This homeschooling handbook offers resources for parents homeschooling with their children, by a teacher turned home-educator. Anna Dusseau explores the purpose of education, how children learn, the benefits of home education, key questions and activities for homeschooling to get started.
Anna Dusseau home educates her three children. Her gritty, wisdom-filled approach shows how home schooling can work brilliantly for families in post-Lockdown times. She draws on extensive teaching experience. She witnessed how mainstream schooling limited, and even damaged, her children’s well-being, curiosity and learning. The success of Anna’s popular Homeschool Guru Blog has led to giving public talks, writing articles in leading journals like the Times Educational Supplement and giving interviews such as on Radio 4’s ‘Woman’s Hour’ on home schooling during Lockdown.
1. The Purpose of Education
Love of Learning - Emotional Education - Life Skills - Finding your Strengths - Engaging with the World - Creating Space for Childhood - Embracing Autonomy - Becoming Trustworthy
2. How Children Learn
Learning Through Wonder - Observation - Experience and Apprenticeship - Free Play - Conversational Learning - Natural Curiosity - Kinaesthetic Learning - Recognition - Mixed Age Play - Time to Digest
3. The Benefits of Home Education
Tried and Tested - Living Better - Finding Your Comfort Zone - Avoiding Tribalism - Freedom from Bullying - Finding Focus - Whole Family Benefit - Learning Without Boundaries
Stories of home educating from 14 families
4. Key Questions
The Law - Local Authority Involvement - Socialisation - English and Maths - Special Educational Needs - Addressing Distraction - Finances - Teaching Toolkit - Homeschooling Terminology - Parent Self-Care
5. 101 Ideas for Homeschooling
Concrete Activities to Explore - The Highly Sensitive Child - School vs. Homeschool Schedule Comparison - Common Arguments for Sending Children to School
Timely comparison of home vs. mainstream school for post Lockdown choices
Straight-talking, tried-and-tested methods for homeschooling parents
Common-sense wisdom from a professional teacher-turned home-educator
Engages children with creative, self-directed learning for life
Benefits of home-schooling options and how to get started
Empowering home learning resources – websites, blogs, books and FAQs
Legal overview so you can deal with the education authorities
Inspirational stories from 14 homeschooling families
Revealing interviews with a home-educated young person and a home educator
Conversational style – highly readable and seeringly honest
Annotated bibliography and index
101 ideas for homeschooling
“This tour de force is laced throughout with pedagogical wisdom derived from a rich combination of common sense, emotional intelligence, acute perception and professional insight. It could only have been written by a thoughtful, playful, critically minded teacher who has struggled with the mainstream system, and then compared it with her own experience of home schooling. A landmark text in the evolving history of the home education movement, it is essential reading for all progressively minded educators.” - Dr Richard House, editor of Too Much, Too Soon?
