Scotland - just about to start home ed

[MommyUpNorth]

Hello. I've just had a look at the link in the Scotland thread... thanks so much for keeping it bumped! One of our children has wanted to be homeschooled for some time, but it just hasn't been the right time for various reasons.

We're now in a position to do it, and they're due to go back to school 2 weeks from Tuesday. I read that it can take 6 weeks for a decision which seems a bit excessive, but not surprising. I'll email the Area Education Manager as we're already on email terms for one of our other children... special needs school, good relationship with the council, so don't anticipate any issues.

Has anyone homeschooled only one of their children while the others still attended a traditional school?

We've pretty much got a curriculum going already as our son loves doing all sorts of 'schoolwork' at home during the breaks... but will need to tighten things up a bit if we are going to do it full time!

Home ed in our area seems to be generally frowned upon by lots of people... mainly just out of not knowing what actually goes on at home, and possibly just because it isn't the norm. We're quite rural, but our 3 oldest do after school activities, so I'm not overly concerned about the social issues... but will be looking into any local families/groups... anyone in Caithness?

I think this is really just a msg to say hi to everyone on this topic, and I look forward to getting stuck in & will have a frantic 2 weeks looking through all the old topics here!

Oh, and our son is 9 and would be going into P5 this month. I'd be quite interested in hearing what any other 9 year old might be up to at home... other than minecraft!

[completelybonkers]

Good luck to you, MommyUpNorth!

Our DS2 is 8 (and 3/4!) and has just come to the end of Year 3 in the English system. We live in a small town and don't have other DC at school, although DS1 is at uni, so somewhat different to your situation.

We took DS2 out of school at the Easter break and launched straight into a structured learning system at home: so, although we'd talked about the possibility of HE for many months, we didn't have a de-schooling period - apart from the first two weeks of his Easter holidays. He had been at a private school which had 3 weeks off so we used the third week as a "this is roughly how it would work" time.

One term on, we all agree that it's most definitely working :) He is fairly academic but we've incorporated plenty of physical exercise, art and so forth; also he belongs to a local am dram group so mixes with plenty of other children and adults. I'm not at all concerned about the social side.

If you wanted to private message me, I'd be happy to talk more and give you further information about what we do . . . not that our way would necessarily be right for anyone else, of course! If your DS had any questions, I'm sure my DS would be happy to try to answer them.

[ArtisanLentilWeaver]

Have you seen the Schoolhouse website? They offer excellent support and might be able to put you in touch with others in your area.

[MommyUpNorth]

completelybonkers, I may take you up on that... just putting all my ideas onto paper of what I see happening when school starts, and I'm going to have DS do the same. He's always been very interested in learning about new things, but his teachers tend to 'run out of time' when it comes to his topics at school. He's not always motivated by what the others want to learn about with the new CfE... hopefully I can cover some of the things he wants to learn, and some of the things I'd like him to learn!

Also investigating all the HS sites... so much info! Thanks Artisan! I've gone through the Schoolhouse website to get the 'local' yahoo group info, so have applied to join that & will see where it takes us!

I'm already following so many HS blogs, but they're mainly in the states & mostly younger kids (I help set up the curriculum for our 6 year old while he's in a traditional school).

Is there a list of UK (active) blogs through Mumsnet or another site? I love having a nosey at what people are really getting up to day to day, & it varies so much!