When?

"When does all this educating take place?" " Surely you don't make them work in the school holidays?" "Do you have a timetable?"

The "When?" question is something of a home education cliche, but things become cliches for a reason, and that reason is that they tend to contain a universal truth. So the answer to "when?" has to be: "all the time". No, that doesn't mean that the children are chained to a desk 24/7. Desks very rarely come into the equation, if at all, but we'll talk about the "where?" tomorrow.

Children, and adults for that matter, really are learning all the time. Even when they look as though absolutely nothing is going on, they are still processing information. These *fallow periods* can be very disconcerting to a parent, but I've come to the conclusion that they are incredibly important. You will often find that, just as you are starting to internally panic that your child is doing absolutely nothing that could be considered educational, suddenly they have made a huge leap forward in some area or other. I've seen this happen enough times now to know that it's not just a fluke or a one off, it is all just part and parcel of how the human brain works.

When you think about it, it's actually not so surprising. If we were to expect our digestive system to work in the way we expect a child's brain to work, we'd soon end up with a nasty mess. Imagine for a minute what would happen if we were continually emptying food into our mouths, whether we were hungry or not, with no time for our digestive system to process it properly. Then ask yourself why our brains should be any different.

An awful lot of education, in our family, takes place through what has become know by academics as purposive conversation. This sounds ever so dry and theoretical, but actually, it's just living really. If you were to conduct an experiment for a day or two, and jot down all the many and varied things you talk about, the little offshoots that these conversations develop, the curiosity that comes from not knowing the answer to a particular question, I think you'd be surprised just how many different areas you covered.

The other day we were watching the TV programme Coast. The particular episode we were watching was asking the question "how long is the British coast line?" You'd think that would be a relatively easy question to answer in this day and age, but actually no, it isn't, and the answer you will receive depends on many variables one of which is the length of the item you use to measure with. Mandlebrot's fractional dimension was explained to us and we were all fascinated. It sparked off an in depth conversation about measurement, the coast, history, cartography etc etc. We couldn't be considered mathematical nerds by any stretch of the imagination, and had I tried to present such a theory in a dry lesson, we would all have been pulling our hair out in seconds, but presented in a real life situation it was made more accessible and we were able to see the real value of what would otherwise have been boring theory. This was on a Sunday afternoon.

Other such conversations can happen in the morning, afternoon, evening, late at night, any day of the week. It can be wearing, but it can be very, very exciting, and these conversations don't just happen whilst watching TV programmes. These conversations are famously held whilst in the car, on a bus, walking along the street. If you are awake to the world around you you can't fail to be learning every single minute of the day.

Of course not all learning takes place through conversation, but this post is just trying to show how, regardless of any other methods you might use to learn, conversation is so incredibly important and happens at any time of the day or night. This type of learning doesn't understand timetables, or schedules, it just happens on the hoof, but don't be fooled into thinking that it's not incredibly important, or valid, just because you can't see it happening, or have no physical evidence to show it took place. It's probably one of, if not the, greatest educational experiences you and your child will have.

How?

"How do you *do* home education?" seems to be another popular question. Thing is, it's incredibly difficult to answer, especially when the person asking the question doesn't really want a long, drawn out explanation.

The how is different for every family, and often it is different for each child within one family. The thing that you need more than anything is time. Time to learn about different ways of doing things; time to try them out to see what works best; time to readjust if something doesn't work so well; time to develop a faith in the inate learning capabilities that are a part of every human being, if they are only allowed to be cultivated.

We have tried all sorts of different approaches over the years, and we are still adjusting as we go along now. It's called life. Nothing is set in stone, and anyone who thinks that there is one true, tried and tested method of education is frankly deluded (or a member of the DCSF? You decide!)

When we first deregistered the girls I prepared an intricate timetable of activities, lessons, radio and tv programmes, outings, books to read etc etc. I spent money on workbooks and maths curricula; our drawers groaned under the weight of educational supply catalogues and lesson plans. It didn't last long, we all found it far too restrictive and suffocating, and tempers became frayed - not conducive to a happy family, nor the most fertile ground for our daughters' developing minds.

Thankfully by the time we reached this point, I had joined the great UKHE email list, which was a wealth of information and full of wonderfully helpful home educators who freely offered their experiences. I researched some more, and having found numerous sources which supported the theory of child led/autonomous education, we took a big deep breath and .... relaxed.

Miraculously (tongue in cheek!) the girls learned to read, in slightly different ways and at different times, but it proved to us, beyond doubt, that we as a family were really able to do this education thing.

Now our son is showing us, once again, that it's all about adapting and looking at what each child needs, because of course he is now learning to read in a way that is all his own. He is taking longer it's true, but he is getting there, and you can see him starting to make sense of these strange squiggles that make up our world, as the weeks pass. It's very exciting to be able to be such a big part of this process. Just like all the other milestones we love seeing our children reach as they grow from babies to toddlers and beyond. That excitement and pride doesn't have to stop at the age of five, we don't have to hand our children over to *professionals* to enable them to make the next leaps forward in their development, we just need to have faith in our child and a willingness to explore the world with them.

Why?

Once someone finds out you home educate, the question that they usually ask (after the ones about legality and socialisation) is "Why?" Why did you start home educating, how did you discover it?

We discovered home education 9 years ago - almost to the day. Our twin daughters were just over two weeks away from starting the village school. Neither of them were ready for this, and our attempts to get them prepared by sending them to the local playgroup/preschool, had back fired quite badly. Still, we had no choice, other than facing prison, so what could we do, it was something we all just had to get on with, wasn't it?

We had been making use of the BBC Dynamo website to help give them a headstart at school, and one day, whilst looking through the parents page, I came across a letter which mentioned home education. I researched like mad for the following two weeks, DH and I discussed it as a stop gap option - we were planning on moving and didn't really like the idea of them getting settled in one school only to be pulled out and have to start all over again in another area - and finally we asked the girls what they wanted to do. It wouldn't take a genius to work that out!

As the girls were expected to start school at the beginning of the term, even though they weren't yet compulsory school age, we thought we had better write a deregistration letter to the head teacher. It was posted through the office letter box the night before school started; talk about last minute, life changing decisions!