Pros & Cons of Home Ed...

Having conversations today with a few friends who like the idea of home education but don't know if it's right for them. So I thought I would write a list of pros and cons. This list is personal to me, so not an exclusive list, just things I have noticed:

Cons

Total self sacrifice of time and energy.

You can easily forget that you exist as a person.

Sometimes you have to be the one to say get on with it, as no one else will.

You will probably wake in the night sometimes, and lay awake worrying about your kids education.

You can't just pack your kids off to school in those life crisis moments, they live them right along side you.

You have to be self disciplined to get motivated everyday and keep going when you don't always want to.

Most activities you do, will cost money, so you have to get creative about free activities.

What you put in to it, you get out of it. By this I don't mean traditional academics, I mean heart and soul, giving to your kids daily, finding new ideas, finding your own enthusiasm for life.

You can't wait for others to plan your day or activities, you need to organise activities for family or groups, for example, if you want to attend a drama class you may need to create a drama class.

You need to be prepared to adapt constantly to your children's changing interests or needs.

You need to be patient and like being with your family.

For formal study, you will need to either learn just ahead of them or get online or tutor help for subjects you don't understand.

You will have opposition to home educating, people will question you constantly and some may think you are either crazy or just plain wrong.

You won't be able to have a 40 hour a week job, you may need to cut back or even move house to afford to home educate.

Your main limits are your imagination, energy and money.

Pros 

Precious unrepeatable time with your kids.

Rejoicing watching every beautiful moment of change and growth in your children.

Ability to tailor their education to their strengthens and passions.

Time to adapt to life's flows and ebbs, when sickness or big life changes happen.

My kids have been taught by someone who completely understands them and hundred percent wants the best for them.

You can holiday in school term time.

You can have all the outdoor learning you want and snow days when you like.

You get to meet and learn from a whole range of different people and make friends with a wonderful mix of personalities and background.

Subjects and interests are only limited by imagination and not limited to a set curriculum.

Your kids can choose what path their study takes them, it could be very practical, like Outdoor sports learning or it might be more formal and lead to exams, but its up to them.

You can travel around Europe/rest of world and learn about different cultures and languages whilst others have to learn it from a book.

Your kids can give lots of energy and time to extra curricula activities, like scouts or orchestras and if they have to be out late or camping all weekend in the rain, they don't have to rush to complete homework or be up early the next day for school.

Teenagers can get the sleep and low pressure they need when their bodies are changing and their hormones are raging.

There are many online learning programs and access to information is immense with the internet, add libraries and tapping into friends or family who have special skills can add to your kids learning.

Your kids will have time in daily family life to learn household task and animal care, that they may not have time for if out all day.

Every new government idea about education, won't change you or your kids goals.

Your kids will see how you manage paid work and housework, and learn from that.

You can all have time to think and freedom to just be.

You will have a close family. Rushing and stress will not be a big part of your household, but laughter will be.

Week in the life of...

I try to get up before my boys in the morning, not being little anymore they don't leap out of bed at 6am and demand fun, so I need an alarm clock now. I usually assess my day the night before and try and see how late I can arise with out messing up my carefully planned morning routine.

So yes I spring out of bed full of vim and vigour (sarcasm) and start my day with a morning routine of folding clean clothes before leaving bedroom, get dress, carry dirty clothes, my gadget bag (contains essential to life electronic devices) and struggle downstairs slightly overloaded to my bathroom. I put on the washing machine, clean the bathroom, and prepare myself for the day. As we only have one bathroom, if I get interrupted in this routine I get stressy.

Then I go let the dog out into the garden and go start cooking bacon and eggs, or similar for breakfast. Make a cup of tea for me and the boys, plus empty my dishwasher. While the breakfast is cooking I go drag children out of bed. This is achieved with a 'Mum of teens' dog lick attack. I take the dog with me upstairs and get him in turn to leap on the boys and lick them awake. If this doesn't work, I have taken to lately dragging my eldest legs out of bed and sitting him up, then quickly positioning the dog so he can't lay back down. I have tried removal of covers, stealing pillows, suggesting the use of an alarm clock..well the alarm clock is useless he can have a siren going off by his head and sleep through it. I have tried leaving him to sleep in, but all this does is turn him nocturnal, which isn't good for productivity.

