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home schooling

Why we home educate in the holidays

30th July 2018 by Jax Blunt 9 Comments

I tweeted the other day about how Tigerboy was enjoying a trial on Doodlemaths and someone replied to ask if that meant we didn’t have holidays. And the honest answer is, we don’t, really.

Over the years, we’ve drifted from a more structured home education approach with some very obvious curriculum related box ticking, to a much more unschooling approach. If you’ve not come across the topic of unschooling before, it might seem like a really odd word – there are some great resources on it out there, like Sandra Dodd or I’m going to try to explain what it means to me.

What it means to me is that I don’t separate off education from life, particularly for the children. So I don’t put learning in a box, and insist on it getting done in a particular way, or at a particular time or split it up into subjects and demand that some are more important than others and have to be done in a particular way.

That’s a really negative way to explain unschooling. Hm. Let’s try that again.

Children are born as little learning machines. It’s what they are designed to do. And as long as you don’t get in the way too much, they will do it all the time. In fact, it’s one of the difficulties schools and teachers have to deal with, that they don’t necessarily want to learn the thing you’re trying to teach that particular day, they might be way more interested in something else that doesn’t fit into the plan.

Maria Montessori talked about this, saying play is the work of the child. Play is how they explore, and as long as they have control over it, they’ll just keep on doing it.

So how do they learn specific things like reading/writing/’rithmetic – I know that’s what you’re thinking.

Well, I read daily to my kids. They see their siblings reading. There is text in computer games, on cereal boxes, signs, the fridge – everywhere. They are curious about it – they want to learn to read. So they do. I’ve written before about Tigerboy’s process – he binge learnt. It was fascinating to watch to be honest, and did involve apps, and books, and a very different process to what you might expect, particularly if you’ve read any of the articles about how difficult it is to teach reading.

It might be difficult to teach, particularly when you’ve got a plan that’s different to the one in the child you’re teaching. The learning part can be more straightforward.

For a while he was behind his peers – now he’s probably a little bit ahead. But right at the moment he’s not that interested in fiction so he doesn’t read by himself all that often. He’s got access to all sorts of books though, and he often rereads whatever I’ve read to them at bedtime, so it’s ticking over nicely.

Maths – we do day to day stuff. Talk about money. Telling the time. Fractions come into life, so does measuring, weighing, adding, dividing. And then I might wave an app at them to try, and they do for a bit and acquire a few more building blocks. They like playing with my montessori materials and other manipulatives and at some point they will probably want to do something that requires a qualification, so like Small, they’ll knock it off pretty quickly. (He’s done GCSE maths in a year, get back to you in a few weeks about how that went.)

Writing, much the same. And because they see TV programs, read books, and have relatives and friends that do go to school, they’re aware that children generally learn specific things at particular ages. Sometimes this is viewed as pointless information, sometimes it’s seen as a challenge.

I have an awareness of the overall educational achievements. I might get out something science based if they haven’t done any for a while, and they’ll deep dive for a while then do something else. I’m confident that they are learning pretty much all the time, and very efficiently, so I know I’m discharging my legal responsibility.

I’m not quite so sure how this all measures up against the stuff LAs talked about in their submission to the recent government consultation. It seems to me that this kind of free range education is very poorly understood, and at some point that might make my life a bit more complicated. But that’s a bridge for another day and in the meantime, I’ll go on facilitating their unschooling lives. Yes, even in the summer holidays and on learn nothing day. ๐Ÿ™‚

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Filed Under: It's where it is Tagged With: curriculum, home education, home schooling, learn nothing day, resources, Sandra Dodd, unschooling

Brief reason for home education.

11th July 2018 by Jax Blunt 2 Comments

Today in the post I got a form from college – additional information for home educated students. There was a little box headed up “brief reason for home education”.

Brief? You want me to summarise how we came to home education briefly?

There were a couple of years of research that spun off reading I did while on a PGCE way back in the 90s. (Eek, that’s a long time ago now.) There wasn’t an awful lot kicking around back then, but enough to whet my appetite.

And then I kept looking, and I kept searching. And when I had children, starting in the early 2000s I was still intrigued by the idea of home education, and I really didn’t like the way primary education was going, with the national curriculum and very little flexibility for schools or teachers to actually meet the needs of the children in front of them.

