The real side of home education — not the Pinterest version. The days when the lesson gets abandoned and nobody’s sure if any of this is working. The role swaps, the reset moments, the times it clicks unexpectedly. This is where the honest writing lives: what it’s actually like to be parent and teacher to the same children, written from ten years inside it.
It’s 10:30am and while the washing machine tackles the first of many loads that’ll be cleaned today, Mr 11 & Mr 9 are getting on with their daily spelling words while the toddler hangs out on my back as I potter round the kitchen, tidying up and preparing lunch. A fairly typical morning though one…
Knowing that something is the right choice is not the same as saying it’s always easy, and on the days home-ed is anything but easy, there’s a particular spiral that home-educating parents know well. It’s complicated: you’re both parent and teacher, your child is also your pupil and sometimes all of those different roles collide….
The question usually arrives around 3pm on a day when nothing went to plan. The maths got abandoned and the printer wouldn’t print. Someone cried (and it might have been you). The afternoon dissolved into a documentary about deep-sea fish that nobody planned and everyone enjoyed, and somewhere between clearing up and starting dinner, you…
Screen usage is one of the trickiest aspects of home-ed to navigate because there are so many useful resources available on screens but you don’t want them plugged in all day, so we’ve had screen rules in our house for years: used for relaxation within reason, used for a purpose after books. The screen rules…
There was a period in our homeschool where one of our learners would start a lesson switched on and finish it deflated. Not because he didn’t know the material — you could tell from the way he talked about things, the questions he asked, the connections he made that he understood. But ask him to…
If home education wasn’t your plan but the school system has stopped working for your child, this is where to start. What to do first, what can wait, and what doesn’t matter as much as you think.
Some days the lesson isn’t the problem, the atmosphere is. Someone’s out of sorts, or siblings have been winding each other up since breakfast, or the morning just went wrong in ways that have nothing to do with the curriculum. On those days, pushing through rarely works. The most productive thing you can do for…
Plan as you might, some days toddlers just won’t get with the programme. It’s not always easy home educating older siblings with toddlers around but there are some ways to make it easier. Involve toddlers in the lesson Use highchair games to occupy toddlers Occupying toddlers with activities that can be done in a highchair…
Marmalade Day is one of the best days of the homeschool year. When oranges appear in the markets, the whole family gets excited for marmalade day. With Paddington Bear in the background, we squeeze, peel, dice, slice and simmer oranges with cinnamon until the house smells like a candle shop and the countertops are lined…
If you’re home-educating siblings, keeping little ones occupied while homeschooling big ones can be tricky. Activities that can be done at a table or in a highchair make little ones feel part of the team. These activities are quick to set up, easy to clean up, and encourage motor skills and pre-literacy learning, key features…