see what happens. He liked my suggestion of measuring the growth as an indicator of success, and producing some sort of chart to display results!The trip to the garden center also resulted in eldest wanting to look after something in the garden so we came back a few days ago with Gourd seeds,tomatoe, carrots and herbs, and the odd flowers. All the current activity in the garden if the preparation for these seeds and plants to go in.

They stayed out till online tutor signed in , Quran sessions for all 3,(this is seperate to their Al Qari work which is more for correct pronunciation and helping in Hifz).

guests leave, and we all have snack time and cuddle up to watch Patch Adams :http://www.patchadams.com/wonderful story! and very good for high lighting the meaness of people who perceive you as being 'odd', as the one who 'doesn't fit in'

Asr prayers together, and hubby took us to Ealing Common for the fun fair.Back home for prayers, quick snacks, duaas and bed

looking back at the day and trying to see this as 'curriculum' I would say
GARDENING: Nature-- identifying flower bulbs, weeds, dead roots, grasses, digging and weeding
ECONOMICS World Trade Wealth/poverty issues
ISLAMIC STUDIES-- sunnah of eating, keeping your prommises, paying the poor due, giving extra when Allah has blessed you with wealth
SCIENCE -- plants, light, water, chlorophly
MATHS -- collecting data, presenting on chart, measuring
ENGLISH-- writing in the Lion unit, reading and comprehension, spelling
QURAN-- Tajweed and meaning
LIFE SKILLS -- housework, helping others, keeping a tidy home,
COOKERY / HOME ECONOMICSI.T. - use of net as a research tool

Alhumdulilla

The Road to Home Education

2008-11-23T12:44:00.003Z

We started Home Educating back in 2001, and this is an old article I wrote at about that time trying to give the reasons why I felt I should be home educating. However, it should be kept in mind that this article came about after a year of knowing Home Education was a legal option, a year of knowing eldest son was deeply unhappy in school and also, a year of knowng that, at that time, hubby was offering us only one academic year - 'to see how it goes'! He was very dubious about the idea of withdrawing our child from school!

But Alhumdulilla, (thanks to Allah), we're still home edding!!

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Where to begin? Picture in your mind the conversations between small boy and his mother:

5 year old boy: Mummy, I don't want to got to school
Mother: Why not sweetheart?
5 year old boy: I don't want to go mummy, I don't like it.
Mother: But you DO like it! you like your lovely teacher? Yes? and Philip and Ashley, and Sabih to play with? don't you?
5 year old boy: yeeees, ( SLOWLY!!) I suppose so.
Mother: And your teacher says you are doing so well!
5 year old boy: Yes mummy.

months later:
5 year old boy: I don't want to go to school Mummy
Mother: Why not sweetheart?
5 year old boy: I don't like it
Mother: What don't you like?
5 year old boy: I don't like it. Can I stay home with you?
Mother: I won't be at home habibi, mummy's going to work.
5 year old boy: Do you have to work mummy?
Mother: yes sweetheart, daddy can't pay all the bills alone.
5 year old boy: Tracey stays at home, why doesn't she work?
Mother: She does work!! I pay her to look after you! Until I can come home
5 year old boy: Well if you didn't pay her you'd have more money and you could stay
home.

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Where next?
I agreed to write an article to try and explain how I came to the decision of home educating, 'trying' being the operative word!! However, once I starting writing this article I realised that there were just too too many reasons and issues in that decision for me to simply putdown that it was a , b, and c, that's it, I went down the Home Education road. For my decision to make sense to me I had to backtrack to find what it was about the education I had received that I objected to, the followingis the result of that process.

Each one of us is, to some extent, a product of our past experiences, some then decide not to continue with a certain course but choose anotherpath, a path that may suit them better and hopefully be more fulfilling from many different angles. Personally, I am definitely a 'successful' product of the state: I went to school, got my 'O' levels C.S.E's I went to college and got my ' A' levels, I went to university and got my degree, B.Sc. joint honours in Mathematics and Education, and I got my Cert. Edu. then what ? I went to work as a teacher , full of committment and the joy of learning/teaching.