So we found Muddlepuddle, and other families with young children who were home educating, and local groups who met in soft play areas, and annual camps, and holidays in youth hostels, and gradually more and more families online and we didn’t look back. (Apart from the Montessori school segment while I was working, but it’s hard to home educate when you aren’t actually at home to do it and Montessori is an interesting educational philosophy too.)

And then we moved to Suffolk 10 years ago, returned to full time home education and had more children who haven’t been to school either.

For a while we did ‘normals’ – a bit of maths. english, science, maybe some history, a bit of french, dabbling in the curriculum approach. But as the older children got to secondary age, it became apparent they had their own ideas and interests and as long as I could see that they were doing stuff, that’s what we did.

Appears to have worked. Big went into school, her choice, and held her own perfectly well. She’s just finished A levels, works as a lifeguard, and has Plans. Small (NotSoSmallTeen most often these days on twitter so as not to confuse people who haven’t read 15 years of archives and think he might actually be little) has just done his GCSE Maths and English in a year with a not very local college. They were only teaching foundation maths, but got in touch (in February!!) to ask if he wanted to do higher, so we did, in a bit of a rush, and fingers crossed it went well enough. Don’t know until results day obviously, because he didn’t do months of mock papers like they do in schools. (He also didn’t do 28 exams and a lot of stress.) He’s planning music at a college in September and if you’d told me that 4 years ago I’d have laughed until I cried.

They need room to grow and explore, and yes my role is to guide and facilitate and at times challenge and push, and sometimes catch and hold. It’s parenting, without a communal safety net of professional educators, and it can be terrifying and exhilarating and actually, if something doesn’t work out first time, you go around again. It’s schools that demand that things be done to a particular schedule, and it doesn’t always work, or colleges wouldn’t be having to do maths and english over and over again for 16 yos, would they?

There’s been a lot in the news about home education recently, and it’s about monitoring and maybe curriculums and evidence of progress, and so many times over the years that isn’t how it’s worked for us. It would be a massive shame if people who can’t imagine education outside of a school get to constrain home education because so many children don’t work like that, don’t learn like that, and will be damaged by it. And so we fight on – because I’ve two younger children I want to have the chance to find themselves, explore the world, and chase down a passion just like their elder siblings have.

Now, tell me precisely how to fit that briefly in a box?

(I put philosophical ๐Ÿ™‚ )

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Filed Under: home education review, how we do it, It's where it is Tagged With: autonmous education, home education, home education consultation, home schooling, unschooling

Home education in the headlines, and on the radio

5th September 2017 by Jax Blunt 16 Comments

There were a number of negative headlines around home education (or homeschooling as some parts of the media will insist on calling it) following a counter terrorism speech by a senior police officer in which he mentioned the possibility of homeschooling (yes, I know) being a possible contributory factor in the rise of extremism/ home grown terrorists.

He talked about a whole bunch of other stuff too, but I guess it just fit to criticise home education at the start of a new school year, so that was what the headlines focussed on. I saw the headlines, groaned a little, and moved on. I’m kind of weary of the negative uninformed attacks from people who can’t be bothered to do any research.

This evening thoigh, the phone rang. I was out in the garden office* trying to plan a series of articles and Big brought it out to me, saying Sandra from LBC. Would I be happy to go on line with Iain Dale this evening?

I’m not a huge fan of LBC. But I will stand up for home education whenever and wherever, so yup, I’m in.

Turns out since our last chat Iain has warmed somewhat to the idea of home education. He still has qualms, niggles, areas of concern, but he’s coming round. Which is nice. So instead of discussing terrorism, which he dismissed as a ridiculous concern, we talked about isolation, parental expertise, resources.

The thing is that home education isn’t like it was even a decade ago when we first started. Back then there weren’t very many meetups – so we set one up. We were spread around the country so we built a virtual village and had camps a couple of times a year. We told each other about cool resources, collaborated on group buys to get decent prices and made do. And it worked. Our children came out of it fine.

