curriculums?

[pinkdollymix]

should I follow a set curriculum or just teach my children 'freely' what methods have worked for people??
I would love to hear about people's typical day of a homeschool family.
Thanks !!

We don't use a set curriculum :)

I try to answer my children's questions, have resources available so they can pursue their interests, and that's pretty much it - from those principles, a huge amount of learning happens by itself. One of the most precious times is in the car, because the children ask what comes into their heads, and there aren't really many distractions, so we can pursue the topic of conversation. We were having a massive conversation just the other day for about 10 miles about the difference between remixes and mash-ups. I had no idea until that moment that the child in question even knew that vocabulary, let alone being ready to embrace the concepts. There have been youtube videos about copyright law and principles open on that child's desktop a couple of times recently (their choice, not mine!), so I guess there is an interest developing about intellectual ownership and creativity.

The only result of this sort of learning that is disconcerting is how lumpy it is - in some ways my children have knowledge and understanding way beyond what children of that age would usually expect to have, and in other ways, they are totally ignorant, because a particular area of knowledge hasn't yet stuck for them as being of any interest whatsoever. But everyone has specialist interests and patchy knowledge elsewhere, and there's no age limit for when you can learn something. I believe fervently in "just in time" education.

I put a lot of effort into making opportunities for them to socialise with other children, in both structured and unstructured environments, and have been working a lot at helping them build a sense of "tribe" through going to the same HE meet up every week, and also building closer friendships when the children seem to be leading in that direction (by having other families to play, or going to their houses, or meeting at other activities during the week).

Thanks for sharing
How do I find out about home ed groups in my area? Do you know? This is the main thing for me, my children being able to socialise as much as poss x

If you join the mumsnet home ed group, I think there's a map of home ed groups on there. The usual places are facebook groups - so you can search for "Puddleton home Ed" and "Puddleton home education" and "Puddleton HE" on facebook, and also check your county with the HE/ Home Ed/ Home Education. I'm on four facebook groups - one for the county, one for the nearest city, one for a small town nearby, and another for a group we go to regularly. The groups spring up like mushrooms!

Other places do it via yahoo groups - you can probably search for the same kinds of search terms on there and catch mailing lists that way (in our area, it's just about all moved across to the facebook groups now, tbh, but some things are cross posted onto the yahoo groups still)

Like ommmward, we don't follow any curriculum but just go with whatever interests the children from day to day (an approach which is called "autonomous education" or "unschooling") I have a few friends who do the same, and a few friends who follow a complete curriculum for everything. However, most people I know follow a flexible child-led approach for most subjects and a curriculum for just a few subjects (say, maths, English and history). There are endless variations. You can start out with whatever seems right and then keep experimenting.

As you and ommmward both mentioned, seeing friends is high up my priority list! (Not all kids want or need this, but mine do.) In fact, when my older daughter was young it was the ONLY thing I really made any conscious effort to do. I figured all the academic stuff would come naturally for her, which it has.

We have no typical day, but here is what's on the agenda for today.

6:30am dd2 (8yo) and I take my partner to work followed by breakfast, housework and DIY, which she is helping with. dd1 (15yo) still having a lie-in!

10am Take dd1 to guitar lesson. During her lesson, dd2 and I will do some shopping and other errands. Then drop dd1 off for an afternoon of Minecraft with two 11yo boys.

12:30 dd2 and I collect her 5yo friend and go to the afternoon home ed park play session, where we see half a dozen other friends. I read a book until the other parents arrive, then chat.

2:30pm dd1 gets a lift home from one of the other Minecraft mums, or gets the bus. She's meant to be getting on with some packing and sorting for our house move, but I expect there to be a certain amount of Facebooking going on too.

3:30pm dd1 leaves to go to martial arts on the bus. Because she has plenty of time on her hands and loves it, she does three sessions back to back: first teaching younger kids, then joining in with teens, then the adult session. There is half an hour in there somewhere for her to eat her packed dinner with the few adults who also do all three sessions. Meanwhile...

3:30pm drop dd2's friend home and return to our house. dd2 will probably watch YouTube or play with dolls or her building set while I start dinner.

4:30pm dd2 and I pick my partner up from work. He's a builder, and dd loves to see the transformations which take place on the sites, and ask him all about how he does it.

While I get dinner, dd2 tries to get poor tired dad to play, followed by watching TV - probably the BBC iPlayer documentary series about building a medieval castle (really good - if you didn't see it over Christmas then be sure to watch it now!).

Then dinner and bed for dd2, and time for me to relax. At 9:30 I collect dd1 from martial arts and I'm done for the day. Well that is my plan anyway, but dd1 tends to want to get stuck in to the philosophical discussions, ask me to help her learn something new, or talk about personal issues at this point in the evening!

We try to make every day of the week a different subject - we vaguely follow that but if something happens we don't worry too much about missing that day's Art or History or whatever.
Every day we do some literacy work from a workbook (ds2 has dyslexia) or some Maths
Every day we read a classic text over a period of a few months; so far it has been Old Testament stories, David Almond book and now another illustrated book Victorian literature
Ambleside Online has some very good ideas for a curriculum but I don't follow it too closely. Still it reminds me what might work if I choose to do more formal stuff.
We also use Galore Park for History textbook not yet tried textbooks for anything else as they are a bit restricting as we tend to rove around a bit.
Ds2 loves having an Atlas and we just go from there discussing places and ideas for example in Geography
Very informal and we do lots of lots of home ed type meetups in the park (at least twice a week if not three) All on Yahoo groups or networking asking around word of mouth once at a meetup. Ds2 has met about five boys his own age (he is 12 - they are a mixture of 11-13) just from a football group on Friday - and then they are turning up elsewhere too.
Tbh I think get the social bit right and the rest follows in the time you have left!

I used to teach dd in a morning then we would go out in the afternoon. She had set lessons and I tries to follow all the different subjects school would cover. We would set a time table at the beginning of the week and though we would never quite stick to it, it did help to structure her learning.

Totally autonomous here too, no adult imposed structure, no formal 'work' or projects or anything, unless the children asked for it.
Simply lived life as though every day were a school summer holiday, learning through every day life doing things they loved to do.....all the way through their teens until each chose to go to college and the onto university level.

Just to give the other side.... we are not autonomous. Our typical day looks like this:

Morning: a mixture of fun lessons with imput from me and then some sort of activity to be completed independently.... usually English, maths, plus 1 or 2 other things eg latin, composer study, geography or history stories.

Afternoon: Reading time together, some project work (this tends to be continuing the history or geog reading from the morning) and then we often have some sort of outing - either art club, ballet, music lesson, play dates etc

In addition to this, I give the children a list of other things that need to be completed for that day (handwriting, music practice, spelling, mental maths, music theory work etc - usually 3 or 4 of these daily).

It sounds like lots but we do little structured work in afternoons and they have tons of time to play and read too (just as important).

bump