Advice on structuring home education for a six-year-old with autism

[HomeEdInspiration]

I’m looking for ideas for home eduction for a 6 year old . We will be de registering as have had too many difficulties with the school and she has autistic burnout which they haven’t recognised and just push ahead with fines.

I know a lot don’t have a set timetable but we really want to have formal learning hours, how do others with this approach divide time - is morning better for things like maths , reading etc and afternoons for more creative subjects?
-do you educate all year or have the school holidays as time off still?
-At 6 would tutors be a good addition to the schedule?
-I’ve researched and there are a few groups locally I was thinking 2 per week or should it be more ?

Any other ideas welcome !

I home edded my 3 who are all adult now. At 6 we’d work out what groups and sports we wanted to do each week. It worked best for us to have about four days with some group activity in (but lots of the day would still be free) and one day free for outings or play dates or whatever, but it really depends how much your child likes being out.
At that age when we were doing ‘work’ we very much concentrated on basic maths and English and then read lots of books to cover things like history and geography. We did lots of hands on science and art and craft Went to loads of museums and signed up for a lot of home ed trips to various places.
They only had outside teachers for sport, music groups, drama groups and they went to French groups.
I really enjoyed home edding at that age as you can follow their interests and they learn so much just by being able to explore and play.
We did usually break for school holidays as we were usually ready it and a lot of the groups would stop - but we’d still do a bit of reading practice.
I found it did mostly work best to do maths and English in the morning and other things in the afternoons but it depended a bit on when the groups were.
Mostly - enjoy it!

Honestly. What works for your daughter? Are worksheets for hours actually going to work for her?
At that age we did maybe half an hour of formal reading, writing and maths. Everything else was flexible, making or playing. Fun experiments. But I rapidly discovered that too much sit down wasn’t going to work. Follow her lead. We did deliberate learning in the morning and then did clubs etc in the afternoon.
At this age tutors are unnecessary follow your daughters lead with what she is interested in. Be prepared to go down rabbit holes and explore subjects deeply but from lots of different angles. Join HEFA (Home Ed for All) on Facebook if you haven’t already.
We didn’t use tutors until we got to 13.
Good luck

Try making a post on the well trained mind forums. It's mostly Americans, but scheduling shouldn't really be specific to the country

I would be focusing on hands on practical ways to learn within contexts. Some structured formal teaching alongside to back it up but not too much at this age.

Foster a love of reading, lots of experience with money and cooking, weights, etc to apply maths. You can teach the 2, 5 and 10 times table via pennies. Cooking teaches independence. Actively teach tidying / washing up.

History and geography via going out and about, follow their interests as much as possible. Junk modelling and experience with clay and paper mache. (Gummed brown paper makes a good cheat’s papier mache)

I would find out HOW she learns best. It’s really varies and she’s so young. For context mine was 12 (AuDHD) when we were forced to home ed and it took months trying different things for a routine pattern to emerge. we now cover 3 subjects a day (it started as 1hour) always have some form of exercise & she has hours of self development project time in which she follows her own interests. This has led to various things like learning a language, watch films in that language, trying to make the food from that culture, visiting places linked to that culture. She set up a slime making mini business, she’s learnt new graphic design skills and animation software ..all sorts. she’s now taking iGCSEs early and some in cohort year the flexibility really works for her.
For a 6 year old I would focus on maths & English skills then just follow her lead and facilitate what she’s interested in plus add in some sports or arts social things. Your be suprised how much they learn with little “formal” learning. The £2 tuition hub has primary level lessons which are cheap to try out. Loads on YouTube too. Good luck.

I’m in the same position as you, although my daughter was at a private school where they allowed physical bullying to go on and did not hold the perpetrators accountable.

We are not 100% set on HE yet (because her dad wants to look at another school). But dd has asked to do EHE.

If we do it, I have decided to get a curriculum called ‘The Good and the Beautiful’ which is a very solid curriculum which provides ‘open and go’ booklets. There is writing in blue which tells you as a parent what to do and lots of lovely pictures to engage the child. They have a maths one too but I probably will get her a maths tutor.

Aside from this, I will book her into a forest school session at least once a week because she loves forest school. And also Spanish lessons because she has an interest in languages. She already does ballet, tap, modern and swimming.

I know a couple of HE young adults, so I asked them a lot of questions about it, as HE would be something that I'd consider for my DC. Usually, the ones who had been to school before took some time off for de-schooling. They all followed various curriculums (Wolsey Hall, the Good and the Beautiful, etc.), but took time off during term time to go on holidays and things, with a break in summer so that they could attend summer classes. Having taught in primary schools, English, phonics, reading and maths were generally done in the mornings, with more practical things in the afternoon.They only really had specialist tutors in subjects that their parents felt ill-equipped to teach (e.g. some sciences, maths, GCSE courses) in later years. Some did just a few community groups a week (mainly Forest School), while others went to more HE sessions, as well as various clubs and things. Quite a few were involved in Scouting. If you're on FB, you might find links with your area's HE community. Some areas have more active HE communities and activities (e.g. sports and art) than others. Go off what your DD is interested in, and work a timetable around some classes of interest.

I know that it's very far in the future, but I would encourage your DD to do her GCSEs at the same time as her school year would. Some of our very bright HE students (I work for a college) were put onto low-level courses simply because they didn't have GCSEs, which they studied alongside their course.

@TheeNotoriousPIG "I know that it's very far in the future, but I would encourage your DD to do her GCSEs at the same time as her school year would. Some of our very bright HE students (I work for a college) were put onto low-level courses simply because they didn't have GCSEs, which they studied alongside their course."

I agree that it's wise to get the lay of the land regarding timing of GCSEs, as the scenario you describe is common these days. But it does change over the years; 15 years ago the word on the street was that one only had to impress the subject teachers at college and they could usually sort things out with admissions. Nowadays it's true that colleges are more inflexible. But that may have changed completely by the time the OP's daughter is looking at exams, so she should make sure she gets up to date knowledge closer to the time.

Also I think maybe you meant to say that you recommend she do GCSEs no later than her schooled peers do? You may know that a popular approach among HE kids is to spread GCSEs out over several years so they can concentrate on a few subjects at a time and reduce stress, especially during the exam season itself. If they are eager to go to college at 16, then they might sit their first exam(s) at 14 or even earlier if they are very academic.

@Saracen Yes, I meant to do GCSEs no later than her schooled peers do (sorry! I thought I'd put something along those lines in my first post). Things might change in the future, but it's a shame to currently see very bright home educated students held back on a lower-level course than they should be on (academically speaking) just because they don't have the standard qualifications.

I think that staggering GCSEs would be a good idea, as I found sitting 13 within a few weeks very stressful at school!