I’m he2kidsandme; HE as in Home Education, my 2 kids are Big kid who’s 14, Little kids who’s 8 and me, Jo. The name doesn’t give any credit to my husband who is a big part of our family but doesn’t appear much in our adventures because he’s usually at work or behind the scenes at home, cooking the dinner, keeping the four walls standing and the roof above our head. Sorry about that love. 😉
We’re relatively new to Home education, Big Kid came out of school just over a year ago, half way through year 9 and Little kid about 8 months ago at the end of year 2. School just wasn’t a good fit for Big kid, she managed through Primary in a tiny Village School with less than 60 pupils but the transition to secondary was a disaster from the start, she was very unhappy and taking her out was the best decision we have ever made. Little kid seemed to enjoy school but we didn’t feel the middle school he was allocated was suitable and since he has been home he has talked a lot about how unhappy he was with some things that happened at school.
I don’t think we have really found our home ed style yet, I don’t know if we will ever have a set style. I imagine it will forever be changing according to the kids needs and interest. At the moment we do lots of clubs and groups: French and a craft group for Big kid and Art, gymnastics, trampoline and STEM for Little kid. We go on lots of trips and visits and I organise a social meet up for the HE teenagers in the area a few times a month. This month I am trying a bit of ‘strewing’ on the subject of Space and we have had quite a bit of engagement from both kids which I am very pleased with.
Recently we have been doing ‘Field trip friday’ our last few field trips were the National Holocaust museum, The Classical Spectacular at The Royal Albert Hall and a Science Fair at Warwick Castle our favourite by far was the Classical Spectacular, we all thoroughly enjoyed it even though we’re not really into Classical music.
I think my favourite thing about home educating the children is watching them enjoy things, and get excited about stuff. They are both more confident and much better company since they have been home and I think that’s because we don’t seem to be rushing all the time (although we are always late!). I think the thing I find most difficult about Home education is that I miss my work, I miss my colleagues and adult conversation and I miss feeling I have made a difference to someone (outside of the family) but I’m starting a new very part time job soon so I hope to get that feeling back.
The advice I received which I found most useful was “Forget School! Learning at home doesn’t and shouldn’t look like School.” Every time I have doubts, to remind myself of that, I sneak off to the loo and look through my Instagram and remind myself about all the experiences the kids have had and try to think of just one thing they learned from the experience – the thing they learned is not usually the ‘learning objective’ a teacher would have planned but something I completely overlooked or was totally unrelated. It’s like having a toddler all over again, you’ve got somewhere you need to be but they’ve got 400 questions about the ant on a leaf floating in a puddle – now we’ve got time to watch the ant, hypothesise about how he got on the leaf or where he’s going, find out what leaf it is, learn about viscosity, look for other ants ……. . And, now you know why we’re always late.
If you are interested you can follow our adventures at he2kidsandme on Instagram.
富强、民主、文明、和谐，自由、平等、公正、法治， 爱国、敬业、诚信、友善。