Support thread for new home educators

[ToffeeWhirl]

There seem to be a lot of us around at the moment, so I thought it might help us all to have a place where we can swap ideas, chivvy each other along on the bad days and cheer for each other on the good days.

I have two boys, the oldest is 12 and is just starting out in home education. My youngest is 6 and is still at school. Fortunately for me, he has just told me he's missing school and looking forward to going back .

We have had a good summer, with lots of dog walking, excursions, get-togethers with friends and family and minimal rules on television watching and computers. I have had a lovely time ordering books for our home ed library (failed to reign myself in on this ) and planning what we are going to study .

The plan at the moment is for DS1 to do a bit of Science, Maths and English every morning. He has a tutor for English once a week and we are going to get him a Maths tutor too. We will spend the rest of the time doing projects, reading together, practising handwriting, art, etc etc. Fridays are going to be 'free' days for informal learning, such as excursions.

I have been in touch with the local HE groups and we are planning to meet up with other HE families.

I'm spending some time today organising everything - plans, timetables, files, folders, lapbooks, etc. We have a visit from the LEA next Thursday, which gives me a good deadline to work towards.

I would love to hear how the rest of you newbies are getting on. And words of wisdom from the more experienced home educators are very welcome too!

chocolatecrispies* please don't be intimidated.. Informal learning is great.. This thread is for everyone who is just starting out. it's lovely having the support.

chocolatecrispies - very informal approach here so I dont post cos theres nothing to post
toffee - DD has had a bit of an anxiety 'relapse' too - couldnt face her check up today as they would weigh her and she thinks she has gotten 'fat' over summer - um perhaps a bit of extra weight but she has had two operations since May and wasnt allowed to swim or use her trampoline all that time Glad your DS psych is supportive of HEd
On plus side DD has made (very short) list of 'HE I want to do first' , and has been using a Maths app and a French one (when she thinks Im not looking) but she has had a wobbly about the Drama class that starts tomorrow so that will be a no go I think. I have bought subscription to BBC history magazine online version so again she can look at it without me seeing what she is doing - I have bought a couple of back issues (including the Richard the third cover - yes toffee I am watching that car park !)

O could introduce self a bit whilst here - have one DD aged 13 (going on 35) - we dereg'd in April after DDs health issues meant her attendance was too low - long story short - school wanted her to attend, we beleived this was phsically very hard and mentally impossible - we asked that they let her go back after she had recovered from surgery (we were on waiting list for it but no date) they could not accept this so it was bye bye. Health issues made us decide to HE but most likely would have anyway - DD is square peg in round hole. School extreemly high achieving/difficult to get in to so was difficult to let go of the place she worked so hard for but it was right thing to do.
Anyway its late and I have bored you all. I dont get on here much (usually when in bed) anf typing bad as on ipod so apilogirs for lack of personals < must try harder B minus>
nite all

I wonder what I should class as HE and what is not. The things we did when DS was at school, would that be classed as HE or just extra curric in terms of formal/structured HE'ers?

I thought about this because of one of the posters feeling intimidated by the formal approach. Then I thought that apart from 20-30 simple sums, 10 mins on Rosetta French and our science experiments, everything else was already part of our routine but just uncomfortably crammed in. Now it's spread out so we look as if we're doing loads when we're actually doing very little.

JustGetting - sorry, I don't know how, but I missed your earlier post about having to run with older DC's interests. It makes sense, except I'm worried about DS1 taking his GCSEs and surely he needs to put the work in to get those? He really struggles at Maths, so I am insisting that he sticks at it. I will have a proper look at the Nrich website. Our LEA woman recommended that too!

I agree that I need to get better at making the work seem more attractive to DS1 though. It's trial and error at the moment. Hopefully, I'll get better at it as I learn. I like the idea of 'strewing', eg. leaving out interesting magazines that DS can stumble across.

MoreCats - sorry you're DD is having an anxiety relapse too. It's a shame she's worried about her weight at her young age. Sorry you had to miss an appointment because of her worries. It is so frustrating, isn't it?