Nowadays even quite small towns often have a choice of meetups each week. Local colleges have wised up to a new market and are offering part time GCSE courses or vocational qualifications. (Hence Small starting maths and English next week, yay, I don’t have to find an exam centre!) Companies have noticed we exist and have started building resource packages for us, and there are so many educational apps, websites, tutor centres etc etc.

One thing Iain said that I didn’t pick up on at the time was that he didn’t feel he had the expertise to teach a 7 year old. Which if you ask me is rather a sad indictment of the education system as is. I’m not dealing with classroom management issues. I don’t have to keep abreast of the latest educational fad/must do/ absolutely can’t. Instead I can develop an understanding of my children and their interests and facilitate their learning. I can help my 7 year old learn to code when she’s interested in doing that. Craft with my 5 year old or build Lego. Find a Japanese class for the 14 year old (and boy did I earn brownie points for that one!) Teaching one 7 year old doesn’t require me to be that much more advanced than she is, and if she asks me something I don’t know, then I can teach her how to look it up. 

The other point I didn’t get around to mention is that there is a strong and supportive home education community both locally and nationally. Today I went to a meet with a group of other parents – the children played, the parents chatted. Locally there’s been a lot of negotiation with a college over potential pre GCSE offerings, and I kept up with that even though it isn’t relevant to us just now. Home education is very much a community activity, and we help each other out.

Our children aren’t isolated, far from it. Are there things they are missing out on? Probably. Just the same as not all kids in every school get the same opportunities as each other or my children. That’s the reality of life, you can’t fit everything in. Not every child can be a world class athlete, and a creative musician, and a linguist, and a scientist. You have to make choices, that’s just how it works.

I’m generally happy to take questions on home education, so if there’s anything you’d like to follow up on, please drop me a comment in the box. Looking forward to hearing from you.

*shed. Yes, it’s a shed.

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Filed Under: It's where it is Tagged With: blogtember, home education, home schooling, Iain Dale, LBC

100 ways to home educate – launching a blog hop.

6th February 2017 by Jax Blunt 5 Comments

It’s Monday morning, and all over the country children aged from 3 or 4 upwards are heading to nursery, school, college, what have you. Education, after all, is compulsory.

There are lots of different schools out there. Mainstream, special, private, academies, and lots of different ways of educating within them.

There’s also home education. A perfectly legal and valid alternative.

Some children didn’t head out to school this morning. Some of them stayed home. Maybe some got up and sat down at the kitchen table with books and it looks quite a lot like how you might imagine a schoolroom. Maybe some of them headed out for the day, to a zoo, or a soft play, or a music lesson, or a stately home, or a library. Possibly some of them are still in bed, and will get their day started later, with a book or a film, or computer time or arts or crafts.

Basically there are as many ways to home educate as there are families home educating, and I’m hoping that the blog hop this post is kicking off will show you a whole bunch of them. (I don’t know whether we’ll make it to 100, that could take a while, but I’ve got my fingers crossed.) There’s also a #100daysofhomeed photo challenge kicking off on instagram/facebook/twitter if you want to check that out.

Tomorrow’s post up now with Care at Secret Life of a Homeschooler, today I’m going to tell you how things work for us.

Once upon a time we used to do typical day picture posts and I thought about doing that again, taking a picture every hour through the day to illustrate what we get up to. But there’s not really ever a typical day here, and it wouldn’t show you the wealth of what we get up to, so instead I thought I’d tell you about the week around today as it were.

Friday was mainly a home based day. We’re not early risers – I’m a bit of a night owl and the kids seem to take after me. Big gets herself up and out for sixth form, leaving for her bus about 7.50 – I try to get up and make her lunch to take with her, and most of the time I manage it ๐Ÿ˜‰

Next kids appeared between 8 and 9, Smallest and Tigerboy. Breakfast together, and then getting dressed, and I had a plan to do some science, from a rather fab folder I got from the works.

(Check it out yourself here The Works – affiliate link)

We went through it together a while ago and basically they want to do science that ‘looks like’ science, so I’d ordered some borax from ebay and we made slime. (See science bob here if you’d like to try this one. )

Prepping for that, doing it and clearing up (carefully and thoroughly given that borax is poisonous – we took precautions including aprons and so on) took us nearly up to lunch time, so more food on the go and then I was out and about shopping and picking up Big, which meant that there was some duplo, Scratch and cbeebies. When I got back in I finally set up Slime Rancher for Smallest – she’s been looking forward to that for ages, but we didn’t have a computer up to running it until last week (graphics card issues. Don’t ask me, I don’t do hardware.) Small must have got himself up and organised at some point – he is pretty self driven at the moment, and his days include Japanese, coding, guitar and a regular walk – he usually covers around 5 miles.

