You send your child to school everyday for 6 hours, and while they are in the care of the school they attend, you expect them to be safe, happy and learning an array of things.
So when I found out that my oldest son's safety was compromised on more than one occasion, I seriously started to research Homeschooling.
It is something that we have considered in the past but never really gone with it, because we always came up with negatives. (Mainly friends they have in school)
It was a number of things that started to add up, when we spoke to the school we got the impression that they didn't really care what was going on. The school have some serious issues that they need to address and they need to enforce an anti bullying policy. The major issue that I seem to have seen is a lack of discipline and authority in the school. In the space of 6 months they have had more issues than the primary school had in 7 years he was there!
We gave Adam a few options, he either stayed in a school that has no bullying policies, or try another school in the area( Which I did contact as a back up) or Homeschool.
He choose to try Homeschool.
The same day we sent the deregister letters to the School and Local Authority.
Toby & Elliot will be staying in school for the time being as they are happy in primary school, they have their friends and they are doing well, academically. We feel that they would be best staying in primary school so they can build on the social side and stay involved with the fantastic school community they have there. The school is small with around 50 pupils and it is a very much every one knows everyone setting.
Adam has been out of school for two weeks now, and we have already seen our once happy, confident boy return. He is not as anxious as he was. He has changed his Social media accounts, he has been getting on with the work we set him and he is just back to being Adam. Can they not just stay in primary school forever?
We have set a curriculum, we want to ensure he is learning to the best of his ability. He is very intelligent and loves to learn, which is one of the reasons we decided to stick to our own (Yet very similar to the school) curriculum. I know some people don't follow a curriculum and just let the child do what they want, while this may work for some families it wouldn't work for ours. We like structure and we need organisation.
Our curriculum currently looks likes this:
Maths & English everyday for 45 minutes each He also has a Math & English tutor once a week.
Then a different subject everyday for at least an hour including:
History
Geography
Science
Art
Religious studies
Technologies
Computing
Cookery
Language - He is currently learning Spanish
Music - He is currently learning how to play the keyboard.
We have bought all of the CGP textbooks so he is keeping up to date for his year and various other learning resources.
My favourite though is Twinkl they have an array of printables for most levels of study. Most of their resources can also be used as extra study aids for the younger 2.Then you have the endless amounts of educational apps you can use on a tablet.
I also have a subscription to Babel for language lessons for all 3 boys.
We want Adam to excel in everything he sets out to achieve, we are encouraging him to focus on the subjects that interest him the most. He is pretty certain that he wants to join the RAF as an engineer, but also has a keen interest in history.
The one question that everyone seems to ask is about socialisation and my advice would be,
to get them into clubs and let them socialise with a variety of ages instead of just his age.
He still sees some of his friends from school and he also goes to
RAF Cadets
Scouts
Swimming
Judo
Theatre school
He has a better social life than me!
Kelly X
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