Complimentary education/homeschooling?

For those of you who read my last post, you will know how unhappy our family has been with the entrance into the school system here. After a couple of months, I have seen how weak the level of teaching is and have decided I have to up my game on the homeschooling front. We have always educated our kids at home, but usually in a complementary manner, trusting the system, yet helping our boys to reach their personal learning goals. Well, that has gone right out the window, and here's why.

I took my son out of school for one day. My youngest son had an event at his school (a breakfast meet and greet for the whole family), which I thought was important for my oldest son to attend. After the event my youngest went to his class and I kept my oldest with me for the last two hours of class, as I felt he would already have missed the day and we could spend some much needed time together. We actually used the time to visit his friends at his old school which he had be longing for - and this was the perfect opportunity. 

Anyway, the next day he went to school as normal but came home with 6 pages of homework (purely for missing one day of school). I was dumbfounded. We diligently sat and completed the exercises which were mostly "circle this", "colour that" type drills. He complained a little but we managed to complete all 6 pages within an hour and he went off to play.

Later that day I went through the three notebooks that had come home with him that day. All the activities were the same. The level (in my opinion) is very basic - pre-lit skills, comparative math skills - and each sheet way too small for the size of his handwriting i.e., age.

When we went to bed, I managed to subtly ask him about his schoolwork and he confirmed my fears. This is what he must complete each day at school - in silence - sitting down at a single desk. 

Well, clearly this won't help him to enjoy learning or find the potential joys of his life. So, I've upped my game at home. I have little power within the school (as my previous post demonstrates), but I can give him an oasis of knowledge at home. 

Now we are playing maths games, including Cuisenaire rods, on a daily basis. I'll be posting plenty of videos of our games and methods on our youtube channel so be sure to sign up.

We are reading daily and (as you already know) we read heaps of chapter books (checkout our chapter books of 2018 here).

We make time for drawing and writing (content, not style). And, conversations that come up are completed in depth to include quick youbtube videos or google searches of anything we can't find in our encyclopedias!

We have done away with daily TV time and replaced it with app time (they choose which app from a pre-chosen selection - see our app post here).

And lots of play. 
Free play, lego play, role play. Simply any kind of play they can come up with. 

And do you know what? They are thriving on it all. They enjoy the ease of learning. The fun we have together, the simplicity of it all. No-one needs to sit and complete endless sheets of activities, it's all happening here in our front room.




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