They have found bones in the car park, by the way! Very informative thread running about it now . Am now wondering whether to read 'Daughter of Time' by Josephine Tey as part of my Tudor History research, after it was mentioned on the thread.

Must get going, as I have a dental appointment later this morning which will interrupt the home ed.

Happy Birthday to MiniHelen today. Enjoy the Blackpool illuminations .

Colleger - as your son is out today (does that count as Forest School?), can you rest a bit so you can get over your flu? It sounds like you need to.

morethan - I have trouble fitting everything in too. I have to keep nagging DS1 to concentrate on his work, otherwise he'll wander off and all those lost minutes add up to hours. Like you, we seem to have so much to fit in.

mam, TBex - how's it going today?

chocolatecrispies - I hope you come back. As I hope you can see, we are not intimidating!

false - you were our first poster. Did we scare you off too?

I think maybe I'm worrying too much about DS1 keeping up with school. But I am so conscious of needing to have his work to show to family, not to mention the LEA, and of the fact that he needs to make progress. I really do feel the burden of responsibility - it's all up to me now! Eeek!

MoreCats - your DD, not you're. Tsk tsk. Sorry.

Sorry not been around been busy few days,

eldest hamster bit baby this morning

toddler kicked off at nursery.

Been to libary to print stuff

Then had 11am with the head.

Was bit nervous.

presented out case in calm postive way.

did get the she has god teacher this year and specialist music/gym teacher on thursday and she would miss all that,

Anyway hes speaking to senco
other teachers
our lawho already cofirmed to me they have no objections.

They have never done it before.
he mentioned freinds child doing afternoon french school which is actually all day.

will be waiting game now.

he seemed impressed with eveidence of work we did over summer and our reasons, hopefull not to negative about school.
we have another meeting arranged next thursday.

Hope everyones ok

mam - that sounds like a really positive meeting . I'm sure all your hard work in preparing and the evidence of work you presented paid off.

Had to fit in dental appointment, extra school run (to administer antibiotic medicine to DS2 because school won't do it) and trip to post office this morning. DS1 did work on his handwriting first thing. He really likes the wipe-on/wipe-off board with letter formations on it - finds it relaxing - and is already beginning to write the letters correctly at last. He also did the first page of a new handwriting book I'd bought for him - and actually produced lovely, neat letters .

Left him doing MyMaths online whilst I went out, which does mean that I don't really know how much he did. DH has been here, but said he wasn't sure whether DS was working or not.

Bought a very nice hardback sketchbook which will serve as our Science project book. Am looking forward to sticking in photos and notes.

DS1 is still very fragile. He panicked whilst I was out and was in tears in case something had happened to me, in spite of DH's reassurances. He rings me regularly whilst I'm out to check that I'm ok and this time he couldn't get through. I looked at all the children in playgrounds at schools on the way home and thought how impossible it would be for DS to join in with any of them .

Anyway, I have less than an hour before the school run, so will try to do something with DS before then.

I am back! Mine are young it's true (4 and 1) but also deeply non-compliant and averse to anything structured. I am trying hard to step back from feeling I need to plan anything or decide what ds needs to do and to follow his interests instead - all his friends have started school this week and so are beginning phonics and reading schemes. The main reason I want to HE is to get away from the terrible tedium i remember from school of learning for the test, or having to learn something because someone else decided it was useful. I want my children to retain their love of learning but i am not sure it is possible. So I think I am Deschooling and I do find it frightening to read about how much you are all doing from textbooks as I am planning to hopefully do completely without them!

Evening all! Really great couple of days here, spent yesterday at the boulangerie and then the beach, doing some work outside in between picking blackberries and swimming, and made loads of progress in numeracy. DD1 read a book to DD3 and she is picking up quite a lot of French. Tonight she said apropos of nothing to me, "I love you so incredibly much," which is just the sort of sweet thing she used to say before she went to school, when her personality changed literally overnight. I heard that a couple of mums at school are having a bit of a moan about what I'm doing, but I'm happy to find I really don't care.