After breakfast, depending on how dozy the boys are we either go for a walk and do a strength workout or watch a documentary. We are going through different science/history/social studies/geography documentaries which we watch may be three a week on different days.

 Every week day morning we do maths (exceptional circumstances withstanding). Sometime my youngest does maths while I cook breakfast, they are both using the online conquer maths program, most days I like to sit with my youngest and help him find ways of thinking through the maths, I never answers the questions for him, but I do show him clever tricks for quick mental calculations. My eldest like to work by himself on maths, unless really stuck.

My weekly plan for structured work I would like us to get through changes termly, depending on our goals and aims. Its totally geared towards the boys ambitions and dreams.

Currently this term we are working on iGCSE Physics using this book, we are all working through it together, my eldest is making note cards with key terms and formulas for revision and my youngest is just making general notes. We all snuggle up on the sofa and I read through and explain, until they understand one topic or part topic if a complex one. I use real life examples they can relate to, for example, how would you work out the velocity of our dog as he runs from one end of the room to the other?

This may seem quite a formal approach to learning, but my eldest son has goals which require certain exams, so we need to work through some set work for the exams. As a home ed. Mum I am always very aware of the balance between interest and driving the boys to achieve. If they are not interested they won't learn, so I drop the subject or find something that gives them the motivation to regain that interest. I am also aware of age differences between my boys (3 years), so obviously I don't expect my youngest to concentrate for as long and if it gets too technical and switches his brain off, its time for him to go do something else.

On top of the above formal work, my eldest works on English, which is set by his tutor. He is currently working on English literature iGCSE, having just passed his English language iGCSE.

All other learning is informal and autonomous, here is an interesting article on autonomous learning. Our days are full of spontaneous conversations, discussions on every topic you can imagine, for example, this morning we had a 'film studies' type discussion on about Star Trek and how the different aliens were supposed to be based on different stereotype national identities. This discussion also included the big question 'Do aliens exist?'. All quite fascinating, and as always learning happened whilst laughing.

My sons are both avid computer gamers, I gave up trying to turn them in to gardeners or chefs quite a few years ago, they love computer games, much like their father and myself. I can't really condemn this love of PC gaming, when one of my favourite ways to relax is to load up 'League of Legends' and play a few competitive online matches, trying to keep the 17 year old gamers on their toes! I have an extremely competitive streak and this is a fun outlet for it. Anyway digress slightly, my boys have found that role play gaming is fun, its basically drama online, so you act the part of the character in the game you are playing, this is usually part of a community of players, who you can chat to whilst playing. Its sounds mindless, but believe me its highly complex including flying realistic flight simulators whilst talking to a control tower, mapping flight paths and rescuing comrades. I challenge Mums and Dads to attempt to play these games, the multi tasking involved is huge. Both boys have become server admins for servers running gaming communities, to do this they had to write application  and submit them, they had to show maturity and responsibility, believe me there is nothing worse than an 'online gaming troll' so they both are learning to be polite respectful, but also how to deal with idiots (a useful life skill). Both boys have learn't internet safety, how to avoid scamming and how to keep a balance between real life and online life. I discourage night time gaming, so most of the time they go on the PC is in the afternoon, before dinner. This is if we are not out swimming with friends or visiting interesting places.

The boys evenings are jam packed. I guess this is my season as taxi driver, I remember my Mum and Dad taxi driving me about at this age too.  My eldest is very involved with the Air Cadets and is highly motivated to be a pilot, hence the exam work. He is also working on his Duke of Edinburgh award so he is helping to lead the local cub pack. He does many sporting and physical activities with the Aircadets and is also working through a BTEC in aviation. Nearly every weekend has some sort of activity, from service in the community to flying aeroplanes.

My youngest loves Scouts and the camping, archery, hiking, shooting and chopping wood with axes that this involves. He is also learning Karate, which is excellent exercise. He reads every night at bedtime, spy stories and wants to be a Ninja.

Then we all love to watch TV in the evenings together as long as it is an episode of Castle or Chuck, or similar.

So this is us...how we roll...

Today's Pigeon rescue.