Meeting Shakespeare – Top Tips

Meeting Shakespeare – Top Tips

Top Tips for Approaching Shakespeare with Kids Story first. Keep the story the focus, and let the language follow. First and foremost, Shakespeare was a brilliant storyteller who explored the universal human condition. Everyone falls in love, grieves, laughs and has...
Doing Your Best

Doing Your Best

I spent a good deal of my twenties and thirties running, along with fantastically energetic and creative colleagues, our school Cub Pack. We had heaps of fun doing campfire cooking (I never realised how useful this would be but I regularly find myself calling on this...

“Are You Ever Going to Send them to School?”

Fellow home edders – do you find yourselves being asked this question as frequently as we do? The decision to home educate our eldest was rooted in our early experiences of parenthood. I had gone back to work when he was very young and, although I loved my job, I...
Home Education or Homeschool?

Home Education or Homeschool?

Home Education or Home Schooling? What’s the difference and does it really matter? Are labels relevant? Well, the short answer is yes, in my opinion, it does matter. In the U.K. it is the responsibility of parents to ensure that their children receive a suitable...
The Value of Play

The Value of Play

Last month I was honoured to be interviewed by a local author who was writing an article advising parents about how they can support their children’s learning at home. In our discussion around the many forms that learning can take, we explored the role of play. The...
Educating at Home

Educating at Home

What very strange times we find ourselves in, friends. My son and I are asthmatic and we all have coughs so we are currently hiding from the world – for how long, who knows, but it’s going to be a long spring! I know many of you are in the same boat; you may be...

Storytelling Tips

Storytelling And how to weave it into your learning journey We have told stories for thousands of years, huddled around campfires, sharing tales of war and peace, creating stories to explain the mysteries of nature… We tell stories every day. How can we tap into our...
Verbs

Verbs

Verbs: the basics, plus imperatives and transitives/intransitives, along with some suggested games and activities.s A verb is a word which tells us what someone or something is doing/being, often described as an action word or a ‘doing’ word, e.g. run, love, eat. A...

The Home Ed Review, Part 1

American Home School Curricula When you start home educating, at whatever stage, one is often super keen. I was warned by friends and members of the HE community that it is a really common trap to buy lots of resources and things that you don’t really need and newbies...
Assessing our Home Ed Kids

Assessing our Home Ed Kids

Should we do it? If so, how, when and why? Assessing our Home Educated Children How do you feel about “assessing” your child? Assessment can be a bit of an emotive word. It might inspire horrible memories from our own schooldays of scratching your head in a spelling...