Online schooling / following lesson plans and curriculum

[Mummyinggnome]

Hi all,

Do any of you follow a website or written curriculum that give you real structure?

I guess I could write my own but where do you get your key learning stage hurdles from and direction about what your children should know at each age?

I am taking my 5 and 4 year old out of school to HE and will have a 3 year old to start with too. We adore reading eggs so I'm wondering if there's something similar which I can't find for the main curriculum?

Thanks for your help!

We don't follow a curriculum, but my children, at times, like Education City, which is based on the national curriculum and has the specific year group stuff. It has English and Maths, and science (which I don't think is great) and some languages. It gives you an idea of what they'd be doing at school that year, if you would like that. BBC bitesize is free and also has keystage specific activities and seems to be usually quite fun.
I find that, as we home ed. longer, I'm less worried about what they should know at their age and more able to relax a bit and focus more on what they are into at the moment. I think they are probably quite a long way 'behind' their peers in some things and some way 'ahead' in others. The government guidelines on elective home educating specifically say that home educators aren't required to 'match school-based, age-specific standards' which is very liberating to have in black and white.

You might want to get a book called The Well Trained Mind by Susan Bauer. It is all about the structured Trivium method of learning and specifically written for home schoolers/home educators. Warning: It is very addictive, and in the end I took certain elements from it and left others. I found it useful in terms of a guide if you like. Also it isn't cheap, but I personally think it is worth having even if you later decide to just be autonomous.

Thanks for the recommendations - I shall investigate! Much appreciated.