Now, this list of 'success' is not being thrown away, it is not being dismissed as worthless or worse, alhumdulilla for all that we are given from Allah. But it is being placed on the back seat as it should have been PART of my life as a muslimah, and there are obviously different issues in between eg. mixing/staying from home etc. but even given the ideal Islamic conditions, even then, this list should have only been PART of my person, of who I am. Somewhere in that list I lost out. What did I lose? ''I went to school, got my 'O' levels and C.S.E's'' I lost out on an Islamic environment, I lost out on being accepted for who I really was, a muslim girl looking forward to being a muslim, nothing more! I lost out every time there were anti-Islam and anti-brown/black comments and actions, I lost out every time my teachers looked at me pityingly with the thought, that was sometimes voiced ''poor girl, so bright, but will she ever make it?'' . I lost out every time a hijabed muslim girl was labelled as 'oppressed' or worse, labelled as illiterate or incapable of learning or worse.

My first day at secondary school will always remain with me. I had worn the uniform but not a knee length skirt, a pair of trousers instead. The deputy head took me for a walk round the school while she suggested I bring a skirt with me to school in my bag, change once in school and only put the trousers back on when it was home time. She also stressed there would be no need for my parents to know! 5 years later, as my O levels approached, the new headmaster called me into his offfice to say that as I was not willing to join the school community in dress, then perhaphs I shouldn't bother returning for the 6th form, as once I turned 16 he was under no legal obligation to keep me on. As an adult I have been taught the same lesson, so long as you agree with the school community then you may be a part of it. If you have your own views or choose to differ then you are not welcome.

My eldest son had singing on his timetable, which I didn't pay too much attention to, (duh!!). It turned out to be hymn singing. Assembly turned out to be prayer to a specific faith and specific idea of God. I withdrew him from both to receive from the head an astonished ''I have been Head here for 20 years and had Moslems go through before, no one has ever asked for anything before!''). ( to be fair he did come round to the idea of a free room for lunch time salah, no communal showers after swimming, swimming dress will cover navel to knee but by then I felt like I had at 16 standing in the heads office, not 'fitting in'!)

''I went to college and got my ' A' levels'': again I lost out on the Islamic lifestyle, the Islamic society and the Juma get together, helped for a while. but by now I had learned success was exams, success was heading off to university, success was career. What I should have been learning was Islamic position of women and motherhood. What I should have been learning was to fight for my rights. My view of Islam was the mad muslims who were fundamentalists and extremisists and the 'normal' muslims like us who prayed salah and read Quran, went to haj if they could, and apart from that generally fitted into a modern lifestyle. I lost out on the bigger picture, the UMMAH and my responsibility to it. I lost out for my future children, who would be nannied and bottlefed and carted around to carers whilst mummy pursued this wonderful career, where she had 'real' resposibility and 'real' reward of money.

''I went to university and got my degree'' Ironically it was at university that i first learned more about Islam! Alhumdullila it was here that my belief and faith strengthened and ' trust in Allah' and 'ask for help from Allah' were daily thoughts and emotions. Unfortunately, the lack of self esteem regarding women's position in Islam and motherhood in Islam did not shift till much later, I never learnt the true facts till much later through reading and research, of what Islam actually says regarding them, and what Islam also requires from mothers. For various reasons uni. was a difficult stressful time, often alone, mostly ostracized, but Islamically it was salvation! it turned my mind to Allah SWT, and a desperate desire to visit Makka and Medina.

Family life is of the utmost importance, Islam places a very heavy emphasis on it for that reason. A friend of mine uses the motto 'children learn what they live' from the poem by D L Nolte, Society of Childhood Education. Many children today who are 'state' children and I know from my own 'state' childhood we learn very little about the Deen, we are constantly bombarded with the rotten eggs of the muslim world whilst at the same time being told how wonderful the 'civilised' world is and how much they have achieved because of their civilisation. There are some wondeful articles about which show how childrens minds are bullied into viewing Islam in the worst possible light and the rest in the best possible light!!

