As home educators – people are naturally curious about what we do and how we do it… Hopefully we can answer some of the questions we get asked here:
Our philosophy:
We are not home educating for any religious or other special reason. Some home educators do – but that is not our philosophy.
Mum and Dad are both very experienced school teachers and we simply enjoy learning and believe that learning is something that happens throughout our lives whether we are an adult or a child. We love what we do. Having been school teachers we had never actually planned to home educate at all – we are just lucky that we fell into it and can share this special part of our childrens’ life.
What we do know is after a few years, the more we do it – the more right it becomes!
What about socialisation?
One of the first things that people ask is how do we learn social skills without school? Well the answer is quite simple. We all socialise widely and very positively in other ‘real’ ways:
Music lessons, tennis clubs, dance groups, drama society, brownies and cubs (and their camps) fill 4 out of 5 weekday evenings and a fair bit of each term time weekend. This brings the children into contact with dozens of their friends and peers each and every night of the week.
Regular local home educating meetings and events also mean whole afternoons can be dedicated to extended, outdoor and creative play and social exploration across a wide range of ages – something sadly missing in the lives of many modern children.
We are also immensely lucky to also travel – a lot! If we could not, then home educating would be less of the great learning adventure that it is.
We meet people who help in our learning in every place or country we visit. Museums, Cities, National Trust Houses, Airports… They all hold something and someone to learn from. The world really is our classroom and it is not bound by a timetable or a subject title!
Do you follow a curriculum?
Yes – We follow UK National Curriculum guidance adapted to the individual needs of our children – but with a very healthy dose of the ‘personlisation’ that the Gov’t wants to see more of. Personal learning pathways and extended time to study favourite topics really do feature in our planning.
Where the children are strong we can skip ahead years and are not bound to progress at the speed of a peer group. When they need time to get to grips with something – they get the time.
What about exams?
If one thing is clear from the research – home educators have no problem seeing their children make it to university. As a demographic – they actually have the highest percentage going on to study in Higher Education. Exams have a role though – and there are plenty of options these days for home educated children to have exam certificates. It is certainly an area we watch carefully. But as Mark Twain said – “I never let schooling get in the way of my education!”
It must be great to miss OFSTED inspections!
Sadly not – we do not get to escape that. We get an annual inspection. All been very positive – and it is something we really look forward to planning for, There is always much more to show than we have time for.
What about books, equipment and technology?
Reading and talking dominate out teaching style. The local libraries see regular use and there are always several hundred reference books around the house for all the topics we teach. What we cannot provide ourselves, we can access through other ways – such as specialist music lessons or visits to museum education events. What better way to study the Romans than visit all the Roman sites in the area and speak to the curators and local experts!
We also realise that technology pervades modern life. We have computers and a wireless network allows us to use small handlheld devices anywhere and upload and download pictures and information. We even have a Promethean Activboard Interactive Whiteboard in our ‘classroom’ that is used continually to access the web and subscription websites as well as to make and manage lessons and watch documentary DVDs during the day. It is also great to watch films and stuff on at night.
A digital microscope, video and digital cameras, a scanner and a printer are used all the time and we even have a small audio/visual studio with some synthesizers & musical instruments.
Our family web rules:
We have decided on certain rules that we will follow when accessing the internet and publishing information on our blog.
- for our own privacy we do not use our own names or say too much about where we live
- we manage this website as a family so that we can learn together and enjoy the experience
- we encourage comments but Mum and Dad will check everything first
- we hope that other home educating families will make contact with us via the blog, but hope that you understand that we will not give out our contact details online
This is a really good way of understanding digital citizenship and how to manage a digital life. We found the following websites really useful to help set our rules:
Nice blog
That particular Mark Twain quote is one of my favorites.