Top Ten Home Ed Tips

1. Don’t pile up your expectations and activities.

2. Take each day as it comes.

3. Don’t compare yourself to other home educators.

4. Keep learning relevant and at your child’s level of ability.

5. Use what’s free!

6. Ask for help.

7. Think outside the box.

8. Enjoy what you can.

9. Let yourself have those ‘down’ moments.

10. Take time for yourself.

1. Don’t pile up your expectations and activities.

One of the hardest parts of teaching your child at home is realising you are not trying to replace school and their teachers. You need to provide your own style of teaching in the way that suits you child’s interests and needs. Your child is always going to take things differently from you than that of a teacher.

I read a lot about unschooling when I first home educated my eldest daughter when she was 13 and took a while to get my head round it but it does make sense.

Your child has been so used to the teacher and schools style of teaching and learning and what is expected of them as well as having a tight routine and schedule of lessons provided across six hours. When that is suddenly stopped, they need time to adjust. If you are home educating due to mainstream education not suiting your child’s needs such as needing a quieter and less demanding environment or perhaps, they are having mental health challenges, then trying to replicate school is not the answer.

Allowing your child to be themselves such as not having the pressures of school on them, getting outside and walking, slowing things down a bit can allow them to relax more for when you reintroduce your own types of learning and activities. But keep it simple. You can have some activity/ day plans but don’t worry if they don’t work out or on that day your child needs a different type of learning experience.

2. Take each day as it comes.

Unlike school, there are no deadlines with home education so don’t panic! If on one day things don’t go as you thought they would or an activity doesn’t suit your child, tomorrow is another day and you will learn what they enjoy doing and what they need to learn. There can be days where you learn more through playing games or going to the park. Some days feel better than others and that’s ok. There may be days where you feel a bit lost or question what you are doing. Who doesn’t?! Remind yourself of the reasons you decided to home educate and remember the next day you can start afresh.

3. Don’t compare yourself to other home educators.

This is something I did a lot when I first started to teach my children at home. I would go on Instagram and Pinterest and see other parents on Facebook exploring forests and doing big projects, going to every home ed group possible and I would sit there feeling like what I was doing wasn’t good enough. Don’t get me wrong, there is mothing wrong with that type of home educating but you have to stop and look at your own child and situation and do what is right for them and yourself.

I especially found it hard not to look at others when I had my eldest daughter home. She stopped going to school after the first lock down as she started to have some personal and mental health challenges which I speak about in my other articles. I would feel guilty that she wasn’t learning and panic that I was letting her down. The truth was I was doing the best thing for her by giving her time and space to be herself and work through the problems. She needed time to experiment with her look and likes and dislikes and eventually she started to enjoy hobbies such as reading (she got through 100 books in a year!) and walking the dog. I thin k had we put the added pressure of learning on top of her already fragile shoulders she would have broken. Look at your child in the moment and take the time to understand what they need right now. Education is important but your child’s well being is worth so much more than any exam grade.

Although I still have those days where I question what I’m doing, I stick to what I know suits my daughter. Isabelle did not enjoy the home ed groups and prefers being with family so that is what we do. I know in the future she may want to do other activities away from home but for now I don’t push her to make her uncomfortable. As Isabelle is autistic, most of her learning needs revolve around life skills but she has her own interests such as animals, dancing and loves playing games. I include her own interests in her learning as much as possible as she then engages much better and she gets something out of the activities.

4. Keep learning relevant and at your child’s level of ability.

Again, don’t look at others and think your child should be learning 101 different things. Isabelle learns aspects of English and Maths which are life skill relevant such as money, weights and measures, practising hand writing and reading. She loves French so she completes five minute tasks daily on Duolingo which is a phone app and she also loves animals, learning about countries and space so I make sure we have paper resources as well as more hands on activities. Isabelle is eleven but maturity and learning level is more of 7–8-year-old so I make a lot of my own resources or make sure the ones I find online like Twinkl are at a lower level so she can achieve them.

As I have already said, Isabelle loves playing games so a lot of her learning is carried out this way. I make pairs games where she learns telling the time, matching French words with English, matching times table sums with their answers etc. Lots of board games are already there to give learning experiences such as monopoly, Uno, Guess Who, Build a Bug, all of which develop a range of skills from maths to problem solving and patience so don’t underestimate them.

