You don’t need a teaching qualification to home educate — but you do need to think differently about what teaching actually is. This section covers the practical side: how to plan and run lessons, how to handle reluctant learners, how to teach core subjects without a textbook, and how to build independence gradually so it’s not all on you. From someone who’s been in the classroom at the kitchen table for a decade.
Lesson planning can be an overwhelming thought when you’re starting homeschooling. You might know what you need to teach, but how to teach it..isn’t that something teachers train for years to learn? Well, yes. But like every aspect of home education, teaching your child is very different to teaching a class full of pupils. Lesson…
Poetry, prose, etymology.. Shakespeare’s writings are something no literature curriculum is complete without. If you’re not an English teacher the idea of teaching Shakespeare might be daunting – even if you enjoy his works in the theatre. As with all subjects, the earlier you can expose children to it, the easier it will be to…
Drama is a fun element to add to a homeschool curriculum and also a fantastic way to encourage homeschoolers to develop confidence in narration and presentation, skills that are useful outside of the classroom. Watch performances – online and in person – and act out plays at home. Make ‘Script Writing’ the focus of an…
The more comfortable we are with the medium we’re using to write words down..pen, pencil, keyboard.. the easier it is to transfer the words from our heads onto paper or a screen. Digital literacy – the ability to use a computer fluently- starts with being able to type as naturally as writing by hand. The…
We didn’t start formal reading lessons until age seven. Here’s the approach we took, what worked, and the one textbook we’d recommend.
Home educated kids are no different to kids who go to traditional schools – there are subjects they like and subjects they don’t, they have hobbies and interests outside of the classroom and can be resistant to challenging themselves if a subject feels difficult to master. A scattering materials approach helps to guide them towards…
The EBacc isn’t compulsory. But as a planning framework for home education, it’s more useful than it first sounds. Here’s how we use it.
Learning a foreign language is part of the recommended subject list for the EBacc and is a skill looked upon favourably by universities and workplaces because it takes dedication and commitment to learn a foreign language and demonstrates a student’s willingness to long-term learning commitments. Learning a foreign language is definitely beneficial to students but…
Reading aloud is one of the most effective things in a home-ed day — and one of the few lessons where you can forget you’re teaching. Here’s why it works.
Turn any topic into a homeschool lesson! Follow homeschooler’s interest and make lessons fun, effective, engaging.