I'm thinking of homeschooling in the UK.

[TootsieBlue]

I feel my childrens time in school is not used to the full advantage. I think there is a bigger percentage in the US of Home Schooling and just wondered if there were any LDS members that could give me some advice.

I have 6 children, eldest is 10 and youngest is 2. We have them at a Catholic School in England. Unfortunately the school has fell short of National targets this year and is in Special Measures, which gives the school extra support for the next 2 years but I still feel really let down. I think their teaching staff do a bad job and most of the childrens day is taken up with play and watching videos. I'd rather they were home having half day lessons with me if thats all they are going to get at school. The rest of the time they can be playing with each other or helping with house chores or visiting Museums, doing service, Scripture study. All of these things we find difficult to find time for due to them being at school for 7 and a half hours per day and it dont feel they are having 7 and a half hours of education every day.

I feel there is constant bullying around. Teaching staff resort to negative language and shouting. Surely 1 adult and 6 children is better than 2 adults and 30 children.

I'd love some help and advice on this.

Many thanks

Tootsie.

[TootsieBlue]

see someone moved my thread way down here to parenting and now i've got noone posting on the thread.

no help!

[gabelpa]

There are several homeschooling support groups int he UK, I am surprised a Googles earch didn't turn them up. Education Otherwise seems to be the leadingg roup, andthere is probablya dedicated regional group.

I can't offer anything by way of legal advice, as we are in Scotland, and the legalities are different in England. we didn't need to notify anyone as we never sent our kids to school to begin with.

Netmums also has a dedicated homeschool forum that you should check out.

[TootsieBlue]

thanks,

please dont run away. I have googled and got some great resources and support in organisations. What I really want is to speak to Parents like yourself that are doing it or have done it and how realistic my goals are really.

I'm mostly concerned that i'm going into this with Rose coloured spectacles and i may must some real mistakes with the children and they will struggle as a result.

Also concerning my 4 year old daughter who is due to start school in September, I was planning on letting her go for a year and then home schooling her also but i'm not sure if thats the best idea or not.

How did your children handle not being in school. If they've never attended, do they feel they have missed out. Do they ask about it, are they jealous of their friends?

I'd appreciate any of your opinions.

Thanks for replying in the first place.

Tootsie

[Elgama]

I'm Gabelpa's wife.

LDSHome-edintheUK : LDS Home-educators in the UK

its not very active but periodically people post things and if you PM me you can add me to facebook, the legal situation in England has just changed

THEN UK and Education Otherwise might be the place to start, they will give you local contacts, and give you the legal situation you need, we are in the Aberdeen area I know there are some LDS home educators about.

We are presently doing unschooling ours are 6, 3 and 1, and have found boring my daughter into learning has been the best way to go lol Right now we are watching Wonders of the Solar System and Space Hoppers. But I have no formal learning as such.

I use partly a Steiner approach so we have a household routine that does activities that breathe in to calm down and breathe out to run around or exercise. Our routine is roughly:

Up, Dressed, breakfast

Prayers, exercise, meditation etc

Bake Bread

Home ed, (Mummy sits and does her lessons and the kids usually join in)

Work in Garden or some dancing,Bake and make soup for

Make Soup for Lunch, clean and tidy up

Eat Lunch

Watch TV

Go for walk

stories

Prepare dinner

Bath

Daddy home

[TootsieBlue]

thats great, your routine doesn't sound far off what I was planning for us.

Thanks so much for your help, I really appreciate it.

I will be going in to talk to the childrens school on Monday, hoping not to offend them and at the same time ask them if it all goes wrong, would it be possibe to bring the children back. We'll see how it goes.

Yes i've been on those sites you've listed, they are really helpful but its not the same as talking to other parents.

I really admire the way you are doing it. I hope we will be sucessful. The children seem enthusiastic at this point and also feel they would be happier studying their own religion instead of doing Catholic studies.

this is basically what I had in mind -

Our eldest 3 boys wont go back to school after the Easter hols. Our 7 year old will stay in school til the end of the school year. Our 4 year old will start primary school in September for a year then will be home educated. Our 2 year old will be placed in a Kindergarten rather than Playgroup, where he will stay 2 years and will probably be home taught from then rather than going into Primary School.

At the moment our 10 year old wants to do it but wants to go to High School in 2 years time. We'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it. Possibly look at private schools if our finances support it.

I'm going to try and be meticulous at recording our progress. Get the children to help with the lesson planning. Projects of Science, History, Religious Studies, Geography, Economics. Implement Chores, Home cooking, Scripture Study and a Sport as part of their curriculum. Family trips once a fortnight if not once a week. Weekly swimmng. My husband is musically talented so that will be something we will also add in as well as Art. Eventually a Martial Art will be mandatory too as will 2 languages. My MIL is fluent in French and my Husband is fluent in Italian.

and basically just work our wee butts off!

