New to Home Schooling

After only 4 days and deciding to say no to state education and pursue “education otherwise” for our 7 year old son we get a virus in the family and find ourselves up to our eyes in piles of washing and cleaning up sick. Nice!  We were unable to send his twin sister to school for a couple of days and much of our time was spent on the sofa sleeping and looking after the two year old twins. It’s horrible when a virus hits the family particularly when you have a fairly large family as we do. It takes at least a week or two to recover by the time it has made its way through every family member.  On the positive, it provided me with the time to sit still and read because my two year olds who were really poorly just wanted me to sit in between them on the sofa whilst they slept.

I read and researched home education plenty more and am feeling even more positive, knowledgeable and enthusiastic about home education.  I feel so much more confident about our choice that we have decided to home educate both our 7 year old girl/boy twins instead of just the one who really doesn’t like school.

Initially when considering home education I was under the impression that we had to bring “school” to the home but through my further research I realise we don’t have to do that at all.  I have learned that there are many forms of learning styles and it may be that the autonomous learning style is more suited to our family particularly while we adjust and “de-school”.

The de-registration letters have been submitted and our new lifestyle has begun.  It’s a great feeling knowing that after a weekend of fun we don’t have to face the anti climax that Sunday evenings can bring due to the pressures of the routine and week ahead.  There is no great panic to get them into bed we can stay up an enjoy The X-Factor!

So What Have We Been Doing So Far?

My son has chosen to study the “Tudors” and his twin sister has chosen to study “Tigers”.  There’s a good example of completely different interests in two children if I ever saw one.

We have crafted cardboard portfolios to keep their project work safe.  My daughter who is of the creative and imaginative type spent a fair amount of time designing the cover of the folder whereas her brother swiftly went on to the web to read and research his topic.

My daughter has compiled a fact sheet all about Tigers using the knowledge she already has and has then researched the six remaining sub-species of Tigers and recorded population statistics and where they can be found.

Meanwhile, my son is planning a medieval banquet and has created an invitation and menu to be sent out shortly to his guests.  Plus we have started to make four medieval shields which was a nice messy painting session for the younger twins!

Other activities have included adopting a monster on a website called Moshi Monsters where you can play maths and reading games and look after your monster.

Another favourite is a maths website where they can play various maths games.  All the basic mental arithmetic is being practised plus some new business skills with a game that allows them to run a small business and play around with purchasing, stock control and retail prices.  They thrive on seeing the money flow in.

I have been including them in household tasks whereby normally it is more efficient and far less messy for me to do them myself.  However, education is not just about learning to pass exams as I am discovering so instead of following just work books and text books the children have been getting some hands on learning experience.  They have been helping prepare the evening meals by measuring the ingredients and such like.

Fortunately, we are in a beautiful setting and have a very large garden so PE and exercise is of no issue for us.  All four of them play happily together in the garden either swinging, running, pulling the little ones around on a boogie board or climbing trees.  We do have a swimming pool for the warmer months so role on Summer time.  They have collected leaves for an autumn project which we may get around to sometime soon and played with the ants they found in the mud.

We have even managed some TV.  Walking with the Dinosaurs, Horrible Histories and a documentary on the black rhino and Bushmen of Namibia.

And let’s not forget our little attempt at some Geography using an interactive map where they had to figure out all of the countries in Europe and also some Nintendo Brain Training!

And now, I am very tired but at least I don’t have a 7 year old son stressing about going to school the next day.