My children are home educated AMA

[NotBackToSchool]

With all the talk about rising numbers of home educated children and increasing pressures on attendance with fines for parents, I thought there might be interest in a typical day for children who haven't gone back to school this week.

My kids as KS1 and KS2 age.

We started this morning with my younger child getting in to bed with me to read her current book - a ladybird 'read it yourself' version of Heidi.
My older child read the 4th Harry Potter book in their own bed.

After breakfast they both did a maths video lesson before I started work as a childminder.

We're using the book 'The Tiny Seed' this week to learn about seed dispersal and made seed collages.

They mostly played with their friends all day and we went to the park.

This afternoon one of them has a dance class, and later we'll be finishing off the Lucy Worsley Six Wives series on iplayer (SIX the musical obsession!)

Everyday is a bit different generally but today was pretty typical! If anyone wants to know more then just ask.

Ofsted only inspect early years children so home ed isn't really within their remit - unless it impacted negatively on early years children during the inspection it wouldn't be mentioned or relevant.
Same as if you get inspected during the school holidays and have school age children present - you need to demonstrate that older children don't negatively impact on early years children but Ofsted don't pass on judgements on over 5s.

Minded parents of home educated children are obviously very pleased to have a home ed childminder. Parents of little ones or school children haven't really told me what they think of home ed to be honest.

We live kind of next door to my PIL (our garden backs on to their land) so my eldest disappeared over there pretty quickly for my last inspection

My thoughts exactly!

Yes, this model of home education is a difficult one to get used to when the school model involves telling kids what to do, ensuring that formal sit-down learning occupies many hours. And yet the OP's approach does give good results.

Many features of school education have arisen not because they are educationally ideal, but because they are necessary in a group-instruction setting. Other aspects of school education have come about through historical accident. People may try to justify them, but in the end it comes down to "this is how we've always done it".

In the very different setting of home education, different methods are effective. As for it being "what they might do if they were off sick", that's quite true, but it doesn't mean they are learning less than if they were doing lessons. I used to fake illness in order to stay home alone and read. My sister used to truant so she could go draw in the museum. As adults, we both believe we were learning more on these non-school days when we followed our own curiosity.

@Saracen you write so many insightful and patient posts about HE!

My kids, now secondary school aged, have never been to school, have followed their own interests and learned plenty and made and sustained friendships, you wouldn’t know in a mixed group of their peers that they were home ed. They’ll get enough GCSEs to do what they choose to at 16, probably college.

I run a kids sports club and have come across quite a lot of home ed kids.Based on my observations, in nl most cases there is a lot of co-dependemcy going on ad the children lack resilience and age appropriate independence.