Formal/National Curriculum Home Ed

[MagicFingerGoesPop]

Hi

Does anyone do formal home-ed, i.e. not autonomous? By this I mean basically following the national curriculum with structured routine/timetable etc?

As much as I would like to do an autonomous style, I believe that my son would benefit more from a structure. It is also easier for me to have the 'plans' in place of what we are doing. It make us both feel a lot calmer. At some stage I would like to swap to autonomous but will start off formal and generally relax as we go on. Easing him into it sort of thing. Initially we are home-edding as a trial and do not want him to have missed what his peers are doing as a result of not being in school. I am aware however that we might get more done in a shorter time as we are not restricted as such and can go at his pace - we might end up even ahead! But I do want to make sure he has covered what his peers are coving just in case we do go back to school.

Does anyone have any resources that might help?

I do structured, but not to a super strict timetable, as I want to also enjoy the freedom that home edding brings. We are not (at this stage) planning to home ed forever, so I need to be aware of the stuff being covered in school.
We use Schofield and Sims resources, Galore Park maths and also CGP books.
Mathswhizz for some interactive maths fun. Other stuff is much more relaxed and we go with what she is interested in at the time. The horrible histories, science and geography books are great for sparking an interest in things which we then follow up through other books, and t'internet of course.

Hi,

I don't know how old your son is but Galore Park www.galorepark.co.uk/ offers a truly wonderful range of textbooks, particularly for KS3. My 12-year-old also enjoys www.mathletics.com/ and www.spellodrome.com/. These latter two ain't free but are well worth the cash if you can spare it. Your son will start to assert choices in what he does and will develop autonomy as you encourage these.

Have fun!

Oh, and don't forget: www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks3bitesize/ (there are other excellent, free BBC Bitesize sites for both older and younger kids)

We did exactly what you are doing when my girls first came out of school. For my eldest, who was 12 when she came out, we followed the government schemes of work - now seems to have been decommissioned but still available archived. For my 8 year old I bought National Curriculum based books such as the WHSmith Revise series which we found very good.

After a year with my 12 year old, we stopped bothering because the National Curriculum is, frankly, pretty narrow and rubbish compared to other stuff out there. However, for all the reasons you describe (it was initially a temporary thing and I wanted her to do what her peers were doing) and because it really helped to hand-hold me when I wasn't very confident, I found this approach useful.

I use mathletics and spellodrome. You can get a home educators discount for the mathletics - 325 for the whole year and £20 for Spellodrome.