Do any of you use a Home Ed Pack/Materials Provider?

[shimmerysilverglitter]

If so, which one.

I want to Home Ed my ds. He is ASD and so it needs to be fairly structured, in that I need to know exactly what I should be teaching him or he needs to know as if it is left to him we would be looking at trains, cars and other forms of transport for ever and a day.

I basically need someone to say to me "Here this is what your ds needs to know at this stage".

So any recommendations for materials etc. Would be very grateful.

There are various 'schemes' and it depends on exactly what you are looking for. Some are very expensive and all the resources are available on amazon/in bookshops and much cheaper.

Witsend do National Curriculum
Oxford Home Learning do KS3/4 (not sure about primary)
Sonlight is an American scheme which seems quite flexible.
ACE is a Christian scheme but very rigid from what I can gather.

What we have done is to cherry pick things that we like and then I put together a work plan every 10 weeks and we stick to that (unless the sun is shining and we fancy a day out!)

Many alternatives to the National Curriculum tend to suit ASD children better.

If you are interested, there is a structured home ed forum on ning. For an invite send your details to [email protected]

Thanks very much.

I don't think I would stick to it rigidly but as his interests are so narrow I need to know what he SHOULD be knowing iyswim. I would imagine that many NT kids could be taken to somewhere like the National Science Museum and love it and their own curiosity would educate them, this would not be the case with ds. It would be "boring" because there are no cars there iyswim?

Thanks for that address. Will have a look. I would just like some general ideas on subject matter and then I would take it from there. Eg I know ds's school were doing The Fire of London this term, so just knowing that I know what kind of things to do with him. So just need a general outline really.

The QCA website will tell you what he would be doing in school, if you want to stick to National Curriculum.

The structured home ed forum is by invite only, but we're pretty quick at joining people. There are a few people on there with ASD children so they would probably be able to give some good advice/information.

I know 'classical education' seems to suit quite a few. We do Story of the World for history and First Language Lessons for grammar which are both 'classical'. Then we use Galore Park for Maths, French, Spanish, Latin, English and KS3 Geography. We also use an American series called Writing Strands which is a very structured approach to writing as my 2 DSs struggle with creative writing. We have also used a great book called 'Trail Guide to World Geography', which has been good for all of use!!

Ichthus resources are very good for American resources and are very helpful if you want further information.
www.ichthusresources.co.uk/

Thank you very much. Will save this thread and look into all of it.

I feel totally clueless at the moment, don't know where to start, that is why I am sticking to the "guidelines" iyswim?

All I know is ds cannot continue at school at the moment the way things stand.

One thing that you may find helpful is to build on his interest and see what you can do with it. There are sure to be some lapbooks on transport - here's an example:

www.homeschoolshare.com/trains_lapbook.php

You could maybe look at engineering, history of transport etc as well.

How old is your DS?

He is 7.

We do do that, for things like writing and reading we focus on his interests to keep him motivated.

He watches loads of videos on YouTube about the history of the Underground. What he doesn't know about the London Underground isn't worth knowing.

Just feel like I am flailing around in the dark though, even contemplating this!

If you can give up on what he should know, then that might help.

"Should" is an extremely arbitrary concept, especially when you are talking about a 7yo. I can understand you feeling the need for a structure but the idea of "I need to know exactly what I should be teaching him or he needs to know" is difficult for me. There is:

• "what he would be being exposed to if he were in school": which may not be of interest and he may not learn it, even if exposed to it

• "what he needs to know": which is (apparently) transport...

I'd be interested to know what you think he needs to know that cannot be covered within an obsession (however annoying) with transport.

BTW, IME even NT 7yos tend to be given to obsessions and it is as well to work with it rather than against.

I use k12.com for my 6 and 9yo dds and find it very good. You can choose the subjects you do.

It is American though so I have the occasional issue with spelling etc. and the odd story book on US history, but on the whole, all the subjects are great (except music which is really a bit poor). History covers geography, ancient civilisations and lots of world history. Art covers lots of art history and classical art pieces then lets children have a go at putting the concepts into practice.

