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Updating Home Ed books thread to bump up for information.

Free Range Education: How Home Education Works Terri Dowty (ed) Hawthorn Press

It is a UK book (many are American) and each chapter is written by a different family about their experience - it gives a good idea of the range of experience.

Synopsis;
A handbook for families considering or starting out in home education. The book is full of family stories, resources, burning questions, humour, tips, practical steps and useful advice so the reader can choose what best suits his or her family situation.

Home Educating Our Autistic Spectrum Children: Paths are made by walking
Edited by Terri Dowty, Hawthorn Press

Mainstream educational provision for children on the autistic spectrum can be inadequate or inappropriate. An increasing number of parents dissatisfied with the education system are looking elsewhere for an approach that will suit their children's needs. In "Home Educating Our Autistic Spectrum Children", parents who have chosen to home educate their children with autism or Asperger's syndrome candidly relate their experiences: how they reached the decision to educate at home, how they set about the task, and how it has affected their lives. Following these personal accounts, the final chapters offer practical advice on getting started with home education, legal advice from an expert in education law, and contact details of support organizations

The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education Grace Llewellyn

(This is the book that really opened my eyes to the possibilities that the freedom to home educate our dsylexic children, really gave us!)

Review;
The Teenage Liberation Handbook will stir your emotions and lift your vision, whether you’re a teenager or a 42-year-old CEO. Although it’s written for teens, this book focuses on a theme all of us could stand to hear: learn what you love. Particularly helpful for those who prefer alternative education, such as online learners, these pages will make you re-examine your educational path until it’s something you truly want to tread.

Llewellyn sympathizes with teenagers who get a sub-par education, wasting hours of their time on worksheets, “classroom management,” and other needless time-busters. Instead of such waste, she contends that teens should quit school and take charge of their own learning. Fortunately, this book isn’t just about lofty philosophical ideas. Llewellyn backs her claim with hundreds of pages of practical suggestions on how to claim responsibilty for your educational life.

From finding mentors to using the library, this book’s chapters contains advice all of us should know, but don’t. Some of the gems include:
• “School is Not for Learning”
• “The Importance of the Vacation”
• “Your Tailor-Made Intellectual Extravaganza”
• “Using Cultural Resources”
Before you open the cover, be forewarned. You may be inspired to quit your desk job, haunt the library, and fulfill your dream as professional chess player. But, that’s okay. Make the most of it and enjoy your intellectual journey. I know I will.

Can't Go Won't Go: Coping with School Refusal Mike Fortune-Wood £10.00
available from Cinnamon Press

School refusal, sometimes called ‘school phobia’ is a complex and often contentious issue effecting rising numbers of children, but coping with this issue can tear families apart and leave children with lasting effects. In Can’t Go, Won’t Go Mike Fortune-Wood looks at the scale of the problem and how families are treated by a range of statutory authorities. Interspersed with moving accounts from families who have struggled with school refusal, sometimes over a decade or more, this important and ground-breaking book sign-posts the need for better communication and strategies from service providers from schools to psychologists and suggests that the current trend to either medicalise or demonise children who refusing to go to school will only add to society’s problems as well as damaging the individuals concerned. He also documents an alternative approach; that of removing children from school to home educate them, suggesting that far from leading to disaster (as professionals often predict) this can become a life enhancing decision.
This is the best kind of engaged research; full of information and meticulous in its willingness to analyse a problem fully, but also humane and helpful.

Alan Thomas’s “Educating Children at Home”

and there is another article by the same author comparing formal and informal home education

Dr. Thomas is Visiting Fellow at the University of London Institute of Education. The research for the book was undertaken whilst he was a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the Northern Territory University, Darwin, Australia. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society

and Alan's latest book

How Children Learn at Home by Alan Thomas and Harriet Patterson.

Product Description
In his "Educating Children at Home", Alan Thomas found that many home educating families chose or gravitated towards an informal style of education, radically different from that found in schools. Such learning, also described as unschooling, natural or autonomous, takes place without most of the features considered essential for learning in school. At home there is no curriculum or sequential teaching, nor are there any lessons, textbooks, requirements for written work, practice exercises, marking or testing. But how can children who learn in this way actually achieve an education on a par with what schools offer? In this new research, Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison seek to explain the efficacy of this alternative pedagogy through the experiences of families who have chosen to educate their children informally.Based on interviews and extended examples of learning at home the authors explore: the scope for informal learning within children's everyday lives; the informal acquisition of literacy and numeracy; the role of parents and others in informal learning; and, how children proactively develop their own learning agendas. Their investigation provides not only an insight into the powerful and effective nature of informal learning but also presents some fundamental challenges to many of the assumptions underpinning educational theory. This book will be of interest to education practitioners, researchers and all parents, whether their children are in or out of school, offering as it does fascinating insights into the nature of children's learning.

One-to-one: A Practical Guide to Learning at Home Age 0-11
By Gareth Lewis, Lin Lewis

One-to-One is a comprehensive guide to learning at home with young children. Its sections on reading, writing and arithmetic have been widely praised by educationalists and parents alike. Additional sections on art, cooking, gardening and crafts show how parents can use these activities to complement academic work and create an idyllic childhood for their children, free from stress and the pressures of modern life.

Unqualified Education: A Practical Guide to Learning at Home Age 11-18
By Gareth Lewis

Unqualified Education is the UK's first comprehensive guide to secondary education in the home, and offers practical solutions to many of the difficulties experienced by young people between the ages of eleven and eighteen: it provides a means to make education rewarding and self-fulfilling; it offers a practical alternative to an education based on examinations and qualifications; and it demonstrates how the home offers the perfect environment for combining traditional educational values with the demands of modern life and modern technology.

School is Not Compulsory

'lots of chapters and short articles by different HEing families and children and grown up children. All sorts of styles, all sorts of viewpoints - really inspiring.'

available free when you join Education Otherwise

The Unschooling Handbook by Mary Griffith - 'a bit American, but good for easing the anxiety that can overwhelm you when you first dereg your child from school.'

Homeschooling Highly Distractible, ADHD, or Just Plain Fidgety Kids (How to Get Your Child Off the Refrigerator and on to Learnin) (Paperback)
by Carol Barnier

"It's really practical with lots of ideas that would work for any kids."

Mike Fortune-Wood, who runs the HE-UK website also now has a small publishing company Cinnamon press that publishes a variety of books as well as the The Home Education Journal

Mike is part of a team of people who are actively researching home education in the UK and he also researched and wrote the book on so called School Phobia 'Can't go, Won't go'

His wife Jan is a well known author on Autonomous education and non coercive parenting

edheretics.gn.apc.org/ is also worth a look at for alternatives to mainstream education.

Another Alan Thomas book is 'Educating Your Child at Home'
by Alan Thomas and Jane Lowe

"also good and less 'alternative' in its approach"

Very many home educators would recommend taking a look at the books by John Holt

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