Introduction
Hello I am Mumma Green and I have 3 beautiful daughters, eldest is almost 5, middle miss is 3 and a half and littlest is only 20 months.
We live in the countryside and love being outdoors having adventures. We learn through life and living. Our journey is what others would call autonomous or unschooling. Learning what they want to right there and then, self-directed and self-motivated, with me there to facilitate their learning.
How long have you home educated for and what made you decide to do it?
I feel like we have been home educating for ever, to some because eldest isn’t what you call Statutory school age (the term after they turn 5) we haven’t even started yet. But to us it’s something we have done since they were born. Facilitate their learning, helping them reach their goals. However technically I guess it would be 6 months as eldest would have started school last September.
What made us decide to home educate, that is a difficult question to answer. The main one for us was that 4 or 5 feels too young for children to be in that environment. Then the more research we did the more and more pros there were. Having more time to be children, play, socialise and be themselves. The more 1-2-1 time they can receive at home, the freedom to learn what and when they want and to learn skills they do not teach at school. For us the ‘academic’ stuff isn’t important to learn so young, that will come, life lessons, skills and independence is something we want our children to learn over being able to read a novel at 4!
Briefly describe your home ed style. Do you have a ‘typical’ week and what does it include if so?
As I mentioned previously our home ed ‘style’ would be classed as autonomous, learning in the moment and following their lead. Nothing is typical about our weeks generally! However there are a few activities we tend to do weekly, like aerial hoops and circus skills, French, horse riding and an home ed social meet. Between those it can be anything from clearing out our chickens, learning about space, taking a walk, mushroom spotting, tree IDing, free play and anything and everything they would like to learn.
What was your highlight of home ed last week?
Ohhhh our highlight of last week…so much! But probably our Fab-u-lingo half term workshop were the girls played games, made and decorated cupcakes all while learning French. They were really engrossed and took it all in and learnt so much.
What is your favourite thing about home edding your child/ren?
The freedom to do and be who we want to be.
What do you find most difficult and why?
The most difficult thing I would say is trying to juggle everyone’s demands. However I don’t think that’s specific to home educating! Fitting everything in can be very difficult, with children various ages. But like anything you want to do you just have to work through these and find the best solution for everyone.
What advice would you give to other home educators?
The same advice I would give to new mums, or indeed anyone with an idea that others may not understand….. Listen you your instincts. Trust yourself.
I blog about our adventures on Facebook, the ups and downs of home ed, life being a mummy of 3 young kiddies who’s eldest and littlest are only 3 years apart!! I hope it helps others who maybe don’t know what home ed looks like to see one way of educating, in an nontraditional way (although is traditional for us!!)
Read more about Mumma HE Green on facebook here: My Life Outside The Box