Starting our new lives

Leo left school (for ever!) on 3rd May 2013...since then, he has had lots of rest and play time to help him get over what had been an extremely stressful time at school - so stressful it made him really ill with anxiety. So the weeks since 3rd May have been very healing, and a good time for all of us to acclimatise, think, and percolate ideas about home education.

I'm feeling unbelievably grateful to Leo's grandparents, because we literally couldn't do this without them. We are all SO lucky, he has the best and most supportive grandparents ever!

So far we know that homeschooling Leo will have a waldorf steiner flavour, in that it will be hands on, infused with art craft and handwork, cross curricular and project based, and based on age, stage and readiness. All of the things that school was not.

We are packing up to go away for a week and Leo's 'official' homeschooling starts when we're back, but I am absolutely sure he will be learning tons while we are away too. We're taking advantage of our home educators National Trust membership, and hopefully taking advantage of free HE membership to an English Heritage site, too.

The very first thing we did together after school finished, was make a 'wheel of the year' - again, this is steiner inspired and it reminds me to keep things seasonal because there is so much to be gained from focussing on the seasonal festivals. Also, it is good to have the months of the year up on the wall, it will help Leo sequence them in his mind.

So that's the blog started. It's going to help me remember what we do day to day, a lot of which I just KNOW I would forget in the general busy-ness!