(Our children, age 12 and 10 at the time of writing, were at school in the UK until Oct. 1997; we started home educating when we moved to Cyprus. Most recent updates written from 2000-2007 are on the last page of this section.)
My own feeling is that autonomy works best for younger children, up to perhaps the age of 7 or 8. The ideal for young children is to encourage the types of question that arise naturally and just continue the educational process of the first few years. During toddlerhood a child learns a full language, the geography of the area he lives in, a wide variety of mathematical concepts etc. If I were starting over, I'd probably not introduce anything formal until my children were 7 or 8, other than a reading scheme if they weren't learning on their own.
But having had the boys in school until they were 9 and 11, our approach is inevitably different. We've tried a variety of approaches over the past 18 months, from an almost 'school at home' approach with workbooks in specific times, through to having no structure or plans at all. Neither approach has really been successful so we've opted for a middle semi-structured approach.
Following up questions as they arise
Having said that, I do agree fully with following up questions immediately, and sometimes dropping what's planned in favour of other things that naturally arise. One day, for instance, my 12 year old son asked me what Newton's laws were, as a friend of his had been talking about them (and trying to disprove them!) at youth group. So we spent the morning with the Dorling Kindersley Science 2.0 CD-Rom and some books, and both boys (and I!) learned a great deal about Newton and other physics principles, and read about some science research of previous centuries... all fascinating stuff and of much more use to the boys because it was something they wanted to know, rather than merely being in their schedule for the day.
Flexible structure of academic subjects
But, if nothing else arises, we've found that a fairly flexible schedule, using books and resources of the boys' own choosing, following topics they want to study, is what works best for us. We aim for 3-4 hours each morning to include most National Curriculum 'academic' subjects appropriate to their ages, although my 10 year old is doing biology, chemistry and French with his brother: he wouldn't have started these yet if he had still been in school. We allocate different things for specific days but that's as much for my sake as theirs, so there's some sort of balance overall.
In a typical week we start around 9am and continue working until about 1pm, with an hour or so on each topic. Usually we take a break in the middle for a drink and biscuit, and sometimes spend longer or shorter as appropriate. Our outline approximate schedule for mornings is:
Monday -
French,
biology, English
Tuesday - French, geography, maths
Wednesday - French, RE, English
Thursday - French,
chemistry, maths
Friday - French, history, English
Afternoons and weekends for music and other activities
We tried structuring in art or craft sessions for afternoons at first, but I found it difficult to sustain any interest. Now they attend an art workshop on Saturdays and do other art or craft when they feel like it. In addition to this they have friends over every Monday afternoon, usually playing outside building a den, and on Monday evenings my 10 year old belongs to a Greek choir. On Tuesday lunch times he is 'borrowed' by a friend to sing in a local private school choir! On Wednesday afternoons both boys have piano lessons with a colleague, and until it got too hot, they were having basketball sessions in the early evening.
On Thursday afternoons my 12 year old has clarinet lessons with the town band leader. On Friday lunchtimes he has church music group practise; in the afternoons we do our supermarket shopping for the week and my 10 year old has guitar lessons. In the evening my 12 year old goes to the church youth group. Clearly it wasn't possible for me to schedule anything much more into afternoons without them seeming rushed. As it is they both often want to write programs or play strategy games on the computer and have to agree to different times; I try to remind them to practise their instruments reasonably regularly but in the end it's their choice to do this and progress, or to do minimal practise and keep working at the same piece for several weeks.
Other approaches to home
education:
Gayle
-
Heather - Henrietta - Jane - Kathie
- Paula