How we Home Educate

Our home education ethos can be summed up with the phrase, ‘Raising children to embrace their place in the Body of Christ’. In fact this is the topic we will be sharing about at the ‘Chess’ home education conference, at the end of the month.

So how does this play out in our day to day life? Education begins the moment our children are born. In many ways I wouldn’t call it education, more facilitation, for my job is not merely to impart knowledge upon these new creations, it is to reveal their hidden characters and then foster the skills God has graciously imparted upon them. For none of us really ‘teach’ our children to feed, walk or talk, but we live alongside our children, demonstrating how to eat, encouraging their efforts to step forward and embedding them in a world of conversation, including them before they can reply. Is that education? I think so, but not in the traditional sense. And so begins the journey of raising and educating our children, without sudden interruption at 4 years old, the age of formal schooling, but an organic process where they lead the way into the next stage they are ready for.

So how do I help them uncover their God-given gifts? It is in the silence of those moments, the ones when they don’t know you’re watching them, that you can see the early formation of their personality. The activity that draws and holds them, consumes their unplanned time, that is the beginning of seeing the unwrapped present hidden within each child.

Here’s a real life example. When our eldest was about 7 months old he started crawling and from that moment on I couldn’t keep him away from the tech equipment. Once, when he was 9 months old, we had a 5 hour car journey and I knew I needed to keep our wriggly boy still and quiet for a long time. The week before we left I popped into the jumble sale and bought an old Walkman, with headphones to push in and pull out, a tape to put in and out, a travel plug and adapter to put together and separate, an old calculator and a remote control with no batteries in it. It was so obvious at this stage what he was ‘into’ and baby toys were just not going to cut it. Moving forwards ten years and he was setting up the hifi amps and rigging torches to the ceiling lights for the sound and lighting for our family ‘shows’, which the children used to put on daily.

Moving forward to present day and he has recently spent a week organising the sound and lighting for our Christian home education holiday for 400 plus people.

Our other adult son is Jonathan, who is now 18. When he was 3 he was junk modelling buildings, colouring immaculately and doing huge puzzles upside down. I remember saying to Phil that he might have the skills to be an architect. He spent much of his childhood building go carts, treehouses and models. This term he has started his Degree apprenticeship in Architecture.

Not every child has such easily discernible gifts, but every child is gifted at something. I see it as my job to help our children unwrap their gift and then help them to develop it.

Each child we home educate will have a basic grounding in the 3 Rs, but they will also have many free hours to pursue their individual interests.

Coming forward to look at our current home educated children and again I can see particular interests on display. Matthew, Hannah and Stephen have been making costumes for their battle re-enactments. They were inspired by a reenactment we recently attended at a nearby castle and since then all things historical and battle-worthy have consumed their free hours. They learn so much more when they lead than they could ever learn when I ‘feed’ them information. Home education is often described as lighting a fire rather than filling a bucket.

One of the most fun parts of parenthood is when I get to see the creativity of God in each unique person he’s created. What a privilege it is to have a part in watching him ‘sculpt’ one of his masterpieces.

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Sending blessings to you all, Vicki