Hi all,

I had a very interesting conversation with a lady the other day. She seemed totally stunned that I could be Home Educating my children and running a business from home at the same time.

She was of the opinion that one or the other must suffer, that there simply could not be enough hours in the day and that something must suffer.

When I thought about this, the only thing that I can see that suffers is HOUSEWORK! ( I loathe that with a passion).

Everything else seems to fit in quite nicely. We have an hour of Maths and English every day, we manage a dog walk most days, the kids sort out the ironing pile when it overflows and we seem to get everything done.

Most of my business is online and a lot of my relaxation products are already set up, so that is a matter of a bit of networking to set up some joint ventures.

I am a Changing Lives Coach, which fits in really well. When I have clients, which are mostly by phone or Skype, I give the girls some research work to do or set them a task to complete.

I am a great fan of self-directed learning and being able to access information without the need for regurgitating it.

As many of my clients are worldwide, their day is just starting as mine is ending, so the end of the school day marks the start of the business day.

Maybe I am also fulfilling a higher purpose, in that I am showing my girls an alternative way of working and generating an income, rather than going out and “getting a job”.

After their last school, where they had a longer school day (8.30 am – 5.30 pm and 1-2 hours of prep per night) that my husband’s working day, I think they are happily embracing alternatives.

Especially if they can see me adopt the idea of “Allow it to Be Easy” .

Next week we have a fair bit of research as we are looking at the Aborigine/Maori/African and Native American Indian tribes from the perspective of Music, Fashion, Dance and Lifestyle.

Yes, it really can all fit quite easily into a day, without anything getting sacrificed.

Maybe that is because we, as home-educating parents, get to choose how we set up our lives and teach our children to do what is FUN.

With abundant blessings.
Amanda Goldston
www.ChangingLivesCoaching.com

Tags: children by Amanda
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Hi all,

This seems to be a question that is raised frequently among hone-educators. What do you do all day long? How do you balance learning with things your children are interested in doing?

When we started out, we designed a timetable of sorts. This has got amended over time, as the children’s interests have changed.

In my view, it is important to keep the English and Maths going on a regular basis. I think these are core skills and if they go onto Further education, they will at least need the bits of paper.

For Maths, we have been following the course content from books for their year group that we got from WHSmith. Jacqueline would be year 7 and Stephanie would be Year 9. Although Stephanie is currently doing GCSE Higher level Maths.

We have found other worksheets, as well as using the BBC Bitesize for Schools and the Maths programme by University of Plymouth.

For English, started to work through the English books and found we got very bored with that very quickly.

Jacqueline loves to write, so we buy the Writing Magazine, which has loads of writing competitions and also lots of ideas for different styles, such as poems.

We are in the process of promoting Jacqueline’s photography business, which is at www.pawingphotographs.com

Both girls love to do drama and cooking, so we do a lot of those. Jacqueline has worked her way through a lot of her Guide badges, such as Film-maker, Party Planner, Craft and (of course) Chocolate which has kept her interest.

Much of what we do seems to be TOPIC based, which I understand was once a popular way of teaching years ago.

We did Chocolate and now we are working with MUSIC, FASHION and LIFESTYLE through the ages.

Last week we started right back with the CAVEMEN.

This proved to be a very interesting topic and they ended up making a cave, as well as finding some fascinating facts about language and culture.

For our English project, Jacqueline had the bright idea of imaging they were an Estate Agent (or equivalent) selling a cave to a cavemen.

This turned into a fascinating topic because they were looking at finding advantages and disadvantages, as well as being able to undesirables into plus points. Being able to look at things from different view points is a very useful skill.

A few weeks ago, I decided to make a list of what I considered to be useful life and business skills for the girls and build as many of these things into their “curriculum” as possible.

I also found that in order to get past teenage shoulder shrugging and “I’m not interested in that”, we had to find ways to make it really interesting.

In a couple of weeks we are going to Cresswell Crags in Derbyshire, which is an Ice Age Musuem. I think that should be fascinating.

MUSIC and FASHION seems to have grabbed their attention and it covers SO many topics and offer so much scope. I think that will be keeping us busy for a while.

My children tend to use the Internet a lot and to do a lot of their own research on topics.

I was surprised recently when I was talking to a friend of mine, whose husband teaches photography at A-Level.

She was telling me that one of the most frustrating things he finds with many students is that they have been so spoon-fed information in the school system that they seem almost incapable of doing their own research. They seem to lack an ability to think for themselves and to question what they are doing and why.

I am sure I am not the only home-educating parent who has had faced the questions of “Why are we doing that?” and “What’s the point of that?”

I am sure I am also not the only one who has found that the responses of “because I said so” or “because we have to” are no longer satisfactory to the enquiring minds that we have in our homes now.

It is about finding the right balance for you and your children as there is no right or wrong to this. Every family’s curriculum is going to be a different as the children in those families. You can certainly see why “one size DOES NOT fit all”.

Have a great day.
With abundant blessings.
Amanda Goldston

Tags: children, home education by Amanda
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