to ask for your Home Ed ideas, experiences and anecdotes?

[Fideliney]

Can we please try to keep it friendly?

I should clarify - my subject knowledge of certain subjects means I wouldn't be able to teach maths, physics, chemistry at gcse level, so what do you do?

You can do GCSEs or IGCSEs as an independent candidate but it is expensive and not everyone wants to do the prep without a teacher's assistance.

Some DC go into college any time between 14 and 18 and take exams there.

Xposted, sorry.

Many HEing parents don't teach but do activities alongside their children. At exam level, you would work through a textbook (or two) and do past papers.

Some people buy in tutors or curricula or use online courses Celia. Some people teach themselves. Undoubtedly some people just ignore whole chunks of what would be considered a 'standard balanced' secondary curriculum, but I would think they would be a minority.

Thanks for starting this Fideliney

Yes, it is expensive I think. I think the lowest amount we paid approx £170.00 (exam fee and exam centre charges) Our LA recommend that if you've previously been registered with a school, you go back to that school and ask nicely if they will let you sit there (cheaper too). Also try phoning local private schools.

Join the home ed exam groups for advice. Some buy the subject book and materials then go through past papers, hire tutor for revision if they lack knowledge or expertise.

No problem Nicki

Grouchy drawbacks for me - lack of time, moments of stress, odd bit of logistical frustration.

I'm lucky to be able to freelance in my line of work (although that has come at a cost) and to have a partner (I was once a single parent and am lost in admiration for women who HE for a decade or more single-handed). I can see potential drawbacks if it were otherwise.

I could list the upsides all day though

I homeschooled one of my 5 DCs, my second one.
I did and always will maintain that taking him out of school saved his life. We began HE when he was 12 and he never went back to school.
My eldest had already finished senior school (he left the term after we began to homeschool, and he never had the problems no2 son did) and my three youngest are all quite happy so far at school.
If ever things got "bad" for one of them though, I wouldn't hesitate to take them out of school.
I had a battle on my hands when I did it - the school were insisting they could deal with the bullying etc, and giving me all colours of bullshit about what was legal and what wasn't, and even my family were dubious, but I did my homework and found out all about the legalities and looked into the practicalities, and we went ahead.
I could talk for hours about it and if you have any specific questions, feel free to pm me.
For us, it began as a last desperate resort, and ended up being the best thing. DS is now 20, is a qualified chef, and has had two jobs, with an interview on saturday for a new one, which, fingers crossed, he will get.

CrohnicallyExhausted oh, yes, people can develop it by themselves which is why I would only dare bet £5 against it.

But it's hit and miss at to whether people do IYSWIM, and what topics they do it with, and so on. There's a lot of people who can do far better with maths than they have, and it is something that makes me very sad. I mean, think of all the geeky maths jokes they're missing out on! Also maths can be really fun.

Ive just taken DD out from yr8. She has health problems and possibly undiagnosed ASD, but had problems with secondary since starting. We tried. we tried flexi, we trieed a small unit and we tried online. In the end the pressure from so many different directions has been too much so we deregistered last week.
DS may well follow as he is very unhappy at school, he is in yr 3 at the moment.

anyone got a link to the bunfight thread? I could do with a bit of frothing tonight

Oh, tiily forgot to tell you my address so you can send me the fiver. Or do you prefer PayPal?

But yes, it makes me sad too. I work with young children, and I wish I knew how to help them develop the bigger picture. Because I developed it myself, it's instinctual for me, and I don't know how to get them to see the same mental pictures I do, whereas if I was actively taught it I could teach them the same way.

For example, I remember a boss of mine working something out on a calculator. She accidentally entered (small number) - (big number) and obviously got a negative answer. She then had to redo the calculation (big number) - (small number) and was surprised that it was the same number but without the negative. So she entered something like 13-100 and got -87, then 100-13 and got 87. Whereas it seems bloody obvious to me that would be the case, and indeed had told her so but she didn't believe me.

I see children write things down like 4+2=6 then 4+3=6 and they just can't see how illogical that is!

bunfight not much space left

Also maths can be really fun

I wouldn't have said that a year ago.

And then I borrowed DS's DragonBox.

I can do algebra ! ME!!

And it's more fun than (and twice as addictive as) tetris.

Took a bit of struggle to be able to transfer to paper, but got there, and lo and behold... still fun on paper.

If they had told/shown me algebra was basically a game when I was at school back in the Dark Ages, I think I might have done better at maths.

ChronicallyExhausted

Has your place got Numicon pieces? It's what I've been using with my children to try to help them feel and internalise the patterns of numbers, and get their number bonds down. Pricey initial outlay, for any domestic household, but they're great. And by pricey, I mean astronomical. But a setting's budget might stretch to it and a guide on how to use them.

Mammuzza ah, that time in your life when you suddenly get algebra! Suddenly, it's like messing around with a code ring, and being respected for it!

