Hi all,
I have just (friday just gone) taken my nearly 7 year old daughter out of school to home educate.
She was happy enough at school, but not acheiving to her full potential - she has a reading age of 11 and was being 'streamlined' far too much for my liking - plus I felt we were both missing out.
I've been planning for around 12 months for this time, but now it's here I feel a bit nervous!
The approach we're taking is a bit of a hybrid between autonomous and more structured, in that (at least this is the way we did it when we had a 'trial' homeschool for two weeks when she had chickenpox!) there are 4 core areas I want her to have 'formal' lessons - math, english, and ICT, because I feel she needs those things to enable her to take advantage fully of the autonomous apporach, and also bible principals, simply because that is something which is very important to us as a family.
The idea is that she keeps the discipline of getting up and ready for the day by 9am every morning, then tv goes off and she is allowed what we are calling 'choosing time' where she can basically do whatever she wants, with or without me involved. 11ish we have a snack and reading together time 11.30 back to choosing time while I prepare lunch 12ish - 1ish lunch, and TV is allowed back on then we have a couple of hours with those more structured lessons i mentioned, until around 3 - 3.30 when big brother arrives home which will signify the end of lessons.
Notice there is a lot of "ish" and "around" statements in there - my biggest rule is NOTHING IS SET IN STONE
I've been very lucky in the contact I've had with my LA so far, which was unexpected, I was both ready for and expecting a fight (which is why I contacted them before they contacted me!) But they're very positive and are promising any help they can give which they can, while making clear they can offer nothing which costs them anything - ie they are giving my daughter an extended library card which means we can take out 20 books from the library for an unlimited time, the library will order any books we want which they dont already have. They are also allowing me access to the teachers library where I can borrow not only books but teaching resources of all kinds.
I'd love to hear what you think of the system I'm proposing, as well as any advice you may have to offer - its all a bit scary at the moment!
hugs
Smoffi