This weeks word(s) of the week are

Home Education

The Little Man left school shortly before the end of the half term and  has been home ever since. We have put in some applications for a couple of local schools but there are no places right now.

We have been working hard to keep up with what he may be doing if he was at school, thankfully, when it’s one on one learning you don’t need to have to work for so many hours as you would in a normal classroom. Star’s home tutor told me that nine hours a week was enough, so that’s our aim at the moment. Of course, we do go over as I like to turn other things into learning, there is so much to learn on a trip out to the park, the shops, or library. Also, we learn while cooking lunch together.

Each day we start with a simple exercise just to get him in the mood for learning. This may be a word search or a puzzle page. I printed off some great Football related code breaking sheets that the Little Man enjoyed doing and got him started with some maths.

Then we go on to a subject study, either Maths, English or Science. He likes Maths and Science best, it’s hard to get him to do any  English as he doesn’t like writing. I think I’ll let him write some work up on the laptop just to get him interested. He can always practice writing later. He loves reading though and I’ve picked a longer book to read together, Kid Normal by Radio One DJs Chris Smith and Greg James. It’s really funny and a bit challenging for the Little Man which is just what we need.

I also bought an electronics kit and he’s had loads of fun learning about and making circuits. We made an alarm for when the door opens and a sensor to tell us when the bath was full and it was time to turn off the taps. I think I learnt quite a bit too.

Finally, we had some craft sessions with a My Gecko Box which I bought him all about Rainforests. We used this as a project and as well as making a rainforest in a cardboard box, we also found out lots of information on the Internet about rainforests. Again, I think I learnt quite a bit too!

Here is the result;

The box that everything came in was used as the Rainforest base and he stuck on some green crepe paper and blue cellophane. The he cut out some green leaves and stuck them on. Finally, I help him tie two pieces of string to divide the sections. We labelled them (on the side) Forest floor, understory, canopy and Emergent.

The Little Man learnt about which creatures lived in which sections and had to choose where to put the creature that he made. In the box there were little bags containing everything he needed to make a Caiman lizard, A butterfly, a colourful bird, two snakes, two tree frogs and a spider. He had lots of fun making the creatures and the Rainforest.

(I bought the box for £19.99 and it contained every needed apart from scissors. It took the Little Man 3 days to make it all, so it was worth the money. I am now considering getting him a monthly subscription.)

We’ve had a really great week and I’m really enjoying teaching him. He seems a lot happier too. We are hoping to meet up with other home educating parents and their children for some social activities in our area.

Have you ever home educated a child, or considered doing so?