Hi, chocolatecrispies! I think one reason some of us seem to be doing things quite formally is because we are all new to HE. Lord knows I'm no expert, but a lot of the books I read over the summer mentioned that lots of people start off taking quite a formal approach to learning, but relax into a more freestyle education as they gain more experience and confidence. I'm doing quite a bit of structured lesson time, largely because that's the deal I made with DH, but if I'd been brave enough to HE from the start (as I wanted to) I don't think I would have been nearly as formal as I currently am. I'm doing French and History in an extremely laid back way and letting her read whatever she likes, and those are the things she loves most and is making most progress in. Good for you for doing it your way.

Chocolate crispies.

My apologies if I was one that frightened you away. To be honest the extensive planning, time tabling, resource collecting isn't really working. I have realised that a bit of formality will be good for us in short term but longer term I would like dd to choose what she wants to do. The only reason I did all this in the first place was because I had no faith in an autonomous approach. I know so many say it works for them and I even thought as my dd is creative it would be a good approach for her. But I chickened out and went for the formal approach. Already she doesn't want to do science and is asking for more Italian and History. So I guess we could end up moving to a less structured approach.
Are science and Geography important?

My son asked to do English the other day. I'm so bloody useless at English that I told him to go an write a story. He said no and would put up with my chemistry instead. Is that autonomous? Lol!

DD has chosen her topics herself. We are structured because DD asked to be. We are slowly relaxing a little. She's really interested in WW2 for history do she is researching that herself.

Just because we're using textbooks doesn't mean we're slavishly following them. I've used the data handling section of her maths book to devise activities for next week. We're doing a pie chart based on the percentage of electricity generated by different means to link with our science topic and a bar chart of UK rainfall by region to link with our weather topic. I'm using the books to gauge the standard we're aiming for and then looking to create similar actinides which link to her interests.

I couldn't be fully autonomous. It wouldn't suit her or me. It's horses for courses.

I get the feeling I'm considered very weird in our local HE circle.

Glad you've come back, chocolatecrispies . If I was just starting out in HE with young children, I wouldn't be doing structured HE either. And, as TBex rightly points out, those new to HE (and with older DC) tend to do things in a formal way at first.

I certainly haven't relaxed yet. I feel this constant nagging worry that we're not doing enough. We did so little today, thanks to me having to rush off and do errands and DS refusing to work independently, that I have told him we'll have to work tomorrow morning now too. Luckily, he seems to have forgotten that Friday is meant to be his day off structured work.

As I get more experienced, I do fully intend to provide more of what DS1 wants to do, rather than imposing my ideals on him. Today, I had him working on the MyMaths website until he said please could he go on MangaMaths because it was so much more fun. He was right and it suited him down to the ground - lots of computer games, but all teaching maths.

Managed to fit in a bit more home ed sneakily at bedtime, by reading 'Shadow' to him as a bedtime story. DS1 wanted to know about the places discussed, so I fetched the atlas and pointed out Afghanistan and surrounding countries.

Am going to keep things low key tomorrow as DS is still too nervy for a big trip out. I thought we'd go for a walk locally (it's meant to be sunny) and practise using an O/S map.

TBex - it sounds like you are both having a wonderful time . I'm glad to hear you're not taking any notice of the moany mums. Why on earth would they be bothered, or is it that they feel HE is a criticism of their choice to send their children to school? So silly.

morethan - hmm, I am treating Science as important because I think DS1 should get at least one Science GCSE. However, I am doing my best to find more interesting ways to teach it than DS filling in workbooks. Am less bothered about Geography, though we are still covering it.

Colleger - at your teaching of English! Fancy your son asking for it though. I can't imagine my DS asking me to teach him anything.

Helen - I agree with you about not slavishly following textbooks. They are useful tools, but not to be plodded through page by page.

DS1 is having a wobble about the prospect of meeting up with other home-educated children. I worry about him not mixing with other children enough, although he is perfectly happy at home with us. He has one best friend and that's it. That's all he wants, but I hate him being so dependent on one boy.

Am nodding off here. Night all.

