(Gayle's three children were 13, 11 and 8 at the time of writing the first section of these pages. They used to be at school in South Africa, then followed a formal curriculum at home before moving to the UK. Gradually they adopted a more relaxed approach, with the children taking responsibility for their own learning. See the last page for further updates from Winter 1999 and Summer 2000.)
Gayle writes:
We have a combined and flexible approach. We tend towards being autonomous for science, history, biology, geography - in that I find these are things they are naturally interested in and pursue. My elder son (T) has been spending a great deal of time playing Caesar III, Anno2000 and SimCity on the PC. Luckily we have a separate one for games! This has led him to research the historical background. He now knows far more about the new world, the Incas, Aztecs, and the Romans than I do.
Child-led learning the most valuable
Last year we tried doing history regularly and they weren't really interested at all .. and we did cover the Romans. Now that he is interested, he has loads of library books on the subject and is thoroughly enjoying it. He used to hate history, now he thinks becoming an historian isn't a bad idea. What a change! He is also building a Roman villa from bits we got at the craft bank, which has led him to investigate Roman architechture a bit more. The other two have learned from his bits of interesting information, but aren't really interested themselves. I figured it was worthless spending time teaching them stuff they were going to forget anyway because it wasn't interesting to them.
T is now reading GCSE physics, biology and chemistry, purely out of interest. He was going to write a Biology exam this year but now feels he doesn't really need to do it and prefers to just read it for interest's sake. We have no problem with that. If he wants to do GCSE exams later when he is older (he is going to be 13 next month) then he can.
Different children learn in different ways
Our 8 year old daughter (C) has taken a keen interest in Fun Fax files and collects the little books. They are loaded with interesting information in a format she finds fun, so she keeps coming to tell me little things she has discovered in them. She also has an "I Love Science" CD-Rom which she enjoys, amongst others.
Our 11 year old son (M) has really struggled with academic stuff, and did not like maths at all. He persisted because he felt he should learn it, but until recently it was a hard slog. He would doze off over the sums he was doing or switch off while learning multiplication tables with me. His memory is really bad too, much like mine. We remember broad principles and have a clear understanding of how things work, but battle with remembering what we feel are boring facts.
Interesting maths books lead to more learning
We bought the Steps maths books and I am doing them with both M and C. They are on much the same level, though M has learned more in terms of tables and formats for doing various sums. C is exceptionally good with mental arithmetic, as was T. We do it together and are really enjoying it. For the first time they think maths is actually fun! The work is not done in workbook style. They give various aspects of things and vary the subject matter. So one day we will do geometry, another arithmetic, another fractions, etc.
If something is particularly easy, or I know they understand it, then we only do the fun things or skip it entirely. They actually ask to do more pages! M now says he is amazed at how much he actually knows because he thought he knew very little maths. But when we do the exercises he finds a lot of information coming back to him as he now sees the application of what he learned before.
Pros and cons of autonomy
The pros and cons of autonomy is a fascinating subject. I think a lot of us see the advantages but struggle with the actual outworking of it. I am really happy to say that we are content with the current way of doing things. Formal maths, some writing and the rest is up to them. We also do daily devotions, which involves reading from a family devotions book and discussing that. Then we read every day from the Old Testament, taking turns to read (good reading practise .. those names!). At the moment we are intrigued with the Kings of Israel and Judah and it often leads to fascinating discussions of war or other aspects of life in those days.
Other approaches to home
education:
Heather - Henrietta
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Jane - Kathie
- Paula
- Sue