Evenings usually include a family sit down meal sometime between 7 and 8, although Friday was a bit later than usual because Big teaches with the swim club until 8.30. Then the little ones have bedtime stories – I read to them, then Smallest reads it over again to Tigerboy, then songs and finally lights out.

Saturday was a bit unusual in that I got up early with Small and we headed out to a not very local college who are exploring the possibility of putting on GCSE courses in Maths and English for home educators. It would be one day a week for a year, and would be a massive help, as accessing qualifications outside the school system is hard to organise in terms of access to materials, and actual exam centres. It can also be very expensive, as centres often charge way over the actual exam price. We were very lucky that Small’s computer club organised an iGCSE course for computer science last year, which included the exam at cost (ยฃ52 iirc for the exam itself). Anyway, the college visit was very promising, and there’s even the faint possibility that the course will be put on more locally which would be amazing.

Then I dropped him off at a charity games jam, and came home to spend the afternoon doing more Slime support.

Sunday is our slowest day, apart from swim club in the evening. Smallest has just moved up to the big pool, and it’s a stretch from her comfort zone, the club have been being very supportive though. Big teaches with the club on a Sunday too, and today she was called in to do a lifeguard shift as well. Because of that we had a split meal – I fed the little ones before Big got back. Too many late evening meals don’t do them any good. Tonight’s bedtime story was a family favourite – Tom and Small from Clara Vulliamy. Apparently the word once was particularly challenging, not surprising given how weirdly we pronounce it.

Monday. Starts with guitar for Small taught by a very experienced guitar tutor who also happens to be a local home ed dad. All sorts of skills in the home ed world. I’m planning to do some more science with the little ones in the afternoon, or some art (we’ve been looking at Picasso, I think I’ll do a separate resource post during the week as this is already kind of long!) Tuesday is our monthly skate and play meet up, in the same not so local town as the college. Other Tuesdays we have soft play at a local sports centre which is lovely as it’s actually a walkable meet up ๐Ÿ™‚ At warmer times of the year we’re planning to do more out and about meets with local families, but soft play is a good fall back when it’s cold.

Hopefully this post gives you a bit of insight into our approach to home ed. I wouldn’t say we’re complete unschoolers – I’m a little bit too nervous to completely trust the flow, and I stick my oar in to guide activities, like giving Small a shove towards GCSEs. I view this as meeting my responsibilities to not foreclose his opportunities in the future – if he’s got the basics covered, he’s got a lot more choices open to him. It has to be said though that there are lots of ways to tick those boxes now, and I might do a more detailed post on that sometime soon.

So there you go – a few not very typical days in our not very typical lives. Hope that’s given you a little insight into a child led/or semi autonomous approach. It varies from child to child and time to time – if I wrote it up again in the summer, the pattern would be very different and involve a lot more out and about. (I might just do that actually, think it would be interesting.

If you’d like to join in with the blog hop and host a day on your blog, feel free to drop me your details via my contact form and if you’re wondering about the technical ins and outs of home education, I’ve a page on that too.

As people blog, I’m hoping they’ll include their links in the blog hop code below, so that we can all find all the posts easily as well as by jumping from blog to blog. I’ll also be back this afternoon with a blog badge – but I’ve kind of run out of energy and time for now. Sorry!

Don’t forget to check out Care at Secret Life of a Homeschooler tomorrow!

Teachmy Preschooler kit review
10 things you don’t need to home educate
Buying books. Resources, I mean, yes, resources.

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Filed Under: how we do it Tagged With: 100daysofhomeed, 100waysofhomeed, autonomous, child led, home education, home schooling, unschooling

On buying home education curriculum resources.

6th January 2017 by Jax Blunt 4 Comments

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?

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Filed Under: It's where it is Tagged With: curriculum, home education, home schooling, resources, the book people

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