an autumn party with a walnut pumpkin cake + poetry.

honestly slightly surprised by the amount of people on this webbed site who are very much anti home education (i was home educated for nine years i feel like I'm allowed to have an opinion on this)

I made a cake yesterday all by myself!

I used a cake mix so it really wasn’t too complicated, other than it literally said “add oil water and eggs = cake” so I almost didn’t put in the actual cake mix LMAO, I was a tiny bit scared of the oven but I did it! It’s very yum

Talking about cake and trust

One of the things that really helped me was my mum trusted me, and she trusted I knew my way around the kitchen enough to make a cake! When you trust your child to their level of skill and knowledge what your doing is trusting them to spread their wings a little and grow into their own person, when you don’t trust your child you leave them open to be manipulated and many other bad things, take for example checking their phone, any “traditional parent” might think that helps keep your child safe when in reality your practically guiding your child to find a way to use the internet and post things where you can’t find it. You’re guiding them to unsecure websites, and unsecure people! But there are levels to this, when I was about 8-9 ish my mum and older sister Checked my phone occasionally because my level of skill and knowledge wasn’t at the point where I could spot an unsafe person before it’s too late. And it’s not just me! My mum trusts both my brothers to their level of skill and knowledge and she helps them with the things they express they struggle with and trusts them to do things she knows they can. Taking my talking point back to the cake when it was time to put icing on the cake my mum came in to help me! Because I had never iced a cake before and she knew I would be sad if my cake turned out not-nice looking, and I struggled at first with it because I was happy in the kitchen on my own but I’m even more happy that my cake turned out ok! Moral of the story, trust your kids to their level and knowledge and they will prosper <3

Neuroqueering Education at Home

Zoe Williams is a late identified autistic parent, who writes about autistic identity and culture. Find her on Medium and Mastodon. Home education lends itself particularly well to neuroqueering, as learning at home allows parents to create a bespoke education that is tailored to the child. However, most adults have themselves been through the school system and have been conditioned to think…

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Three points I would like to see discussed in homeschooling conversations more -

1. The economics. Unless someone is making absolute bank, being a single income household is very hard, especially with children. It then can become a game of child's education vs parent's job, even a wfh job (or family business, which is an even bigger bog of money vs education). And this is just day to day costs, not including that if you want a good education without a school you need to $pend on extra curriculars. So $$ vs education.

2. The difficulty of teenagers and how easy it is for education to become a battleground when the very normal process of building an identity outside your parents, but still being young enough that you can't take full responsibility for your education. If a child is of an age where they're ready to start fighting about everything, school is the easiest battleground. Parents already have a HUGE influence on the development of their kid, from big things like values to stupid shit. Increasing the amount of time you have together tilts this dramatically, so when teenagers very normally, very healthily pull away it's even more confusing and stressful. So relationship vs education.

3. The state of the community itself. Everyone wants to believe that they are the exception, they will stay normal, but your life is so fundamentally different to other families that other homeschoolers become your community just because they have this in common. And oh holy shit, the radicalisation in homeschool communities is real and a problem.

It's that human nature drive to be The Most, that tends to pull groups of people to more extreme positions, and it's the nature of the people who choose to pull their kids out of school - you have to be very strong and independent, very intense. And that strength has a down side - prone to contrarianism, stubborn, inflexibility. They're oddballs, but that makes them vulnerable. Everyone needs community, and if you're hanging out with people more extreme than you it's easy to loose sight of where you are.

The starting position of homeschool communities is that schools, especially public schools, Are Bad, Worse Than Anything You Could Do To Your Kid (why they are The Worst depends on the homeschooler, and is kind of besides the point).

This line gets repeated so much, it's taken as just absolute truth. Again, the reasons are mixed, some are ideological, sometimes because of bad experiences (especially parents bad experiences). But anytime there's a problem, other homeschoolers, who become a huge part of the family's support network, will always, always encourage to Keep Homeschooling, Homeschool More, Homeschool Harder (or unschool! a different topic for another day). And anyone outside the community who has concerns is Not Being Supportive.

Having said all of that I met my bestest best friend through homeschooling. There are also some lovely, dedicated, smart, fun people in there.

