This was such an interesting and actually quite challenging project for me to work on. I was taking Eloise Rickman’s A Beautiful Education course for the second time round and realised that there are SO MANY stories about school out there, but none where children who are home educated can see themselves and their experiences reflected.

Important…

I fully hold my hands up and say I’m not home educating a child of school age (she is 2.5 at the time of writing), so I wanted to share this information and disclaimer I guess, and why I wrote this book!

First things first – I’m very eclectic in my home education styles, pedagogies and interests, and I’m aware from speaking with many families plus a huge rabbit hole of research I undertook that home education looks different for everyone. 

My hope was that this book could capture that, without alienating or pushing any one specific approach. I’d love for children who are classical homeschooling, following Charlotte Mason, Montessori, Reggio, Waldorf Steiner, unschooling and anything in between, to be able to find something here and see themselves. However, as approaches are so diverse, and families and children themselves unique, as you can imagine it’s impossible to cover everything and I can only say I hope the intention is clear even if the execution doesn’t exactly show your family’s personal experience. I can only promise I have done my best to be as inclusive of all approaches as possible.

I do appreciate unschoolers may take issue with the use of the word ‘school’ in the title, and for that I am sorry.

I’d also like to say I am not anti school and nor is this story. I do personally see many things I don’t love about the school system, but this book is absolutely not intended to be critical of schools – the intention is simply to reflect the lived experiences of home educating families so children can see themselves in stories (as there are SO many stories about school out there!)

I also really need to acknowledge 1) my privilege of having the choice of whether or not to home educate, and the privilege of many who do choose to do so; and 2) the many families who choose to home educate who do not have this same privilege and who often choose alternatives to the mainstream at great sacrifice or risk to themselves. 

My research for the story included talking to some wonderful families about their experiences, plus I highly recommend and have to thank the following:

✨@mightymother_ – ALL of her courses, her Instagram, her book Extraordinary Parenting

✨Home Ed Voices Podcast

✨Leah Boden’s course Charlotte Mason Unboxed, and her podcast the Modern Miss Mason

✨ Project Happy Home YouTube Channel

The below were also incredibly useful and formed part of my research to varying degrees:

✨@onwillowsbend Instagram

✨@school.with.a.view on Instagram

✨@ellagrimwade’s Made by Mamma’s interview on homeschooling her 7 children, and YouTube videos on homeschooling on The Grimwade Family channel

✨ @bigmothering Instagram and her podcast Consent Based Everything

✨ the many YouTubers documenting their homeschool experiences, or filming content discussing it, for example Kendra Atkins and Kayla Buell, Mayim Bialik, Slowly We Go, and I’m sure there are others!

✨all of the podcast interviews on Apple Podcasts with Lucy Aitkenread and her Instagram 

✨ Happiness is Here blog

✨ Home Educating Wildlings podcast

✨The Life Without School podcast by Stark Raving Dad

My personal journey with home education so far (or attempting to answer « why did YOU write this story? »)

I suppose you can say we’re currently home educating our 2.5 year old – we don’t use nursery, childcare or preschool and don’t plan to at present – and as some of you who may follow me likely know, very early on in my motherhood journey I fell in love with consent-based and child rights focussed parenting approaches (thank you Eloise Rickman!)

Naturally, I ended up spending many hours nap trapped and reading around this (and also studying a bunch of early years courses – everything from Understanding Mental Health in the Early Years to Children’s Perspectives on Play, Child Rights, and the wonderful Eloise Rickman’s courses where I became very interested in home education).

My husband and I previously held negative views about home ed because of his experience of it – however becoming parents, understanding the history of school, issues within the current UK system – both state and mainstream private schools although this isn’t the time or place for me to explore these and I don’t want to have a political debate here (!) – and just ultimately researching everything we possibly could to ensure we felt we had all the information to make the best possible decisions for our children – I have become more and more interested in home education and the different pedagogies.

As I mentioned, I was taking Eloise Rickman’s course A Beautiful Education for the second time around at the time of writing and can highly recommend it.

I can’t know or make promises right now as to how our journey of educating our daughters (I’m now expecting my second!) will look, but for now home education works for us in the early years and it’s definitely a consideration for me for the future too. ❤️