I think the best way to describe our home educating journey of 13+ years is “relaxed”. When the boys were little they pretty much had all of my attention and as a result were secure and happy. We played lots of
learning games along with all their others and they soaked up knowledge at an astonishing rate. They were both very early readers and loved maths, but hated writing (a trend which continued for years and seems to be common with boys).
My motto once we officially became “home educators” was the quote by William Butler Yeats “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire”. I knew I could never teach them everything, but I could try to impart a love of learning. We had some structure for the basics like maths, spelling, grammar etc but otherwise our schedule was very flexible depending on their interests at the time. Wherever we could we followed the
Charlotte Mason philosophy of reading ‘living books’ rather than plodding through textbooks and the boys learned most of their history this way. I read to them daily until they were well into their teens, and if we had a particularly good book, I would carry on reading and the next subject would just get postponed. I learned early on to grab the “teachable moment” rather than sticking rigidly to a schedule. Mornings were “school” time and afternoons were free for the boys to choose what they wanted to do. They often chose group activities with other home educators. Sometimes it was classes such as art, woodwork, chemistry, science and technology etc and sometimes it was just a social get-together. Often they just stayed home and played Lego.
This happy state continued until Matthew at 16 decided to do 7th Form by Correspondence School and sit the Bursary exams. It was a stressful time adjusting to the different style (and having to write essays) but a lot of skills were learned along the way and he got his bursary and went on to do two degrees at university. Daniel at 15 decided to do the same as it was the last year of Bursary and no-one knew what NCEA might mean. We had strong reservations about him doing it so young, but he was determined and pulled it off brilliantly. He went straight on to university right after his 16th birthday, fitted in really well, and is now 6 months into his PhD.
My boys have very different learning styles from one another and I think that is where home educating really shows. Mothers know best how their children learn and can adapt their teaching to suit. Although the content
of our home educating was essentially the same for both boys and many activities were done together, I was able to adjust for their differences in our one-to-one lessons. The most obvious example was in maths. Matthew was a hands-on learner who needed lots of practice with new concepts (he took an engineering degree). Daniel picked up concepts quickly, hated repetition and loved to solve puzzles (he is a scientist). One maths curriculum did not suit both.
So one home educating family has produced two very different boys. One is a global thinker who looks at the big picture. He is interested in world news, politics and the workings of big business. One is a puzzle-solver who loves to focus on a problem that no-one else can solve and work it out. He is passionately interested in science and is happiest doing research. Both have lots of other interests outside their chosen field of work. Matthew is a gifted photographer and Daniel is a gifted guitarist.
At times along the journey I would stumble and doubt myself, especially when other people would criticize what we were doing, but looking back I don’t think I would change anything except that I would shut out the negative voices and relax even more.
Cheryl Playne
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