just starting out...

[homeeddays]

well here we are, dereg'd from mainstream school mid july, have been chilling since. DD 8 years wants to watch tv all day and DS 6 wants to play tablet games. we live with Grandparents who keep asking "are we schooling today?"
DD is very strong willed and my attempt at "work books" has met with MUCH resistance!
I think child Led Learning is the way to go, have read about unschooling which seems a bit hardcore for us. How do i balance out the grandparents questions with wanting to be child led, but not letting the kids eat chocolate spread sandwiches every half hour mixed in with tv and screen games, oh and housework and chores???????
any advice welcomed please????

There's child led and child led!

DD 8 years wants to watch tv all day and DS 6 wants to play tablet games.

Give them options, not freedom to do anything they want!

thanks ItsNotEasyBeingGreen
in your experience is it advisable to set limits on tv and screens in general, i know we are deschooling really but i would love them to be doing something else! esp. DD, she will only ever watch tv, play on tablet, climb the washing line post or hang out in grandparents house until they take pity on her. its impossible to get hear to do something on her own by herself!
please feel free to throw rotten eggs my way :)

I don't homeschool but child led in my opinion would be finding something they're interested in and educating them in that. Not letting them pick and choose exactly what they want to do.

So give your DD a list of topics that she might be interested in. Let her choose one and then let her choose how she is going to learn about it. Library, internet, an educational programme. Then set her some work.

I don't know... Say she likes dinosaurs. Ask her to do a timeline for some of her favourite dinosaurs. She can print pictures of them off the internet and stick them in their appropriate time periods. Then set her some work like explaining in a story, essay how fossils are formed.

It is still her choice if you see what I mean because she wanted to learn about dinosaurs.

IMO the whole point of homeschooling is that you school at home. Save the I want to play on my iPad. I want to watch telly for rest times and weekends.

Thanks, i have read so many articles about unschooling, and radical unschooling, my brain has fried!
i will prob structure the day a little, to appease myself, and start the project about chocolate that they fancy doing, the research could go on forever!

"IMO the whole point of homeschooling is that you school at home." Green, it's certainly true that some (not all) home educators would agree with your suggested approach in not giving children the freedom to learn in whatever way they want but instead imposing some requirements in how they go about it. And it sounds like the OP isn't completely comfortable with autonomous education, so your advice may be helpful.

However, very few of us describe what we are doing as "school at home". Even parents who follow a structured curriculum, and require their children to do certain things, do see HE as fundamentally different from school in many ways. This is the reason why the preferred term in this country is "home education" rather than "home schooling", emphasising that it rarely resembles school.

I'm a big fan of outings. That may be a good compromise between letting the kids do what they want and reassuring yourself and the grandparents that they are learning.

How about drawing up a list of interesting places to go, and letting the children choose which they like best? There are some fantastic museums and historical sites scattered across the country, many of them free or very cheap. A day trip could be quite a tonic. Most kids like going to new places, and it would be hard to avoid learning loads while there.

Phew, panic over, I can see light at the end of the tunnel! Just signed up for Education City, they loved the free trial, and they are loving it!
This will fill the "schooling" bit of my brain!

Homeddays, no need to panic! Trust your instincts as you absolutely do not have to do anything that resembles school at home.

The fact that you have read about unschooling probably shows that you do not feel a particularly structured approach fits your children! The reason DD wants to 'just watch TV all day' could be for a number of reasons...making up for lost time by having it restricted previously by virtue of being at school for most of the day, a cultural fear that TV is wrong (and worse, non educational!) or simply that she is easily able to learn in this way. TV will spark many different interests and 'allowing' her to watch it will not mean this is all she ever does - she will have her fill and find other things to do when she is ready and has a desire to.

Watching TV for my DD inspired a whole series of activities linked to Inuts. This included a 1950's BBC documentary on you tube that led to a small child version of global warming discussions, igloo crafts with salt dough, playing various Inuts games (ox push for example) so if I was thinking in school terms, we managed to cover loads of history, geography, science, maths, English, art and PE...all because of one small thing on TV!!

