Thinking about HE for DS4

[MamaC4]

I am thinking of de-registering my almost 7 year old (year 2 at school) because we have recently started at a new faith school and its horrific! I have 4 children, one is in college, one in secondary and other one is in year 6. Despite issues with the school he seems to want to stick out the final couple of months before secondary however DS4 would like to be He'd. He is a very clever boy already and my eldest son has mentioned I might 'ruin' his chances with HE but I feel I can teach him more!

I work 3.5 days a week but could cut to 3 days and my hubby is happy to fill the gap. What sort of hours do other parents HE? are you structured in time and days or more relaxed using weekends too? I was thinking we would to the bulk over my days off.

Any advice would be fantastic!

For a 7 year old, even if you want to be pretty structured about it, it wouldn't take more than a couple of hours a day of explicit "learning time"

Have a look at alittlebitofstructure.webs.com/ for support if you think you'd want to take a structured approach.

We don't do a lot of structured top-down stuff at all - instead we let the children pursue their interests, and support them by providing the resources they need, and by answering their questions. Sometimes it doesn't look very educational at all, and then suddenly there they are deeply immersed in something that even the most traditional educationalist would recognise as valuable learning :) There is a silly meme around in the home ed community which is International Learn Nothing Day. sandradodd.com/learnnothingday/ It's just silly really, but there's a serious point behind it which is that children don't learn to a schedule - they ask questions or dream up activities when they think of the questions or the activities, and that's the most efficient way to engage in education (because it is "just in time" learning)

Find the home educators in your local community. You'll find everything from boxed curriculum to "unschoolers" and everything in between :)