New to Home Education?

Home Education Part 1

Welcome to home education, I along with my husband have successfully home educated our four children for years at a time throughout their lives. Three are now adults with careers, our youngest is still in education. Like most of you, his school closed on Friday and he’s at home now.

There are many different home education styles, most people begin with a structure, a timetable with set times for each subject, making lesson plans and having a goal which may be to get your children ready for a test to a particular standard. I would refer to this method as homeschooling (i.e. recreating school at home).

There are other more relaxed methods including child-led learning where parents and carers provide learning opportunities and material and allow the children to decide their path, this method is usually crossed with a little homeschooling, eg mornings are for formal lessons and work plans and afternoons are more relaxed or creative.

There is also the option to use an autonomous method, some parents take this to the level of never telling their child what to do or not to do. This has led to some interesting discussions between children when they meet up, homeschooled children chatting with autonomous children makes for fruity eavesdropping …

”what do you mean you don’t have to wash if you don’t want to?”

We have used a little of all three methods over the years.
If you simply want to get through the next three months and for your child to not fall behind academically, I would recommend a mix of homeschooling and child lead learning.

This means getting together a nice amount of resources. No, you don’t have to know all the subjects and nor do you have to be a teacher, your child will look to you at first to direct their learning as they do their teacher at school. However, the aim should be to get the child to find the ways that they learn best and the times they work well. This is vital for older children especially. Study skills are an important life skill. How long did it take you to find out that your best work is done at 4am or that you need to plan in advance to make the most of your time as you can’t work properly under stress? The sooner your child learns their limits and strengths the better.

Right now I would strongly recommend talking to your children, playing together, cooking, cleaning and making things, we are all incredibly stressed and afraid we need love around us. Have a movie night, bake cookies or a cake, have a dance-off, build a Minecraft world together.

The lessons can begin next week.
Jameella Leadbitter Suljam.com

Jameella.com

My blog has now moved to my own server jameella.com

come and see me there 🙂

Eight Things I Love About Blogging! (1 Min Read)

I’ve been blogging for a few years now, initially, it started because I needed to vent my feelings after a miscarriage writing a post called Coping with a miscarriage. Since then I’ve branched out into talking about education and health.

Here is a brief list of the things I love about blogging:

Re Blog, How to Flip those”20% Blog Scrollers” into “80% Addictive Readers”

1. Trust Your goal is to inform, help and inspire your audience. If you overplay the headline, your audience will feel misled and skeptical of your next headline. Be useful, and never waste your reader’s time.

via How to Flip those “20% Blog Scrollers” into “80% Addictive Readers.” (1 min read) — Millionaire’s Digest

Teen Education. Think Outside of the Box (2 Min Read)

Routes to take for teenage education.

• School, yes school! If you find the right school for your child then they can do very well taking the traditional route of GCSEs. Look for independent academies that don’t have catchment areas to have more choice.
• Distance Learning, recommend Oxfordhomeschooling
• Treehouse, this site is the most amazing online up to date resource to study Web Design, Coding and App Development. For a small fee or a free trial, your child can start to build skills and network links that will see them into a career. Not just aimed at kids, I’m studying with Treehouse myself, so it’s something that I strongly recommend.
• Flexi Schooling, This is becoming more and more popular, find a Head that agrees to it and you can arrange for your child to attend school or college part time sitting a few subjects rather than the usual 11 or 12 GCSEs.
• Local College from 14. Contact your local LEA and college for details, funding is available for 14-year-olds to study core subjects. It does depend on your location, though.

Raising Teen Boys. (2 Min Read)

Why the title? Why not just “Raising Teens”? Well mostly because I only have boys and also because men and women are different. Teenage boys have to deal with a rush of testosterone which causes anger, aggressive behaviour and a need to try and be alpha. As well as the rapid growth and deep voices our boys are struggling with all kinds of emotions they didn’t have before. They don’t know what to do with these raging hormones and are often overwhelmed, understandable really.

As a woman, I have a lot of ideas about raising girls too but that’s another article altogether!

