Honey, I Homeschooled the Kids: A personal, practical and imperfect guide

Honey, I Homeschooled the Kids” is utterly brilliant. It’s honest, raw, and one hundred percent authentic in that it connects with so many feelings and experience we’ve all had and are having. As an educator myself it’s tough at times to truly communicate my desires for my child when it’s adherently different that what societal norms are, and what I am plague with upholding each day at work in the school building. My greatest of days are ones that fill me with pleasure and purpose when I can deviate from the script (sorta speak) and give my students opportunities to grapple with ideas that invigorate them with a deep hunger to know more and do more. As long as politicians run the education systems huge amounts of students will fall victim to never realizing their true potential, talents or desires. Thank you for letting me know I’m not alone in my thoughts and views; that it’s ok to be scared and even more alright to go against the grain. I feel as horrible as this pandemic has been that making the choice to turn away from traditional schooling may be the silver lining or the rainbow from the storm. I’m looking at this an an opportunity for exploration and discovery. This is an easy read that will leave you reflecting and analyzing in the best of way.

This is a well-written, fascinating exploration of what it means to homeschool your child in 2020 and beyond. This book begins by dismantling the homeschooler ‘stereotypes’ in a humorous way and the writing is shared between both parents, who give an understanding into their own experiences of education, their own preconceptions, thought processes, and the ups and downs involved when it came to their two homeschooled daughters.Some children and teenagers find the traditional educational route a struggle. Private schools may be too competitive and give the child less freedom - a shy child might struggle to keep up in an intense learning environment. In some schools a child may be bullied by their peers... there are many reasons why you’d consider homeschooling. If your child’s grades are slipping, they have anxiety that goes beyond ordinary school anxiety, they have lost that passion in their eyes, and they have become miserable, then homeschooling is not just a last resort, but is a viable, exciting new way of learning. It can (and this book proves) become an excellent alternative.This isn’t a book that belittles the traditional school system and acknowledges that it works for many children and is the stepping stone towards higher education. However, what this book does very well is gives you another option, another way to get your children passionate about learning and seeing what makes them tick; what subjects are they drawn towards? How can learning be fun, engaging, interesting?The book addresses a typical day in the life of a homeschooler. There is no rigid schedule and learning can be condensed into half hour slots (the one-on-one independent learning is far more condensed and stimulating than it would be in a busy classroom environment.) There are plenty of opportunities to meet up with small study groups, join clubs, go on school trips and become socialised.The curriculum is there as a guide but you can approach subjects in creative ways. For example, one daughter in the book would write a song from the perspective of different characters combining the historical context and the imagination to gage the motives behind the oppressor and the oppressed in post slavery America where lunching was still commonplace. This information was then used to comment on current affairs with George Floyd and the politics of Black Lives Matter. Many subjects overlap in this way and learning isn’t simply ticking off facts on a spreadsheet, remembering and regurgitating them for an exam.If you are considering homeschooling then this guide will assuage your fears and apprehensions and prepare you for the first step of your new journey. If you are not interested in homeschooling but want an enjoyable read that can bring back memories of your own educational journey and spark off an interesting discussion about the education system, then this is a fun, engaging, thought provoking book that I think you’d enjoy.

A beautiful book that allows you to rethink not only your own education but that of our children and grandchildren. I wish I’d had such a book when I was raising my kids. It also transported me back to my anxities during my schooling which had been ignored. This book will now be given to each of my 3 sons who have 5 daughters between them. Well done Mark and Nadia!

Let me start by saying this: you do NOT need to have kids to read this book, you do NOT have to be homeschooling to read this book, you do NOT need to WANT to homeschool to read the book. All you DO need is to have a story of your own; and everyone does.This will help and interest and delight anyone who has any kind of opinion on the education system. Even if you think it’s brilliant and effective I’m sure there will be interesting insights into how it isn’t effective for all. Most importantly though, it is a book that could help countless people. It helped me. I went through HELL in school. Funny, maybe, because I wasn’t bad at school, but I constantly felt belittled and trodden on and had my self-confidence (metaphorically) beaten out of me by some (not all) teachers.I changed over to a very small and unique kind of school for my last year and it was so different, it was a positive place to go to, an encouraging place to go to, but it also deeply saddened me that not all learning was like this.Long story short, I have always felt SO disillusioned with the system, but even that one year in that new school started to build my confidence up again, and I went on to do a BA and MA and now strive to do all the weird and quirky courses that no formal education system would deem worthwhile, but they are things that make MY heart sing.Nadia and Mark refer to this notion a lot, “what makes your heart sing”, and therefore this book really encourages and challenges you to look at what “success” actually means. At its very core, this book is about love, happiness, the human condition, interconnectedness and of course, how to cultivate a TRUE love of learning.This book has made me feel understood, and helped me to recognise that I am not the only one who looks at education VERY differently to the mainstream education system, despite the fact that I have been involved in it and have enjoyed my COLLEGE (NOT school) life. The only reason I’ve enjoyed college is because I’ve deliberately chosen things that MAKE MY HEART SING and I always try to take learning into my own hands as much as possible alongside everything else.This is a heartfelt, raw, emotional and very real book that made me teary eyed, if not then sobbing, at something at every section. It is a breath of fresh air and such a relief to read, I felt a weight coming off my shoulders at every section.One last thing, Sir Ken Robinson, who has been an inspiration to me ever since I discovered his Ted Talks a few years ago, and who has sadly now passed away, in Mark’s own words, is “threaded” throughout the book. This is the perfect book for letting his memory and ideals live on in more than one way.Thank you Nadia and Mark, and well done to Kiki, Maddie, and indeed Isobel and Fleur, all bright and wonderful girls! And well done to the ‘village’ of people that helped this family along the way.Sophie Jane Matilda De Abreu

For anyone who wants a step by step guide on how to home school your children, this is not the book for you! For those who want to learn the struggles and reasons that can lead up to making a decision to home school your children and the road to get there, then this is a must read.Nadia and Mark tell you their journey of why the decided to home school their girls and give you an insight into all the trials and tribulations they had to go through that led them to their decisions. They brilliantly explain all the research you have to do and information you need to arm yourself with before you can start.I love how the explain that you do not need to follow the school curriculum and find an alternative way of teaching your child by using what makes their childrens hearts sing and keeps them interested in what they are learning, because it is the topics that they love, taught in an alternative way, but also teaching them and giving them a very good education. I wish a book like this had been around when my daughter was of school age and I would have known how to keep igniting her passions that made her want to learn. Instead she was always very bored at school as the lessons were boring and what she had an interest in was not ignited. Read this book if you want to know the path to take to home school your children, it is brilliantly written and very honest.

What I liked most is the style of writing. It's two down to earth parents who have taken their experience and generously shared it so that others can benefit from their experience. They are not pretending or claiming to be home schooling experts, so their experience is a genuine one. This is not to be taken as a prescriptive "how to manual" - there is no right or wrong way to home school. What Mark and Nadia have done is explained their approach, and why they did it their way, why it suited their children, basically putting the happiness of their children first rather than subject the children to state education dogma. And frankly isn't that what all parents considering home schooling should be doing, putting the child's happiness first. Personally I'm of the view that formal qualifications are not the be all and end all. If your child does not know what they want to do in life yet, why subject them to choosing options while still in school? People can still take their GCSEs etc. even as adults. And that was, to me at the heart of this book, that you don't have to plan your child's education to suit the world of work. Yes arithmetic and literacy are of course essential skills, but not everyone child wants to go to university or college, some may want to pursue other passions.