Wednesday 26 October 2016

Looking back-starting to home educate

I'm planning a short series about starting to home educate. The aim is that this will be helpful for anyone thinking about home educating their children, those starting to home educate and also to people who don't home educate, and don't intend to, but are curious about home education. 

The topics that I hope to cover are


  • why home educate?
  • the positives and negatives of home education?
  • how to start.
It is now seven and a half years since we took Middle Son out of school and started to educate him at home. I was terrified. Whilst we had spoken to some people who were supportive, we had also had some major and serious opposition. Now, it is possible to have some perspective on this but it was far more difficult at the time.

Being rather nervous, I started out with a school style timetable and spent ages planning the academic subjects. Day one found me having to take my husband's mother to an unexpected appointment. When we came home, I discovered that my son took a strong dislike to the read aloud that I had chosen and that just writing PE on the timetable didn't really help me know what to do. The first term contained further challenges: missing school friends, trying to make friends in a home education group where there were already established friendships, disliking the maths book, more appointments, occupying my two year old and balancing education around a baby.

Of course, it wasn't all bad but that first term was tough and I probably made it rougher by being so anxious. So I'm writing this in the hope that others may avoid some of the pitfalls.

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5 comments:

  1. Really looking forward to these posts Sarah! Love Emma

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  2. This sounds like a helpful series, Sarah. I keep getting emailed questions about starting home educating, so I will be able to point then to your series :-)

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    Replies
    1. Thank you, Gwen. I think there are a fair number of people who wonder what starting home education is like.

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  3. I am certain this will help many people out there who are just beginning. We homeschooled right from the start which I think made it that much easier. We didn't really have any negatives. I shall look forward to your posts :)

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