A semi structured approach to home education

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

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/13298http://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

Alphabet 'work'

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...

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