30th May 2011

Hello all.. well I have been threatening to write a home education blog for a while now .. however these days I'm one busy lady!
I home educate my 3 children M 9 years D 3 years ( well 3 tomorrow) and C who is 10 months
We take a slightly different approach to most and initially I found that quite hard,we started Home educating last October, with M who was then 8.
she was miserable at school and I can't say I thought very much of the curriculum,it all seemed so diluted and well I'll be honest aimed at the lowest common denominator.
As time went by and I found myself doing teaching at home to cover the bits school was missing everything was pre prepared and packed away for them - a far cry from the school I knew where we expected to help out it was part of the learning process the hours spent mixing powder paint!
We learnt team spirit how to co operate and how to listen our teachers were firm and mostly kind.
I enjoyed school on the whole - I certainly didn't hate it or find it a waste of time.
As time ticked by I started to get more and more annoyed with various things - the money wasted by the PTA ,The waste in school in general reams and reams of paper, tables turfed into skips assemblies that expected parent attendance sprung on you the day before the lack of homework , the blame attitude and the permissiveness.
I know there are some fab teachers out there who work hard and love their job but sadly they seem to be dying out replaced by people who simply tick boxes and nod.

So? what's so different about us?
Firstly we both work so we don't have limitless time to teach secondly we don't have family to help out - it's all us. Thirdly we have a big age gap between the children and lastly I'm not the biggest social butterfly so we don't attend many social activities.
I have had to come to a happy place on that one every book I read every article every one told me the most important part was "getting out there" - they were right in the sense that we love being outside but equally we enjoy inside things too.
Lots of advice suggested to be "good" home educators you were going to every activity every day I have never felt it necessary to send my children to every dance class every group so this one was hard to take in,I understood naturally my daughter would need and desire peers and space - hell I need space sometimes!
After a lot of agonising about various groups and how they fit into our family philosophies I asked the local gymnastics teacher if she could do a drop in session for the HE children mixed group mixed ability - she was pleased to do so - so we go there once a week.
We go out every day but not to anything specifically planned for either home education or children.
Obviously this is not set in stone if something comes up we'll go but our resources are limited I am but one woman and the children are happy with the way things are going.
I'll talk more about what we do as time goes on but,for now I am going to start making birthday preparations - D is 3 tomorrow - wow... where HAS the time gone?!