Where to buy complete work packs - primary.

[Muglldo]

I've been homeschooling for a while, and we're following the British national curriculum. We've been doing OK, but I'm drowning under writing my term plans, planning lessons, making resources, finding relevant texts etc - I have 3x different ages, so am basically doing what I did as a teacher for a full class but x3 year groups. It's exhausting me.

We use Maths No Problem, which I love, as it is a) enjoyed by my kids, and b) sets out a lesson a day for the whole year, so I just need to open it up and away we go.

What resources are out there that would be similarly "ready to use" for English, science, history, geography, art, French etc...?

English, as in, it includes all aspects - spellings, handwriting, comprehension, creative writing, literature, poetry - not just the grammar aspects.

I'm not homeschooling by choice (well, not directly...), but we live overseas with no access to decent education for our kids, and I'm keen to keep them up with the UK system for if we return.

Others I know who homeschool in this area use American schemes, which are beautifully laid out day by day (little to no prep required), but they do seem VERY different to the British system, so I'm reluctant to switch across to that system if I can avoid it.

Any suggestions HUGELY appreciated.

Following out of pure curiosity.

Oak National Academy was set up over lockdown and has lesson plans for all years I believe. It's free.

Twinkl has lots of good resources, often in ready-to-teach topic packs. We do interest-led rather than curriculum-based learning, but I get a lot of resources around those interests from Twinkl.

@abc2gcse I wouldn't be buying educational resources from someone that misuses 'your' instead of 'you are' in their sales pitch.

@Muglldo you do realise there's no UK curriculum.
England, Wales and Northern Ireland do GCSE and A-levels as the main exams but there are variations to the curriculum.
Scotland has a completely different system.
If you will be returning to the UK make sure you follow the correct one for where you will be living.

I've been very impressed with the resources in Ireland - you could have a look and buy a whole bundle for a year group (probably about 150-200EUR given what it costs me each year for my kids at school here) - they include very good textbooks covering all the subjects (you'll obviously be able to skip Irish!) as well as work books (all with online access too)

Things like the handwriting/English and Maths are excellent in my opinion - I've sent some of them to my cousin in the UK for her child to do as she wasn't happy with her school's homework for instance.

We could return to England, Wales or Scotland, as have family in all 3 places and we have no UK "base" ourselves, so I'll just have to hope whatever we do is enough in line with whichever system we return to. I'm hoping they're not HUGELY different in the basics at least. Basically I just want my kids to turn out competent in their ability to write and do maths, and have an interest in learning...! We're not aiming for super-competitive academics, just normal levels of functionality :)

I use the English National Curriculum handbook, but we switch up some topics anyway, as local geography etc is quite different here so it's hard to use uk geography resources, and obviously our currency is different so we also mix that up.

It's complicated by the fact we can't buy any books locally, and importing is hard, so I want to find a one-stop resource that I can buy on a UK visit sometime, bring back, and be mostly set from that.

So I don't mind having to adapt from a resource, but having something mostly done for me would hugely help.

@CleftChin Thank you for this - what would I search to find specific resource packs? Yes, might skip the Irish language! We're trying to do English and French to keep up for if we move back, and learning local language too, so that might do us for now!

I used twinkl for home learning in lockdown, very easy to find what you're looking for and would be easy to use with national curriculum as it's all based on that

Thank you - yes, I do use twinkl, and it is super for a lot of things, but I find I still need to do the background work of figuring out what we're doing each day/ week/ term, and then finding the relevant stuff.

I'm more looking for things like Maths No Problem, where it is literally "day one - complete these 2 pages. Day 2 - complete these 2 pages" and it takes you through the entire school year, covering everything you need to include.

I'm currently pulling it all together from various sources and it's a lot of work. I don't mind tweaking and adapting, but having a folder that is already put together for me, and says "Monday week 1, take out pages 1 and 2 and complete those" - type of thing, would save me a lot of time, and also a lot of worry that I'm accidentally overlooking any important topics! I'm happy making changes as we go, but just having it laid out in one book per subject would be my dream...

Are you suffering by knowing too much about teaching? Writing term plans, planning lessons as if still in a school?

It is 100% what I'm suffering from, but it's the only way I know. So I'm kind of trapped in the cycle, as it's the only way I've taught before.

My friends who homeschool and have no teaching background all buy in packs and are far more relaxed than I am - but as I say, the packs they buy are American and quite different to what we've been doing so far.

White rose maths is quite comprehensive. They have power points and matching worksheets. If you’re a teacher you could adapt them/ make it more practical where necessary, but you’d have a good start point.

CGP+ is great for UK curriculum. I'm a tutor and use it loads - costs £3 a month. It has whole packs on specific aspects of maths like fractions for Y5 and so on. English literature texts and grammar outcomes are also very good. Has some options for stretch and working towards in some work. Also has powerpoint type info that you can work through. It's the best value I have found and I rarely need to look elsewhere for resources.

Sounds the Twinkl home ed curriculum is exactly what you want?
https://www.twinkl.co.uk/resource/home-educators-primary-curriculum-overview-t-bbp-1627455070

All the planning is done for you, you just download the lesson pack.

I'm a former teacher, and letting go of the school way of learning has been the most liberating and eye-opening experience. We have no set school hours - we were out this evening and my daughter sat quite happily completing a Gothic writing and Frankenstein comprehension task until 9pm. She'll get up and do fractions while eating her breakfast at 7. At 11am or 1pm we might be out on a day trip or out for a walk, or at the post office or library or wherever we want to be.

Throwing away the long and medium term planning is the best way to get the most enjoyment and benefit from home education. Yesterday my daughter told me she wanted to do some coding, so I found her a challenge on Scratch and she worked at it until it was done - no bells or interruptions to move onto another task. If she needed help, she came to me - otherwise, she happily worked independently.

I'm a qualified teacher, but I'm not my daughter's teacher, and I genuinely think that's the way to approach it.

Hamiliton Brooke’s planning. Look on their website.