Home Schooling

[Pumpkin&Piglet]

I've read a couple of threads on here about Home Ed but I had a question about cost.

I'm planning to home ed my children (I've currently only got the two but plan to have more) but would like them to have opportunities and to socialise so would like them join clubs/have lessons to find what they like.

Am I being unrealistic cost-wise? And if I am what are the options to make sure they are not missing out and are interacting with other children enough?

Even I think these question show ignorance but I'm not sure about it all as I've not yet done it!

[Mrs H]

We dont home school, although we have looked into it. We only have one at school currently but another 2 not far off and to be honest we are discussing it again. When i looked into it last time, i googled it and found a few home schooling groups locally who do regular meet ups with the kids so as to ensure socialising skills are developed.
Again, no idea on cost but i do know you can buy specific home schooling kits, i suppose like online course type material to help you. Might be worth a look. Good luck and would love to know how you get on. xx

[trinder]

I will respond in a day or two but I am about to go off grid for a couple of days. I know someone ( I respect her a lot) who is very knowledgeable about this. I will email her and ask her to reply. In the meantime good luck I am sure it's a good choice.
Her daughter about a year ago applied to vet school as a home edder and got a VERY favourable response.
last time we spoke she is settling well and enjoying uni life. What I can say is that she was a wonderful happy well adjusted 17 year old.

[chickenchargrill]

The youngest is going to be a home ed kid and the expenses when young aren't too bad. From November he'll be going to a group at the local museum, that's free. The local Home Ed folk arrange all sorts of things, from PE groups weekly, about £3 per child, soft play, and meet ups at local parks. They also arrange trips to the theatre that cost, but they get the group school rate and try and book for the matinees that have a discussion afterwards with some of the folk who worked on the play. The most expensive thing I've seen them organise was a week's science camp this school holidays, but even that didn't work out too expensive, £24 for a child, £58 per adult, for the week including all the lessons, experiments and your camping for the week. Obviously, that's not compulsory either. How much it costs is really up to you. I plan to do trips to coincide with whatever we're learning about at home, I'll need to factor those in too. But just from a social aspect, I'm sure there'll be people near you who organise local meets at parks.

I think the main expenses come later on. If you plan to home ed right up til uni age, you're looking at quite a lot of money if you go down the iGCSE route at home.

[welshmum]

i home ed and have 4 with another on the way. cost really depends on your teaching methods. We follow the national curriculum for the eldest 2, aged 7 and 5 and the 3rd child has just strted joining in wiuth us, shes nearly 4. I just purchased the workbooks, activity books, supplies for next term or 2 and it cost about £40. Thats the cost of school uniform for 1, in comparison. We do half day real school style ans arts,crafts science in the afternoon. The children chose the afernoon theme and we work the theme into the activities. There us a home ed group local to us and the children go to evening activities, st john ambulance, scouts, etc, Early on you can do the pe based on outdoors pursuits, biking, walking, play parks, etc, to keep costs down. Theres lots of free places you can visit and you can turn any activity into a learning activity.

[dustydave]

We home ed, but we also send them to school as well - probably sounds a bit bonkers, but we home ed at weekends and school during the week and the reality is that while they enjoy school we''ll go along with that, but we don't do any of the schooly stuff and as soon as they decide that school is not for them we'll pull them out and continue with home education during the week.

School actually is quite good, it's the politics and disruptive odd kid that ruins it.

Works for us.

[mrsflibble]

most of the HE groups round here work on either a sliding scale, so you pay according to how many kids attend. for instance the meadowfields group last week had 15 attendees, so it only cost us £3 each child. the others charge just what they need to cove hall hire costs and materials, for instance messy science costs us a fiver per family, but craft is only £3 per family to cover the hall cost and yearly group membership of a local scrapstore. gym class is on a "mates rates" basis of £35 per half term, which is quite expensive as HE groups go, but well worth it for us as sophie loves it.

personally, I've seen an increase in my overall funds, becasue at school I had at least £80 a year for uniform, then £30 for trips, 30p per day for snack (option to send your own, but child got bullied for her hippy food so I gave in for a quiet life) , more money for charity contributions, school friend's fund, going to fetes etc.... so although we have to now pay for transport to get places (unless I am carpooling with other HE parents which is also possible locally), we're better off.

for work stuff, there are so many free online resources that you need never pay for a book! SENTeacher, TES, and others require a log in, but it's usually free. beware American English modules though lol. check the spellings!