You can definitely unschool and still have limits of bedtimes, good etc...though you can also read and learn a little more which may or may not take you away from these things. That is the beauty of HE, you can really relax and facilitate an education that suits your children. Only you will know how long you plan to HE and what your hopes for your children are in future. There are lots of Facebook groups which might help too, as well as interesting blogs if that's your thing.

Child-led is child led, it is not not giving them a choice of things you might like them to do/think are suitable (this is what they got at school and doesn't suit everyone!), as the poster up-thread suggests. If you are happy to facilitate them being child led then that's great, if you feel you might like them to do 10mins or so per day of an online programme too then that's great too - think about what is best everyone and work out a plan!

The grandparents issue is not easy, but once you have decided on the approach that is best for your family, you could always give them some reading or discuss how it will work.

Saracen is right and ALWAYS has wonderful advice, as do loads of others on here! The suggestion of day trips is great, perhaps actives like these would also give breathing space from grandparents and spark various interests that your DC then want to pursue via other avenues.

Enjoy

I'm with saracen , in being a great fan of days out , join English heritage ,go to museums etc and then encourage them to look things up and learn off the back of what you have seen and done.

Get the grandparents to do cooking with the children it fulfils every criterion you need to get them on your side. (tell them not to pressure the dcs though).

Agree with everything said here too. good luck

Listen to Saracen - she's a wise lady. We try to be out of the house about half the time - there are all sorts of cheap ways of being active and interacting with the world around. Take time over things.

e.g. sometimes when we go shopping, the children make the list and go and get all the stuff they want to buy. We take our time over the whole thing; I just slip into the trolley the things that I think we need, but it's really on their agenda. And yes, we end up with various sorts of sugar-based foods on those trips, but it's not the end of the world :)

So a "boring" shopping trip just became a whole educational activity, with sequencing and writing lists and working out what foods and other items we might need, and navigating round a shop and reading the signs to work out where things are. And then talking politely to the checkout person, and remembering to get the car park token validated. And not getting lost ;) And noone ever mentioned the fact that education was happening, but it damn well was.

I used to worry about screen time. I've been thinking loads recently about making sure my older child begins to encounter David Attenbrough stylee nature programmes because they are "educational". Hadn't quite worked out how to introduce them as something fun, without pressure. I glanced over child's shoulder a week or so ago - deeply immersed in some nature programme on Youtube. Screen time can be massively massively educational.

You may need to talk with the grandparents about learning to see the educational in the activities that are happening anyway, rather than trying to impose "educational" activities from top down.

ppeatfruit - I had my breakfast cooked for me today (scrambled egg on toast with herbs from the garden). I got no choice about the menu, and had to be present as the kitchen assistant to mop up spillages, but the whole thing was done for me, at the child's instigation. Cooking is a splendid way for a child to learn independence (and yes, yes, yes, of course people whose children go to school also learn to cook - but they can't take an hour over carefully learning to cook a new thing any day of the week that they fancy trying it out).

That's brilliant ommm No I know they don't learn to cook at school because I was a teacher I't's shocking. There may be a bit of an improvement but they're still teaching 6 year olds about a lady called Florence Nightingale when hardly any of the dcs have the slightest idea about the Victorian times to put FN into context!!

Thanks everyone for your lovely replies :-)
Today has been better than I expected. Kids have done a chunk of time "playing" on education city, been to the park, done a teeny bit of tidying upand spent time on electronic games. I am quite confident now that we can plan to do chores and Ed City etc. In the mornings and explore or enjoy playing in the afternoons, got some trips out planned, some baking days too!

Homeddays It breaks my heart that in EYs they don't follow the DCS' interests. As you say about chocolate or about shoes; just one topic could keep their interest and fulfil every 'educational' criterion that's needed (if you explain that to your parents or ILS they'll understand).

Ah I'd forgotten about cookery, I'll add this one to the list, my DD is always happy to 'help' cook next week I think we'll get adventurous and bake some new things...