On buying home education curriculum resources.

I’ve been quite proud that despite the fact we’ve got piles of curriculum style resources around the house, Smallest and Tigerboy have largely been unschooled so far. However, right at the moment I’m a little concerned with how screen focused they are both getting, and I want to do something about that.
I also want to be sure that I’m aware of the sort of topics that are being covered in school – I’m conscious that Smallest goes through phases of being very interested in school, and if at some point she wants to go in, I want her to have the background knowledge of her peers. (Yes, I know that sounds a little odd, and certainly if your children don’t go in to school until much later it won’t be a factor – it didn’t hurt Big at all – but I think there’s a possibility that Smallest will want to try primary and I think it would make more of a difference then.)
So, rightly or wrongly, I found myself on the Book People this morning. It wasn’t my fault – they enticed me in with a sale leaflet that arrived this morning. And they had these rather fab DK Everything I need to know for school packs. 30 books in each pack, 29.99 per pack, free delivery. (This handy affiliate link will take you right there.
No, I couldn’t resist either. I went for the younger and the older sets after a quick chat with Tim, and my current plan, having discussed with Smallest is that we’ll spend around an hour a day after breakfast doing topic-y stuff, although obviously if there’s anything that really sparks their interest we can dive deeper. I haven’t quite worked out what form that hour will take, I’ll see what I think when I actually get the books. And of course, we already have lots of other resources, like songbird phonics and Walker story book collection
.
Past experience of myself, my children and home education tells me that as the weather improves and we can get out and about more our use of any resources will drop off, but if it gets us through to March I’m going to count this as money well spent. Of course we’ve still got Reading Eggs, Mathletics and Muzzy which are online, so they will be online sometimes as well.
If I bump up our arts and crafts too, ensure that we’ve got at least one home education group outing a week, as well as the usual swimming, library, music and so on we should be in pretty good shape for the rest of winter and the beginning of spring.
Tell me, does the turn of the year spark new plans for your home education or is it just me?