What’s your all-time, hands-down favourite resource?
Biggest lesson you’ve learned so far?
Is curriculum necessary? If so, whats the best you’ve come across?
Or do you run with more of a certain philosophy? Which one and why?
This is the list of questions I compiled to send to a few home educating families I knew or followed online in 2019. I think I sent it to a handful and maybe one replied. Home schoolers are busy. They are also so into their own space, managing their beautiful micro-cosmos as best they can, and sometimes questions like these get lost in the nether. The answers to questions like this are also so individual and ever-changing, so it’s hard to write it all out. Often home educating parents would rather meet up with another family and have a chat while the children play. It’s easier to discuss how to home school in person when you can see the way it works playing out right in front of you.
Why is home education such a tough gig to summarise? When you are starting out — and you find yourself wanting to research and gather information — you are more than likely approaching it from a mainstream-educated mind. You know how to formulate questions, gather answers, and put down all your data in writing. It’s what you were taught to do. Most home educating families aren’t putting things down in writing anymore though. There is no science project board displaying all the answers. They are a living artwork. So it is from going to the gallery, as it were, and observing them that you’ll find what you’re looking for or not.
Having said that, I’m going to attempt to put some things down “on paper.” And there are loads of families that also journal their journey online (or on real paper in a notebook or folder or homeschool planner somewhere). My newsletter will be an online hybrid of a conversation and invitation into our home (education experience). So you can see what you think and get inspired. If you’re already home schooling, hopefully this space will help you feel seen, because I certainly want it to help me feel affirmed in my experiences as home ed mother.
So, I’m going to answer my own questions here. We started three years ago when our eldest would have started mainstream school. However, home education really started the day we became parents!
What’s your all-time, hands-down favourite resource?
Honestly, the answer is Instagram. Freebies everywhere. The people/accounts that shaped me: Jill at Little Oak Learning, Eloise at Mighty Mother, Em at Home Educating Es, Anna at Family Folk, Rachel at Holdfast Beach School, Adele at Soul Farm .
My other resources are my local library, my local home ed group (more on this later), and my life. Everyday is enough.
Biggest lesson you’ve learned so far?
Don’t plan anything. The children will give you material to work with. Their natural curiosity fuels their learning. Also, stop worrying about your life looking like some ideal you have made up in your mind. Let the fuck go.
Is curriculum necessary? If so, what’s the best you’ve come across?
No. But it can be useful. Its main use for me is to give me structure, but I’ve only been organised enough for about a month in the whole three years we’ve been doing this to use the curriculum I bought once. If you’re talking about using something to achieve certain mandated standards, I can’t answer that question, because in the UK we don’t have any standards to keep for the children each year.
Or do you run with more of a certain philosophy? Which one and why?
I definitely run with the philosophy that all of life is learning. I’ve learned a really special word during the last three years: unschooling. To strip away the unnecessary practices that were hailed as prudent in traditional schooling. All those things I remember thinking weren’t needed truly don’t have to be a part of the way my children understand teaching and tuition.
Recently, my friend Robin sent me some questions as she’s thinking about home education, and I told her I’m always open. I’m answering her here, because I think her questions (and maybe my answers) are helpful to others.
What made you choose homeschooling? Has your reason ended up being something you were able to say yes, I avoided that thing I didn’t want in traditional school, or yes, I got these extra things I thought I would get by doing homeschool? And now that you’re well into the process,
Which parts have been the hardest?
Maybe homeschooling chose me. Something inside me says it’s right for our family. If it’s alternative, against-the-grain, and a little bit rebel, it’s us. We definitely get the things like slow mornings, potential to take holidays whenever we want, and the beach to ourselves in choosing to home educate, so that’s satisfying. The hardest part is overcoming personal negative mindsets stuck in my head.
How have you separated your daily life into “regular” day stuff vs school time stuff? Do you have a designated area of the house? Do you have designated times?
I haven’t separated our daily life. It became too difficult to make different spaces. I have embraced that our life, our entire home, every hour is our school. It is both overwhelming and liberating. I do have a “play room.” And in the kitchen is the arts, crafts, and games shelf whereby the kitchen table is the designated space for using those supplies.
