Can I ask a question please ?

[DeskPlanner]

Hi. Hopefully nobody thinks I'm being rude asking this question, as I'm not a home educator, but I do think It's very interesting.
I just wondered how you time table lessons. Do you do a 9-3.15 arrangement similar to schools, and do you work termly and keep to similar school holidays like schools ?
Hope I haven't offended anyone with this post. I was just wondering after watching the 16 and counting program last night. Thanks.

Everyone does something different (even to the extent of DH does a different work pattern with the kids than I do).

We tend to not do much formal at weekends, we tend not to have weeks off at a time unless we are going away. We tend to do more in the mornings than the afternoons. But it varies :)

I think that you will find that there are as many ways of doing it as home educators DeskPlanner! The whole point is freedom of choice to do what suits them and the school hours is unlikely to suit many.

Sorry -are not is.

Thanks for the responses. Yes, I thought everyone would have there own way of doing things. I love the idea, of not having weeks and weeks off. I find my children struggle after going back to school in September after the school holidays. I find it very interesting. Thanks.

I'm sure no one will be at all offended by your question!!

I think you'll find that few people do such long hours as schools, because the one-to-one attention makes home ed more efficient for the learner. Some have timetables and some don't.

At the moment all of my children's learning at home is informal, with nothing remotely resembling "lessons". (There was a year or two when dd1 asked me to set aside a regular time to work with her on reading, so we usually did that at bedtime.) For us, everything is totally ad hoc except where we go to scheduled group activities such as writing workshops, sports sessions or dd's guitar lesson, which obviously happen at particular times and give a structure to our days.

I'm always aware of when the school holidays are and our pattern changes then. This is because many of the activities I mentioned above meet term-time only, and because we prefer to book holidays when they are cheaper, go to places such as museums in term-time when they will be fairly empty, and catch up with friends who go to school during their holidays.

Any formal work we do is usually in the mornings. By lunchtime we've covered so much that's it for the day. My elder daughter managed 10 good GCSEs on no more than 2-3 hours work a day. Makes you wonder how schools take so long! Home ed is very efficient - you learn what you need to and no more. When DD1 was at school she would bring home 50 similar maths exercises to do. It would take 2 hours and was tedious enough to put anyone off maths for life. When we do maths at home, once DD2 has the third or fourth example correct, she obviously knows what she's doing, so we leave it. This is partly what makes it quick, I think.

When I first took DD2 out of school at 8 we worked a 4 day week with Fridays being "trip day". We made a concerted effort every Friday to go to a different place or museum. We had lots of fun! Now she is working for GCSEs and so work does tend to spill into a fifth or even sixth day. She knows where she needs to get to, and just keeps going until it is covered. We have lots of time out of that for various activities and meet ups.

I teach piano at home and partly in school, so it makes sense for us to stick loosely to school holiday times so that they get a break when I do. But it is only roughly. DD2 will probably keep working over the Easter holidays and May half term as she has exams just afterwards. She is finished in June and we will probably do no formal work then until September. But lots of things will still carry on for her, her ballet, piano, singing, theatre class, art with the home ed group, so we don't really stop as such, just put the textbooks down for a while.

The flexibility and freedom of it is the one thing DD1 misses now she is at college. Oh, and she constantly grumbles how much of her time they waste!

Thanks for the answers. Doing less hours because you get more one to one time, makes perfect sense. I never thought of that. I love the idea of having educational outing one day a week it sounds brilliant.

Music your daughter noticing the amount of time wasted In collage is very illuminating.

We do keep to terms and stop formal work during the holidays, but that is because I didn't take my DS1 out of school till he was 13, so this is what he is used to. Also, I have a younger son at school, so it suits us to keep the two boys to a similar pattern.

We start work at around 10 am, which gives me time to do the school run with DS2, have breakfast and get breakfast for DS1, and wash up/tidy/get the washing on. We cover Maths, Science, English and Handwriting practice, as well as extra topic work for other subjects (eg we studied slavery in North America last term). DS1 also has a weekly guitar lesson, Maths lesson with a tutor and works on a farm once a week. We also go for walks and swim. If we go on any trips, it tends to be on a Friday. DS1 sees his best friend either after school or at weekends.

The timetable is for me, really, so that I don't lose track of what we're doing. It is often much more flexible than I've described here, which is one of the advantages of home ed. For example, today DS1 was terribly anxious about going to the farm and couldn't do much formal work. No problem - he will do it this evening instead. Or he could catch up tomorrow, if he prefers.

It's true that working one to one at home is much more efficient than at school. I never expect DS1 to spend more than half an hour on each subject and often it is even less than that. However, I am amazed at the ground he has covered already.

We home educated three all the way through their teens, with no formal work at all, as the children didn't want to do any. No lessons, No timetable, No plan.
Instead they learned through living life, doing things that really interested them, so we facilitated that-with a long term aim to allow them to recover from the damage done to them by their schooling experience and become happy self confident individuals-and they learned along the way!

Eventually all three took themselves off to Further Education College post 16 or did an OU starter course. From there they went on to University level.

"Music your daughter noticing the amount of time wasted In collage is very illuminating."

My daughter said something similar when she tried school for a term in Year Five. Someone asked her whether she felt she was learning more or less at school than she had while being home educated. She replied that it was about the same amount, but at school it took all day to do it! This was the main reason she decided to come out of school again: she resented school consuming all of her time.

Can anyone offer advice about home educating a 15 year-old girl? We would like to connect with others and not go it alone. We are in central/north London

Deskplanner

I saw that programme last night too. I think the Sullivans seemed lovely and she was so tranquil and laid
back. I only have 1 dd to H.ed, I'm not sure how i'd cope with their brood

We don't really timetable as such but I will try and involve her with a bit of maths and English and encourage her to look at another subject, which is usually history. My dd left school to concentrate on music practice, so this takes the morning usually.
We keep to term time only because it fits in with the family and alot of her activities run during term time.