Timetabling

"Topic" was for Science, PE, History, Geography, Music etc.

This was my first attempt at making a timetable. Looks familiar? Yes, it's pretty similar to a class timetable. Does a class timetable, which is used for up to 32 children, work at home for only one child? It can. Is it necessary? Nope.

After nearly a week of home educating the timetable is the first thing I'm going to change. To complete all these lessons as I've timetabled here, takes pretty much the length of a school day. Which means fitting everything else we need or want to do during the day a bit of a challenge.

So one of the first and exciting things I have learnt is that though such a timetable is helpful at school it's not necessary at home. In a classroom environment where there may be different teachers coming in to teach lessons, or a larger number of students to teach, such a timetable with lessons focusing on particular learning areas and only a few learning outcomes can be helpful. In this way the teacher can check the whole class against only one, two or three learning outcomes. Checking a large class against many learning outcomes coming from a variety of learning areas in one lesson is pretty much impossible.

This isn't my situation anymore. I'm helping to educate one child. So, as he plays and works I am able to observe him working towards many learning outcomes in many learning areas at any given time or "lesson". For the learning area of English we could be learning about non-fiction texts say memoirs and biographies relating to a famous person in history. We would still include While Mr. r writes on the topic, I can check and assist his handwriting, sentence formation, use of graphemes and spellings, we can read together and discuss what we have learnt. We could do some research on the Internet about the person in history that we are learning about, go to museums and take photos using a digital camera. Mr. can learn how to download and write up a simple report, and so forth. In any given lesson on this one topic we are able to producing rich lessons that combine many different learning areas, strands and learning outcomes.

So, for now, I'm scrapping handwriting and guided reading and am talking to Mr. R about possible Geography and History topics we could learn about which I'll try be linking with the English ICT and Shastra (Religious Education) learning areas. Hopefully producing a learning environment that resembles real life, is interesting and fun.

Homeschooling = Home Education

A week and a half ago we decided to take my 5.5 year old out of school and teach him from home. It wasn't something I ever planned to do. Actually, i was quite happy for him to go to school, just like i had done, to learn and socialise with friends.

But, before I continue, first let me give you a little background info. We are foreigners living in India. We live in a beautiful and heart-melting place on the bank of the Ganges. It's a small village and has a number of schools close by. The school Mr. R was enrolled in, and that I  felt was the best for him, was the international Cambridge affiliated school next door. This school starts from Nursery and continues up to the end of high-school. There are some amazing teachers in this school who are dedicated to teaching. But, perhaps because we live in an isolated place, because India is not always the easiest of places to live and perhaps because the pay is very little, it's difficult to get enough experienced and dedicated teachers to cover all the classes.

This year, we didn't have luck finding an experienced teacher for Year 1 and after having a quick look at the teaching of a couple of lessons by the young girl that was employed to teach this class, doubts did rise. I did want to support this school, which has great potential, but not at the cost of my son's education. I gave myself until the end of the week to decide what to do.

I took to the Internet and did as much research as i could on homeschooling, or as i soon learnt "home education." I joined home education groups on Facebook and tried to get acquainted with the UK curriculum for KS1.

Now, there is one thing I haven't mentioned. Something I should probably mention about now. I have a bachelor degree in teaching. So what's the problem you are thinking? The problem was, I still felt like I had no idea how to tackle home education. I had so many questions and doubts. Like what do I cover? What are the laws? How do I do household chores and teach? How do I entertain and give attention to Miss S (2.5 years old)? What do i do if Mr. R doesn't want to listen to me? What about socialising? What if Mr. R turns out odd? and on and on...

Still, I just wasn't sure if he'd grow and learn as he can if i left him at school, so by Friday after discussing it over with everyone in the family, our minds were made up and I unregistered Mr. R from school.

Luckily the following weekend was a long weekend. Over the next four days I ran around like crazy collecting, stationery, purchasing a printer, downloading QCA documents, bookmarking relevant websites, registering with teaching sites, creating planning templates for lessons and for meals, organising the house, cleaning and food shopping.

By Tuesday i was exhausted but pretty much ready to go.

So what's the deal with the blog? I guess this blog is, at the moment, about our home education journey that has recently sprung upon us. It's a place where I can record what Mr. R and eventually Miss. S and I are learning and how we are growing. I guess, just in case in the future, I need to prove I have in fact been home educating and not home neglecting, and also to hopefully share with others my experiences as well as learn from other's experiences relating to growing beautiful children.