When my husband and I were first pregnant with our baby girl, we talked about homeschooling as an option. We’d both encountered people in life who were unusually mature for their age and knowledgeable, who had turned out to be home-schooled. Both my husband and I had struggled with regular schooling, not because of the work, but because of the grind of it all. I had been bullied and struggled to be motivated to do things I didn’t love. My husband was a fantastic student with excellent grades, but he hated being at school, so he missed a lot of days. But when the time came, we didn’t want our girl to miss out on the social aspect of school, so we enrolled her, but always planning to do a bit extra at home. Of course, she started prep in 2020, so she ended up being home-schooled half that year and half the next, anyway.
What finally tipped us over the edge in deciding to homeschool our daughter full-time was the behavioural issues in some of her classmates; we hated how disruptive it was to her education. She came home with some pretty shocking stories of class members having full-blown meltdowns and then having to be removed from class by multiple teachers, or the class next door evacuating into her classroom because a little girl was throwing chairs around. Our daughter was punched in the chest one day in grade one by a prep boy who punched eleven other children that same lunchtime. When I spoke to her teacher about the incident, I was assured that they had dealt with it… He was missing out on some of his lunchtime the following day… Yeah, that’ll teach him that punching people is wrong… sheesh.
Class allocations had just come out for her second year and we saw that she was in a class once again with a particularly disruptive student. We contacted the school and asked for her to be put into the other class at her year level, explaining our reason why, to which they said they could, but that they had purposely put her in that class because the other class had an even more disruptive student… We told the school we’d be unenrolling her and homeschooling from the beginning of grade two.
Home schooling has been a lot of work, but it has been wonderful! It took a while for us to find our natural way of doing things, to find the right rhythm for our household. I had so many ideas about how exactly we’d do everything, and how things panned out was quite different, really. Rather than highly scheduled classes in advance, we ended up with literacy and math every day, and then taking the other classes as they naturally came up, everything became a learning moment. We also encouraged her to read, a lot!
You’ve probably heard this a lot, but reading to your children and encouraging them to read is so good for them! My husband bought our daughter a small Kindle two years ago, and we started her on her first little novels, the Minecraft ones, because she’s such a fan of the game. She devoured them pretty quickly and was soon looking for something a bit beefier. I gave her a cute book I had just read, The Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking, which she loved, and then the first two Emily Wilde books by Heather Fawcett, which she read very quickly and also enjoyed. I was already reading her the Harry Potter series (we’ve just begun book six!), so my husband suggested the Percy Jackson books and she read those happily! She finished the first series, two of next series, then went onto one of the other series in that universe but didn’t care for the characters in that one as much so wanted something else so my husband suggested Magician by Raymond E Feist and she’s enjoying it so much! She’s finally reading something that’s introducing her to a few new words, which is nice, and a new level of challenge in her reading. It’s so important to keep pushing our little learners to read texts with some challenge for them, so that they keep building their skills. Our daughter is in grade 5 and is reading at a year 8 level, and we’re very proud of her taking to it with such gusto!
This is another benefit of home schooling; we can tailor her lessons to her abilities. We bought her a workbook that had literacy and math worksheets for grade 5, at the beginning of this year, and whilst the math was at her level or maybe a little easy, the literacy sheets were way too easy. So we went back to assigning her tasks that are appropriate for her skill level.
We also teach her a lot of things that she wouldn’t learn at school like how to do a load of laundry, or basic cooking, or basic I.T. troubleshooting, whatever happens to come up! The thing she says she’s learnt that she doesn’t think she would have in school is to think for herself, to not just do whatever she’s told if there doesn’t seem to be a good reason for it, and I have to say, her having learned critical thinking at such a young age makes me pretty proud of the job we’re doing!
The only thing that I think is missing is more time with kids her own age, and getting her into some extracurricular activities would sort that out. She’s very polite and can easily talk to people when we’re out and about, and ask kids to play at the playground, but I don’t want her to miss out on those deeper friendships that begin to form around her age.
After three and a half years of home schooling, we’ve ironed out the wrinkles and have found a really lovely pace. We take holidays when they suit us instead of when the rest of the country takes theirs, we have lots of fun as a family, and we get to spend loads of time with our smart, funny, daughter who’s growing up in a supportive, learning rich environment! If you can, I really recommend home schooling, even if it’s just one year. You’ll be amazed at how rewarding it is, and how wonderful it is to spend that extra time with your child.
