Our Home Educating Lives

Ben's Family

Our home education involves supporting our child to live a life that he finds to be valuable, in terms of what he creates, what he contributes, and how he spends his time. We use an approach often termed "unschooling", because of its contrast with the rigid curriculums and external control that children experience at school.

How our home education style supports our child to thrive.

Ben spends his days practising creating what he wants in life - social events, money, food, a menagerie of pets, mostly through play, but a play that as he gets older is becoming richer and richer in the accomplishments he will need as an adult.

Since he is doing what he loves, or working towards his own goals, Ben is extremely motivated from morning until night. Although he has learnt skills at different times to school children - reading at seven for example, he has done so with ease and enthusiasm. From this perspective we see our style of education as efficient and low stress -none of Ben's time is wasted on straining to learn things his brain isn't yet ready to process.

Our style of home education allows our child to focus on what he loves and excels at, and confidently allow others to do the same. He has developed a knowledge of the natural world at eight that has surpassed that of most adults, but yet isn't a musician or an actor, and that's fine. In the process he is practising proactively creating a life he loves, and building the skills and knowledge he needs to live, work, and play collaboratively with people who will naturally have different goals and preferences.

A glimpse into our home educating lives...

We have some structured activities Ben likes to attend regularly, including gym, swimming, talks at the zoo, and various social meets. We also love taking advantage of classes and activities in our community: this week we have been orienteering and star gazing, and we occasionally do online classes such as those run by the fantastic Theatre of Science.

However, we also leave a lot of free, unstructured time in our week, for Ben to play, learn, and create as he wishes; on his own, or with family and friends. As well as seeing Ben enjoy himself we can watch him developing the skills he needs for the future. For example, this afternoon he decided he wanted to breed crocus plants, which he loves, and sell them. He then researched how to create hybrid crocuses and had a go at pollinating ours with a paint brush, with the plan that they would seed and create new unique plant to sell. He then spent a long time hunting for bugs in our garden, researching and identifying some beetle larvae he didn't recognise. He adores the natural world, and sharing what he knows about it with other people. In the evening he decided that he wanted to set up a terrarium making workshop for his friends and planned the equipment needed, date and timings before inviting them along. In the process he considered how he would manage the problem of two friends wanting the same plant for their project.

When I consider how he has chosen to spend his day - business planning,growing things, investing in his passions, planning workshops for his friends, managing relationships - it is hard to imagine him learning a more useful set of skills by following someone else's curriculum.