I’m Abi. I’ve never been to school.

My parents chose to educate me at home. Here in the UK, this is known as EHE – Elective Home Education.

Although people often use the terms ‘home school’ and ‘home education’ to mean the same thing, they are actually pretty different.

Home School = replicating school at home.

Some home ed families do this. They may have set hours/days, a classroom area setup in their house and they may even follow the national curriculum.

Home Education = ‘…..??…..’ it looks very different from one family to another.

People learn things every day, people learn in different way and as adults you have a choice over what and how you learn. Why should this be different for us kids?

What Home Ed Is (to us):

• freedom, flexibility & choice
• fun; lots of days out, travelling and experiences.
• choosing what we learn about
• learning together through talking, reading and experiencing life together.
• learning when the opportunities arise, whether this is 9am or 9pm, on a regular Monday or Easter Sunday.
• learning where the opportunties arise, whether this is at home, in a shop, out in the car or playing in the park.

What Home Ed Is Not (to us)

• being told what I need to learn
• following other people’s rules
• following a national curriculum
• having set hours
• believing learning can only happen at a desk
• putting learning into school subjects (i.e. maths, english, science, geography etc)

What about Maths and English?

Outside of schools this is called numeracy and literacy and I naturally pick up the skills I need from the projects and things I do each day.

I can already count to over 180, I am aware of percentages and I already know my 2 and 3 times tables. I can do addition, subtraction and basic multiplication and division using my abacus. I know there are six noughts in a million. I am 5.

I know all the colours including lots of funky ones like crimson and aquamarine. I know all the days of the week and the months of the year. I am learning to read. I have regular access to a tablet, where I play games, watch videos and use educational apps. Mum and Dad read to me every day and most days I play lego with my dad and do some sort of arts or crafts with my mum.

What about the social side?

I accompany my parents on their errands and appointments and we interactive with lots of people within the community. I attend various home ed meetings each week and I have a good group of friends. Some of my friends go to school and others are home educated like me.

If you met me whilst out and about I’d happily tell you all about fairies and mermaids. I love fairies and mermaids.

What about exams?

Believe it or not, GCSE’s are not compulsary, but yes home educated children can sit GCSE’s if we want. I’ll most likely sit maths, english, science and perhaps another one or two based on what subjects interest me. Unlike school children, I won’t have to study for 10+ exams at the same time and I can focus on just one or two each year.

All the extra free time I get from not going to school, will allow me to gain other exams and certificates which may be more useful to me once I know what career(s) I am interested in.

But HOW do you learn?

We just live and do things.

For example take cooking, mum cooks most days from scratch. To be able to cook we need to be able to read the recipe (English tick). We need to be able to convert different weights and measures, to recalculate ingredients based on how many people the recipe is for (Maths tick). When you cook, ingredients melt, change consistency and react with each other (Science tick). The presentation of the dish could be considered as Art. Learning traditional dishes from all over the world ticks off Georgraphy and perhaps History too.

The same theory applies to gardening, needlework, in fact everything we do is a combination of the subjects learnt at school.

We often listen to audiobooks whilst doing other things like driving in the car, drawing and painting.