Following university I went to teach in Jeddah, staying for 3 years. Part of my flight to Jeddah was that what I had learnt I could NOT live by, and flight was needed! Here I came thinking I would find the best possible of all the world!! What did i find? Some good, some compassion, some love but also racism from muslim to muslim, importance of skin colour, one above the other, cultural baggage left, right, and centre!Not that different from anywhere else!
Back to where we grew up and back to the life of a modern muslimah. Riba? What's that? Haraam? Why? Social system in Islam? Economic system in Islam?Who? What? When? Where?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A VERY SLOW AWAKENING!!! alhumdulilla!! Life is not about getting knowledge of this world, knowledge by subject, Islam is not madressa hour on Friday afternoon, Islam is not learn the Quran and Salah and you are free! Islam is not live now, just one chance! Not material success and not academic success. Islam is so much more! Islam is a lifestyle, day in, day out, breathe in, breathe out, inshaAllah. That is the reason for Home Educaitng!Wanting my children NOT to go down the one route I went, wanting better for them in knowledge of Deen, better for them in self concepts,better for them in understanding of today's world and wanting better for then in dealing with today's world....... Wanting for them to learn their COMPLETE Deen, and wanting for them to be Complete individuals! Home education can help us make Islam a daily, hourly thing and that's why, the basic reason, why I want to home educate!

May Allah SWT guide all believers to the siratum mustakeen, ameen.

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Where are we now?

Currently Home Ed. seems to have come to an end for eldest as he was accepted at College to follow a Graphics Design course this September,though in reality HE continues! eg. he still joined 11 year old for a visit to a Drawing workshop and did in fact use it as part of his next project at College.

Younger children have never been to school - they are currently 11 and 9, (well to be accurate 9 year old did try school - he chose to come out again after 5 days!) and we follow a mix and match effort with them too - some bits are their choices, some bits stem off suggestions from me or someone we know, and basics on the Religion front are guided by me though they can negotiate when, where and how. It's a mix, and sometimes it's a mess, but it works!

Final comment for Home Education? TRY IT!

http://www.islamichomeeducation.co.uk/

http://welovehomeed2.blogspot.com/ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/homeeducatorsandukmuslims/

Home-educating a free-range, mixed-age brood

2008-11-17T09:32:00.002Z

The ages of my children, in descending order, are 19, 18, 16, 6, and nearly 2. I home educate them all using the autonomous method, also known as unschooling. This article is about how that works.

So, obviously, I can’t spend all my time helping just one child to learn, or even all my time helping all my children to learn. I forgot to add that I’m a single mother, so there’s the house to run, meals to prepare, shopping to get and so on and I’m a writer too. We don’t all sit around the kitchen table pouring over or ploughing through coursework.

Is coursework the best kind of learning, anyway? This is the moot point. If you want to build a portfolio of educational certificates in order to help you find a job, then some coursework is necessary for that. But for actual learning – well, how do we really learn? How does that function work?

It usually starts with curiosity. Very young children are naturally extremely curious people. If allowed, they like to crawl or toddle around exploring, touching, tasting, listening and experimenting with their environment. If you watch a toddling child, you can actually see it carrying out experiments all the time: trying different things, seeing what the results are. Testing their ideas and learning from the results.

Most schools thwart this vital learning process by seeking to take control and direct it. The child stops experimenting, stops questioning. The best kind of educational provision allows exploration and encourage experimentation. Who are we to say what a child should learn? Curiosity is a fragile thing – if you override it, it switches off. Sometimes, permanently.

The best learning happens when we question things, when we burn to find answers and when we’re free to do both.

