With the kids getting older, they are doing more independent learning and with me working for the past 6 months their progress has dwindled due to loss of interest so I am changing tactics for their home ed. We decided to try a brought curriculum, but it has been a bit of a non-starter. The girls found it boring and although someone has put it together to cover each year, it is all working from exercise books. To really get the full benefit of the workbooks they need a tutor to ensure they are fully understood. So they haven’t worked for us and I am scrapping the whole idea for Jessica as she becomes more and more unresponsive to learning, as the work bores her leaving her confused and fed up.

So between now and Easter, it’s about getting them to enjoy home ed again so we have paid for Elephant Maths and IXL for daily English and Maths. This can be done independently so they are not relying on me to coach them through all of the work.

Subject breakdown

History

We are sticking with Jessica’s history book because it is one of the subjects she has loved and engaged with but we are planning a slower approach with extra projects based around the topics. Emily is into the ancient Egyptians and Jessica is into the medieval period of 1066.

Science

We have introduced Mel Crates and again we are adapting the book Jessica got from her curriculum. You can see how we are getting on with Mel Science here.

Geography

Jessica’s work will be based on the book from her curriculum but again the book alone leaves a lot uncovered so will be expanding on the topics covered and for Emily, we are (with Jess as a bit of fun) learning about the countries that appear in her Atlas Crates. This means we can do a different country each month based on what the crate is for starting with Russia. She will also be doing more simplified versions of Jessica’s topics from her book.

Bronze Arts award

This is a paid-for course for Jessica which will see her complete the qualification during the 10 weeks of lessons.

Pottery

We have booked in again for the holiday events and hopefully putting together a monthly lesson with the lovely Kim.

Music

I have really started to push Emily now she has got on well on her own but we are more structured in her lessons now and she is focusing on the guitar, piano (onto two hands!), violin and clarinet and have kept the drums for ad-lib when Jessica can’t make her lessons due to her young Carers events.

English

Concentrating on story writing and getting them enjoying reading more complex books. Emily is reading Mr Gum and Jessica is reading the Harry Potter books. We are also building on Jessica’s story she started, both in the content and the illustrations and looking forward to when the book is finished so we can bind it. In preparation, Jessica is also working on her handwriting skills and improving her calligraphy.

Maths

Both Jessica and Emily are still working through their maths books from the curriculums but we are also introducing the elephant maths for Emily and IXL maths for Jessica.

Cooking

After being so disappointed with the cooking part of her brought curriculum we have decided to start back with our own dinners and to ensure they always have ingredients for cakes so Jess can start experimenting with her cake-making again.

To allow them to monitor their own education I have started to introduce them to bullet journaling to help them not only remember to feed their animals, clean their teeth but also help them organise themselves, ensuring they do their work each day.

I have included a computer app-based tracker too, this means we can all keep track of the work they are expected to complete for each subject and they can mark off what they have done, these will work alongside the bullet journals. We are using Trello to do this and it allows us all to see what pieces they are completing showing where they are struggling, so we can offer help in those areas.