OK - todays 'Home Ed' (and not a workbook in sight chocolatecrispies )
DD got up at 11.30 as she had a bad night. Made her own lunch and did the Maths for her meds she takes with meals.
Watched 'Why Didnt they Ask Evans' and discussed differences to book which she read recently and I have read several times. Discussed why the differences may have been made and whether they spoilt story. Discussed changes made between other books and film/TV adaptations. (DD wants to be an Shakespearean actress, no less )
Discussed nutritional merits of potential breakfasts as I needed to do weekly shop online.
DD played various dancing and sporys games on Wii whilst I did shopping.
Used Maths Wizard App (and acheived Maths Wizard level - yay!) whilst I cooked evening meal.
Listened whilst I wittered on about Richard Third and his bones over the meal (I may have already mentioned thr subject a few times )
Wotked out meds for evening meal
Wrote in journal
Read The Hobbit in bed
Listened to A Series of Unfortunate Events (again) in bed.
Still asleep at 1.48 (now)

I call that educational but I also call that living your life. And it is certainly appropriate for what DD wants to do with her life (act) and what we as parents want for her (to be happy). Dont think she would have acheived as much if she had gone to school (especially after the bad night before).

So there you have it - tomorrow will be much the same though (as she is asleep now) Im hoping for an earlier start and that she will eat breakfast.

toffee DD doesnt want to go to any HE groups yet either - they dont seem to be well attended by teen girls around here either so bit tricky. She does prefer company of adults - is this necessarily a bad thing?

mam - sorry I havent kept up with this thread properly but I think you are trying to flexi school? Sounds like you might be successful - I hope so - we werent able to do it but did look in to it at one stage. Sounds like you were well prepared which can only help your cause!

Sorry lack other personals, its 2am so need to get some zzzz's.

Have a good day tomorrow peeps

I got collared by one of our governors yesterday. She wanted to have a moan about something but she ended up offering me a scheme of work on the book DD is currently reading ("Boy" by Roald Dahl). I won't follow it all but it has some comprehension exercises and creative writing prompts in it which I might use. She also offered me some exercises for use of commas, colons and semi-colons (currently our nemesis!). She's head of English in a school and very supportive of HE.

Blackpool illuminations was a fun trip. We ended up queuing so we discussed Coastal erosion on the East Coast of England, as you do. Not a textbook in sight .

Today is going to be a bit more rollercoaster maths, creative writing, weather and fun static electricity experiments. Well that's what we discussed yesterday!

Trampolining again tonight (=coffee and book for me ). DS started hockey on Wednesday and declared it the best fun ever (=more coffee and book time for me).

Tbex-is the boulangerie a local bakery? I heard you mention it in other posts.

Chocolate crispies-think you have to do approach that works best for you always get impression with home education that the structured home eders are outnumber by the autonomous ones and a few of the groups are mostly autonomous.

Me personally im not a naturally organised person.
but having no hekp with 3kids, hubby working long hours I need structure and routine in my life to help keep things flowing, im a huge fan of writing lists half the jobs never get completed by find it reassuring as have tendancy to be scatty mainly as im so tired and trying to juggle so many commitments.

I think even a rough list of topics ie

shapes, colours, letters-as thats what middle dd seems to have learnt in nursery.

I get impression homeed with very young kids can be fun.
Im not sure how I would feel about secondry as I hated high school.

Also I think quite a few have had rough stressful time at school as not met their educational personal needs so as a parent you are keen to ensure what they get at home is better than they would receive at home and dont think fact home ed is less stressful its just different if that makes sense.

ie before parents evening at school-you hope your childs done well this year and if they havent you ask teacher why is this?

with home ed i guess you not just asking this question near report/exam, parenst evening you asking it daily or weekly as parents responsability and other people who dont home can be negative.

everyone sounds so busy and like they doing fantastic work.

toffee whirl-yes was positive, was lots of prep and libary printer hates the guadian and wouldnet print off those articles.

Its not been a straight no , I feel it was positive and must admit I dident realise he was so forward thinking a hes been there 14years.

