Are we doing the right thing? Are they learning enough? Is it okay that we take the dog for a walk in the middle of a school day? Will we make them weird(er)?
I think (hope) that this kind of worrying is completely normal when you do something that's not normal.
When it all gets a bit too much and we have a genuine wobble on the whole EHE philosophy I instinctively head to the figures. Maths may not be my strongest suit but I'm improving along with the boys.
School is 9-3.15pm. So 6.5 hours or so. Let's knock off the easy bits - coats off and registration, assembly, lunchtime, 2 x 30 min breaks, coats on and pack bags ... perhaps 3 hours lost to logistics.
Feeling better already.
Now we're looking at 3.5 hours of teaching. Roughly 30 children in the class so in that time we still need to take into account papers being handed out, repeating instructions, supporting struggling children, stretching the most able, handling any disruption.
I'm a qualified teacher but I'm secondary and these little people are out of my comfort zone. Even knowing the rhythm and challenges of school life I am astounded at how much progress children make in state primary school - and how hard and creatively teachers work to make that happen.
Maths doesn't lie though. 3.5 hours of group teach per day is equivalent to how much one to one tuition? I'm sure it's different for every child and attention span, interest and brain ache are natural limitations. One unexpected aspect of EHE for us was that we have to work in small bursts or the boys burn out fast. In a normal classroom they get integral breaks: while a child is told off, while the teacher writes on the whiteboard, while 30 handouts are passed round. At home you can't hide. It's full on, constant and you can't rely on your partner to answer for you.
Add to this the fact that the teaching is completely tailored to the child's level and needs.
So a typical day is not the relaxed, bubbling-along-like-a-stream dream I was expecting. It's intense. And we need those brain-breaks. So between lessons we bounce on the trampoline, dangle from the trapeze, head to the woods ...
But HELP I still don't know if the boys are doing ok?! Good news - external assessment is my friend. W has gone up a sublevel in maths in a very short time.
Because I'm a brilliant teacher? Because his school teacher wasn't great? Definitely not.
It's because the cheeky monkey was coasting and at Home School you can't coast. Instead you can just go to the coast. Because it's a beautiful day and we can learn about tides, fish & fossils.....
