A new kid in town?
There’s a new parenting website in town, but this one is a bit different to the mum focussed networks that seem to be all over the place. (Not that I’m saying mum focussed networks or bad, but does mean that there is room for alternatives!) Quib.ly is a membership site that focuses on parenting and technology by allowing members to ask and answer questions. There are sections on Child behaviour, development, education but also on apps, social media and gaming. There’s a good buzz of thought provoking discussion – I enjoyed a thread last week on whether kindles are good to help reluctant readers.
Education and home education
Education is always a large part of the equation in child rearing and Quib.ly has a great education section. There have been a number of discussions about home education, which has been great to see – I’m all for promoting alternatives to the mainstream school system, as regular readers will be aware.
Irregular readers may have somehow missed that we home educate, so I’ll just quickly bring them up to date 😉
I’ve four children. Big is 13 and attended nursery from very small, then had a few years at home, 3 years flexi school at a Montessori school and has been back home for the last 4 years. We are currently looking at how best to prepare her for the world of work in terms of whether she should work for qualifications at home, what qualifications those would be, or whether work experience and a portfolio are better for her.
Small is 10. He did the same 3 years flexi attending Montessori, starting in the toddler room at 2 1/2, and working through to the elementary room. He is a very different child to Big in terms of education, being almost entirely self contained. He taught himself to read despite the best efforts of his montessori directress, as he ignored all the resources available to him in the children’s room, then went from illiterate to Harry Potter in four months at the age of 5. He is now mainly educated using online resources, and is working way above his age in maths and IT, and comfortably at his age in other subjects (not that I break all education down into subjects, but it’s easy to talk about it that way.)
Smallest is three. I don’t really do anything formal with her – we read a lot of picture books and the occasional chapter book, do craft and art and gardening, swimming lessons and she spends a lot of time educating herself with the aid of the cbeebies website, her kidzstar tablet and her older siblings.
Tigerboy gets to tag along for all of the above 🙂
As it may be apparent, I’m not really a home *schooling* parent. Education is done in a child focussed way, but largely as part of life. And it’s great to see a wide variety of approaches to education – and really good to find a site where all of this can be discussed.
There’s also going to be a twitter party.
On Thursday 20 June at 11am BST (that’s this thursday), Quib.ly will be hosting a Twitter chat to explore home schooling/ education. We hope to demystify and bust some myths for those curious (and maybe even sceptical) about it all, celebrate the successes of homeschooling families and discuss all the tools and techniques that can make homeschooling, flexischooling and unschooling a positive experience for many families.
To get involved, follow @quibly and use the hashtag #QuiblyQs – I’ll be there – hope to see you too.
Disclosure: this post has been sponsored by Quib.ly. As always, opinions remain my own.
I’ve actually started looking at this as school is still proving difficult for my son, but he is not keen!
I’m glad that there are so many resources available to help parents make home schooling a positive option 🙂
It’s getting better all the time. Wide variety of resources and support groups out there, and I think people are more aware of home education as a realistic alternative, which is great to see.