Home ed for year 6 only.. Any advice?

[Meanderer]

We're considering home ed for year 6 only..to avoid the boredom, time wasting and stress of basically spending the year being coached for SATS...and to take the opportunity to spend this precious time with our daughter before she launches into teenager hood! can anyone advise, especially on any pitfalls to avoid?

I'd just say: work as hard as you can to avoid it looking like school at home. Do lots of trips to interesting places; find home ed groups to hang out with for educational and social activities; do the things she loves that there would never normally be time for; do things together (like, both do riding lessons, or go swimming together, or whatever floats your boat); and enjoy extended family or close friendships - one of the things I love about home ed is that there really is the opportunity to just up sticks and go and spend a week with grandparents, while they are still of an age to really enjoy interacting with the children.

Totally agree with ommmward!

It's often said that there is no wrong way to home educate. I mostly agree with this, but I think you'll know you are getting it wrong if you aren't all enjoying it.

HAVE FUN!!! ...if you want any ideas about how to do that, start by asking your daughter and then maybe ask us.

Will it affect your application for secondary school? Often attendance at a certain Junior school can be one of the admission criteria for certain secondary schools.

OP, I feel exactly the same way, we have HE'd before and DD learned so much, we had a huge amount of fun.

What worked for us was academics (for want of a better word at 7) three days a week plus social meets two days a week. Social included doing drama, music, living history, football, languages, orienteering, forest school and art with other children. It sounds regimented written down but it wasn't like that at all in reality.

DD wanted to go back to school, however I can see that changing and am really prepared hoping to for doing it again. I would love to get her out before SATS.

Educational activities like swimming, riding etc and lots of social time is important, but there is also a lot of other important stuff you could do and it would be easy for the year to pass whilst you have neglected the 'academics' - or whatever you want to call them. We do 4 hours of more structured learning at home each day, leaving the whole afternoon for seeing friends, ballet, swimming etc. You can achieve a huge amount in 4 hours and have lots of fun!

I would say get reading - snuggle on the sofa together with hot chocolate and enjoy reading good quality literature together. Reading is so neglected in schools. Follow your daughter's interests: for our children this is history (we have read The Story of the World books together and made a huge time line, then visited museums for each era). Grammar - sounds boring but our children have a better grasp of grammar than I did at uni, and they enjoy the lessons. Just enjoy learning - reading together - learning together. Spread a feast before your child and let them eat.

Ah, it's all horses for courses, isn't it? For us, the grammar conversations tend to happen in the car on the way to something that doesn't sound academic at all :)