Welcome to our home school blog!
We hope that our blog will provide an insight in to how we home school and we hope that it will help others who are considering or who have already taken the step to home school.
Please do ask us questions if we have missed anything out!
Home schooling was not an easy decision for us. Our son's school suddenly closed mid August leaving us with just two weeks to find another school before the Autumn term. When our son asked to home school we were initially very wary but after hours of research, advice taken from friends who home schooled abroad and in the UK and speaking to various teachers this really was essential in our preparation to home school.
Finding a suitable curriculum was surprisingly easier than we thought. GCSEs were not really suitable for us as there was teacher assessments and course work involved. Practicals would have been difficult as we had none of the required equipment and purchasing such things was very costly. We researched and considered some Christian courses and other courses offered to home schoolers through distant learning. There was even an online school! We will try and include some of the websites we discovered later.
We chose International GCSEs. IGCSEs are a recognisable qualification both in the UK and in many other countries - friends of ours teach IGCSEs in Africa! Many private schools in the UK teach IGCSEs.
The examination board we chose is www.cie.org.uk We have been impressed with Cambridge International Examinations as have some friends of our who teach IGCSEs in an African school.
For each subject we have the syllabus, past papers and a resource list with books, DVDs etc
We use BBC Bitesize (www.bbc..co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/) as GCSEs as very much in line with IGCSEs. There are revision sections on this website as well as puzzles, videos, audio etc.
Some amazing teachers have placed lessons and revision lessons on youtube (www.youtube.com) and we have found these really good and a great change to simply using a text book.
I have given up trying to find IGCSE books in the county libraries. They did exist but most were borrowed and never returned!
Our text books were purchased mainly through Amazon. Most were second hand so saved a great deal of money. Most students at school work from handed down text books! I have also found some new revision books in WHSmith last week.
Nearly 8 months in to home schooling and we find ourselves on track, if not ahead of our schedule. The weeks fly by and we have no regrets in our decision to home school - we just wish we had done this sooner. Our days are relaxed and flexible.
We will share how more next time on how we timetable our week and on the out of home schooling activities our son is involved in - including the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme.
