I was looking for research and evidence to reassure me that our decision to home educate our children had been a sound one. When we decided to take the children out of school, we knew no one who home educated, so we desperately needed other voices that advocated for this way of life. We also needed resources and support to help us on our journey. We are not teachers, and never profess to have all the answers, so we have enjoyed finding people and organisations that complement our journey and our ethos. They have given the kids familiar faces, different viewpoints, and a kind of stability amid our travels.
Podcast
The Life Without School Podcast, with Stark Raving Dad
We found the podcast a couple of months before leaving school, and it felt like Issy calmly guided us through it all. Every time we stopped to question ourselves, to wonder whether we were making the right decision or whether we were messing up the kids' lives, we turned on a podcast and let Issy's well-researched and reasoned words show us that we were on the right path.
Read more
Our home education journey has felt like one of swimming against the current at times, and we are thankful for voices like Issy's out there, to help show that things can be done a different way, and that it is not wrong.
This was an interesting read. It showed that intelligent people can be especially good at building a logical story to explain their own decisions, even when those decisions are objectively not very good.
Read more
The book has many examples of people with high IQs who created problems of their own making in this way, despite the high IQ that society would have us believe should prevent that. It made me think about intelligence in a new light with my own children, and reinforced the idea that academic success, and proving your intelligence through that structured format, does not always lead to good life outcomes. Real-world experience, and exposure to people from different walks of life with different viewpoints, is just as critical.
I was recommended this book by a teaching friend. It talks about the habits and character traits that make a good learner, such as curiosity and resilience, and about ways to make them a focus in the classroom alongside the conventional measures of achievement.
Read more
It discusses the unhelpful learning habits that some conventional classroom set-ups can develop, which made me reflect on my own learning experience. I was an A* student who had little love of learning for its own sake. At school I learned to be dogmatic in my need for the right answer, and timid of making mistakes. Although the approach is designed to improve teaching in schools, it reinforced the concerns I already had for our own kids, and the need to focus on learning how to learn, and to cultivate a love of doing that, rather than being so heavily concerned with the outputs.
This was great for us in our early days of home education. When we took our daughter out of school, it soon became clear that she was under-confident with maths and "didn't enjoy it". She was capable, but struggled with self-confidence when approaching a problem, and it felt like the curriculum had jumped forwards too quickly for her.
Read more
Starting the Kumon programme gave her that confidence back. She followed it for just over a year, and during that time she developed her confidence and ability again. The repetitive, slowly progressing method suited her learning style. The programme focuses on mental arithmetic, which has given her a core foundation of numerical reasoning that she has since been able to build on. Our son, who was much younger at the time, did well in the early stages, with the counting and early adding, but the repetition was too slow for him and he didn't gain as much from the method. The teachers were great and very supportive throughout, but we stopped when we could no longer attend the weekly sessions because we were travelling.
We found this platform more recently, and the kids have tried several of the classes, which they've enjoyed. It has a good credits system, which allows you to buy up front and then keep your credits while dipping in and out of classes.
Read more
My daughter did an excellent entrepreneurial course and a writing book club, and went on to a watercolour course. My son did an inspiring science class and a ukulele session. We enjoy the flexibility, and being able to log on with excellent, enthusiastic teachers from wherever we are in the world is a real bonus for us as a travelling family.
The kids have had a great time following Emma in her home education art classes. Wherever we are in the world, Emma and the group pop up weekly as familiar faces. Emma is extremely professional and has such an engaging approach to teaching on Zoom, which is rare.
Read more
The kids love getting to choose the music that plays as they create art together. There is a new theme each week, which they get to influence, and with it comes a new style of drawing to try. Through this class the kids have both grown in their art ability and had a lot of fun, often carrying on their sketches in the weeks between classes.
