Online school help

[Seasider276]

Hi
I’m new to all of this, long story short is my child’s prep school suddenly closed and now no school place for September and I’m not sure how he would cope going from a class of 7/8 to 30. I’m on waiting lists for schools however I’m thinking of home education in the mean time maybe longer term if goes well.
Where do I begin? I’ve heard of kings inter high but is there any others? He is 7 years old so just starting year 3 . Also does any online help with 11+ or is that something I need to get a tutor for etc .
Any help as advice appreciated as this was not the plan but because the private school suddenly closed we don’t have any other options right now . So think home ED is the way to go.

[Araminta1003]

I don’t think I would sign up for an official online school if you are on a waitlist.

In lockdown we used White Rose maths and they had free videos then. They also have Year 3 text books I think. I would print off the year 3 curriculum and go through it. Or is he ahead due to being at a prep before? I also like the Collins Workbooks for English. For Science, I would use BBC bite size videos. Keeping up lots of reading and a daily diary entry would help too. Little research tasks on anything vaguely education and writing about it. This is the year you work on lots of further detail and description in writing. If you have any friends who have already done Year 3, could you borrow their work books for core subjects? I always kept the work books of my older DC and they were a Godsent in lockdown. Twinkl was free in lockdown too and has great resources.

Vocab building is important for 11 plus. So lots of reading of different texts, novels/poems/theatre/newspaper articles and trips to library. Ideally some science experiments. Good luck - you can do it. Staying positive, exercise, keeping mental health up is good.

I always said post Covid government should keep online schooling up to date at all times. With this RAAC business now, I wonder if there will be some stuff.

[Saracen]

I'm so sorry you had the rug pulled out from under you unexpectedly. That must have been quite a shock.

The first thing to know is that you don't have to have home education all planned out in advance. You can figure it out as you go along. It is totally different from the scenario where a teacher needs to capture and keep the attention of many children who are all meant to be doing the same thing at the same time in the same room. Teachers can't afford to just go with the flow: they need to have a plan so as to avoid chaos, and they are accountable to parents, so they need to be ready to justify what they are doing.

It is entirely different when you are in the position of giving individual attention to a child you know well, and you are the one in charge. Try something, and if it doesn't work, try something else. You can tailor the education to the child. If opportunities arise (local home ed group organise a museum trip you want to join in), you can just go along. If it takes a month or two to find the right maths curriculum, that is okay - focus on other things and you can easily make it up later.

[Saracen]

It's quite unusual in this country to do full-on online schooling with a child as young as seven. They tend not to engage with it very readily, as many parents discovered during lockdown!

If I were you, I'd look first to see if there are appealing activities in your local home ed community. There may be hands-on science sessions or cartoon-drawing workshops or coached PE-style sports sessions. You can also chat with other parents in your area about what curricula they use and what they like about it. A pick-and-mix approach is popular, with people using whatever resources their child most enjoys for each subject.

Some of us don't do formal lessons at all, especially with young children, but instead do learning through play and let them follow their interests. There's a wide variety of approaches.

If you are planning an imminent return to school then you probably want to keep up the key skills which are necessary at school, specifically reading, writing, and maths. If not, there is no particular hurry and you can let your child acquire skills at his own pace

[Saracen]

Further to what I said about not needing to have it all planned out, the usual advice given to parents who are new to home ed is not to invest too much money at the outset until you have tried some things and figured out what your child likes. If you buy into a year-long curriculum and your child doesn't get on with it, it is money down the drain. What's more, having invested in it, you may feel inclined to keep pushing your child to do it though he hates it, which is not a good recipe for happy and effective home education.

[BuffyFanForever]

Firstly apologies for the suddenness of the school closure, it’s so sad when this happens and a huge shock for the pupils and parents! Lots of good advice here. Have a think about the best approach for your son, look at the curriculum and decide where/ if you would like support from a tutor. Keep up daily reading and writing for various purposes. I’m a qualified teacher. Happy to give some more advice if I can help if you want to DM me ☺️.

[CLemur]

I strongly recommend steering clear of Kings InterHigh. The frequent turnover of my children's teachers, challenges in contacting them or advisors, and inconsistent grading make it a stressful experience. I can't stress enough how much avoiding this school will spare you and your children from a lot of heartache.

[crazycrofter]

We had to take our son out of school in year 4. He went back in year 7 to a grammar school and we managed the prep for that as part of home Ed.

Online school would have been too many hours and too intense at that age. We used a variety of different resources - Conquer Maths (which is an app), Mystery Science which is a fantastic American resource with videos and follow up work to do, Minecraft Homeschool (I think it changed to GameEd Academy) which covered lots of different subjects and we did workbooks and general reading for English. We didn’t do more than about 1.5-2 hours a day max and we did the 11 plus prep quite intensively over the summer before he took the test in September.