What's your focus ?

[Heswall]

I am thinking, English and Maths and Languages I want to teach.
Everything else we can "discover" in the day to day course of life
Does that sound ok ?
I don't want to anounce now it is time for art that sort of thing just do a bit of pottery combining history, geography etc
Science they will think they are playing hopefully, they love that.

Any recommendations for French and Spanish materials ?
Thank you

what kinds of ages? Watching movies with the subtitles is a good way for immersing in language (or having hysterics, if it's Danish or something similarly weird sounding!)

My focus is on helping my children build confidently towards emotional and practical independence, at their own rates. Absolutely everything else looks after itself :) (and it really does)

Oh heck I hadn't even considered emotional and practical independence, I think it's going to be a steep learning curve.
Ages are 7 and 9, I want to play to their strengths and they seem arty but the maths basics have got to be covered so they aren't behind as I cannot cope to senior school level I don't think so I want them to go back to school at some point.

have you read the research about how formal maths teaching for little children is actually counter productive? Children taught no formal maths at all did better later on than children who were taught formal maths from 4 or 5 or whenever! Relax - maths comes up all the time in conversation (let me tell you, during our early easter egg hunt this morning, there was a considerable amount of sophisticated counting and fraction work going on in the name of fair shares :o )

Read Thomas and Pattison "How children learn at home" - it will really open your eyes to a different way of seeing your children's education - as possibly something self-directed and self-motivated, that hardly looks like "education" at all to conventional eyes, but which is astonishingly efficient.

I haven't taught my children to read, write, count, anything like that. I haven't taught them history or geography or biology. They teach themselves when they are interested; they ask for help when they want and need it - and THEY know what they need help with (and sometimes are very specific about exactly what they want me to do to assist). And they teach me things all the time (I had no idea until my 3 year old told me a couple of weeks ago that the bit between your nose and your mouth is called your filtrum! This had obviously been the subject of conversation with some other adult; it was an interesting tidbit and it got retained. My children astonish me every single day.

So as a starting point on the Monday after the Easter holidays what would you do with them ?
My thoughts at this stage were to take them off to the library to have a look around for something to do a project on, I fancy titanic myself but realise they might have different ideas, having found a topic we would then do English, maths and art around that, is that what people typically do ?

There's a right mix.

Some people do completely adult-led, curriculum-based quasi-school schooling. that suits some families.

Some people do a mixture of adult-led formal learning and more free-flowing just-living-life. That suits some families.

Some people just do the free-flowing approach. That suits some families

Let me tell you how the last one works, because that's what I live:

If I went to the library with my children, I'd just invite them to have an explore, read some books that interest them, maybe take some books home. If those books led to conversations about some topic, then I'd make sure I paid attention to those conversations, answered their questions honestly, kept the conversation going until they were ready to leave it. If the books led to imaginative play, fine, I'd leave them to it. If they wanted to look things up on the internet, I'd leave them to it if they are experienced with google, and answer questions when wanted "Mum!! Read this NOW!!!" Or I'd be there advising if they aren't internet savvy. If they wanted to draw or paint, I'd get the materials out for them.

For me, it's about facilitating, not pushing my agenda. They'll be learning all the time, and the things they learn because they are motivated to are going to STICK in a way that your Titanic project just won't, because it's your agenda not theirs. I mean, they might acquiesce and go along with the Titanic idea, but following their own ideas will be much more intellectually productive.

And they might not produce any sort of educational "product" for weeks on end - and that's fine too! No writing, no paintings. But when they really WANT to write, they will.

p.s. in my family, it's holiday every day. there is no differentiation between "term time" and "holidays" - we treat our whole lives like that 6-week-long summer holiday (except that I toddle off to work after lunch most days!)

What ommmward said!

The only small difference for us is that at 7-9 my older dd wasn't much good at choosing library books, maybe because she wasn't a very fluent reader, and she wanted me to choose books for her. I would grab an armload of all various different kinds of books which I thought might appeal to her and take them all home. Dd would choose one of those and I would start reading to her. We might carry on or abandon the book depending whether she liked it. Many books went back to the library unread because they didn't hit the mark. That was not a problem.

I mostly facilitate but I do push my own agenda somewhat. For instance, in the book-grabbing process, my own preferences did play some role. If I'm the one who is going to be reading the books aloud, they may as well be ones which appeal to me! I'm not a read-aloud machine and I deserve to have fun too. I wouldn't subject my dd to anything I knew she disliked, and I did choose some books which I thought she'd love although I didn't like them myself. But in the vast unknown spaces, I did indulge myself somewhat.

So go ahead, include a Titanic book among the books you take home. You don't have to make the kids sit and listen if they wander off; you can just keep reading it to yourself. You will be setting a good example to your kids if you follow your own passions and they see you learning new things for yourself because you enjoy it rather than because you feel duty-bound to teach them about it. Through exposure to your interests, the children may come to share some of those interests. For example, children who grow up in a musical family are likely to want to make music. Probably the parents aren't thinking, "Must play the flute to the children so they can be educated"; they were just playing because they liked to play the flute.

I know some home educators do projects. I suspect it requires a certain type of child to succeed (and possibly a certain type of parent as well)

I have the kind of child where projects wouldn't work.

Firstly he would ask for suggestions as to what he could do.

If I were daft enough to think this was a real request for information rather than a way to pass the time by breaking my ego on a wheel AGAIN while he explored his own subconscious, then I'd have to endure his saying all my ideas were STUPID.

Then he would get angry when asked for his own idea and say we might as well do mine.

And then he would have Get Out Of Jail Free card to remind me whenever I brought it up that none of this stupid thing was HIS idea.

I have watched other adults hurt or puzzled in the past as they kindly picked up on one of his interests or activities and suggested how he might like to develop it or take it further. He treats these suggestions with great hostility and suspicion and I can only infer that he experiences them as a personal attack.

