We made the decision to home educate back in 2019 when our eldest was three. Lots of people ask us why, so I thought a great way to restart this blog would be to share how our journey started with you!
We hadn’t considered home education until I got chatting to my friend Sophie at a mutual friend’s 30th birthday party. Our babies were born just a few weeks apart and if they were to follow the traditional route, they would have been due to start school in a few years time.
When Sophie mentioned her intention to home educate I was surprised and very intrigued. I clearly remember thinking, “that’s ok for you but that’s definitely not for me”. I was curious though and wanted to understand and find out more.
I asked a lot of questions and as we talked, Sophie asked me questions too. Questions like, “what do you think education is?” and “what do you want the girls to learn?”. I was a bit taken aback, I hadn’t really thought about these questions before! To be honest I was mainly focused on surviving the early years and thought that when they turned school age, they would go to school and learn what everyone else does!
Following that conversation, this home education thing lingered in the back of my mind. I grew more and more intrigued about it. I started reading and praying about it, and the more I read, the more I not only started to consider it as a possibility, I grew more and more convinced and excited about it.
The opportunity to spend lots of time outdoors, to follow the girls’ interests and to cater their education to their individual learning styles were big draws for us, so was more family time, less rushing to and fro and the opportunity to go down rabbit holes and to dig deep into topics.
I also had done a lot of reflecting on my own childhood and started to realise the impact of comparisons and grading, which starts from a young age in the UK! My husband started school at 7 in South Africa and we both felt that children in the UK start school incredibly young without enough emphasis on play.
Despite not having considered home education before for ourselves, we had come across a small number of other homeschooling families, one of whom was my husband’s brother and his wife who live in South Africa. So when my husband and I started to talk about it, the idea wasn’t completely alien to him, in fact he was actually pretty keen on the idea. As we both prayed about it, over the course of a few weeks, a number of unexpected conversations happened that convinced us that God was leading us in this direction.
Our eldest daughter is seven now and we’re so glad that God has taken us on this journey. It’s not always easy but it’s such a blessing to be on this journey learning together.
If you home educate, we would love to hear more about your journey and what led you to make that decision. If you are new to the idea and have any burning questions, please comment below and we will do our best to help!
Lucy x