Let’s go back to the thing about portfolios and jobs. Is having a job the best way of earning money? For some people it might be, but for many it’s a soul-destroying way of life. Working for someone else, day in, day out, hoping for a promotion, seeing the bosses take all the profit. I know a lot of people who feel they could do a better job of running their company than the people in charge, but they daren’t branch out on their own because they’ve got a mortgage or rent and rent and debts to pay.

But imagine if, instead of school, you’d had a childhood full of natural learning in which you were free to find out what you were really good at and stick at it obsessively (we are naturally obsessive creatures) until you became an artisan. Imagine you never got used to a daily schedule, with measured portions of work but instead you liked to work non-stop on projects until you finished them and that you really enjoyed that work and could be well paid for it.

Imagine you had the confidence to intrinsically know when you were really good at something by virtue of the thousands of hours you’d been free to invest in it and from the peer group feedback you’d been free to elicit for yourself, when you felt ready to do so.

Then you wouldn’t need to go to an employer for a job to be able to pay your bills. You wouldn’t need your portfolio of certificates and you wouldn’t need to spend most of your time, until adulthood, in educational institutions learning what someone else decided you should learn, in the way they decided you should learn it. You would start your working life in credit, not in debt and you would fill your portfolio with examples of your success.

That’s not the outcome for all unschooled children, but it’s a likely alternative to the mainstream and of course, they’re not precluded from doing coursework or taking exams if that’s what they want to do.

My older three children haven’t pursued qualifications up to press. My older son (19) is gearing up to set up his own business, doing what he’s been so good at for so long: building, maintaining and repairing IT systems. His 18 year old brother is as yet undecided whether to join him in this, or to develop his work in translation and interpreting – languages being his thing.

They choose to spend most of their time learning and developing their skills and ideas. I don’t have to stand over them. Indeed, they wouldn’t thank me for doing so. All three of the older children have always been very independent learners. Over the years, I’ve provided tutors, books, equipment, transport and (when possible) funds for what they’ve wanted to do and I still do that.

I also provide a sounding board for their theories and – not to be underestimated – I stand as a protector of their freedom and space to live their own lives. I provide stability: the deep roots of a solid foundation from which they can safely grow in whatever direction and shape is best for them.

I’m the person they’re trying to explain their theories to, while I’m stirring a pan or cleaning a floor. Sometimes you can’t understand something properly until you’ve explained it to someone else. I’m the person they’re often brainstorming with while they’re trying to work out how to do something, or what to do for the best – though they use their siblings and friends for that too. I’m the person who says: “Yes, you can do that. I don’t see why you shouldn’t. Let’s work out how you could do it,” or sometimes just: “Let me know if you need help,” is enough.

They come and find me when they need me and I’m usually available to them, because I think older children – young adults – still need that kind of parental relationship. Perhaps we all do.

Our six year-old is learning all the time, but so is the baby too. In a natural, healthy environment, that’s what people do. But with the six year-old, it’s very definite, deliberate learning on her part. She says: “I want to learn this,” and she learns it, often with my help. She wants to learn to read and is making good progress in that respect. The reason she wants to learn is not because anyone has persuaded her that it’s a useful skill, but because she sees the rest of us benefiting from it and she struggles with the activities of her choice (computer games, websites, comics, maps) without it.

Like her older siblings, she comes to find me if she needs help with something or wants to share something, both of which happen frequently. Whenever possible I stop what I was doing and go to accede to her request. She doesn’t always need my help: sometimes one of her siblings is a better person for the job, or sometimes she’d rather play or work something out by herself.

The baby is free to roam around the house and, in good weather, the garden. I make the environment safe for her and there are many books and toys around. She often brings a story for me to read to her and I make it a priority to stop what I’m doing and to sit down with her and the book. How else will she want to be literate, if she doesn’t learn about the treasure and pleasure to be found in a book?

They both have free access to art equipment too, and computers, games and puzzles. Lyddie asks questions all the time, and isn’t scared to stop me when I’ve answered too much, or to challenge my replies. Nor am I scared to say: “I don’t know. Let’s go and find out,” to anything. I’m only her mother, not an oracle. But I do see it as my parental duty to help her find the answers she needs.

