Six things I learnt in our first year of Home-Ed
I’d always dreamed of homeschooling my kids but, like with anything in parenting, I dreamed a lot of things and realised when you get there, even with great intentions plans change, and so I kept my mind open. I remember being in a local library and seeing a sign saying that the sign-up for school for Heppy’s intake had passed, and I felt such peace. I’d prayed about the decision a lot, a few friends were homeschooling and soon it wasn’t a question but something we’d 100% be doing, although, the doing part was what I was trying to wrap my head around. What exactly would we be doing? I began to research curriculums, join online groups, read blogs and ask questions and ask more questions. I quickly discovered that home schooling, or home education as I’d soon come to call it, was very different from what I’d imagined- less of the children in linen dresses listening intently around a table and hankering on my every word desperate to know the planets in the solar system, and definitely more normal, chaotic and fun then I’d imagined! I feel like I learnt and grew more in this past year than I ever could have anticipated, and so part of me wants to share a little of what I’ve learnt in the hope that it may help you too.
Home education is a VERY BROAD term.
Unschooling, Charlotte Mason, Classical, Waldorf …the list of home-education practices goes on. People have found themselves homeschooling for many different reasons. For some, it might be because of children not responding well to school, maybe they don’t fit in, maybe they have additional needs. For some it’s lack of support from schools or not enough access to ‘good’ schools in the area. For us, it was a real mix of things- I will go into detail at another point but I mainly didn’t feel comfortable with giving my child over to almost strangers who had the power to influence and guide my child’s life the majority of the week. We have placed so much emphasis on our kids knowing truth, listening to themselves and God, creating a home of wonder and exploration and safety for them to be told what to learn and who from….but I diverge.
The point is, everyone goes into home education with a different angle because guess what, we all have different kids with different passions, abilities and DNA. This is VERY different to traditional schooling where there is more of a one size fits all approach.
The first year for me was really figuring out where I fit into the very BROAD home-ed spectrum, and where Heppy fit too! Did we want a curriculum, did we want a label? Did I need to buy a printer to print off worksheets etc. was I okay with them playing outside all day with no formal guidance from me?
After a few months of stressing out about what I should be doing, we decided to stop trying to do a certain rhythm or curriculum and realised that’s not where we were at or where Heppy was at. I have a mix of friends doing a range of things, some following curriculums and some not. For us we will probably wait til she’s at least 7 until we start something like that and even then I’m not sure…a day at a time! The most important thing is to find YOU and your family in the midst of it all. Home education will undoubtedly be a different experience for everyone and it should be!
2. It’s not ALWAYS what the pictures say or what Pinterest tells you.
I learned this lesson fairly quickly ha! I take pleasure in aesthetics and setting up a home for my kids- a place that is inviting and welcoming. I loved the little images I saw on Pinterest, Instagram or blogs and children gathered around a table drinking cups of tea reading poetry, reciting bible verses and chunks of Bronte, all after they’d put away the dishes and made their own lunch. Well you know what, that stuff doesn’t just happen, it grows- it’s taught and modelled. BUT, more than that let’s not forget that the attention span of a five-year-old is around 10 minutes. As with anything in life, what we see is idealised, often romanticised and usually not the whole picture. I do it too! Go into this first year open-hearted, handed and LOWER THE BAR. This is YOUR journey, not a Pinterest board of ideas.
3. YOU DO NOT NEED A CURRICULUM A THOUSAND RESOURCES or a schoolroom
Not dissimilar to the point before, those Pinterest pictures can often feed a message that we need certain items in our home to make Home Education work. I thought I NEEDED the sandpaper letters, the seasonal rotation of books covering every topic, the ten-frame for ‘success’, the printer (I was obsessed with getting a printer). Alot of the books written on Home Education and some of my favourite books are based in America. There are a limited number based here in the UK. America, as we know is very different to here and so writers talk about devoted school rooms, and school cupboards and it doesn’t take long before you look around and feel like your set-up is inferior. The truth is, your kids don’t need a thousand resources, they need a present you, a loving home, a phone put down and lots of time outdoors. I now ALWAYS buy as I need (the sandpaper letters are sat unused in my cupboard).
