Home schooling for the third term of Y6

[Yamin151]

Good luck!

My feeling is that your programme more than adequately covers a thorough education for this term. personally, if you took her out and did nothing but travel, talk, discuss and live normal, active, non-screen life that would be enough for this last term. Year 7 is really full on and there is not a huge amount they do in the last term of primary that would suffer for being missed out.
So.........I would add.................naval (?navel?) gazing..................if its sunny, go lie on your backs and discuss the stars. Sounds like you are a family that naturally educates anyway, so for this term I really think you can have some informality around a few structural points.

But good luck, and enjoy! Precious time.

[LostInTheShuffle]

Good luck!

My feeling is that your programme more than adequately covers a thorough education for this term. personally, if you took her out and did nothing but travel, talk, discuss and live normal, active, non-screen life that would be enough for this last term. Year 7 is really full on and there is not a huge amount they do in the last term of primary that would suffer for being missed out.
So.........I would add.................naval (?navel?) gazing..................if its sunny, go lie on your backs and discuss the stars. Sounds like you are a family that naturally educates anyway, so for this term I really think you can have some informality around a few structural points.

But good luck, and enjoy! Precious time.

Thanks for the feedback, Yamin151. I agree with your point about navel-gazing time. Looking at it again, I think our programme appears more structured than it will actually be - the idea is to do things together in a somewhat leisurely and spontaneous way (DD and I spending a sunny morning at the tennis courts hitting the ball, my wife and DD spending an entire day making crafts when the mood strikes, discussing an issue that intrigues DD without needing to rush off to school, etc).

Nonetheless, perhaps there is scope to scale back on "planned" activities. Thanks again.

[Guest55]

http://www.archerygb.org/archery/intro_archery.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

You might find a course near you - it's a great sport.

I'd recommend Bletchley Park if you want to explore coding - the museum is fascinating and some of the guides have first hand experience.

http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[LostInTheShuffle]

Many thanks, Guest55. They look great.

[meerme]

We would appreciate any advice from those with experience going down this path. For example, does the above look feasible/realistic?

All looks very interesting. We started out with a very structured approach and, like you, a long list of life skills and core competencies but, as is common in HE, we ditched the structure once we found our feet, developed confidence and, more importantly, realised that if we kept up the pace we'd have completed the entire GCSE syllabus in all subjects way before the children were 14.

It's great that you've got a lot of outdoor and non-academic stuff on the agenda. Many new home educators don't realise that you don't need to do much "school work"; they often plan entire 9.00-3.00 programmes!

I think we give schools too much credit. The actual amount of learning is very little given the time children spend in school and on homework. Teachers spend the majority of their time planning, assessing, reporting and proving to all and sundry that they're doing a good job; they spend relatively little time actually teaching. 1-2 mornings a week on formal academics is all that's needed for most children to keep them ahead of their school going peers.

Attending a legal trial (age might be an issue, though)

We took ours to the Royal Courts of Justice and the Supreme Court. The former charged £10 a head for our HE group but the children got to take part in a mock trial - it was great fun. 14+ can sit in the gallery for a real trial. And, if I remember correctly, the Old Bailey allows children in the viewing gallery as well. I would strongly suggest making contacts with other local home educators and joining your local Yahoo and Facebook groups where you can work with other parents to organise/plan these activities.

Should we devise a weekly (or monthly) calendar to provide some predictability to DD?

Nobody else's opinions on this should matter Whatever you decide is right for your child. And when/if you change your decision and take exactly the opposite approach ... it's still right. Ignore the back-seat drivers especially the ones with no HE experience and/or a "school bias".

Coding and "educational" online games

Ours do a lot of Codecademy, Scratch and Minecraft (including coding "mods" for Minecraft) and they chat with other children on Minecraft. All the children on this Minecraft server are local home ed children and have been verified as such; the server is maintained and moderated by one of the mums.

Drop me a PM if I can be of any assistance. I don't come here often, but shall reply to PMs when I next visit.

[LostInTheShuffle]

Thank you very much, meerme, for your good advice. We are a couple of weeks into home schooling and it has been fun as well as challenging (we adore DD but she is always around!).

We have been more structured on some days and less so on others. I agree that learning can be much more efficient at home than at school - we have definitely not attempted to track school hours.

[meerme]

... (we adore DD but she is always around!).

For years she's had an unnatural environment of an adult around all the time (!) supervising her learning, telling her what to do and what not to do .... she needs the crutch of an adult's attention.

It'll take her a while to lose that dependence, but if you guide her well you'll be surprised at how self-sufficient children can become, how mature they can be with taking control of their own education and how independent they can become with learning. If you continue with home ed by time she's 13 you'll probably not have to teach her anything at all (as long as you provide access to good resources)! Not even maths or languages. You won't realise she's around!

Unless she returns to school and re-discovers the crutch

I replied to your PM.

[Amber]

Excellent post meerme. I have to agree. Children are really good at identifying and pursuing their own learning needs and adults often just make it so much harder. I wish I had been time-rich and, more especially, patient enough to keep on with home education (I don't like the term 'home schooling' at all - totally different connotations to me) as it was the most liberating thing ever. I do think my children were forever changed by it though which gives me some comfort for my inadequacies in sending them back to school - I send them there every day not really believing it is the best I could do for them .

[meerme]

(I don't like the term 'home schooling' at all - totally different connotations to me)

Me neither. I did touch on this in an earlier post.

Unfortunately, the whole idea of school - and the "indispensability" of school - has been so drilled into us that most people automatically assume that home education = home schooling (because "schooling" is the only way to teach children, right?!). I don't blame them for using the terms interchangeably.

I support whatever parents choose - whether it's school, school at home, unschooling or other non-school style of HE. But there's much opposition from schools to the use of the term home education. Maybe they don't want people knowing that you can get a bl**dy good education, a better one, without no school. Teaching unions go out of their way to refer to HE as homeschooling (despite elective home education being the official tem in all legislation, government guidelines, official Local Authority policies etc). In fact, the NASUWT feels so threatened it goes as far as instructing officers of the union to not talk about HE and that if they are asked directly in a TV interview for example, to call it homeschooling. It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

And after all that effort EHE is growing by a whopping 17% per year in the UK! The teaching unions are really upset about this and have canvassed and are still canvassing against EHE.

[LostInTheShuffle]

Thought I would post an update for those who are interested in our experience with home education/school over the past term (FYI - I started this thread last November).

Overall, mixed results. It was great to spend quality time with DD (including a fair amount of do-nothing time), pursue activities that we would not have otherwise done (art and gardening projects, cooking/baking, teaching her tennis, etc), allow her to research topics a bit more in-depth (including having her interview a healthcare specialist), and take excursions as a family within and outside the UK. We also had time to engage in long discussions (really just talks) about current affairs, religion, evolution, etc (I particularly enjoyed our chats walking to and from the tennis courts).

However, as an only child, DD might have been a bit lonely (although she didn't really complain), even though we tried to arrange more playdates with her friends and classmates. She was also perhaps too relaxed and didn't really take the initiative in organising her activities (so we had to do more, although we were much less disciplined than when preparing her for the 11+ exams).

While the experience was positive overall (and it was the right decision given that she had outgrown her primary school and other factors), I wouldn't recommend unreservedly taking this path.

Anyway, DD is looking forward to starting secondary school in September.