It's very structured within each module with clear lessons (each with optional activities) and progress bars for the year. I'd continue with it, I think, if we moved back to the UK because I'm quite impressed with the American curriculum - it does seem to cover more.

"I'd be interested to know what you think he needs to know that cannot be covered within an obsession (however annoying) with transport."

That is actually pretty inspiring SDeuchars, have been thinking about it, this morning. How I could translate that. At the moment I already do descriptive stuff with him by printing off pictures of various modes of transport and then asking him to come up with words to describe them. He loves doing that. We go to the London Transport Museum at least once a month and he knows tons about that.

"what he would be being exposed to if he were in school": which may not be of interest and he may not learn it, even if exposed to it"

Well you are right about that because presently he is learning Jack All at school because he is not interested in it. Part of the reason to want to home school him.

Would you say that just exposing him to tons and tons of stuff within his interest would be enough? Maybe trying to direct it with projects and stuff? I am taking them to Kew Gardens today and we will take some pictures there and get some info for him to put in a scrap book. He is not overly interested in Flowers or Botany but he loves taking photos so I am using this as way in iyswim. He will take photos and along the way hopefully pick up some information about the things he is photographing.

Am I thinking along the right lines? You see I am totally clueless.

Any book recommendations about Home Schooling in General would be great.

That doesn't sound at all clueless to me! I'm glad you are not offended - I didn't want to diss what you were saying, but school is so embedded in our society that it takes ages to stop thinking that the school system is the custodian of knowledge.

I'd say you are exactly on the right lines. Perhaps you could also do interesting things with the photos when you get home (e.g., if they are digital you can use a photoediting program to modify the images, create a web page or a slide show, etc).

How Children Learn at Home by Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison is well worth reading - it is about "informal learning". They are researchers from the Instutute of Education (not EHEers) and they conclude that informal learning is at least as efficient as formal learning, at least up to 12-13yo. They also admit that it is not codifiable - by 12-13 all the children they studied were at least equal to their school peers in maths and English, but they could not say how it happened and it happened differently for each child.

The trick is to not be anxious that you cannot see what is happening. A bit like being a gardener at Kew - you have to trust things will grow because if you dig them up every week to check, then you know they won't. Sometimes they don't anyway, but it is not a disaster because something else does (analogy breakdown). For example, if your DS is able to reel off a million facts about transport and LU, does it matter that he has not done a project on the Vikings?

My DD is an expert on the Tudor courts. She has been reading about them since about 10 - now 18 - and had books by David Starkey and Alison Weir for Christmas at 13. She came in the other day with a book on British History from 1700, for research into something she is writing. The point is that she is still interested and is extending her interest because she has her own reason, not because a curriculum advisor thinks that all 10yos need to know about the Victorians, IYSWIM.

Your DS may decide that he wants to start building models of the LU. He may be interested in the story A Subway Named Möbius by A.J. Deutsch (trains disappear because an engineer accidentally builds a train line as a Möbius strip). That leads onto lots of interesting geometry and other maths... You get the idea.

shimmery what you're doing sounds great to me. it really sounds like following his interests is best for him. we won't start off HEing, as DD really wants to go to school, but that's the kind of thing we want to do with our children outside school. I think it's so important for children to direct at least part of their own learning. I remember discovering the game Towers of Hanoi, and spending the evening deriving the formula for the number of moves.

DH and I feel so strongly about this, we find it quite frustrating when his DDs (now 12) are really getting into a homework topic but then they'll still stop when they've done what's required. we're usually just met with "but we don't need to know that". erm, so what?!

ooh, mobius strips

"They also admit that it is not codifiable - by 12-13 all the children they studied were at least equal to their school peers in maths and English, but they could not say how it happened and it happened differently for each child"

SDeuchars what exactly does codifiable mean in the context of that sentence?

I meant that they could not lay out exactly how the learning had happened. They couldn't , for example, say that the informal learner grasped concept A and then moved onto learn B - it is haphazard but it all comes together in the worderful thing that is the human brain.

Ah that's what I thought (but googling confused me more!) thank you

(I'm a firm believer that if I don't know something, I ask rather than keeping quiet!)