Life with the Lowthers

We have now been home-educating our children for three and a half years, and so far it seems to have worked out very well, both for me and for them.  Obviously things have changed as they have grown older - Joel would now be in the first year of Secondary school and Toby at the top end of Primary, with Elsa in Reception and Kirsten in Year 3.  However my basic philosophy that education should involve as much seeing/doing/touching and even tasting as possible still underpins all that we do.  I also believe firmly that their education should be rooted in real life, giving them skills (including cooking, laundry and shopping as well as reading, maths and social skills) that will be helpful to them throughout their lives.

Our children know that they are free to go to school if they want, but they seem quite happy with the way things are at the moment.  We offered Toby the chance to visit some Secondary schools, and his reply was, "Why would I want to?"  They are happy, sociable, keen to learn (usually), and get on well with each other (most of the time at least).  They are also normal, and at times are tired, grouchy, unco-operative or squabbling with each other.  All of the above applies to me as well!

My aim in this page is to explain how we do things, for anyone interested in home education, and also to give some examples of recent work.

    One of our enormous collaborative collages

Topic work

Two days a week we work with our great friends the Lewises.  Nicky and I take it in turns to plan work for the 7 school-aged children (ranging from Elsa in Reception to Joel in Year 7, with Nicky's fitting in between), based around topics, with an emphasis on trips and hands-on work that would be difficult to do in a school setting.  We use primary and secondary school National Curriculum resources but don't rely on them entirely, following our own and the children's interests and abilities wherever possible.

This year our topics have been World War II (the home front), Growth (plants, animals and humans lifecycles, development and habitats etc) and Light.

I am hoping (in some magical free time that is going to appear from somewhere) to put full details of our topic work onto the web page, as an example of what can be achieved through topic work and as a possible resource for other home educators.  As this is some way off you will have to believe me that we have done some fantastic stuff, including living for a week on World War II rations, growing all sorts of vegetables to study their lifecycles, visiting many museums, historical sites and natural habitats.  We have looked at real human bodies, videos of babies in the womb, been inside several World War II air-raid shelters, used lenses and prisms and made some huge pieces of artwork.  All in all a very busy year.

    Try out an air raid shelter at Avoncroft museum

Other work

Doing topic 2 days a week leaves plenty of time for other learning, both formal and informal.  We fit in the usual maths, English and Science, together with other curriculum subjects, sometimes in mini-topics such as "Greek Myths" which we studied this Autumn (at Toby's request).  We also work one morning a week with another family, when I teach all the children maths and she teaches them French - each of us is very grateful for the others' expertise in these areas!

We are also part of a home-ed group that meets once a month in a community centre for games, singing and socialising, and once a month uses the "buying power" of having a larger group of children to gain access to many of the museum and art gallery guided tours and activities that are usually available to schools.

The children also have access to an unusual but interesting range of PE activities.  Every week we swim and the older 3 ride - Elsa is just starting to go out on a lead rein for short treks too.  Once a month we spend the day at a local watersports centre, where they have learned sailing, kayaking, canoeing, raft-building, archery, mountain biking and a whole range of other skills.

We also take part in other home-ed activities arranged by different individuals and groups in the Birmingham area.  This year this has included an amazing day of assault courses, zip wires and canoeing (see picture below), ice skating, climbing, more zip wires, grass sledging and probably several more things I have forgotten.  We also go walking, cycling and kayaking as a family, and Elsa does ballet and tap dancing, so hopefully the children have plenty to keep them fit and to help them develop healthy interests that will last them into adult life.

    This was serious mud.

When I first started home educating I read an article by a family that wondered how anyone ever had time to go to school.  In addition to all mentioned above we somehow fit in violin lessons for Kirsten, Christmas choirs for me and the older 3, a lot of baking, home cooking and jam making, much time on the computer (at least for the boys), watching documentaries, petitioning the council and hundreds of other things from the mundane to the fascinating.

This year I could potentially have had all my children in full-time school for the first time since Joel was born 12 years ago.  Occasionally I dream of the time that I would have if that were the case.  But really I wouldn't swap the lifestyle I have now for anything!

If you are interested in home ed or want to ask any more about our work then please feel free to email me at sally@lowthers.net and I will try to reply to the best of my ability (and available time).  Sally.