Home Schooling

[alloutofnameideas]

What can anyone tell me about homeschooling? I'm only considering it. I have considered it before but didn't really look into it massively. Have had a quick look online and can only find the education act repeated everywhere. Nothing about actual practicalities of doing it.
For added information I have a girl (7) boy (5) b/g twins (4) and a 10 month old baby.
Am I being silly to even think about doing this????

There's a Home Education section here on MN. I'm sure they'll be able to help over there :)

Thank you. I tried searching and couldn't find it. I'll have another look

That's about the ages of my children when we first started home educating, and it was so fun! We found local groups via Facebook, so it's worth having a search on there. We were living in an area with an active, vibrant home ed community at the time, and we got involved in all sorts of clubs, tutor groups and meetups. For about a year, the children were really interested in ancient Romans, so we did a lot of reading and exploring with that topic; it branched off into learning a bit of Latin, plate tectonics, local history, arts and crafts, etc etc. They played together a lot, we read together a lot, and we often just pootled about, too.

They are all back in school now, and it hasn't caused any problem for their academics. It was a great experience.

That sounds great. How long did you home ed? Did they choose to go into school or did you make the decision?

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/home_ed

:)

We all home educated together for about a year and a half, nearly two years, then my DD wanted to try out year 1, my DS wanted to go back for year 3, and they eventually all filtered back into the school system. Earlier this year they were all home educating again because our living situation was chaotic and up in the air (we were renting temporarily after relocating from the other side of the country and house hunting in an area that we weren't actually renting in - settling them into a school for 2-4 months didn't seem worth it to me) but once we found our current home we got them into school asap.

In my experience, primary aged children are easier to home educate, but that isn't everyone's experience by a long shot. I think, for us, the time to HE came to a natural close and that was fine. :)

Putting aside the home schooling practicalities, if the decide they want to return to school after a year or two you may not be able to get them all in to the same school and may have children at a number of schools.

There is a risk of that, I suppose, but if you are already home educating, you could simply wait for a place to open up? Having some in school and some out of school isn't easy, but it isn't the end of the world either.

What was the reason you chose to homeschool in the first place? If you don't mind me asking?

John Holt! I'd read one of his books when my eldest was a baby, and the entire concept resonated with me. But I chickened out when she was older and went along with nursery and school for a few years. It wasn't until I made friends with a lovely family who have home educated from the beginning that I started feeling like I could do it, too. I really don't think school is for everyone; there are plenty of children who need something different. I also enjoyed the flexibility of choosing what we did, when we did it, and cheaper holidays of course! ;) But no big drama at school or anything. School has never really been an awful experience for my children, just not necessarily the right one at the right time, iyswim.