Homeschooling (minischool)

[Shaunarauna]

Hi there, I have a 3 year old daughter (T) who will be due to school in September 2012. She is currently at a Montessori nursery school which she absolutely loves. I love the Montessori methods of teaching as they let the children be freer than when segregated into classes with subjects. I think it is important for a child to be able to use their own freedom of will within a guided environment. I have to say that I am dreading the thought of my child beginning a school where the above doesn?t happen and she is forced to learn textbook information and could even be chastised for questioning her given info. So this leads me to thinking about homeschooling. I know it is becoming a lot more popular due to bullying and catchment places being unavailable. I have to say that to have my daughter at home with me alone for 7 days a week will most certainly drive us both insane. I feel she needs to socialise with similar aged children and share her schooling experience with them.

I?m looking to gather another four likeminded mums who would love to homeschool but also see it as solitary. The idea is for each of the 5 mums to teach all 5 children one day a week. We can agree between us what we can each teach and how we would like to schedule school days.

This way our children get a more personal relationship to each ?teacher? and have their needs met on a much deeper level than what a school provides.

If this sounds like a good idea to you I would love to hear from you and hopefully get this plan into action...

You forgot to say where you are.....

She has a profile.

Appears to live in Essex.

a good idea on paper a lot to it though, inc having the right environment at home, may i ask if your pregnant what would happen when in a few months time you have a newborn in the house wouldnt that make it disruptive? and also obviously you would have to stop to take care of baby now and then , unless you are going to get a relative or CH to take care of baby?

Is that legal?

you have looked at a reception class recently??? A good reception class experience is far from children "forced to learn textbook information and could even be chastised for questioning her given info".
and a good reception class is run so that "it is important for a child to be able to use their own freedom of will within a guided environment" . A good reception class is just a step on from a good preschool.

Your idea of sharing HE sounds interesting but does rely on finding a group who share your vision of HE and some HE'ers won't want to be structured in that way. You may need to check that you wouldn't full foul of the laws on childminding.

UniS is very wise and speaks much sense.

What about meeting up with parents who are already home educating in your area to get to know what it is all about?

I am not anti HEing, far from it in fact (as long as social needs are being met, which you obviously are considering), but you seem to be rather out of touch with modern schooling. I completely agree with Unis. Please make any decision about your dds education based on all the facts.

There is a specific section on HEing which you could post on.

anyone claiming recpetion class is far from academic or fording children, is wrong. i am a teacher myself. teh class looks beutiful and colourful from outside, the sandpit, easels, lego etc all look very "playful", but the reality is that the curriculum set by politicians for our 4 years olds does not suit all children. some children can cope with it, others can not. if you read John Holt, and other researchers, reality is that our children are being taught and not learn in the way they learnt the previous 4 years. children learn by exploring themselves, with their own interest. but you can not let 30 children in a small classroom explore, they have to sit on the carpet, divided in groups of ability.
I took my boys out of school and am home educating. it is the best i have ever done. my 4 year old reads fluently and counts to 100. he has excelled his peers, because he can be silly when he needs to and can sit quietly when he wants to. children are children, and we are putting them in schools because that is the norm and suits us adults well as childcare. teachers, incl me, have become puppets from politicians, who have never taught at school. the pedagogy in schools is extremely inflexible and we train them to learn from textbooks which we should know by know may be good for tests but not for real life.
home edding is brill, but is hard work and sometimes I am wondering how long you can continue. socializing is an effort if you do not have a support group. but defo at this young age i would recommend it.

Homeschooling - I am trying hard to keep an open mind about HE, but why do you tell us that reception classes are far too academic in their approach, and then describe the benefits of HE for your 4 year old child in terms of his academic achievements in reading, counting and outstripping his peers?

Shaunarauna, have you been in touch with home educating families near you? You may find that there is quite a lot of socialising and shared enquiry going on already, though it may be more informal than what you have in mind. Where I live, HE is far from an isolating experience and we certainly don't spend seven days a week at home with our kids unless we want to!!

As for your idea of setting up a sort of small school, you might want to check at an early stage to see exactly what the legal definition of "school" is - I think it depends how many children and perhaps some other criteria. If you could have a less formal arrangement which escapes officially qualifying as a "school" then you could escape much of the regulation which you want to avoid.

I would suggest you go and do some research into HE. Start on the HE topic on here. You may find that it is not an isolated thing at all and that there are plenty of groups and events where people meet up