It's been two weeks since we decided to Homeschool so here's our first update

It's been two weeks since we decided to take the children out of school and homeschool .

I decided to homeschool due to many reasons , not just one and it was certainly not something I decided over night.
I had obviously heard of it before. Being a blogger I know many of my blogger friends have homeschooled and if not their were many an article to read from a parent who was doing it themselves and so seeing it from their perspective helped me understand it a little bit more.

I have to be honest in saying I never actually thought I would seriously do it myself until very recently and when I did decide it was all done very quickly .

On the 16th January I decided I wanted to definitely take the children out of school, by the 17th the deregistration letter was handed in and by the 20th I had them at home learning from worksheets in my front room.
I have to be totally honest in saying that I had no idea what I was doing nor what I was expected to be doing.
I pretty much dived in head first with no floating device for backup and just held on to hope I would find a survival mode and not sink to the bottom leaving us completely lost .

I had the support of my husband who was completely with me in wanting the children home schooled and family did not seem to mind or have an opinion against the idea .
I think people kind of know now that once I decide on something , there is no changing my mind, I'm pretty stubborn and set in my ways and if I want something I will do all I can to achieve it so even if someone told me not to, I would probably just do it just to prove a point anyway.

I decided to go crazy the first week and printed of thousands of worksheets and placed them all into files for each child. The children were actually taking it all very serious and by the end of the first week they had done a file each filled with work they had done.
Some of the children tried to push their luck and tried to hide under a duvet watching t.v for hours on end but by the end of each day I was surprised to still  find they had done something which contributed to them learning and they were doing maths , English and science at least on most days. They were spreading each subject evenly over the week and it was nice to see them enjoying the work they were being given .
By the end of first week one we found that the printing was a serious issue. The work they had completed already filled their files and they were still continuing to do more which made the paper pile up , meaning I was using a lot of paper and ink which was not very Eco friendly  I know but with all those free resources available I did not want to miss an opportunity.

Looking back now I see I made a big mistake. Instead of printing just one lot of sheets, I printed everything out x6 for everything, one set for each child when in reality, all I had to do was get them to share one or two sheets and have them work from them into a notebook which I was later informed was a better way of teaching them in a way they would remember the work more .

The second week , I thought a different approach was needed so we stopped printing the work of as much , slowed down a little and relaxed more.
I stopped writing every detail of their learning into a diary each day and decided to log it in photos here and Instagram with you at the end of the week instead.
It made so much more sense and I had no idea why I had not thought of it before when blogging has always been apart of our lives so here we are with my first update of how we are getting on . Hope you enjoy the journey with us.
I decided to take the children out of the house and take a walk around our village after receiving the letter that confirmed they were taken from their register at school and were finally home schoolers . We felt like celebrating and getting out of the house was the only way I knew how while their dad was at work so we headed straight for the park.
Before reaching the park we were greeted by the War memorial garden and instantly the children took an interest so we stayed a little longer and in the end we ended up visiting our community Centre also just to find out a little more information about the names in the garden.

What started of with a walk to the park ended up being a full blown interest for all of them. Not only did they take note and interest in the war memorial garden, they then went on to taking a look at the the heritage trail and the plaques that were apart of the war memorials in the local community centre. Without them knowing they were learning about History of the world wars and once they got home they wanted to know more.
For the remainder of the week , the children took it upon themselves to write stories and facts and watch movies, they even went to the online library and ordered books about Anne Frank and the War itself. They loved it and I was happy that they were happy.

The children have since been back to the library and picked up more books about the war including War Horse which my 10 year old daughter asked for . Our younger boy Kaiden decided he wanted to learn about the Great Fire Of London and ordered a book also and they're also part of a reading challenge to encourage reading as part of their learning.

I've had people ask me about their socialising and how it will effect them, but I explained that the only socialising in school they get is before and after school in the yard or outside of school gates and their dinner and break times ,many times the children told me they were not aloud to speak in class unless it was a group activity and they can get that in out of school activities.  We've also joined them up to an extended lesson tutoring at the weekends which they are really excited about and where they will meet new friends . There are also clubs in our area they can attend if they wish to and we are always out and about. There is 10 of us in this family, there's always someone to talk to .
I am also encouraging my children to pen pal and as they met new friends on holiday last year they're rather excited to start the process.
They've had a wonderful second week and learned many things.
They even spent time with some of the local horses who were happy for a little attention.

Feeling a little more organised , we are now looking forward to our upcoming journey and what it will hold for us . 
We are still looking for any help available, I'm willing to try anything that will help us along the way .

We also had a fantastic past two weeks for other reasons too. Not only did we encourage a little D.I.Y with them little ones in home decorating our sitting but we also booked our holiday for a week in the summer which they're really excited about .

Can not wait to share with you what we have been learning about next week , thank you for popping over .