Every days a school day

February half term 

The title 'half term' might seem a bit confusing as, I reckon, most home educated children don't really have a term time. But due to my little lad going to school we have weeks in the year when he is off that make our days a little different. Because he is home we like to go on more trips, explore more places and enjoy having him home with us. He says that he is at 'Violets school' when he has a school holiday and likes to sit down and do some math's and English with us. We continued with Violets online work but just reduced the amount spent on it as her time spent playing with Dawson and trips to the park are just as important as the sit down learning.

This week we went to some beautiful places and because we are lucky enough to live in Somerset there are lots of places to explore without spending a fortune.

 

We went to our local museum in Weston super mare. They were having a history week and everyday was a different time in history. When we visited on Tuesday, it was Roman day. The kids got to see artifacts and dress up like a roman. The museum itself is lovely and we plan to go back to see all the things we missed on this visit. This place is free to visit but do accept kind donations to help keep the place running.

We took the kids tobogganing at our local ski centre in Churchill. Both kids were a bit dubious about the activity. Violet didn't really know what it was and Dawson, after looking at the pictures online, just kept saying 'scary' to me. But OMG the kids both loved it, the faster the better. We had just as much fun watching them as they had flying down the slope. Its an activity we will definitely recommend to anyone and will be doing again.

On Thursday Violet and her Dad (Mark) went to Hinkley point for a tour of the power station. This is a nuclear power station and they offer free tours and information sessions to explain nuclear power. Violet (and Mark) learnt the chemistry about nuclear fission and enjoyed seeing around this massive building. Both of them came back buzzing and would like to join the next tour to have a look around another part of the site.

The weather, here, was like a summers day by the weekend and we all wanted to get out to explore and enjoy the unusually warm February weather. So we packed our wellies ( a must when exploring with kids so they can jump in streams and puddles), food, water and ventured to Clevedon. We went to the Ty Sculpture trail for the first time. This place was recommended to us by another local Home ed mum. It is a beautiful trail put together in the woods by a father who unfortunately lost his son at the age of 21. His son, Ty, used to spend his childhood exploring these woods which his house backs onto and this trail is in memory. In the forest is a 'bubbling' pond, this pond produces bubbles for an unknown reason which the kids found very interesting. The trail is free to visit.

We also went on our annual trip to snowdrop valley to see the thousands of snowdrops that grow there each year. It is a muddy walk but the kids loved the exploring and playing in the stream. We had friends and family join us so we had a total of 9 children out on the trip and they were all fantastic.

All in all we have had so much fun, lots of fresh air, lots of learning, exploring, making fantastic memories and none of it has broken the bank.

We always say that we 'home educate' and not 'home school' for the reason that what we do is nothing like a school. We are not replicating a school, we are not 9am-3pm Monday to Friday. We are educating in a way that suits our child, every hour, every day and  every week of the year.

  

 

The start of our story

My name is Chelle and I am mum to 4 beautiful children. Courtney (16), Violet (11), Dawson (7) and Baby Darcy. I decided to start this blog about my decision and Journey in Home educating Violet.

I am not anti school and think we are really lucky to have our education system but every child is different and that system doesn't suit them all.
Courtney had a wonderful school experience  and is now doing an engineering apprenticeship and I couldn't be more proud of the young lady that she has become.
Dawson has special needs and we are lucky to have a school near us that offers him amazing support. His year group of children (and parents) are so lovely, he has some great friends and he enjoys school.
Violet on the other hand has had a very disruptive year group all through primary school and we hoped the mix in secondary school would help dilute this however when she started her secondary school her attitude towards us and learning was getting really bad.

As a parent i am no different to anyone else, we all want the best for our children. Violet approached us about home educating her and sent us links to lots of sites. After we looked into it we decided to give it go in the hope this would be a good option for her and she would, again, enjoy learning.
We had our own fears about our ability to do it and to do her justice as she is a bright kid. But we could see she was unhappy and the fear of her spending the next 5 years unhappy was far greater.

In October 18 we took the leap and deregistered her from school. Yes, it really was as easy as that. A letter saying we would be home educating her and she never returned to school the next day.

We next had to 'unschool' ourselves. Violet was so used to having 6 lessons a day that she was trying to copy that at home. We could not sustain that. She would start one subject and just as we really got into it she would assume we had to finish to do our next lesson. So now when we start a piece of work we can keep learning and gaining greater understanding and interest without stopping. We decided to cover the basic subjects maths, science and English every week and we would then choose other areas of learning to spend time on. Violet has a very creative side and a love of maths but really struggles with English. So we work at her levels of understanding and build from there. We use a variety of resources and get out of the house to learn as much as we can.

We are not teachers, we don't have all the answers and to be honest we are learning with her. But we are having fun doing it and getting to know Violet in ways we never had a chance to before.

I look forward to sharing our journey with you.