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Home education on Quib.ly

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A new kid in town?

Quibly logo parenting technology

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.)

crafts from weekendboxclub

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.

The economics of home education – a personal point of view.

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One of the odd things about home education is how many myths surround it. For example, there is often this theory that only the rich can do it, that it’s out of reach of ordinary families as they can’t afford for one parent not to work. In my experience that’s just not true, though certainly life was more luxurious with one child and two salaries 😉

The thing is that much of home education can be done on a budget. And as with everything in life, it depends on your priorities. When we both worked and the then two children were in Montessori school *that* was costing us a fortune. Prior to the school, childcare for Big as a baby and toddler took a very sizeable chunk out of my wage. No call for childcare means that those wages aren’t missed quite so much.

School, even state school, comes with overheads that home education doesn’t. There’s no uniform list for children at home, no expensive PE kit that all needs labels so that it doesn’t disappear. We don’t have to fork out for school trips or holidays which as I understand it can cost hundreds for one child. All of these savings can be offset against the unearned salary, if that makes any sense.

Obviously you can spend as much as you like on educational resources. But you can also use ebay, secondhand books, free downloads and so on. In the past we’ve had national trust membership from Tesco vouchers, I scour charity shops for children’s novels, and many online resources like mathletics do home ed discounts – it’s always worth asking. And I forgot the many free ones – one of the widest ranging probably being the BBC education stuff (thanks Jan), incredible amount of things there. So we do lots of historical outings to National Trust or English Heritage properties to get value for money out of membership, and club together with other families from time to time to pool our knowledge, reducing our need for specialist input.

Other cutprice offerings – worth checking if your local area has a county music service. Big is getting bassoon lessons for £43 a term, plus a bassoon free on loan, definitely not to be sniffed at. And if you’ve any other hints or tips to share, I’d love to hear them.

The whole early years/ school age thing and home education, with a book review.

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Increasingly via twitter I’m getting contacted about home education. This is good. I’m glad that ppl have somewhere to reach out to. When I was considering it for Big, all those years ago, my online answers came courtesy of the Muddlepuddle, now Early Years, yahoo group. That group put me in touch with a fantastic bunch of ppl, many of whom I’m still in touch with daily, and whose children are my children’s closest friends.

So I’m all for online solutions. But sometimes it’s difficult to fit it all in a tweet. I thought maybe a blogpost (or two) might help instead.

Ppl often ask what their responsibilities are with regard to curriculum or standards. And actually, there aren’t any. That legal definition, of an education suitable to age, ability and aptitude, doesn’t specify a curriculum that needs to be followed, and in fact private schools don’t have to follow the National Curriculum either. I think many home educators do keep an eye on it, as if you have to satisfy informal enquiries from your local authority it’s can be easier if you’ve some idea of what your children might be doing in school and where they stand in relation to it all. But I don’t know anyone who follows it slavishly really, and often there are a variety of pick and mix approaches even within one family.

Of course, faced with days and days of entertaining and educating children ahead of you, lack of curriculum can be rather intimidating. There are, however, a wide variety of approaches out there, just waiting for you to google and find them. If you like reading aloud, you can go the Sonlight way (it’s described as a Christian literature based curriculum. If you aren’t religious it is possible to miss out the very Christian bits, worth checking it out anyway.) There’s also Five in a row – which works around a classic children’s book which you read every day for five days in a row, and then build other activities around the story.

Recently I was contacted by Core Knowledge, a Civitas project, offering me a copy of their Resource book, What your year 1 child needs to know, to review. (buy from amazon ) It’s based on an American resource, which does show to some extent, but adjusted to be compatible with the National Curriculum targets in this country. I found the section on learning to read a bit odd – it doesn’t actually offer a method, instead assuming that the reader will be familiar with the approach. However, there are lots of dedicated resources for learning to read, and if the book was being used by a school using parent it would certainly supplement the school approach well.

What I did like, a lot, were the stories, poems and literary resources that take up a lot of the book. There are lots of familiar classics, with the proper drawings, and it’s a great resource of the type of thing that is good for children around this age. Readalouds and so on, great things for sharing. And the book goes on with resources and activities for history, geography, science, music, maths and visual arts. I’m not sure it would be a complete home education bible as it were for year 1, but it certainly would give the unsure parent something to base their own ideas around, and fill the days when inspiration doesn’t strike.