He said hes not sure he agrees with lots homework.
He likes the sweedish system
that one to one has massive advantages.

i tried to be positive about school and say we still happy with some element and really point out that its better for our family needs and for needs of our child.

I certainly did do a lot of prep, proposal turned out to be 5page essay.

Did find out one interesting fact with baby boy can defer him or send him part time in reception which think I might do as hes april birthday.
middle is sept so shes 5when she starts.-Again maybe i works out could negociate part time for her.

More cats then kids-did you consider idea or was idea rejected?
head had never heard of flexi schooling. The school had never offered this option befeore apart from sending kids to other educational establishments.

2am sound so me only time get any peace.

im so tired was up 5.30 with younger 2
had school meeting yesterday evening 8pm-10.30
got home and dh had all 3 kids awake and up -impressed was not the word been long day.

Did read with eldest before meeting shes doing well not too bothered about her starting lower level that others as thinks he will sail through and catch up to where she needs to be or least the majority of the class just dont want her every year playing catch up.

Her teacher said your mummy writes very long notes in homework contact book-not sure if thats meant to be funny i cant always go in quicker to write a note and be clear with communication from week 1 surly.

Eldest said we doing proper year 2work this week and its really hard.As oppose to pretend work year :)

I need top clarify what assistance shes getting this year as shes on one of bottom tables and rest of her table go off for literacy with senco shes only one left behind.

Re maths-shes doing shapes and properties this term so need to brush up on that.
my freind of course once again thinks her dd same class is a genuis so had her banging on about that.
So end of week 2at school and so much whinging, worrying and negativity so hoping we get 1day off as think do me good being out of it for 1day and doing it our gentle but structured way and cant wait to do trips.

Next week think need to do short written peice on stuff brought up last meeting to adress his concerns.
Also will ring neigbouring lea bristol and see if any of their schools flexi school.

printed off devon county council flexi schooling protocal so least another south west lea but devon has high proportion of home educators so was quite comprehensive.

It could well be i need to change days-but think as her teachers half day thursday its best option.

There could be few weeks negocating before can start so dont forsee a possible start date until october as think need to draw up a contract.

right best get eldest up shes hopeless in the mornings.
catch you guys later, have fun day.

mam have a look at the Lancashire County website. They are generally well regarded in their attitude to home education. They may have something on flexi-schooling too.

Thanks helena greace will take a look.

enjoying a nice rest and pleased its friday.

braved toddlers today big mistake they were both overtired glad to be home,

On way home my soon to be 3year old is fixated with seasons the tree leaves, conkers, picking blackberries and she keep spotting apple trees never noticed before.

I love autumm so think will go national trust forset near us called westonbirt and local park/cyclepath and do a mini project on changing of the season catering for varied age groups so with middle leaf painting, both can go foraging as wondering if too late on the nuts but think might be fun running round forest in their wellies.

planning day at home tommorow

have to do 3lots school homework with eldest
some more carol vordman and give her extra help of shapes and their properties.

really need to get some organisation in the house too.
do some more research and prep for next weeks meeting.

morecats - I like the way your home ed seems to blend seamlessly into your everyday life .

Helen - glad to hear your day out in Blackpool was good fun. How lovely that your friend has given you a scheme of work to use for English. Even if you don't use it all, it will give you ideas. Well done on the extra afternoon's reading/coffee time. I really need to work on that. DS2 started drama on Monday, which gave me an extra two hours to myself at the end of the day - but he hated it and doesn't want to go again .

mam - at right-wing library photocopier.

It's great that your headteacher is so forward-thinking and that he let you know that you can defer your little boy's start date for school. I hope you get your answer about the flexischooling soon.

Your trip to the forest sounds great. I know I keep mentioning it, but have you looked at The Woodland Trust kids' page? It has loads of free resources. I joined it and use the downloads for DS1's home ed, as well as for DS2's fun activities.