Thank God I’ve survived raising three boys into men or rather I’ve supported three men to adulthood. Through the stubbornness, anger and moods and happy times, it’s not all doom and gloom. Now with the internet and social media is very important to monitor their activity, I don’t like to do this in a big brother kind of way but we do have monitoring software on the computer, porn blocks on the home wifi and we regularly ask our teens to talk about what they are doing online.

Here are my top tips.

 

• Listen to them, read between the lines, boys are not as keen as us females to share their feelings when they do speak be sure to listen.
• Try to remember what it was like to be a teenager yourself. The moods and just how incredibly difficult the whole time can be. Did you enjoy being in the midst of puberty?
• Encourage their interests, they won’t be the same as yours, as these people find who they are, support what they want to do. So if your teenage son tells you he wants to be an (insert horrifically inappropriate career choice here) be supportive, if you react negatively you can be sure they’ll be more inclined towards it.
• Set clear boundaries
• Don’t argue with them, for some reason my teens go through a phase of goading me into a row, sometimes this goes on for years and puts a real strain on our relationship. I’m working on this one!
• Have fun together, do something together that isn’t work related that you both enjoy.
• Get them into a sport, from 16  gym membership is a great idea!
• Forgive. Move on.
• Be positive.
• Love them, even when they are not very lovable.
• Religion, don’t force it, simply teach it and let them find their way. Their relationship with God is for life, make sure it starts well.

Why do boys need to be alpha? Genetics I suppose, but it’s exhausting trying to coax them into everything, so I just leave them to it. A man of 16 can decide when he needs to do things, organise his time and work. He’s old enough to know the consequences if he doesn’t uphold his responsibilities. Let him deal with the outcome if he does mess up. It’s so important to treat them as adults or else you will have a 20 something child on your hands!

Give children responsibility from a young age, all my children have chores or jobs to do around the house, as they get older these jobs get bigger and more important. They are not nominal and nor are they to “earn pocket money” they are important parts of running the house. Praise them when they do well, praise them for trying when they don’t. No one wants their shoddy work put down. But we all like praise don’t we?

Help them make choices but don’t tell them what to do. I was dictated to as a child, teen and adult by my parents, you can be sure that whatever they decided I should be doing, I did the opposite. Not just to rebel but to carve my own way in the world.

I can’t imagine going back to my teenage self and given the chance I’d tell myself one thing

“It will get better”

What would you tell your teenage self? What’s your experience of raising teenage boys?

The Diversity Deal

Diversity and inclusion are wonderful when they work in your favour. In the last week, Muslims like myself have been the beneficiaries of the world’s love and understanding. At airports around the United States people with open, liberal minds …

via The Diversity Deal — Ali Abbas

Selfish Mothers.

So the new trend at the moment is mothers loudly declaring that –

“I Love my daughter, I wish I’d never had her”

Guardian Weekend Magazine 11/02/17

Yesterday I didn’t get a chance to read the entire article,  Today I’ve read it, researched the whole movement and yes it’s a thing, bloggers, writers, Instagrammers everywhere online there are a few of these regretful parents.

I feel deep sadness reading these quotes, real anger and a need to go and hug one of my children.

How to Move Ahead After Losing a Child

Written by Millionaire’s Digest Staff Member: Aui V. Founder & Owner of: Aui’s Den Millionaire’s Digest Staff Team, Editor and Author of The Booze Stole My Son: Don’t Let It Steal Yours 1. Allow yourself to cry as much as you can, as often as you want and every time you feel like doing so. Don’t […]

via How to move ahead after losing a child (2 min read) — Millionaire’s Digest

Can’t Write, Won’t Write.

Most home educated children that I know or have known hate writing, actually, the problem is worse with boys in my experience. So what is there to be done?

I remember when my second son was 5, who up until then had been 100% home educated, almost in tears on the phone to a friend who is also a home ed Mum,

“He just refuses to write, says its too hard, you do it, Mummy, I’ll tell you what to write”

She was awesome, made soothing noises and said things like

“He’ll write when he’s ready”