4. You will question yourself alot- ask yourself what is your success?
Right at the start of our decision to not send the kids to school, LOTS of people (naturally) asked us how homeschooling was going! The thing was, home education didn't look any different to us than the previous year, I didn’t have ‘yes! she’s learning to read great!’ or ‘She’s acing her spelling tests!’, it was pretty uneventful to be truthful, just a simple answer of, “Life doesn’t look much different to how it did before. We’re enjoying it!”. Oddly but not surprisingly, we are wired for success but success doesn’t have to look like academic success. I realised each night when I lay in bed, to stop some of the comparison and to help me in the knowledge of my decision I had to figure out what it was for me that was the marker of a successful day. This will again be different for everyone and it will naturally evolve. For some it might be completing the workbook page or the online course, for some it might be getting outside or trying something new. For me, it’s having some sort of intentional time with Heppy whether that’s 10 minutes or half an hour. That’s to lock eyes with her, make her feel fully known play a game, or discover the answer to a question she’s intrigued about together.
5. everything is a learning opportunity
For those of us who have been traditionally schooled, learning looks like sitting down, pen/pencil in hand, writing, watching listening etc. then it’s playtime and back to learning. My first year was revolutionary in sitting back and trusting that Heppy’s learning was outside of me. I remember our first week of ‘home-ed’ planning to meet with one of my closest friends- we’d worked out we were going to alternate who led each week with some sort of rhythm or learning. They arrive to our house, I have the nature activity planned- something like collecting leaves and items to make a natural loom. Turns out the girls didn’t want to entertain that idea at all and just wanted to play babies together. Is that any less than? I think I started off thinking it was and have since discovered I don’t think it is. It may not be the loom they’re interested in but it may be the question on the drive to a friend’s house about why the moon is sometimes full and sometimes not, or the question before bedtime about how a plane stays up in the air. And, maybe it’s not the maths book but it’s them cutting bread into 8 pieces to make rolls, setting the timer on the oven, running a Christmas stall at a fair and handling the money. Maybe it’s not the ABC writing programme but it’s listening to a book being read aloud or cutting with scissors to build muscle strength. Learning opportunities are EVERYWHERE if we open our eyes to see them and most probably forget a little of what’s ingrained within us, and let them go at their own pace. They will find their way in their own time but they were born HUNGRY to learn.
6. YOU NEED YOUR PEOPLE.
As with most things in life, it’s better with others. I am SO thankful that my closest friends here in West Sussex decided to homeschool. Thankful that we outgrew meeting in each other’s homes so quickly we now hire a place to meet on a Friday, and thankful that contacts, connections, other families who home-educate seem to be everywhere. Community can also mean a break (friends taking kids so it doesn’t feel quite as full on), people to bounce questions off, and just people that don’t make you feel so weird or as isolated. It’s also been vital for me to have people further along the journey. I amazingly have a mix. But there is one particular friend who is technically a year ahead, and I have probably racked up the minute’s voice noting her, asking her ‘WHAT THE HECK’ am I doing so so many times, and her saying ‘oh yes it was around that month I had that wobble too etc.’ One thing I did before we started was organise a little coffee morning for a group of people who were interested in homeeducating and a group of people who were already home-educating. Their laid-back answers to my 100 questions made me realise that everything really would be okay.
Ways I have found community: local home-ed days, online FB groups (local ones and wider ones..there’s SO many), Church, Instagram, randomly meeting people out and about, specific home-ed classes eg. Forest school or daytime gymnastic classes etc.
I’m sure there’s many more home education blogs to come…say hi if you're home educating or thinking about it too!
Here are some of the books that I’ve really loved and been encouraged by:
