How do we learn??

Many families have a different approach to home educating. I haven't met any two families that home educate the same way.
When I started our journey I was desperate to find a lesson plan, or make a schedule to structure our learning. I was looking for guidance from Google, Facebook groups, instagram, blogs etc to know how to home school.

I wanted someone to tell me what to do!!!!!

I was quick to realise that there was a reason I was getting nowhere with my research and that was because every parent, and every child did things differently.
Once we looked at our own lives and got to know how Violet learnt, we slowly began to find our feet with home educating and created the learning to suit us. It has taken a while, and no two weeks are the same.

Home educating isn't about having 6 hours of lessons a day and making sure we fit every piece of the curriculum in our week.
Children don't need a plan to learn, if you give them the space and freedom you will find they are naturally inquisitive and want to learn about all sorts of things.
There have been studies done showing us that we don't need a learning plan to read a book. If we fill a childs surroundings with  literature and story telling they will naturally learn to read all by themselves.

I thought I couldn't teach my children to read because I disliked reading.  When I was younger school made me read the most difficult, boring and none inspiring books, which put me off wanting to ever pick up another book. I have since learnt that I love reading books, as long they engage my interests. If you fill your child with opportunities to read, whether that is reading book, role playing stories, researching something that interests them, then they will naturally learn to read in their own time.
Whether it is when they are 4 or 10 they will do it in there own time without judgement from others. In other countries they don't start any formal learning until children are 7, in this country they have guidelines telling us what they should and shouldn't know from the age of 3.

Learning on their own

Violet came to us a few weeks ago telling me that she wanted to play the piano. We have one in our house that mainly collects dust. She researched and found a style of learning that inspired her and with all her time spent practising she was playing beautiful songs within a week. We just let her run with her interest and passion and 'voila' she can play the piano.
Similarly, Dawson came and told me that he wanted to know more about tornados, we watched documentaries, films, you tube clips, got a book from the library, drew pictures and made a tornado in a bottle. He loved every minute and learnt lots because he wanted to. We were guided by his interest and ran with it.

We do have times in the week where we do sit down, structured learning, mainly because we are starting to study for G.C.S.E's, but there is plenty of time to freely learn whatever she wants to.

It's a bit of a leap of faith in hoping that children will learn if left to their own devises. It has been a learning curve for me!
But I have come to realise that they have a huge thirst for knowledge and they want to learn about the world around them. It's amazing to watch there curiosity teach them as they thrive in all aspects of their learning.