Home Schooling - Where To Start?

I've been trying to figure out how I will manage the education of my son. Some people seem to do it all very organically, whilst others are more structured. There are no fixed rules. The law of the land simply says that you have to provide an appropriate education for your child.

My work means that I'll need to have some structure. My work has also given me an incredible thirst for knowledge so I really hope I can share that with my son. Although I'm very nervous about the size of the task I'm taking on here, I'm also quite excited about it and am beginning to wonder why I ever just blindly handed my child over to complete strangers for six hours a day. It's really quite liberating.

I've found a lot of support and care from all sorts of places. The lady responsible for home schooled children was great. One of my son's godfathers is going to teach me how to teach programming to an 8-year old. I've joined some great Facebook sites and have found all sorts of really useful information. There are a couple of groups near here who have been really kind and I'm going to see them next week. One group hires tutors to teach small groups of children and that looks like a lot of fun.

The Works book shop has some work books covering the Maths and English syllabus for my son's age group. This is great news as it'll help me keep up with the National Curriculum which is important to me as I want to be sure that my son is in a position to return to school - at the same level as his peers - if that seems like the right thing to do next year.

I'm collecting magazines so I can cut out pictures to help my son write stories. I got this idea from the Roald Dahl Museum where they had chopped up pictures of people for children to stick together to form their own characters. Perhaps I'll post some of the best ideas I come across for teaching things to children.

Tomorrow, I'll write about the socialising issues that are a great concern to me and to anyone thinking about home schooling.

Home Schooling - Going It Alone

Today, I went and met with the SENCo (Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator) at my son's school. I told her how very sad I am for my son and how I feel that he's trampled in a school setting. I said that I had done a lot of researching into home schooling and had found local groups and had even been to meet with one. She seemed very interested in what I'd found out and was surprisingly supportive.

I think I'd assumed she would be defensive and very pro-school, but actually she seemed to really understand my concerns and recognised that taking my son out of school might help to rebuild his self-esteem and get him back on track academically.

And so now it begins. I'm going to teach my son at home.

This blog will chart the highs and lows of our adventures in home schooling and in parenting in general. I'll also post any cool things we learn so you can try them with your children too.

You're very welcome to come along on our journey.

Wish us luck!

Jane x