Never going to do it! But interested to find out more re home schooling

[lovemenorca]

Home schooling - the very thought horrifies me! No judgement re others who choose to do it, or is just my idea of, well, not quite hell but not far off it!

How does it work? Doesn’t it feel very intense? If you have pre teens or teens how the heck does that work? Do your children ever ask to go to school or say they’d like to learn with other children? How ma y hours do you estimate do you do a day? How do you keep up the enthusiasm day in and day out of balancing parenting AND teaching (not to mention life admin, housework, laundry).

So many questions. The mind boggles!

Do you find it very intense?
How many children do you have?
When you say they learn with other children - is that other home Ed children?
How do you teach all these subjects? I mean I could teach history and English as I studied at uni and my strongest subject. But engineering? Maths? No chance!

I home educate with 4 at home. Youngest is a baby, eldest is 9. We wake up, have breakfast and go for a long walk or to the park. Then do school work, experiments and projects from 9-1 then lunch ( including text books, chalkboard lessons, worksheets, various learning toys, science kits or field trips). After lunch we do reading, art appreciation, poetry, baking and crafts before cooking dinner together. After dinner we do more reading and then have free time where we usually play games together. Eldest will happily do some coding on her own, middle two will crack out the orchard games or some puzzles. We have various musical instruments they help themselves to as well. Once a week we attend HE swimming and PE classes and stay for a HE picnic after.

Me and DH get chores done throughout the day in turns.

When kids are in bed, DH will work while I entertain the baby and then I will work while he gets her to sleep. Then I'll organise and lay out the next days lessons and crafts and off to bed we go.

It's just life for us. We only take days off if they're sick days. I don't find it intense at all, busy maybe but that's how we like it.

We're lazy; ds goes to an online school. It's affordable though and we don't have the patience to teach anyway. Dh helps him with the maths and science side and I help with the humanities.

It's great going downstairs on a cold winters morning to a roaring fire, porridge, hot chocolate and no trudge out to the bus stop.

He has friends via a couple of activities that he does and plays online with them after school as well.

I never thought I'd be the sort of parent to homeschool, but he was getting bullied and online schooling was the ideal solution.

You need plenty of maxi skirts and a superior attitude.

I would never home educate because like you op it would be my idea of hell! My kids fight all the time, I can't imagine they would even listen to me trying to teach them things without them thinking they could treat it as a normal school holiday and tbh, I'm not particularly academic myself so doubt they would learn much. Certainly not GCSE standard and seeing as dd has just started year 7 that wouldn't be very good for her.

She has begged me to home educate though and looked up online schools to try and convince me but they're way out of my budget for a start and I like the fact there's a social aspect to school. She does have good friends within her sport but doesn't see them socially every week so I wouldn't want her to miss out.

@Whatafackinliberty

Or just an endless supply of pj's

like a pp we use an online school. DS struggled in mainstream secondary and from this September (year 8) has been enrolled at an online school. He is ASD and it was awful at mainstream. This is the 3rd week into the term and its fab. He is doing so much better in every way. Yes it isn`t cheap £260 a month for 7 subjects. But compared to how things were in year 7: worth every penny!

I do not miss uniforms, ironing his shirts and lunchboxes lol.

Oh and compared to mainstream school, I can email the teachers direct any time. So can ds.

Munch Munch did you look at all the online schools. Some are eye wateringly expensive!! We are with myonlineschooling. You pay per subject. Id recomend this school, very happy on the whole (first couple of days there were techy issues, plus mum here has zero IT skills lol!. I`ve learned sooo much in that way now!).

We are just out of the other side of GCSEs, it has been quite intense.
We home edded out of necessity rather than choice.
If there's something you can't teach then you outsource.
Dc is now doing A levels at home via a correspondence provider.
It's not ideal, it's expensive, it's not what I would have wanted but we hope to get there in the end.
She's safe and happier at home and we manage to rub along without killing each other

I don't own a maxi skirt though.

I`ve never owned a maxi skirt either! Is there a home ed mum uniform?

Are there any stats on how well home Ed children do in terms of GCSEs or what proportion go on to HE?

dont know. What I do like about HE is that unlike year 7 I actually know exactly what DS is doing in class/ topics! Last year if I asked all i got as a reply was "I forgot....." "Dunno" a lot! DS needed but thanks to £££ cuts didnt have a 1 to 1 TA anymore . So I sit with him in class (at the dining room table/ laptop) and I am his TA. So for us in this house it is more intensive for me. For a NT child they`d be left to it.

I doubt it? Education providers are reliant on a private candidate letting them know their results.
The LEA don't appear to care, we haven't been contacted by them in nearly 2 years.
Some families follow alternative routes to HE too.

Theres no other kids in the classroom chattering/ humming/passing notes etc etc. No distraction. Teacher isn`t having to do crowd control. So its a great environment for getting on with the class. More gets done in 1 class! Kids are given mic privaledge by the teacher. So they control from their end noisy, distracting kids! Or kids can type.

As for superior attitude not here. We only fell to HE because of necessity. We would rather ds went to mainstream! But its not to be and this works for us.

I also don`t own a maxi skirt, floppy hat, eat weird beans. I am very normal.

What Norfolk said ^^

I like chips and beans.....

I don't own a maxi skirt, knit my own yoghurt, keep chickens or sing to the moon 😂

I have a 6 year old, we do a couple of hours formal stuff then just follow his interests or involve him in things that need doing. It's certainly less intense than having a baby or toddler at home but I've always intended to home educate so was mentally prepared I guess.

I tend to find that DS will take in loads because I can do topics when the interest arises or an event happens.

The plan is to give him a choice for secondary but we're happy to carry on.