What’s the best part been?
Seeing my girls learn in real time. Being there for my eldest’s “this-is-clicking” moment in reading having never forced her to read books or do worksheets. It is deeply pleasing to hear the girls excitement over equations or numbers or words or flowers or any ordinary thing without pushing them to know it or understand it. I love the little affirmations that come just when I need them that we are doing enough just by being.
How do you maintain your own interests, have your own time, care for your mental health, etc.?
You know how you have to put your own oxygen mask on first before your child’s in the pre-flight instructions for emergencies? Well, home educating in the younger years will feel like (still feels like) an emergency all the time. So I put my oxygen mask on first. Honestly, I do the things I want to do, and I’ve had to let go of the idea that putting myself first is “bad.” My own interests and caring for myself IS teaching my children. It’s teaching them how important it is to look after themselves and to follow their hearts.
How much of your experience involves co-ops, hybrids, or other outside teaching venues? Where did you look for resources to teach things you didn’t feel comfortable teaching?
Most of our experience involves regular meetups with our local home ed group. So “home” school really isn’t done all that much “in the home.” Or I suppose just as much of it is done on the outside. From the group, we gain opportunities to visit all manner of places of learning together, but we approach these opportunities (for example: visiting animal parks, museums, historical buildings, playgrounds, beaches, woods, galleries, the fire station) purely from a social aspect and let the learning happen as it happens instead of listing any teaching goals. So far, I haven’t felt uncomfortable teaching anything, but I have so many home ed friendships now, I’m pretty sure there’s someone who can help me with anything I might not be sure of when I need them.
How much of your experience involves a small group of your own making that isn’t an official co-op, like a church group, other extracurricular groups you’ve chosen (like scouts or sports or arts)?
Almost all of our experience involves the home ed group of our own making. Mine comes from meeting people at toddler groups and on Instagram who were nearby, putting those people together, then linking arms as those people knew other people who knew other people. I feel very lucky that I have met so many outdoors, nature-centered educators in the pre-school arena that have carried over into home education. Forest schools, beach schools, farm schools, community gardens — these have been amazing sources of connection for me.
Where does most of your kid’s/kids’ social interaction come from?
Honestly, social interaction is inherent in society. Going to the shops, the post office, riding the bus, sitting in the doctor’s office, going to the playground, and generally being in public makes for a great social education for my girls. I teach them everyday we go out (and we decidedly DON’T go out every single day) how to interact with the world, and I’m proud of the perspective that my daughters are socialising with people in every age group, because at school, they’d literally be contained within a classroom to only socialise with their teachers and children their own age, which just doesn’t happen in real life. You are never in the grocery store with only your peers. Of course their main source of socialisation with other children is our home ed group. We operate on a WhatsApp group, and we have ages 2-15. I can’t speak enough about how home education wouldn’t be possible for me without this source of sanity. I am not besties with everyone. Neither are my daughters. But we have access to many people.
Did you settle on a particular (or various) curriculum, do your own pulling together of lots of unconnected resources, or a bit of both? Do you have a favorite starter curriculum that’s sort of good enough for anyone who’s starting out?
I can’t help but chuckle at this question considering what I’ve said on it previously. But I think a wonderful starter curriculum is Wanderlust Nature Study. It’s the only curriculum I’ve purchased so far. I was only put together enough to complete 4 weeks of it, but it’s so evergreen, I can go back to it year after year.
How dependent do you think homeschool success is on the personality of the child and parent? For example, does it work for one child and not the other sometimes, and if so, what do you do about it?
Success is dependent on how you define success. If you’re measuring things based on the traditional school year and the year of study they’d be enrolled in a mainstream school, then you have to be a more mainstream type teacher in the home, and if you haven’t studied to do that or have any interest in doing that, I think you’ll struggle. If you do want that, then you’ll probably be great at it! When it comes to different children in the same family, I’d say it’s very much like parenting in general. One thing works for one child, but maybe not the other. Home schooling is going to require flexibility for sure, but if the learning is generally being done as a unit, because it is just one day in the life of being a family, then you’ll all succeed in individual ways without anyone really having to make those distinctions.