Starting our home education journey in the the UK!

Why choose to Home Educate in the UK?

Anxiety. Stress. Pressure. Or at least that’s been it for us. Which seems crazy! No one should be as stressed as my girls are currently at such a young age. In fact, no one should be, period! And to be clear, my kids LOVE school. They are such keen learners that we usually spend our free time conducting experiments, visiting historical sites, completing workbooks and researching and discussing a wide variety of subjects. But with every term that passes they become increasingly anxious, more overdone and less capable of doing the things they want to as the pressures of the education system take their toll. We’ve gone from Dance classes, Kickboxing and loaning ponies after school to barely being able to get through the basic school day without someone in tears and “I just don’t know why; I just feel worse and worse as the week goes on, I don’t know what’s causing it.”

It takes me back to my childhood, undoubtedly capable and plenty intelligent- yet every school report reads, “One of our best students, if only she’d apply herself.” I remember clearly the feeling of finishing my work and understanding of the topic while classmates chatted or struggled or just mucked around – and then just having to wait around until the prescribed class time had finished and I could begin the whole process again with the next class. I remember the feeling of being so enthused about a subject I wanted to really explore it, find out WHY these subjects developed and how they could be truly applied in different ways. But no. “We’re not doing that today; we have to move on to practicing our 6 times table.” Just imagine what you could achieve in those 6 hours if you were allowed to really dive into a topic!

Not that I am against learning my 6 times table, although I’ve always struggled much more trying to memorise the seemingly arbitrary number patterns. I can work them out perfectly well but simply CAN’T pluck them at random. If only there had been another way to approach it….

But I digress…..

All this (and the startling realisation that I very well may have ADHD along with the children, who are hopefully being assessed before we draw a firm line under their traditional schooling) has led me to the fact that there very much IS another approach! I can utilise my and my children’s love of learning, flighty natures and occasional tunnel vision in a much more productive and less stressful manner! For the first time since I was 4 years old (yes, I had my older children a little too early), I might not HAVE to wake up before I am ready every day and try and squeeze us all into the unsustainable overwhelming schedule that someone else has deemed ‘acceptable’. Until now, I simply didn’t realise that there was a feasible alternative!

Which, naturally, led to me entering full-research-mode! I have spent the last four weeks tirelessly diving into all of the different methods and techniques alongside the many different approaches, such as:

• Child-led learning
• Forest School
• Flexi-school
• Full-time Tutoring
• Gameschooling (what?!?)

…..and just about every other approach known to man. Eventually I settled on a routine that I think will suit us much better than anything else, and although not a “set” plan, it should provide a good balance of education and also allow enough flexibility to easily adapt and evolve with us as we find out what works for us and what doesn’t. From what I’ve been reading, it seems very easy to go in all-guns-blazing with a million timetables and plans and burn out quite soon trying to take too much on- so I’ve intentionally (despite getting VERY over-excited about all of the things that we could do!) started us off as basic as possible, and thereby giving us (I hope) the best chance to succeed. This is what our starting timetable currently looks like….

But what does it mean?

“Core” will cover formal English, Maths and Science lessons in a combination of online and workbook input. Project time covers the whole breadth of possible subjects in the form of extended projects such as “Open a restaurant”, which I will talk about in more detail in my next post. Plan days are set aside for a combination of “Grandma school” teaching knitting, weaving, dying and other life skills (and also give me a break, because let’s not kid ourselves, eh!) “Grandpa school” as Grandpa Bill has got quite excited about some History-centric day trips, as an ex-tank-commander, and various educational based day trips, museums, forest school clubs, workshops and home ed groups. I wanted to set specific days for these to provide enough flexibility to allow for a variety of schedules as it will change frequently- but also offer routine and stability in WHEN those things are happening.

Tidy time!

To Try and counter my own personal dread in not only having the kids home that much more, but also actively doing things and creating chaos- I have set us up a “Ten Minute Tidy” alarm which will go off randomly throughout the day, in which we stop what we’re doing, buzz about like headless chickens clearing up and promptly sit back down to what we were doing before. I’m hoping that this helps our undoubtedly ADHD mentality of procrastinating the chores (as we won’t ever be sure when it’s coming, to avoid it) and to key into that state of sudden activity and deadline focus! Whether this system will be kill or cure….well, we’ll soon find out!

Final point, I promise!

As part of my research, I also looked up all of the government guidance recommendations for a rounded education and the curriculums for their current year groups to aid my peg system! You have until noon to finish your prescribed Core work, which can be done in any order you feel necessary- when all of the days’ pegs end up on the other side, you’re done and can pick any activity on the Choosing Time list. I have also utilised this information to set up a pressure-free “Bullet-point Curriculum” list in full view at all times, along with the recommended spellings, so that we can pick and choose what feels right to cover on what day or for what project we’re drawing up.

Well now. I feel that that’s probably more than enough for this incredibly rambley post, and I have a few more final tweaks to add before we set about all this at last in the morning, I’ll see you on the other side!