Anyone work and home ed? and how do you manage?

[PotPourri]

Right, we want to home ed our 2 (nearly 3!) when they reach school age. However, we have been having a big sort out of our affairs and realised that both me and DH have fantastic pensions/life cover with our companies. as well as jobs that pay well, are relatively secure and have been flexible in the past (homeworking, moving country etc). So, now I am having a flid out thinking about what if.....

My situation is - No option for DH to go part time, but I could easily, although it would need to be standardish office hours. DH also works office hours pretty much. My parents might be able to help out, but are getting on a bit and 3 kids would probalby be too much for them. Not to mention the fact that they are quite institutionalised and will faint at the suggestion of home education when the time comes! DD1 was 3 in December, so still a few months to go. I have a great childminder who I coudl potentially use, but again, have not even mentioned home ed to her -and she seems quite traditional

So, back to the question - does anyone work? How do you do it? i.e. part time. And where do your school age children go at that time? Nurseries don't take that age group during school hours.

And as an additional question - what do you do with older kids when you take younger ones to mother and toddlers etc? I find that helps my sanity alot as I love chatting, and like the kids mixing with local children too

Thanks all

Have you heard of Flexi schooling? It's when you home ed for part of the week and the Dcs go to school for the rest.

Would a childminder be an option for you? There's a list of areas that have HE-friendly childminders on the EO yahoo list (you don't have to be a member of EO to join this btw)

I have heard of flexischooling. But on searching around haven't found anyone local who home educates, or flexischools. Part of me feels that if she is going to school, she should just go - would she not miss out on parts of the curriculum, and what would be the point if I was then covering those missing bits?

DH was home educated, so we are big advocates of it. My family will die if we do it. and in all honesty, other than to DH's immediate family, I haven't even mentioned it - i,.e. not to local school/nursery (DD1 goes to school nursery currently using her age 3 places), and not to childminder either.

I guess I am going to have to start talking about it to people to get the feelers out - basically I am terrified of the expected backlash.... maybe just being a wimp and putting off the inevitable

Terramum, thanks, Will maybe sign up to that board. I think the first step may be to talk to my current childminder, who as I said is great (at this stage anyway)

I think it is doable if you go part time, but you would have to be ultra organised. And it would depend what you mean by part time as well.

You have to remember that it does not take a whole school day to educate a child. So much a the school day is taken up with time wasting things like lining up, going to the toilet, waitig for other children to finish, etc etc.

I don't work, but we concentrate our school type activities in the morning. I have two children (also soon to be three) and spend about 15 mnutes with each of them on maths, then about the same on handwriting type activities. We also do topic work to cover the sciences, history, geopgraphy etc. These take maybe half an hour a day.

Things like PE, music etc are done mostly through after school classes like swimming and dance and drama.

So, what I am saying is that if you can go half days and find a childminder that can take them for the rest of the time, there is no reason why you can't home ed.

As to your other question, I have found that we had to stop going to toddler groups once my oldest was about 4. They just don't like older children being there. However, we replaced it with going to home ed groups instead.

As to flexi schooling, I think you would be hard pressed to find a school to do it. I know of only one person that has done this and it was with a small private school in London.

I know a couple of childminders and and ex nursery worker who do HE for families. 1 did it 5 days a week, hours to suit parents and herself and the other does it for a day or sometimes 2 days a week to provide a break for parents and allows for a change of approach/scene etc

Would it be possible to work from home?

I work from home already. But I'm not sure it would be possible to have a child at home - it's an office job, lots of phone calls/meetings. And I need to travel at least once a month to London or Europe for 3-4 days - so would need to sort something out on those days.... So, it's just like going to a normal office job, other than the fact the office is in my garage.

We work from home and have 5 children, granted three are under 3, but the elder 2 are 8 and 10, and we home ed from choice. If you can find a way to factor in enough hours to do your work where you have to be on your own, and your trips, then you'll be able to do it. Noone said that home education has to take place between 9 and 3.

Good luck