Sunday 26 May 2013

Onwards

Exams have dominated our home ed for too long. Even though ds1 is only taking one subject this summer and one in Autumn it has all been far too time- and energy-consuming. (He survived the first chemistry paper, btw, thought it was "ok", which is as good as we could hope for.)

I'm looking forward to moving on to other things. Doing fun stuff again. Ds2 and dd have been left to get on with textbook stuff for too long and things need to change. Dd, in particular, I'm realising, needs a far more hands-on learning technique. She might be reading now (at least at a basic level), but there is so much she can't access without support. I also need to recognise her interests...or try and work out what they are! She's a completely different kettle of fish to the boys. In fact they are all so different it's as if I've had to re-invent home education with each child.

I'm looking forward to summer. We have trips planned to tie in with prep for classical civilisations GCSE. And I'm hoping to visit some art exhibitions and The War Museum in London to inspire Ds1 for his Art and Design IGCSE, and we'll hopefully start Ellen McHenry's "Cells" course as prep for starting IGCSE biology in the Autumn. But it won't all be about exams. I hope.

Sometime soon I will do a catch-up post, of all (non-exam) stuff that's been going on. There has been life (of some sort) outside the whole GCSE thing...

4 comments:

Admin said...

I think constant re-invention is a huge feature of home ed and I guess thats what I love most about it. (despite it being flipping hard work!!!) All of m three so far have been different to each other as well as being different at different ages - its certainly a learning curve.

Does your classical civilisations GCSE have coursework?

higglepea home ed said...

Our girls are taking the first paper of their full Classic civ Gcse in 12 days. They sat the controlled assessment back in Dec.

We're hoping after the chemistry Igcse, this will be the fun one of the batch! x

Each of my girls have been different in their educational/learning approaches/styles. I am constantly having to source/listen to/learn and encourage different ways to help them. It's all a bit vocational/academic, but we get there in the end. x

Katie Pybus said...

This post really hilights my thoughts about the future with 3 home educated children and how you continue to meet everyone's needs when the needs of one person take priority - Especially with limited time and money.


At the moment (8, 6 & 4) there are many many things they all enjoy together but from reading blogs of families with older children I imagine that one day that their interests will diverge.

If one of my trio were to choose the exams path there would be very little cash left in the gallivanting pot!

Fablabmum said...

I feel your pain. Exams have totally taken over in our house as well! Only two more papers left and then maybe we can restore some normality (whatever that is) to the household and to HE.