(I've deliberately stayed away from specific ideology because that is a different conversation, and I think the above is relevant regardless of political leanings.)

There are many reasons to homeschool. There are also as many reasons not to. I think people should have as many options as possible, they know their lives best. But before defending it or pulling your kids from school, or begging your parents to homeschool, please think about the above. It can turn into a vicious circle of everyone's needs not getting met, leading to a bonus 4th thing -

4. Mental/physical health crisis. When you're living an unusual life poor mental health can be normalised or missed. I mean this more in a generalized "we are a bit overwhelmed by life, haven't got out enough, just tired, etc kind of way than a serious issue. These are the conditions that can breed a serious issue. Or a bereavement! Or job loss! Or illness and injury! Or any number of life stuff that can compromise the primary source of education for a homeschooled child. A good homeschool friend will help, but again, the community is a grab bag so they can also enable a lot of shit.

I dunno. I know people want to argue about socialization all day, but I think those discussions often miss some of the finer issues - and if you're being bullied (yo, i did go to school for a bit, and that was a really mixed bag) the kind of socializing you get is fucked anyway. Even as a homeschooled kid I've always thought of it as not better or worse than school, and I stick by that as an adult. But I do wish the money, and the parental relationships, the community as a whole, and definitely the health of parents and children was discussed more.

A weekly theme for my 2 year old.

Rlly wish the near 16000 ppl whove reblogged that home education post would stop to talk to some ppl who were actually home educated. Bc it's literally saved my and several other HE kids who i knew growing up lives. None of us had super religious families. (i do know literal dozens of ppl who were in mainstream school and have trauma inc religious trauma from schools however....). Grades and physical and mental health improved dramatically. Learned about what we were passionate about. Still took exams. Still socialised. Please don't spread misinformation that will result in good parents being hounded by social services and kids who are happy at home being forced back into traumatic environments that don't actually provide a good education anyway.

Never fall for the elitist fallacy that only "experts" can teach. Parents have more curriculum options available than ever!

Our 2024-2025 Homeschool Curriculum, Schedule Plans, Resource Links, and Daily Routine - Lots of FREE resources!

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winter solstice brunch.

This just in idiot who was home educated yerns for the Birmingham science museum

Homeschool Plan: Learning Latin to inspire my children to learn Spanish/ languages

Dear reader, First of all, this is absolutely not 100 percent of my homeschooling log. Additionally, my babies have awesome tutors, and I supplement their learning. Spanish is my first language. But I speak mostly English now. Dad speaks only English. Our children were not interested in learning Spanish, so I didn’t force them. Now, […] Homeschool Plan: Learning Latin to inspire my children to…

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Why hello there !

Im Niamh! and one thing you might not know about me is I grew up homeschooling. I would like to use my blog to spread knowledge about home-educating ! Other than an occasional post abt Sabrina carpenter album or a rant about my favourite video game, home-educating is what I will post about. I’m completely open to questions and queries about my lifestyle, other than “WHATS YOUR ADRESS” lol, im in A LOT of fandoms, so prepare for a ride if you so choose to take a seat, happy scrolling ♡

no school today

My son didn’t make it to school today he cannot let go of this friend situation that’s happening in the street and not in school . So instead we went and helped daddy at work and he grafted Alday and got to chill out in a hammock from a tree. We don’t always get it right as parents but we try our best as I fell into the rabbit hole of saying right you can choose school or the garden daddy works at (says he hates this garden so I thought he would choose school ) that was silly off me as I tried to back track and it was to late 😂 but we had a great time and hopefully tomorrows a better day for him if he makes it he makes it not theres more to life.

We have took this relaxed approach as parents as we have forced my daughter as we felt we had no choice and choice is what my children need. She’s now homeschooled but won’t engage with anyone outside of the house hold and wants to rent to school now she’s heading for senior school I cannot get my head around this I would love to home school the both of them but she’s heading back there’s a whole different world of home education and I want everyone to know school isn’t the only way but it makes me sad she won’t engage with it . And I think going back to school is solely to make friends .

anyway hope everyone’s keeping well