5. Use what’s free!

I spend time once or twice a week searching for free resources and printables online as well as making my own which I share here with you. These range from word searches, colour by times table, word games, worksheets and using apps such as Duolingo and Twinkl. It is also useful to look for other learning opportunities such as zoo web cams which my daughter has loved watching. She loves watching Yang Guang the Panda at Edinburgh Zoo and we play musical penguins each evening where we watch the penguin cam and see which penguin stands still the longest. There are learning resources available at The Natural History Museum website and many others. One good thing that has come from lockdowns is the amount of online learning now available at places that would not have had it before.

6. Ask for help.

This is something I am still learning to do! One thing you must remember when home educating is that you are with your child 24/7 at an age, they would normally be away from you for six hours a day. If like us, your child prefers being around family than social home ed groups then its important to ask for help. This might mean seeing if your child can have some time at your sisters or Nannies etc so that they can learn skills away from you and independence. Isabelle loves visiting her cousin, so I now make sure she does that once a week and spends time with her aunties sometimes too.

I think you can feel quite cut off when you home educate as you feel like you are going against the grain of the expected education path so you need to know you are not alone. Sometimes its helpful reading other parents’ blogs so you can remind yourself that you are now one of many choosing to home educate. It seems to be human nature to see asking for help as showing weakness, but if you are asking for help it is because you don’t want to give up and you want the help to move forward.

7. Think outside the box.

Try and see home education as a whole combination of things. Even trips to the shop and feeding the ducks are worthwhile activities. Also let learning take place naturally sometimes. You might be watching a TV show with your child and they start asking about what you are watching. The other day Isabelle saw a CBeebies show which started to talk about Bees. From this we then started to look online about them and talked about how they are important and their role in nature. When we have been feeding the ducks, she has pointed some out that when we have got home we have looked up what type of ducks they are, what they eat etc.

You are in control of how your child learns so make it fun for both of you rather than a chore. I turn as much as possible into games as Isabelle doesn’t even realise, she is learning but to her she is having fun and enjoying herself which is the best way to learn.

8. Enjoy what you can.

It is not always easy home educating. There are days when I think what it would be like if Isabelle had gone to secondary school. I know it would have meant I would be working instead of being at home and her experiences would have been very different. However, I remind myself why we decided mainstream was not suitable and think how she would have been in a very busy school, with too many children and around peers that were not suited to her own interests and level of maturity.

On days when I am tired and know I must start again tomorrow I remind myself how lucky I am that I can stay home, and all the experiences Isabelle is having that she wouldn’t have had had she been in school. I see how much happier and relaxed she is at home, and it has allowed her to flourish and stim and be herself more without the constraints and pressures of school.

It could be something small like knowing you can sit inside in the warm at school pick up rather than standing in a freezing cold playground!

9. Let yourself have those ‘down’ moments.

I have my moments where I miss work and I miss having time away from the home where I can be Rachel and not Mum and a wife, but I know it won’t be forever. I worry about money and what the future holds for Isabelle in terms of college or work, but I know worrying about it won’t get me anywhere and now she is still learning and developing so I won’t know the answers to those questions just yet anyway. My time is best focussed on the here and now and what I can teach her and how I can prepare her as best I can to be as independent as she can be.

10. Take time for yourself.

I have only recently learnt the importance of taking time for yourself. When I was working at a special needs Primary school, I would be working until lunchtime and then when I got home, I would be supporting my eldest child with her mental health and needs and doing all the usual household jobs until it was time for school pick up for Isabelle. I just kept going and it wasn’t until I stopped and left my job that I saw how much I was doing without taking time out. I think you just get so used to your own ‘normal’ that you stop questioning what you do and just do it.

As I am home all the time now I decided to start up this blog and share my experiences and have a kind of outlet I suppose as I don’t have many friends or other adults in similar circumstances so it can be hard for them to understand what our home and family life is like.

Also, this blog is mine where I am Rachel and I can say what I need to say and support other people however I can with my own experiences both professional and personal or just to be another parent to chat to at the end of a long day where you just want to know you are doing the best you can and that you are only human. There are times when I wish there was a handbook for life, bringing up children (especially how to navigate the teenage years!) but there isn’t so all we can do is create our own paths and see what we come across on our way.