Selfsufficientish.com

I quite agree Red!

It is really hard occupying kids sometimes,my girls some days are just getting to the stage where they can pootle with very little input from me(I shriek for joy & Get Lots Of Things Done )on days like those,but most days they do still need me to be a big source of Entertainment,well I have always found myself quite funny so its nice to have an audience

It can be hard tho finding things to keep them occupied/distracting them from moidering each other.Mine went thru a period of insane energy recently,honeslty the walks we went on were leaving me pooped yet they would get home & race around & be up at 5am
I had a few tell me they needed nursery then too but the real issue was ME,

I had to drop somethings so I went to bed earlier so I could cope with the energy balls it was me that needed *solving* not them

Thankfully that was a *phase* they then hit a massive growth spurt & started sleeping like logs till gone 6

When my now 16 year old was in the UK equivalent of Year 4 (I lived in the US at the time). I decided to homeschool her. It was a wonderful year for us and at the end when we had to submit her portfolio for evalution by the education authority we received glowing comments. Unfortunately my (now) ex-husband didn't support us and she returned to school the following year.

Still I have fond memories of raising butterflies, recreating Egyptian feasts, learning ceramics, rock climbing, archery, interactive reading/play at the library all with other homeschooling moms (mums!), and quality one on one time. Obviously we covered other topics such as maths, etc but we really did get out and about doing alot of activities that we probably never would have touched on had it not been for the blessing of having the time to do it and meeting wonderful people who were also self teaching their children.

Not really a point to this thread so apologies if its a bit out of context but I completely support the idea of homeschooling and it made me a bit nostalgic. Thanks for the opportunity to reminisce.

UK wife your post made me smile. We too are out and about constantly.
We are a home edding family, with two boys aged 8 and 5 and we are always out and about.
When we first started home edding I was so worried the boys wouldn't have any friends and would become reclusive, my eldest has always been quite reserved about joining clubs etc. But to our astonishment the opposite has happened. In a few short months of HE eldest son has become suberbly confident, outgoing and now attends clubs happily.
We struggle to fit the social scene in, there are so many families out there who are actively home edding and there is some social activity to be done every day should we chose.
For me the occasional desire for a day to myself is off-set by the absolute delight of re-visiting history, geography and science with my kids.
Deciding to home educate our boys has transformed our family life, we are all so much happier and so much more fulfilled.