And that’s how we live here. Our days are free-flowing, not usually pre-planned. Each one is different; each hour is different. We do what we want and also what we need to do, to enable us to live the way we want to live. Home education frees us from structure and schedule, and from other people’s ideas about the way we’re supposed to do things and in our situation, this has had some very happy and healthy results for all concerned.

By Gill Kilner

http://gillkilner.blogspot.com/

Alphabet 'work'

2008-11-06T21:00:00.004Z

One of the strangest things about autonomous learning, I’ve found, is the frequency with which children actually ask (beg, sometimes!) to do things that most of us autonomous home educators would steer well clear of - real ’schooly’ things. But then is the reason that they have never been put off schooly things because they’re done on their own terms - when and how they like, for as long or as little as they like? I think so, and I love the freedom of being able to say ‘ok, you don’t want to finish? that’s fine - do you want to finish it another time, or do you want me to finish it for you?’. There’s no pressure - it can just be fun.

A while ago our 5yo had been asking to make an alphabet frieze for sometime now - she doesn’t like having to ask things and was very into writing little notes and lists at the time but fed up of asking us, not only how to spell words, but also if we would write the letters for her to copy (she wasn’t confident enough to get the letters the right way round etc. yet). So she wanted something on the wall she could refer to whenever she wanted (we already had a number line used for similar purposes and made in a similar way!). Our 3.5yo hadn’t outright said she wanted to learn her letters, but seemed to be very interested in letters at the time and has always loved projects with a passion. So we made this:

I printed all the letters out off the computer for them to colour in and cut out (they both were very into cutting and colouring at the time) and then my cousin (who was staying with us) drew them pictures requested by them that began with the letters they were in charge of colouring in. So our 5yo did the posters with ABC, JKL, STU and VWX, each time thinking up pictures that she wanted drawn for her letters. Our 3.5yo did DEF, GHI, MNO, PQR and YZ and chose from a selection of pictures that her big sister had thought up for her. Our 5yo wasn’t interested in doing any writing for under the pictures, but our 3.5yo wanted to so I wrote them for her to copy and she did an incredible job! You might be able to just about read her ’pig’ and ‘queen’ but she also had a go at ‘mouse’ and ‘net’.

Our 5yo, our little butterfly, didn’t have the stamina to do much of it, and only did one poster per session (it took about three sessions, but my cousin and I kept saying we were happy to finish it for them if they got tired) whereas our 3.5yo, our attention span queen, did two and then only stopped because her big sister had started doing something that interested her more! Our 3.5yo was disappointed when it was all finished and wanted to do another one, but we’d run out of wall space so her Grandma suggested she make a poster with her name on it and lots of other things that start with A:

She seemed, at the time, to see ‘A’ as her name, so I was keen on the poster idea to help her realise that there’s more to her name than just ‘A’ and also that there are other words that start with ‘her letter’. I knew she would work this out anyway, given time, but she wanted to do the poster, so we did it! Obviously she could have done it anyway, even if there had been no tangible 'educational benefit' to it. She also, as you can see, had a go at writing some of the words herself and has done a fantastic job :-)

This still wasn’t enough for her though, so she then started working on an alphabet book, along the same lines as the frieze and coloured all the pictures and the letters before she ran out of steam. She’d made books like this before and will spend, quite literally, hours on them at a time. Our 5yo isn’t really a project person so it makes for a pleasant change to work with a child who learns in such a different way.

In the couple of weeks after making the frieze, our 5yo spent a lot of time looking at the frieze and then persuading us all to sing the ABC song with her - she obviously knows it very well, but our 3.5yo doesn’t so automatically got a lot of practice at the names of the letters and the order they come in. All on their terms, in their own time, in their own way, when they want and for as long or as little as they want. And most people in our culture don’t believe children will learn anything if they’re not taught it - pah!

