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Home ed

Find advice from other parents on our Homeschool forum. You may also find our round up of the best online learning resources useful.

Moving and hoping to start HE

2 replies

WildEyedAndHairy · 14/05/2012 12:34

We are hopefully moving in a month's time. DS is currently in year 1 in England. Our new home will be in Wales. The LA have said there are no places in year one at the local school so we will be going on the waiting list. I don't want to apply to other schools in the area so I assume we will be HE until a place comes up anyway.

DS had a very difficult reception year and I came close to pulling him out about a year ago. As a late July birthday he simply wasn't ready to go to school full-time. With hindsight I wished I'd kept him at pre-school until he was 5.

My whole family including DH were against trying HE then and I caved and was persuaded to give the year 1 teacher a chance. She has been brilliant has spotted that he is very good at Maths and has been setting him extra more difficult work. He is still on the school's SEN register for behaviour although the incidents are becoming less frequent. The school also referred DS to Speech and Language for assessment earlier this year. They say that he is fine as far as they are concerned and do not need to see him again. He had the vocabulary of a 7 year old but they did note that whereas he was capable of following multiple instructions in a one to one situation he is easily distracted in a way that would be problematic in a classroom.

We also discovered this year that DS needs glasses. In Reception we were told that his hearing and eyesight were fine but we already had a referral to Audiology and DS had grommets and adenoids removed at the beginning of year 1. He was also seriously ill (in hospital for a week), missing two weeks before the Easter holidays although he did see the hospital tutor for a few hours. So he has been through a lot over the past few months and has fallen behind at school. He was such a happy little boy when he was at pre-school, very keen to learn. I am so saddened that most of that spark has gone now.

I am now seeing this as a great opportunity to help my son regain his love of learning but not sure where to start.

OP posts:
WildEyedAndHairy · 14/05/2012 12:38

Sorry OP is so long Blush. I would also be interested to know what Newport's attitude to HE is if anyone knows please. My other main concern is that DS will miss out on learning Welsh. I would like to learn myself but not sure if there are any courses suitable for us to learn together.

OP posts:
julienoshoes · 15/05/2012 12:29

I'm pretty sure there will be opportunities for home educators to learn Welsh, and if it doesn't exist already, I'd find a way to organise it, if it was my child interested in it.

I'd start by relaxing, deschooling and just doing all the things your son enjoys.
Home based education is SO much more efficient than mass schooling, you can afford to declare yourselves on summer holiday from now until September at least!
Go out and about and explore your new area, go to castles, to the beach, to museums, to the theatre. do anything and everything your son enjoys. Watch DVDs together, cuddle up and read books to him.

Let your son regain his sparkle for life, and then three or four months down the line, stop and look back and see how much he has already learned just from living life.

read up on How children learn at home as opposed to haow they learn at school. It is completely different.

I don't know the address now of HE groups local to you in Newport-but if you join the HE-Cymru group people there will point you in the right direction, and tell you about HE in Wales.

Good luck and enjoy getting your happy little boy back-I know I did!

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