My word, it’s been a long time since I have written a blog. I feel like I’ve aged about 200 years in the last six months, which is mostly down to homeschooling two children.
Very honestly, we sort of had it easy compared with most parents. Both TheBloke (TM) and I work flexibly from home, and so we could divide and conquer the two children’s education. Despite this, it was not an experience either I, or the children, wish to repeat.
Here are some things I learned:
- My maths ability can be baselined approximately at the Spring term of Year 2. I had to Google what a unit and non-unit fraction was. This does not bode well for the GCSE years.
- Telling the time is some sort of weird magic, and there’s absolutely no way you can explain it to children. To save me screaming into the void, “BUT OBVIOUSLY WHEN THE HAND POINTS AT THE ONE, THAT MEANS FIVE!” can we all just embrace digital watches and the 24-hour clock and be done with it?
- I come from a family of educators. I think the gene must have skipped a generation because I have NO PATIENCE and think that most kids are dicks.
Whilst YoungestGirl did get to go back to nursery towards the end of the summer term, EldestGirl’s year didn’t go back, and so homeschool bled (profusely) into the holidays. Normally in the holidays, we would do bits and pieces of maths, reading, workbooks, just to keep their hands in. Not this year. I parked them in front of Disney+ and occasionally threw junk food at them.
YoungestGirl has now started Reception, and I think I may have already alienated some other new parents, who may have been feeling a bit sentimental at dropping their precious children off for the first time, as I shouted “I’M FREE!” and skipped off into the horizon.
EldestGirl still can’t tell the time, but thanks to Dora and her friends, YoungestGirl is semi-fluent in Spanish and EldestGirl can recognise 220 different Moshi Monsters. So long as the next round of SATs is based on that, we should be fine.
You definitely won’t be the only parent shouting ‘Freedom!’