Friday is meant to be our outings/exercise day, but it didn't happen today. DH wasn't feeling well, so wasn't up to driving us anywhere. So it ended up being a regular day instead, which was less stressful for DS1 anyway. We started with handwriting practise, then shared the reading of 'Shadow' (difficult for me to put it down actually ). On to Maths (DS1 has been stuck on subtraction using written methods all week - I do wonder, yet again, what he was taught at school? ). He played MangaHigh to relax when the written Maths got too much for both of us. A bit of Science, where I encouraged DS1 to copy a diagram of a plant to label. This was greeted with protestations because he says he can't draw, so I triumphantly produced tracing paper instead. He made a big fuss about this too, but did it. Am going to stick it in the scrapbook I bought yesterday, which will be our record of Science stuff.

In the afternoon, DS spent some time using an English CD-Rom, which left me free to do other stuff. I thought we'd get round to other things, but that was enough for one day.

Am spending a bit of time now putting together a scrapbook I'm making of our home education. It's good to see it starting to take shape.

Toffee whilrl-Lol at right wing photocopier was gutted as im sure teachers love the guardian but independant would have to do and guardian did follow one upper class couple who flexischooled in london and took little satch to educational trips to newyork- i mean how can I relate to that?

Sounds like you had a good day.

will definatly look at that link.

Hope you dont mind me making few suggestions.

In early years foundation-theres something called a learning story.

its basically ie toddlers nursery its a

photo of them doing the actuvity.

what subject or skills it requires.
description of what they doing

short assessment and paragraph on how the child did in that task if they enjoyed it and tackled the task.

sometimes added what equipment they used.

so breaks down to task/subject skills.

what they learnt

you could do that in lovley scrapbook form for lots of stuff especially the days out and the practical tasks ie experiments ect.

In adition to that

a days out photo album.

A learning log so very dry and boring but

day
date
subject-topic
what you did maybe approx time frame- maybe use that day to remind yourself with little note continue with tudors on later day.

3rdly practical work I would keep in large box files as thats what teachers use as nothing can fall out then and have one for each subject .

might need large box with lid for lapbooks and other bigger bulkier stuff.

With topics like maths and english you could have large ringbinders divided into topics.if thats easier.

lastly if have space why not get couple large cord boards and do a work display each term of his current work.
im sure the evidence of learning will build up quite quickly

and if lea did come round they be impressed.

Well end of week have birthday prep for 3year old tommorow and eldest has 3lots homework.

she asked tonight if can do project on world flags,

tonight was lovley sunset so shes going to draw it tommorow then if we do project on weather or seasons can pop it into that.

This morning we got up late so DS only managed some maths and then I took him to a film makers club for two hours. The club is not for him which is a relief as, although I met lovely mums, it adds around two hours driving. We then drove 1.5 hours from the film club to his bassoon teacher so no practice today. On the way home I crashed the car on the M25 so he missed swimming and social time with his choir. So not a lot achieved today, except driving!

colleger hope you both ok. That busy day and lot of travel.

filmaking sounds fun but guess sometimes need to try a few things to decide hat interests him.

So sorry you had an accident, Colleger. I hope you and DS are ok. Also hope you are recovering ok from the flu.

mam - those are great ideas, thanks. I have separate folders for the subject stuff at the moment, but intend to put completed worksheets into ringbinders at some point, then display more interesting stuff in sketchbooks/scrapbooks. At the moment, I only have display stuff for Biology (some work on seeds we did when we went to the park the other day, a seed dial printed out from Woodland Trust, photos, plant diagram). This thread is a very useful reminder of what we've done every day, but I do need to keep a proper record somewhere, as you say.

I still feel we aren't getting enough done, but DH thinks we're doing really well, which is encouraging. He said he thought DS1 was learning much more than he'd be learning at school. We are always hard at work when DH comes home for lunch, so that looks good!

Exhausted again, so off to bed now. Hope you all have a lovely weekend.

Hope you are both ok Colleger, you have had a rough week with flu as well. Hope next week is better for you both.
I should be going to bed but hey my dh is away tonight and tomorrow night and ds1 21 is at home for once so been havin a chat with him. Although only a limited time I can sit through stories of cars and insurance, lol.

Hope you're both ok colleger.