Not sure where to start!

[MintMat]

The title of this thread says it all, I am so keen to homeschool but I really dont know where to start. Tutors,groups,online courses.....etc etc. It seems like a minefield!
My children are 5 and 6, can anyone help me with some sort of direction?

Join the HEFA group on Facebook “home education for all” lots of information

Thank You for this, I dont have facebook or any social media, do you know if there is anything not on social media? I might just have to break the habit of a lifetime and sign up :o)

Have a look on Facebook for local groups and meet ups as well. When I started it really helped to talk in person to people who were home edding about their different styles. It’s also good to have a sense of what’s available in your area and what activities you might do each week. When mine were that age we got a structure of a couple of social groups, an allotment group, ice skating and basketball each week and then fitted other stuff around that. We did prioritise being out and about - doing sport and socialising and things like museum trips when they were little.
We did maths and English a bit more formally and most other subjects were through stories/play/home science experiments etc.
They are all grown up now and at college/uni but the home ed years when they were little were really fun.

Just seen your second post! I had to join Facebook just to find local groups!

This is really helpful Thank You, I will have to join facebook as it seems this is where the groups are :o)
Thank You for all of the info 🙏

Yes a big community of home ed groups are on face book both local and nationally you won’t get much on here. I can’t give much advice for younger ones as we were forced into home Ed for teen years but it’s going well. Locally there’s far more for younger kids as it’s more play based socialising and learning.

It's pretty much impossible to connect with other home ed families and find out what groups/classes etc there are in your area unless you are on Facebook. It's really the only way you can meet up with other families. You can create a very basic Facebook profile and don't have to share any personal details. Once you have created an account you will just need to search 'Home education' and your county or nearest city/large town or a combination of those words to find your nearest group. How you choose to home educate your children is up to you from being very structured and following the national curriculum right through to completely child-led and unschooling. Good luck, I hope you find some local groups that are a good fit for you and your children.

Yes another chiming in to say you'll make far more contacts if you use FB. MN is notoriously sceptical of Home Ed so you need a platform that gives you the most opportunities to find groups and resources for HE.

I only use FB for groups nowadays and it's the reason I won't leave FB. It is utterly invaluable for groups. As well as the HEFA group mentioned above, there are numerous local groups and also groups focusing on more specific advice on individual subjects or types of HE (unstructured/structured/Unschooling etc) and recommended tutors etc.

When our children were your children's age, the FB groups were in their infancy. Back then Yahoo groups were a thing and that's how I discovered my local group!

As for tutors, you really don't need them at the age your DC currently are unless you particularly want to splash out. We were very unstructured which we don't regret at all. We focused on play based learning and letting children explore their natural curiosity. We never forced anything and as soon as they got bored, we changed path... Boredom = switched off! We learnt that the hard way!

We did use the Reading Eggs app which they enjoyed and a maths one but most maths at that age was real life maths... Talking about pricing in the supermarket, weighing ingredients etc. They learnt a lot more when it was fun and exciting.

We couldn't be more glad we home educated our children. They both got a full set of GCSEs and now one is mid A levels and the other is on her gap year after getting three As at A level. We really feel their drive and enthusiasm for the latter years of their education was borne from a very child led, unstructured approach they had when they were young.

Hope that helps and good luck!!

Hiya,
It could seem daunting at first, however once you've got a few weeks under your belt you will get the hang of it. When we first started we joined groups on socials but that didn't really help as we felt like there was too many opinions and choosing which approach is suitable for our life ? So we ignored many platforms and just went to the basics, research the curriculum for schools for our kids age range, this gave us a basis, it didn't mean we'd stick to it, just so we knew where to start and get a baseline as to what schools do. Upon breaking it up into the different subjects we'd want to teach, we started planning on resource and planned accordingly. Each week we'd have the lesson plans ready and a timetable to give the kids structure.
We're now 9 months in, kids are enjoying and now we've got a hang of it so less time to plan. I'm a developer so I built a tracking system for our kids so we know what we worked on and what we plan to do going forward.
Hope that helps.

Just take a step back and create a process for yourselves, it'd help you going forward!