He's fine for one thing to lead to another eg by reading wikipedia and clicking on links.

What Saracen and Ommmward said!

My two are now "out" of home ed (but they'd tell you they are obviously still in education because they are not yet dead, LOL). They are 17.5y and almost 20y. The 20yo is at university doing law and the 17.5yo is applying for a year in industry before applying to uni for engineering or technology.

We HEed from birth in a free-flowing, living life fashion. We only did stuff if there was a "life" reason to do it. At 7 and 9, we did a lot of practical skills (craft, cookery, science, sport and music) because it is fun and because I think that practical skills are most important to the development of young children - I read to them but was not bothered about "doing literacy and numeracy".

We did projects that grabbed the DC (and stopped when they were finished with it). We dyed raw cotton with vegetables because the 6yo was into Pocahontas and it was fun. We did pottery because we had access to it via a friend. We did Russian because we are involved with a charity bringing Russian-speaking children to the UK. We did German because my DD at 12 chose to do an exchange with German-speaking families. We cooked and baked because we like to eat.

I firmly believe that people learn stuff when they have a reason to do so. Children are passionately interested in the world around them and will learn because they are programmed to do so by being human. Often, adult agendas stop children learning because it distracts them from what they need.

Hi. I've been HEd my twins (just turned 7) and 8 yr old daughters since october and last month respectively (they came out of school at different times). My basic aims are to keep up a sound knowledge of maths and literacy, and then to just inspire a love of learning and give them a taste of what's available..sow the seeds if you like. I encourage them to read every day and practice writing (I have seen one of my DD's writing and spelling deteriorate since leaving school) as much as they tolerate (tho this often happens during their own games- writing notes to eachother, instructions, treasure maps etc etc). I occaisionally ask them to write something more eg a story or notes in their scrapbook about a day out we've had but they're never very keen!!

Maths really does happen on a day to day basis (shopping, baking, sharing things out) altho I do introduce the ideas of things like angles, graphs and other more 'pure maths' concepts and we do some worksheets together, but often ones I've made up myself rather than the usual 'lets do 30 of the same sum just to make sure you've got it' type!

Learning about 'the world around us' is a big part of what we do, and this includes science, nature, space and also human history, how people live around the world. This naturally incorporates languages, geography which we are just touching on at the moment but following things further (conversations, internet, books, dvds) if any of them show a particular interest in something.

I'm also introducing music and we look at art, painters etc etc.

As far as project work goes, 1 of my girls is quite happy for me to say 'lets read about this subjest' or 'lets watch a programme about plants' but the other 2 just look at me as if I'm mad and show no interest in things that I'm interested in!!

What I'm loving about HE tho is the fact i CAN cater to each individuals learning syle and I'm so much more aware of how they're doing and how they're understanding of things is going, plus they are so much happier and more relaxed and actually so am I ;)

Mental maths I can understand happens day to day but my concern is that I basically learnt absolutely nothing of angles, fractions etc at school I do not know how this happened but I didn't know about area, circumference etc until I got to college age 32.
Surely something you have to be sat down and taught ?

So... you learned all that maths not in school but when you needed it? What makes you think the same won't happen for your children? :)

I agree. If they need to know the above things for a test/exam in the future you can teach them then. There are many good workbooks/maths text books/websites that you could use. you could also incorporate angles into drawings/art etc. how about showing them how to draw a building with right angles? I talked to my girls about circles, diameters etc when we made a to scale solar system mobile and they used a compass to draw the planets. I am quite keen tho on introducing this kind of maths tho as I love maths and playing around with numbers etc!

I feel the same about grammar, sentence construction etc. i think it's important that they know this and I think they learn alot just from reading alot but I do think they need to practise these things too.

Why don't you do a project on Titanic yourself? If they are interested they'll join in and you're modelling life-long learning for them too.

Interestingly I also thought I could no way cope with teaching at secondary level when DD2 came out of school at age 8. I now have a home educated 16 year old .

I also started in a quite structured way, sitting down and teaching stuff, workbooks etc, and if you want to do this so you feel you have a bit of a safety net, there's no reason why you shouldn't.

However, since about February I have been supporting DD1 with her GCSE stuff and busy working myself and so DD2 has not been taught anything. She is 12, just the age where you'd think you need good tuition from specialists.

She seems to have learnt a whole load of stuff in that time. She reads masses and she's currently writing some kind of novel (have not read it but have seen it and she's quoted some bits at me). She's taught herself from books to draw and colour the most amazing dragons - her art way surpasses anything I've ever been able to do and I was taught "properly" at secondary school. She's doing an astronomy correspondence course off her own back. She's been researching volcanoes and trying out earthquake proof buildings with lego. Oh, and she just passed Grade 5 music theory with 95% (I helped a little bit with that!). I'm thinking that for a child who has been so utterly educationally neglected for most of this year, she's not doing too badly!

If they need it, generally they'll learn it. If I could go back to when I first took them out of school, I would be a lot less rigid and just have loads of fun. We did have fun in lots of the stuff we learnt, but I worried about what they were learning way more than I needed to.

I think it will all happen much more easily than you imagine :)

DS is 5yo. Right now I'm focusing on the basics: the three R's. We do science because ds loves it. We do geography because ds thinks it is fun. DS wants tap dancing lessons and play the violin. I don't push him, believe me. I tried to take him to taekwando(sp?) lessons and he hated it so we didn't pursue it. We are using workbooks because it helps me feel I'm doing things and keeps us focused (I'm a newbie, can you tell?). The most important thing if that ds has always seen me with a book in my hands, so he's learned books are fun.
I'm rambling. I would say my focus is to teach him to think for hilself and develop a love for learning.