Accidental Homeschooling

Along with millions of other parents around the country, I’m suddenly an accidental home schooler. Whilst some children are due back at school soon, for others there could be many more weeks of home school. Over 15 years of teaching experience means that I didn’t feel the rise of panic that many other parents faced. I have access to resources and have ideas up my sleeve to fall back on. However, there have been challenges and over the weeks of accidental homeschooling, I’ve certainly changed my approach along the way to make life a little easier.

Less is More!

An experienced homeschooler once told me that she only had to do a few hours a day to cover the whole curriculum with her child. Impossible, I thought. Children are at school for over 6 hours a day. It’s hard for teachers to fit everything in.  I now find that it is indeed possible. 1 to 1 for most children means that things can be covered much more quickly.  A couple of hours of good concentration (if you can get it!) is much better than sitting slogging through 6 hours of home school while the sun shines outside.

Follow Your Child’s Interests

I admit to being a little naughty. I haven’t followed the curriculum sent through by my daughter’s school. I asked my daughter what topics she wanted to learn about and that’s what we have been covering. (The National Curriculum has been suspended anyway.) Learning about subjects of personal interest has really helped with motivation.

Plug the Gaps

This is a sure fire way to help your child make progress and the biggest benefit of home schooling. I’m certainly not the only teacher home schooler working this way. I know the skills that my child find trickiest so these have been our focus. In Maths sessions, we have covered some of the complicated bits of the curriculum like fractions and time. 1 to 1 really helps children grasp some of these challenging concepts.

Rewards

Show me a child that has had a grumpy day or a few tears during homeschooling! It’s happened to us all. My teacher friends freely admit it! It’s horrible and your child knows just how to tug at your heartstrings.  After a particularly grumpy week, we decided that positive attitudes = rewards. I was reluctant to go down this path, for various reasons, but the promise of watching a TV program cuddled up with daddy or an ice cream for pudding have greatly improved Little Lady’s perseverance

Celebrate Success

We have been keeping a folder of all the work that we have done and it’s a pleasure to look back through. Are we doing enough? Are we missing bits of the curriculum? A look through the folder helps us all to remember how hard we have all been working. We have also received encouragement from sending photos and video clips to grandparents who can be relied up for positive responses.

So if you have more weeks of home school lying ahead of you. I encourage you to keep going but look at ways of making it a little easier on all of you.