Some home education thoughts

I was with some friends at the weekend and we chatted very briefly about some home education issues that I have since been thinking about.

Firstly I was asked how I keep my enthusiasm spending so much time with the children. Yes, this is sometimes hard! We don't have any close family locally who can help with the children on a day-to-day basis so it is very intense, as anyone with young children knows. I am not perfect and neither are the boys. Of course we lose our patience but we all get along as well as any humans spending almost all their time together could and we are very close. Most days and weeks are, on balance, good. If my enthusiasm wanes due to tiredness/illness/other issues to deal with, usually I have enough activities pre-prepared or in mind to occupy us and if not, I believe very strongly that finding activities to occupy themselves is an important skill for children to learn.

We also talked about the separation of work and life. My work is at home, looking after and educating the children and I do not separate this in any way from the rest of our life. We do not have school hours or school terms as education is part of normal life for us. We will learn things on holiday just as well as at the kitchen table and I save some things for the weekend when Harry can have one-to-one attention. Harry practises reading at bedtime with a book or in the supermarket reading a sign. I do have a very loose plan of things I would like to cover, but if we become interested in a different topic, we will move on. This approach is really working for us at the moment. Things are flowing along well and Harry is making great progress and, most importantly, is happy!