It's all about the spin...

2008-11-06T19:58:00.005Z

Monster and Teeny (who aren’t really called that!) are an 8 year old boy and a 6 year old girl who have never been to school or nursery and are autonomously home educating themselves and us too! This is a blogpost I wrote back in 2007 on our sometimes neglected home ed blog which can be found at www.monsterteeny.blogsome.com .

It’s all about the spin…

But then I guess you already knew that. In much the same way as politicians use spin to tell us what we want to hear, spin is used to sell you things you don’t actually want or need. I think one of the areas that spin is used the most is Education. And I utterly include Home Education in that sentence. I regularly use spin to convince people of the benefits of Home Education - it’s not that I don’t think what I am saying is true, or that I am trying to market Home Education to people particularly but a bit of spin does allow us to get on with what we want to do, how we want to do it while reassuring people enough that we are not members of some weird cult or abusing our children and glossing over some of the less traditional ideas we have.

We’re not known to the LEA and I would defend to great lengths our right to remain unknown, after that our right to educate Monster and Teeny in the way we see fit without visits to our home, meetings with the children, presentations or ‘proof’ of our educational provision. However, if I had to do it I know I could. I know I could fairly easily convince an LEA bod that we ticked all of their boxes and then some. I could spin what Monster and Teeny spend one morning a week doing, without any intervention or guidance from me, into encompassing every area of the National Curriculum. Yes, ladies and gentlemen without the aid of a single workbook, curriculum, lapbook or even time spent sitting round a table, let alone a safety net I could fit what we do into boxes, label it, colour code it, timetable-er-ize it and present it, neatly packaged into bite sized gift wrapped chunks of spin, satisfying anyone that we were providing that all important age, aptitude and ability appropriate education.

Long, long ago when I was still full of questions about Home Education worked, full of doubts about how I would possibly cover every ’subject’ let alone deal with issues like pythagorus someone gave me an example of how they spent their morning:

"We decide to do some baking so we get out a recipe book and read the ingredients list, writing down our shopping list of items we need to buy. We walk to the local shop where we purchase the items on our list, having added up the total and worked out what change we will get. We stopped at the park on the way home for a play on the slide and swings to run off some energy playing with some other children we met there.

Once home we weighed out out the ingredients, followed the recipe and baked our cake. When it had cooled we iced and decorated it."

In just that brief exercise you have your literacy (reading, writing) numeracy (weighing out, paying) physical exercise (walking and playing in the park) socialisation (with other children in the park) science (baking - adding ingredients together to change form, adding heat from the oven to cook) and art (cake decoration). Add in all the conversations you’ll no doubt have along the way, maybe some observation about the weather, the wildlife you might happen across in the park, some discussion and negotiation about what recipe to use for your cake, what colour to ice it, some long words chucking in educational terms and a sprinkling of photographs of children doing the writing, baking, running in the park, icing the cake and there you have a near perfect example of activities that meet all the criteria of even the most picky of inspectors.

Even with our autonomous approach if I wanted to I could easily pick out examples of everything the children do which meet the ’standards’ required. This despite the fact everything they do is at their own volition with me occassionally suggesting or offering or introducing ideas and activities. I could spin so many of the things we do into ‘projects’ or ’studies’ along with supplying huge photographic evidence, reading lists of the many books we have, art inspired by it, supplemented with the many and varied conversations we have - a perfect example of this recently would be our chick hatching. Which has spawned all sorts of activities, knowledge about bird life cycles and development, chick inspired art, plenty of practical animal caring and rearing experience, learning about their needs, alternative ways in which chicks are reared and treated. Monster narrated a piece to go in our local HE newsletter about the chicks hatching and between them they came up with the idea of a competition to name our fifth chick which they judged and picked a winner for. In very traditional ‘which came first?’ mode clearly if we’d not introduced the eggs and the incubator into the house this would never have come about but that was all we did - all of the ensuing developments from the chicks hatching to the various inspired activities the children have done since happened without our direction or interferance. But if I needed to I could rewrite that to perfectly document our chicken and egg insprired curriculum for the Summer Term at MonsterTeeny Home School and present it with lesson plans, timetabled schedules of what we did when and have it all look very contrived and successful.

