Thanks

to everyone who has written to say they have enjoyed this blog. Very kind of you to take your time filling the enormous word verifications in to tell me that. I do appreciate nice comments. Elderfairy, yes I know I am a lucky girl masha'allah - he's more adorable when it isn't *your* house he is bulldozing though ;-)

Dear Hijab Wannabe. You asked this in my comments the other day so I will try to answer as best I can insha'allah:

1. How do you get them (as in the kids) to learn? Sometimes I have tried to teach my son things like even and odd numbers, phonics. He sometimes learns, sometimes wants to steer the topic in his own direction (eg. I am talking about one letter and he wants to do another) or expresses disinterest altogether. Everyone makes it seem so easy! Is there something I am missing??

I don't inculcate school at home. I don't have a plan and I don't have a schedule or a list of things he *will* learn. We are child led here, as are many homeschoolers. You take the cues from the child. So my son has a massive interest in animals right now. I am going with it. He kept wanting to read and read and read about whales so I thought I would channel all his assing-about monkey energy into doing a project. I asked him "would you like to do a project on whales" and his answer was "yes - NOW", so that's what we are doing. If he didn't want to do it I just wouldn't have started it. Sometimes he doesn't want to do craft things but I push him along to finish what we have started because I see in him the inability to delay gratification which isn't something I want to inculcate. So we finish what we start. Through his interests you can teach anything - I heard of a woman who taught the curriculum through basing everything on Star Trek - reading, number work, geography (you have to know where you are going to land your space ship!). Through reading him a chapter or two of a "big" book everyday we cover numbers since he has to know what page we've stopped on. Then sometimes he takes that ball and runs with it and we do numbers for a bit. With certain words he is interested in he has descovered what each word begins with - lion begins with the L sound. He knows the whole alphabet and I never sat and taught him it. If isn't child led it will always be a fight. Some children take longer than others to want to learn too and that's OK. Eventually they all get there.

2. How do you teach different levels at the same time?

I don't. Jaws is too young to teach. When he is a bit older I'll just fob him off with play doh and duplo for a bit.

3. I am afraid my weaknesses will become their weaknesses. I learned a lot of great things from my parents, but being in school enabled me to closely see different traits in other people that I admired and emulated. Isn’t homeschooling going to turn them into some kind of clone of me? I hope for them to better than that!!

You can let them out the cage occasionally. They get to mix with other people all the time.

4. If I homeschool, it will be myself and my two daughters in the girls camp, and only my eldest a boy. Isn’t this too much estrogen for a boy? He will be surrounded by girls all day!! My husband is great, but he does work most of the time and comes home late.

You can find social groups for him to join - sports groups - things like that.

5. When in the day would I have some time for myself to recharge?
That is difficult. You would have to pace yourself and if your husband is a good one then he should let you have an hour off in the evening for a cup of tea or something. I think I would go nuts if my DH didn't watch Jaws in the evening so I could get some blog time.

Saying that, as they get older, and if you are child led letting them be autonomous in their learning then things will get easier insha'allah. Finding support with other homeschoolers is also a good idea and you may be surprised at what things are organised locally and nationally between homeschoolers.

If you haven't already found it you really need to go and see Mrs Homeschool herself to see how it's all done.