[Elgama]

for me thats very structured:) some families thrive that way but for me it would remove all the advantages of home ed. I find home education comes unstuck for me when I approach it like schoo for me its about learning rather than being taughtl, my kids pick up so much without it getting formal, something a lot of families recommend is a period of deschooling ie not doing anything school related for 2-4 weeks, I wasn't going to do that, but was forced upon me by Australian flu and going into labour (my daughter had done 2 mornings a week at preschool) For me I personally appreciate the freedom that home education gives us, we can decide because Cbeebies are running a certain show we will learn such and such today, or Ellie can sit and watch hours of Horrible Histories (wonderful source of information), yesterday she read the Beano comics which are social history as well we found out about the history of it,

We do science through baking and cooking, maths when we got to the shops or singing the times tables, we can even do reading looking at sign posts, My daughter makes a list and we go shopping for things she wants to make we look at prices etc

I personally would plan it with them find out where their interests lie and what they want to study, but other people who home ed feel differently, but again for me its about giving my children the ability to run their own learning to a point rather than me teaching them

[gabelpa]

My wife is composing her take, but here is my reply to your curriculum. I work all day so have limited input in to the homeschooling. What you are proposing sounds physically and emotionally draining. You will be exhausted in a few months at that rate.

Formal schooling teaches habits that are completely at odds with the homeschooler's approach. If you are going to homeschool, start. Don't go half-measures. Keep your youngest out of school. It will only serve to confuse them if they go for a year, and then not.

As far as the foreign languages go, it is time for your husband and MIL to speak to the kids in only the foreign languages, any other method is a disservice to them, especially the young ones, who would learn much faster than the older ones using that method.

Take it easy, you can teach far more in less time than a school can. You don't have targets, and you don't have to pander to the lowest common denominator. Also, don't worry about a lack of knowledge, this is just as much about your own personal learning as your kids

Edited March 28, 2010 by gabelpa
terrible spelling thanks to smartphone's dumb keyboard

[Elgama]

t

I'm going to try and be meticulous at recording our progress. Get the children to help with the lesson planning. Projects of Science, History, Religious Studies, Geography, Economics. Implement Chores, Home cooking, Scripture Study and a Sport as part of their curriculum. Family trips once a fortnight if not once a week. Weekly swimmng. My husband is musically talented so that will be something we will also add in as well as Art. Eventually a Martial Art will be mandatory too as will 2 languages. My MIL is fluent in French and my Husband is fluent in Italian.

and basically just work our wee butts off!

ok just an idea chores can teach physics (friction, energy etc), sorting laundry colours, making cleaners chemistry, economics take them to the bank or shopping with you, walk or run to the bank and you have sport, listening to Book of Mormon and General Conference CDs during the day covers LDS education its amazing how a child will just come up with a question. Art and History can be done at once for example this week we are going to the cathedral which is two minutes walk from here, kids are going to draw it and we are going to find the grave of a lady called Jessie Pozzi who was a custodian of the cathedrals

Languages can be done easily if your Mum teaches them a lesson in French but she can do a history lesson, same for your husband or he can just speak to them in Italian or he can conduct scripture study in the evening with a Book of Mormon in Italian.. we use the Rosetta Stone language programme for our kids, mind you thanks to one Elder my daughter was more fluent in Russian than English at a year old lol An awful lot of what you want to do can be fitted in to everyday life. as children get older as long as they have good reading, writing, arithmetic and algebra they can learn anything they want from a book, those are the skills I concerntrate on.

[TootsieBlue]

Thank you both, I really do appreciate your thoughts on this, especially as it seems to work so well for you.

My concern is that I want to keep the children up to or past the national level for their maths and English.

My OH went back to education late and qualfied as a Barrister last year. We really value education and know that many career choices depend on education certificates etc.

There for if my children will have to take GCSE exams and Highers etc, I dont want them to struggle. I want them to excel.

In their year at school they are doing long divsion and long multiplication, fractions etc. these aren't things that can consitently be used as part of shopping once or twice a week, but will require some pen and paper work. I dont want to neglect these things incase the children struggle with them later in life.

It would be great to find a system that works straight from the beginning but it looks like it might be trial and error for a bit until we find a way that works for all of us.

Its such a daunting thing at the moment.

Thanks for all your help,

Julie Ann

[TootsieBlue]

Yes, i'm going to be children led on alot of things, for example -

Eqyptians - that covers, history, georgraphy, science, art, literacy etc.

We can go to Museums, take pictures, make books, do write ups, draw our own pictures. Do research for more info on the net and find more history. Plot places in Egypt of interest. Try to make our own Egyptian artefacts, ink and makeup etc. Construct a play etc..

so just from one thing that the children are interested in, I can do so much with it. Hopefully we'll never run out of things we are interested it.

Dinosaurs, Great English Battles, Volcanos etc...