How we homeschooled today #49

Plus: tell me why you homeschool

Share your ‘why’

At the home ed sports day we attended yesterday I met loads of parents whose children had been shockingly let down by their schools. Some of the stories are hard to believe in the 21st century. They were in stark contrast to my own ‘why’, and gave me a completely new insight into what some families go through.

So I’d like to do a post on why families homeschool, not just how, featuring stories from homeschooling families—that’s you!

If you’d like to be included in the post, please send me a paragraph or two on what led you to home educate. It doesn’t have to involve a bad school experience, all stories are welcome. It also doesn’t have to be beautifully crafted. Just jot down how you ended up on this path. Submissions can be anonymous or not, as you like.

You can reply to this or e-mail waddingtonc@gmail.com

I’ve set a deadline of this Sunday evening, 23rd July, because a deadline always helps me get on with a task.

And please feel free to share with other homeschooling friends. The more the merrier.

Thank you! I am looking forward to reading and sharing people’s experiences.

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How we homeschooled today #49

Yesterday was a Big Day Out and tomorrow is another one, so today we had a very quiet day at home.

• I woke up after 8am to find the flat totally silent, because the children were reading in bed. They have rediscovered the Time Chronicles books. If you’re new here, this is a series about Biff, Chip and Kipper, for confident readers who are in the awkward gap between ‘reading books’ and chapter books. The 18 books get progressively more challenging, and the children go back in time to stop the evil Virans from erasing history. Gently educational because they travel back to eg. Ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy and meet real figures from history. Very expensive new but I got our set online secondhand.

  

  Biff, Chip, Kipper and friends

• After lots of reading they moved on to an imaginary game where they were wolf cubs, until I told them I’d had enough of the howling.

• My daughter did a science experiment from her Curiosity Box about density, and my son did this maths activity (free printable) about adding two dice together and writing numbers. By the way the Oxford Owl website has other great maths activities for ages 3-11. He moved on to reading Alexander the Great and King Arthur while my daughter moved on to her Jolly Phonics workbook, after which they both moved onto the sofa for yet more reading. (By now it was after 11am and all three of us still in pyjamas.)

• At lunch we did Multiplication by Heart (only one card today so not very taxing!).

• This afternoon we did the ice cream experiment where you add salt to an external bag to draw out the heat of the ice cream mixture. It was only partly successful but nobody seemed to mind that their ice cream was a bit runny!

• While my daughter was at Beavers/Tiger Cubs my son did yet more reading: Norse Myths and Sharks (and, since you ask, I read Storm in a Teacup: The Physics of Everyday Life). When we got home they ran straight into the garden to play with a friend and I was slightly defeated by the challenge of herding them inside.

• Reading in bed: Captain Cook, and more Time Chronicles

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