We’ve done it! We’re finished with our first official year of home education. It’s definitely not the year we planned to have when we set out in September, but in spite of all the challenges we’ve had a brilliant time, and A has learned a tremendous amount.
I am still writing up my records for the year - things fell apart a bit in the admin department once lockdown hit - but I wanted to share some of how the year has gone for us, and a brief outline of what we hope to cover next year. More people than ever are contemplating educating their children at home next year due to Covid, and I want to reassure any of you who are wondering if you can manage it with more than one child, or with a child who is spirited or neurodiverse. You can do it! You know your child better than anyone, and there’s no set way that you need to teach or share information with your child, other than starting from a place of love and joy.
We have learned so much this year about A’s learning style, and how we all like to learn as a family. As a child who has a difficulty concentrating for a long time, and who is easily overstimulated by busy visual input, we found that very simple black and white printed pages or workbooks are more enjoyable for him than colourful ‘fun’ ones. I wasn’t planning to rely heavily on workbooks, but open-ended activities that don’t have a clear beginning and end brought about a lot more stress and anxiety than a worksheet with a very clear set of expectations. Discovering this has informed our choices in learning material as we’ve gone along.
How We Learn
We’re inspired by a few main educational philosophies. I started out as a fairly faithful Montessorian, and I incorporate so many of Dr. Montessori’s ideas about independence and respect into our days. We use some traditional Montessori materials, but only those that seem to resonate with our children and have longevity. We’re also greatly inspired by Charlotte Mason’s emphasis on the outdoors and on providing children with a ‘feast’ of ideas to fill their hearts and minds. I have many hesitations about Waldorf philosophy but draw on the rich tradition of verses, songs, and seasonal celebrations as we move throughout the year. We have plenty of open ended art and object exploration, as inspired by the Reggio Emilia tradition, and we have laid the groundwork this year to start on a cycle of history and language learning in line with Classical education. The beauty of home education is that you can pick and choose the aspects of different philosophies that work best for your family and your individual child.
We know that learning happens all the time, even (especially!) when a child is playing or exploring the outdoors. This year we have tried to have two ‘learning points’ each day when adults and children come together to focus on learning new things or refining old skills. Having a young school-age child and a young toddler has made this challenging, and once Birdie dropped his naps we struggled for some months to fit in two concentrated periods of this type of learning each day. Now that he is older, we are coming out of the other side of this challenging time and he is able to participate in some of the learning with A.
What’s Worked
One of the best discoveries of our year has been the deep love that A has for audiobooks. With more than one young child, it’s challenging to spend as much time reading aloud as I might like - most books that A would like to listen to don’t hold BIrdie’s interest. During this season of our lives, audiobooks fill this gap, and A is able to listen to long chapter books without interruption. During listening time, he draws, colours, makes contraptions from string and loose objects, plays with kinetic sand, or does exercises. I expect that even when he is able to read chapter books fluently, he will still enjoy listening to books as well.
We’ve loved the Explode the Code series of writing and reading workbooks. They were perfect to begin after A could comfortably write all his letters and had completed a set of phonics readers. They are low on visual input, and mildly funny. I recommend them for children who have a challenging time focusing on busy pages but who like workbooks. We’ll continue to work our way through the series next year.
We also enjoy our science curricula. We use Exploring Nature With Children very loosely for nature study, and Building Foundations of Scientific Understanding for all other science. We’re going through it very slowly, and will probably continue to use this for the next two years.
A has enjoyed our artists studies this year, mostly based around art we were able to visit locally. Covid has changed this for us, so I’ll be taking a more planned and systematic approach to art history next year and focusing on female and feminist art throughout the ages.
Although this is ever-changing, what’s working best for us in terms of ‘learning time’ is having a focused, short morning time session of about 45 minutes where A completes some pages of maths and writing, and we read a book or two. We then read more in the afternoon based on the day’s learning theme and reserve one day per week for science projects.
What we’ll leave behind
We’ve gone through a few different maths books this year, and not loved any of them. We started out with Singapore Maths No Problem and while it is fairly low on visual stimulus, I didn’t feel like A was getting enough practice with each concept to really understand. We supplemented with Usborne practice books, which we did find useful. The Usborne maths activity books do not work at all for A at this stage due to the ‘busyness’ on each page. I’m not sure I’m going to commit to a specific maths curriculum for the next year. We are using more and more Montessori maths materials, and we may put together our own set of maths activities for the first half of the year based on a combination of Montessori and Singapore maths.
We’ve had to say goodbye for the time being to A’s music, swimming and dance classes, so we are thinking about how to incorporate these into his schedule in a way that feels fun and safe.
Some of our favourite moments of the last year…
Going to the Tate Modern to see the Olafur Eliasson show again and again (and again)
Doing a lantern walk in our garden and talking about helping others
Learning all about the Nutcracker ballet and then going to see it with friends
Studying earthworms and bees, and observing them in the garden
Taking the train to town to have adventures
Planting wildflowers in our garden
I am amazed, when I look back, at all the things we learned and all the progress A made. In the moment, it felt like we weren’t doing enough, but when I look over the months I see so much rich and beautiful learning happening usually when I felt like we were standing still. I’ll carry this reminder with me into next year.
Thinking ahead to next year
I have some new things lined up for A in the autumn. We’ll start our new cycle of world history, starting with ancient humans. We’ll be starting Latin in the autumn and recommitting to our French studies - and we plan to add in some basic Welsh as well. There’s new art to study, new musicians to discover, and new outdoors to explore as we look forward to a move in the autumn months.
Now that Birdie is two, I am considering his interest and abilities more and more in our home ed plans. He loves learning French and is drawn to anything involving wheels, trains, tractors, or bugs, so I will be preparing some basic language and numeracy materials for him on these themes, along with puzzles and other fine motor activities.
We don’t know yet what the next year will hold -will we be able to join classes and see friends? - but we know that our upcoming year of home education will be infused with cosy enchantment and love.
