What influences your education decisions

[frances5]

I guess that one of the great things about home education is that you can make the day to day decisions of how your child is taught. For example

Do you use textbooks or do you make own materials.

Do you teach your children to read by phonics, Look say or a mixture of methods.

What approach to you take to teaching maths? Does your child learn through play or is it death by worksheet (ie. Kumon maths) Are work sheets a good thing in moderation?

When teaching your child to write do you teach them how to do joined up writing (cursive script) from the start or do you first teach them how to print letters or do teach them a non-cursive script (ie. how to form letters in a specific way that makes joined up writing easier later on.)

Which educationalists or websites have influenced you?

john holt

oh i am a john holt geek, no one ever came close til i read alfie kohn. we are bbasically autonomous

there is a good book-can't remember name aaargh! franny reccomended it...aaargh...re reading...

Filly- got a B for that essay, I was going to drop it before I had help- thanks

I like Montessori too, the older boys went to a Montessori nursery and they made mroe progress there than in 3 years of a 'good' school. They were also much, much happier there. I did my presentation on it for my Access Course, and the history was really interesting.

Amazing woman.

Good on you, peachy, well done!

dunno if my waffling at length counts as help but if it did, jolly good

big well done on essay !

studying is so incredibly much harder with kids, IMO. I got a first in my first degree. I am struggling to maintain a 2.1 a lot of the time this time. Kids just bllx it all up really . So extra double big well done there...

My eldest dd went to Montessori Nursey and I thought they were fantastic!
One of the defining moments when deciding to HE was when I pulled out all the work she had done aged 3/4 there, then looked at the work she'd done in yrs 2 and 3 at school and ended up in tears!!
I felt like she'd actually gone backwards!!!!

I bought a Montessori book as we were'nt flush enough to afford to send dd2 to the same nursey and I was happy to realise that it was actually the methods I was already using at home.

I do refer to the NC but it is quite limiting.
We now look at KS3 stuff (dd is 7) as it is a lot more interesting.

John Holt is very inspiring, as is John Gatto.

Starfall.com is a fantastic website for little ones learning the alphabet and the first steps in reading, (if you don't mind American accents).

Generally we do lots of days out and are led by what the dds are interested in.
Lots of art and craft too, which you can relate to most subjects.

Reading, reading, reading can never do enough of that, our house is filled with books, and their heads are always stuck in them!! And my eldest sleeps under a pile of them!!

Writing, as long as it is legible I think it's what they write that is more important. I think if children get bogged down with correct spellings, paragraphs etc, they get scared to write anything.
Imagine if you got corrected constantly whenever you did anything? You'd soon lose heart doing it!!

I think if you read loads spelling comes by osmosis.

did you have "teach me so I can do it myself" or whatever its called, rb?

I love that book

have just decided to send ds to a steiner kindergarten a couple of mornings a week-would love montessori but there isn't one in cardiff. steiner is a good compromise because they are very methodical, like ds

If anyone wants a montessoru book, a have the one by Maria Montessori- its ancient and it was found in a charity shop but well worth the read imo.

filly you did help, only people I quoted were the ones you mentioned LOL

Filly LOL- what was that?????? Do you want the book?

it was a wayhey good I helped you

is the book going spare?

OUt it like this- we've been here 19 months and I haven't unpacked it LOL!

If you want it, CAT me or e-mail my address on peachesandcream04@bt internet dot com

cool, if its really going spare, can i bung you something for it please?

right will email you once i'm not typing 1 handed. this may be tommorrow.