As regular readers here will know, we’ve approached this education/ childcare lark in a number of ways over the years. (Wow, if that isn’t a phrase guaranteed to make me feel old!) We started with Big in nursery 4 hours a day, 5 days a week at the age of 14 weeks while I rushed back to work half time. The hours changed and increased gradually until she was there 4 days a week by the age of 2. That worked reasonably well for us until suddenly at 2 1/2 the nursery switched from being a wonderful place where children were looked after to a place preparing them for school. And preparing them for school meant having them queue up and wait in line for a few minutes with teacher 🙁
Given that I was on the parent committee there and I’d already announced our intention to home educate, Big was often excused from these activities. I well remember one of the staff explaining that they knew I “did things with her” but that the activities were designed to encourage the parents who didn’t do stuff. With their 3 year olds this was.
What sort of stuff? One of the first things that she brought home was an alphabet book. There was a doublepage spread per letter, and they were encouraged to look for pictures to stick in the book. One parent I knew stayed up very late one evening filling the book in, thus missing the point extremely comprehensively I think you’ll agree.
And we already read together and talked about letters, as well as all sorts of other activities. And I was looking into home education groups and other stuff. I’m not sure when I started going to a group – rather think I was pregnant with Small, and that it coincided roughly with Barbara and co moving to Sheffield, so perhaps that puts it around Big’s third birthday.
I was following the standard involved parent pattern. Doing research into educational establishments, laying the groundwork for my child to get a place. Making the right friends, moving in the right circles.
But I was going to home educate – you’d already read that.
Yes, and I’m saying that preparing to home educate has, in some ways, become very similar to preparing to send your child to school. We try to make the right connections. Read the right books. Decide which home education path we are preparing to follow – will we buy a curriculum from sonlight, nip down WHSmiths for a pile of books, handcraft our own montessori materials, or become an unschooler and make sure the house is packed to the rafters with encyclopeadias and easy to read chapter books?
It’s just as much of a con as leaping through the hoops to get into the right school – I’m saying that we con ourselves that is. Perhaps it’s just a part of human nature that we like to believe that we can prepare and plan for the way ahead, and yet we’ve no real idea where we’ll be a year or two down the line. Plans are not carved in stone and they flex and change. Perhaps your child didn’t like the curriculum you’d bought and you feel nagged by the untouched books in the corner of the room. Or your unschooler is bored and what’s more, discovers she likes to fill in workbooks. [Quick aside, if they want the books, that’s still autonomy!]
Eclectic is a good word. And relaxed is another. Flexi-schooling works well for some ppl, and I know families who home educate while other children are at school. The important part in all of this is that it has to work for all of you, at this time. Of course, the definition of work for you differs from family to family as well, but basically, when it comes down to it you – the one who is there day in day out – have to feel comfortable with it. There is no point in crying yourself to sleep over education, it won’t get your family anywhere.
Now, I’m not entirely sure where I was going with all of this, and I’m definitely not sure I’ve got there. But I’ve other things to do tonight, and my offspring will be home soon, so that will have to do for now. I’m blaming Gill. Her recent series of myths have inspired me to some serious thinking. 🙂
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