Curriculum

Home educators are not required by law to follow the National Curriculum. The legal requirement is to provide an education

*appropriate to the age, ability and aptitude of the child.*

We have used an ecclectic mixture of resources with Sonlight curriculum (an American, literature-based curriculum) as our base. I highly recommend the literature-based approach (see 'Charlotte Mason' in Methods below), and I recommend Sonlight as on of the best literature selections available.

There are also tests which schools use in conjunction with the National Curriculum, but one of the reasons many choose home education is to avoid such tests, preferring not to use the National Curriculum as a list of tasks to attain by any certain age, but rather proceeding at a pace which the children themselves find comfortably challenging.

For more details on my view of the National Curriculum, take a look at my revised notes.

Teaching Methods

There are many different approaches to home education in the UK. They range from autonomous / child-centred / child-led or 'unschooling', right through to very formal textbook learning.

The tendency with UK home educators is to start off with a formal approach and gradually become more child-led. The method we are currently using is something of a mixture of many methods: a fairly relaxed position somewhere between "unschooling" and Charlotte Mason's "living books (quality literature) & life experiences", backed up in some areas by a more traditional, text-book approach. For more details, look at our outline of some of the popular methods of home education.

Subjects

The following is broken down into individual subject areas, but we actually find that our "school-day" is not broken up into different lessons but merges into one; and lots of study topics have cross-curricula links.

* Personal, Social & Spiritual * Language & Literacy * Mathematics *
* Knowledge & Understanding of the World *
* Physical Development * Creative Development *

Additionally, Home education offers the possibility of tailoring the education to our children's interests and aptitudes individually, and so we are able to offer many subjects not covered by the National Curriculum.

Follow the links to Little Bears Study Notes

For ideas of how to approach each subject, click on the individual subjects:-

Personal, Social & Spiritual Education

1] Social Studies

this includes the study of cultures around the world, art appreciation, classical music appreciation (and later, youth culture) and more

2] Citizenship

similar to the American subject 'Civics & Government'

3] Religious Education

Giving a grounding in our own community beliefs and festivals as well as an understanding and respect for other communities.

4] Life Skills, including:-

(i) survival skills (ii) childcare (iii) cookery (iv) handicrafts (v) house and car maintenance (vi) money and time management
(vii) character building

Language and Literacy

1] English
2] Foreign Languages:-

(i) Modern, including:-
(a) French (b) German (c) Swedish

(ii) Classical, including:-
(a) Latin (b) Greek (c) Hebrew

Please note that we do not necessarily study all of the languages at the same time! We have done 'taster' courses at various times, and follow-up languages that interest the children.

Mathematical

Mathematics (though lots of subjects have cross-curricula links with Mathematics too)

Knowledge and Understanding of the World

1] Science
2] History
3] Geography
4] Information/ Communication Technology

Physical Development

1] Sports & Games
2] Health Education

Creative Development

1] Art and Craft
2] Music and Dance
3] Design and Technology
4] Drama

Little Bears Pages

The School Room Home

Homeschool Co-op

Long-term Objectives

Long-term Objectives by Subject

Short-term Goals

External Links

Home Ed UK Network

Charlotte Mason Network

Our Day

Our home education day starts with traditional 'circle time' which includes a prayer and a candle, stories and rhymes, Bible-time and even occassional dancing! We write the date on the board every day and talk about the weather and our plans for the day.

Our 'lessons' are very short - 15 minutes usually. We start with fun Latin (and sometimes include logic), followed by Maths. We try to include an outdoor break if at all possible followed by 'elevenses' (a very British tradition!) and then Swedish, which is usually a nursery rhyme or song.

A short English lesson including reading and phonics (and alternating through the days between grammar, spelling, creative writing and dictation / copy-writing) is followed by Hebrew, which at the moment is a mixture of learning the alphabet for the younger children, and preparing for Bar Mitzvah for our big Bar Mitzvah boy!

Next up is History & Geograhy (or Science on Wednesdays), for which we alternate between Sonlight curriculum books and our own British history projects. Wednesday is our Science day, so we try to get out for a 'nature-walk' every week, and follow it up by 'nature-study' and some drawing or journalling.

This next term we're planning to introduce some French at this point in the day, using Skoldo. This is followed by curling up together on the sofa to read our lates Sonlight read-aloud literature titles. This is the longest part of our day, and can easily take up an hour or so.

Thursdays are our Arts & Crafts days, when we also try and make an extra effort to listen to classical music and occassionally do 'composer study' as well as art appreciation and 'artist study'.

Most days we are finished by lunch-time, and have lots of time and energy after lunch for outings, climbing trees and socialising!

More Pages in the Works

Charlotte Mason

Nature-Study

Swedish

Hebrew

Doorposts

Keepers Clubs

Eagles Wings

Far and Blessed

Site-map

Index