Of course, it’s a very traditional approach, and if you prefer unschooling, Montessori or waldorf you will want to look elsewhere (if you’re interested in further resources/ information on those areas please stick me a comment in so that I know to wax lyrical at some point in the future 😉 ). But as a starting point for what to consider as base knowledge, it’s pretty comprehensive, and definitely worth the £12 or so that’s being charged for it. I believe that Core Knowledge are going to be offering the chance to win a copy or two, and as soon as I have the full details on that, I’ll update the post and share on twitter.

Hannibal returns.

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Years ago, when I was a much younger and less experienced parent (and actually thought there might be a Right Way to do things, that only I didn’t know) Big went to nursery. It was a very good nursery. The staff cared very much about the children, and they were all very calm, highly qualified and experienced. They taught me a lot about child rearing, some of which I’ve now decided I don’t really agree with, but all in all, it was useful.

One of the things I learnt early on is that it’s highly embarrassing if it’s your child doing the naughty thing. Not that naughty is a word the nursery, or we, use. But it’s upsetting to be called in for chats at the end of the day because your darling offspring has taken to sinking her teeth into another child.

It happened in batches every so often and always that one child. He was her best friend – I got to be very good friends with his mother, and we used to do pick up runs, or even have the children on sleepovers from around 2 iirc. The nursery were at a loss as to why she was doing it – it didn’t seem to be in anger, and didn’t fit any of the patterns they were familiar with, and the only answer they could come up when redirection etc didn’t work was to split them up. Which meant we had two unhappy children 🙁 His mother nicknamed Big Hannibal, which seemed only fair tbh.

Eventually she just stopped doing it, and we all breathed a sigh of relief, particularly her little friend I suspect.

And all of this came back to mind this week, when Small screamed suddenly as Smallest quietly sank her teeth into his (slightly sunburnt) arm. She left a fairly substantial mark, and really did make him cry, and I got her to hug him and say sorry, and then had a long chat with dp about it all.

We think we may have sussed it now. We think it’s because she can’t get his attention any other way. Small has a one track mind – if he’s in the middle of doing something, it’s very difficult to get his attention. Smallest can’t call out his name, or lay a hand on his shoulder as I often do, so we think she’s calmly decided that sinking teeth in works well. And I think the answer is that he’s going to have to learn to notice when she wants him, and head off the nipping at source. Which will be very good for him.

Things I haven’t done to resolve this issue include biting her (seriously, ppl have recommended that in the past. It’s so far past wrong that we won’t discuss it any further), shouting at her, telling her off, sitting her in time out or rapping her knuckles or bottom (again, recommended by others. Sigh.) Instead I’ve shown her that Small is sad, reminded her to be gentle and shown her how to hug him and stroke his arm to get his attention.

And I’m now wondering if it was a similar thing with Big. Perhaps her little friend was just busy and wasn’t giving her the attention she felt she deserved. I know we’ll never know, but it’s an interesting thing to ponder on.

Have you ever been the parent of the child causing problems? What’s your reaction or solution?

Learning to read – a carnival!

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So sorry this has taken me so long to post.

without any further ado…

Here’s Katie from Outside the Box with her Change makes you wanna hustle post about different approaches for different children.

Drool over the absolute gorgeousness that is Chris’s post on the subject, Ready to Read, Something for the weekend. (Seriously, I felt inadequate trying to blog about the topic after I read this one. I need a better camera at the very least!)

And then take in the wise words from TbirdAnni who knows that not every child just gets it from the start: When words are an uphill struggle. Great tips and encouragement from someone who has experienced dyslexia from both sides of the fence as it were.

Katherine at Teknohippy shares how the process worked for her daughter E in E learnt to read while Zoe isn’t quite sure she’s doing it right – To read or not to read?.

Maggie from RedTedArt shared a fab crafty post sneaking letters into baking, or is that the other way around? Book and Cook – Alphabet Book while Carol tells us about four different children enjoying Real Reading.

Tasha reminded me of her Book Week posts – Tuesday was a whole day of learning to read posts, so check the round up while Ali from Fantastic Reads shared her memories of learning to read and the books that inspired her

Rachel from Midlife Singlemum shares her thoughts on the deeper importance of sharing stories at bedtime.

And my own post on it all? All I know is it’s different every time. But I have a plan. Learning to read, take three.

If I’ve managed to lose anyone’s post I grovel and abase myself hugely, and if you remind me, I’ll oh so happily add it in. Hope it’s of some use to ppl and thank you to everyone who contributed.