Whenever I talk to people about Home Education, which is pretty darn regularly, they start off with all sorts of concerns / questions / issues. Gradually by way of calm, contained utter belief in what we’re doing I am able to answer all of those questions. Yes, we socialise, yes the children are learning, they are happy, healthy, inquisitive, intelligent, articulate little people with passions, interests, plenty to talk about, excellent communication skills and questioning, challenging minds, we are providing them with an education - depending on how I choose to spin it which at will certainly not fall short of what they would receive in school, with the right spin I can demonstrate that we cover every topics taught in school, just in baking that cake and walking to the park. What I find myself frequently left with as the last resort question is ‘wouldn’t it be easier for you if they were in school?’ because once you remove the potential damage to the children either educationally or socially that is about all you are left with. Clearly I have my days when the idea of waving them off with a lunchbox for seven hours at 9am would be really quite attractive, but I know I’d be missing them dreadfully by about 9.30am. One of the best things about Home Education for me has been doing all the great stuff I’d have loved to have done as a child but couldn’t because I was in school. Keeping tadpoles, hatching chicks, going to Legoland during term time when you don’t queue for one hour for every ride but instead can manage 6 rides in one hour, walking through the same woods once a week watching the seasons change, sitting on the beach during a surprise hot spell in April, splashing in the puddles during a surprise wet spell in May, spending an entire afternoon making animated plasticine figures, curling up with bowls of popcorn and watching 4 films back to back, driving a 300 miles round trip to attend a birthday party for an afternoon. I’ve never been so free, I’ve never had so much fun - this to me is what childhood should be about and I am just so lucky to be getting to have another go at it as a grown up and spending it with the amazing, fascinating, interesting, wonderful people on the journey with me still enjoying their first crack at childhood. And with a little bit of creativity it is possible to make all this fit into the little boxes we are required to fit it into. Result

How to contribute stories

2008-11-06T15:00:00.001Z

To contribute stories of home education (parents and/or children), please send an email to homeeducationstoriesuk@gmail.com with:

1. a title for your story
2. your story (either clearly marked as such in the body of your email, or attached as a Word doc.)
3. your name as you'd like it to appear (if you want it to appear)
4. the topics you suggest we list it under - don't worry if you think it belongs in a category we haven't got listed already as we hope our topic list will grow as our bank of stories grows.

Wondering what to write about?
Anything that might interest someone wanting to know more about how home education works for different families - either someone new to home education, wanting to learn more about how it really works for families before leaping in themselves, or families already doing it but wanting more ideas.

Some ideas: how and when your child learnt to read; the story of when you deregistered your child; about your local home ed group and what you do there; about how you go about home educating your child with SEN; about your experiences with your LA; about the approach you take as a family; about an activity you've stumbled upon as a family that you'd like to share. This list isn't complete though...we can keep adding to it!

Does it need to be something new?
No. Maybe you've got an old blog post that you think would help other families. Or maybe you remember writing an email to a friend when you first started home educating and you think it would be interesting to other families. Your family's education philosophy, if you've written one, might be something that would help other HEors. Or write something from scratch if you like. Whatever you prefer!

How long should it be?
As long or as short as you like - this isn't intended to be published as a book or a journal, so there's no need for a word limit. Bear in mind,though, that very long stories may not be so easy to read, but don't leave things out just to make it short if everything is important to the story. I'm happy to edit things if you like, or leave it be if you'd prefer. It doesn't need to be perfect either - just interesting or helpful!

Can I include a link to my website in my story?
Yes please! This website is meant to be a support for parents, so links to websites relevant to the stories would be a wonderful way to provide pointers to parents for even more support.