Good grief - I just looked at the price of the numicon sets. How do you let the children even look at them? I'd be frightened their mere gaze would cause wear and tear.

Well that other thread was an eye opener! Good job I didn't realise/don't much care that people were thinking all that stuff about me when I took DD out of school to HE. People have tended to be too scared of me polite to say anything negative to my face about it.

Right - so this thread currently contains lots of reasonable HE people with masses of experience.

I have questions!

My DH is considering home ED for our DD (currently 3yo). His reasoning is that the school environment is totally artificial and not particularly well aligned to deep learning. Well and the business with religion. That is a major problem as we are atheist.

We are both qualified to the PhD level in science and I have some random thing I got from the HEA which has to do with teaching.

Are we mad?

Okay so only the one question to begin with.

I live in an area where there is a massive home ed group and some AMAZING volunteers. We have our own exam centre and help with funding from local LEA. Small group classes run be qualified teachers many of whom are now ex teachers and are home ed parents. Vast majority of home ed teens I know have 5 + GCSE's at 16 and have gone on to university/work.

Home ed is not a utopia - oldest child is a run with the pack personality and happily slotted in to school when he chose to go. Academically considerably ahead in many areas. I find the social side of it hard but that it because I have to work at it and I not a big people lover.

For us it gives us freedom. To get out when the weather is nice and places are quiet, to visit family when we chose to rather than cramming everything in to school holidays. To explore anything and everything that interests him. To come to things in their own time, we are relatively structured but rather than the class moving off a topic when the majority understand we can stay on one thing as long as it takes or go away and come back with a fresh pair of eyes a couple of weeks later, equally well if they understand something quickly we move on. DS2 is sickly and would miss quite a few days at certain times of the year (asthmatic) yet the only time we've had off 'school work' due to ill health is when he has been hospitalised - can cover a lot from the sofa. The kids are confident and from a young age can do towns/shops/buses on their own as used to it and in the village we live people know us.

I think there is no right option in home v's school debate only what we think (we can never entirely know if we were right) is the best thing for each individual child at the time. My one at home knows school is an option and should he decide on it. I am not sure I will ever feel happy sending him to the big primary and secondary so we may try and steer him to other options but I would let him try. Equally well if DS1 decided to return to home ed then he could I'd try and dress why first as I think it would have to be a problem as being one of 400 kids in a year actually suits him. He enjoys the competition and he shines.

I have seldom encountered negativity to HE in RL. Maybe it washes over me somehow or I have mastered the knack of stressing it's a personal choice and I am prepared to admit there are lots of bad points. Plus my kids are on the whole bright, articulate and most importantly well mannered and NOT what people seem to expect. Often it comes up when I am filling in forms for activities they do without me and the response is "I wouldn't have known they were..." because obviously home educated children grow horns or something...

IceBeing No, you are not mad ;).

Crabby I know. It puts a new angle on those repetetive 'aren't you brave?' conversations in park, shops and library doesn't it?

Ice No you're not at all mad

its I am very jealous!

tilly yes, we have numicon, not enough for whole class work (due to cost) but I do interventions with it.

First off we like home ed and educationally its going swimmingly. And tbh, I know its an old chestnut, but if anyone thinks that dp and I (5 degrees between us, in a range of subjects, both with teaching/tutoring experience) cannot teach our young kids about the world then that's a bit worrying really.

We are struggling a bit with the socialisation though. I've got three kids. The oldest is very geeky, physically quite young, small and all the rest and finds groups of boys overwhelming. In the 18 months we've been HEing he's been quite badly bullied, including being punched in the face enough to leave a black eye, (really quite nasty) at the HE group. We have had similar experiences at the other group. The thing is he never struggled at school and really doesn't struggle at the other social stuff he does (scouts and woodcraft folk,a computer geek club and a DIY.org based club). The parents attitude was "boys will be boys" (dp's attitude was "that's actually assault" and we are new so its hard to work out how to deal with it. It is different kids but there seems to be a real culture of this boys fighting thing at this age in these groups, whereas at school, being a quiet, geeky boy was never an issue for ds.

My younger two get on fine with everyone but miss the large groups of friends they had at school. A lot of the kids at the HE group have been friends since before They are both very sociable and its hard to meet their needs. We have make a few friends among other newcomers, but its not enough for my kids really.

We're HEing for a limited time for specific reasons. No school places (unless I'm prepared to a. make 2 of my kids late daily, and b. spend most of the morning and afternoon driving about in a car I don't own) and we're expecting to be relocated in a few months, so not that much point settling them in a school and disrupting their education. I think we'll probably put them back in school, though I've loved HE, just because socially its been hard on them in different ways.

Sorry if the message above isn't clear. My tablet seems to be autoediting out some sentences. The other kids have been friends a long, long time, is the gist of it. We love HE educationally though, its just a shame its not worked socially very well.