Choosing Your Child: Changing the Story
An invitation to the Learn Free Home Educators Conference There is a moment many of us remember with surprising clarity. It’s the moment you begin to realise that the “traditional”…
The View from the Summit: Lessons in Learning and Home Education
Seven years ago, I trained in VERVE. It aligned beautifully with Home Education. Alice from Streams kindly invited me to write about my experiences, and about how inclusion is woven…
Chasing Ideals vs Trusting Your Judgment
In home education, it is remarkably easy to absorb other people’s ideals. We scroll past beautifully organised learning spaces. We hear confident descriptions of philosophical approaches. We encounter strong opinions…
Unschooling: Doing Life Differently
by Heidi Steel When we first decided to unschool our children we knew that we were doing education differently. We weren’t following a curriculum. We weren’t requiring our children to…
Unschooling Together: Imagining a World without Walls
We began our unschooling journey with a simple yet radical word: ‘we’. Not ‘I chose this’ or ‘they needed that’. ‘We’ imagined something different, together. It was a journey into…
Unravelling
I caught my falling leaf this morning. Something I do each Autumn. It’s messy, imperfect, blemished, I love it. An oak leaf. A seemingly simple item, a leaf, with which…
A Community Hub: Cultivating Place, Participation & Hope
“To bring change we cannot go alone; our world faces huge challenges which are complex and difficult. They cannot be solved in isolation.”– from Community blog part one 1. In a fracturing…
BRAVERY. The scary plunge into home-education. (Part 2 of 2)
It always felt with our adopted twins, we were on the back-foot going into school. Then with our boy, it wasn’t long before the walls crumbled down. And despite feeling…
HONESTY. The raw emotions of when school falls apart. (Part 1 of 2)
School taps into so much around how we are bringing up our kids and what we prioritise in their education. It shines a light on economy, politics, the care of…
“PARENT MODE ACTIVATED!”
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts. William…
Honouring the Creative Process
This blog explores how honouring the creative process—rather than focusing solely on finished outcomes—can build confidence, resilience, and authenticity in young people. Artist educator Jemma Grundon reflects on her work…
What Happens After You Jump
In 2020 I sat in my car, hands trembling, tears flowing freely. I’d just handed in the de registration letter to remove my children from school. It was a huge…
The Power of Togetherness in Home Education
As the year comes to a close, it feels like a privilege to reflect on the theme of togetherness. At Streams, we hold firm to the belief that we are…
Dare we take the risk?
Written by Alice Khimasia My teen boys taught me to be bolder in my risk-taking. It was always my children who pushed me to relinquish control, to trust them more.…
Help! I Just Started Home Educating!
Hey there, new home educator! So, you’ve taken the plunge into the exciting world of home education—congratulations! Whether you’re here because of personal choice, or as a last-ditch act to…
Taking up the baton – a time for bravery
In 1950’s Britain, home education was something unheard of, and not spoken of, or written about. It was expected that all parents would want their children in school, and this…
Embracing Unconventionality: What to expect from the Learn Free Home Educators’ Conference
The Learn Free Home Educators’ Conference stands as a beacon of empowerment for home educators not only in the UK, but abroad as well. This year, with its theme of…
Honouring our Home Education Heroes
The year was 1997. We were living in South Africa, and my husband and I were parents to three children aged 7, 4 and 3. Realising that our oldest was…
Embracing the Chaos: Enabling Growth in Home Education and Beyond
by Caroline Clark We all have our little phrases, don’t we? For me, “embrace the chaos” is one I use a lot and often it’s misunderstood. It’s an approach that…
Staying the Course: Bringing Integrity to Your Home Educating Journey
One of the best things about Home Education is there are as many ways to home educate as there are home educators. A local parent said this to me when…
A Guide for Home Educators: Navigating the UKGovernment’s Consultation on Home Education
Introduction:We home educators find ourselves (yet again!) at a crucial juncture as we face anotherconsultation – this time on Guidance for Elective Home Education. The proposals have raisedconcerns among home…
Nurturing Contentment: Embracing Family Togetherness in Home Education
By Leah Boden Maya Angelou once said, “We need much less than we think we need,” and that sentiment holds profound relevance in the realm of home education. As a…
Embracing the Unknown: Navigating Risks, Dreams, and the World with Family Travel and Worldschooling
By: Lizz Quain, Founder and Worldschooling Parent at Trailblazing Families In a world often tethered to convention and routine, our family decided in 2016 to take a leap of faith…
The Benefits and Challenges of Community – A Reflection
by Ruth Barber The older I get, the more I realise how complex we human beings are! Despite being in my 50’s (shhh!) I am still very aware of how…
Top Ten Tips for Newbie Home Educators
by Juliet English and Matt Harris Introduction Welcome to a new chapter in your parenting journey! As September rolls in, many families in the UK gear up for the start…
Navigating the Highs and Lows of Home Education: Finding Rest in Tough Seasons
by Molly Ashton I wonder what your immediate reaction is to the word “home education”? Maybe it includes concepts such as fun, relationship, creativity, good stories, rambling nature walks, learning…
Embracing Openness: Unschooling and the Path to Alternative Education
It was 2010 when we leapt from the bandwagon and began our journey into unschooling. There was an openness about that; an openness to other possibilities, other ways of being,…
“Why In-Person Conferences Are Valuable for Home Educators!”
If you’re a home educator, then chances are you’ve attended a conference or two in your time. The reality of the last few years has meant that in-person conferences have…
Why honouring our children’s mental wellbeing is essential for learning and growth
Guest post by Julia Black of “Lights On Learning” My daughter was 9 years old when one morning she curled up with our dog, Zola and said ‘Mum, you might…
A Question of Inclusion
This blog post has taken far longer to write than it should have done. That’s partly because I’m aware that inclusion matters. Inclusion affects people’s lives. It’s important. And it’s…
A Journey of Integrity: Naomi Fisher
In a fast-paced world of fake news, tweets and clickbait headlines, I find I crave real stories, vulnerably shared and steeped in integrity. So often we only celebrate the ‘We…
Harnessing the Power of Strengths in Home Education: Their Role in Enabling Individuals and Communities To Flourish
Guest Blog Post by Fabienne Vailes Home education offers a unique opportunity for families to create a personalised and flexible learning environment for their children. It also provides a platform…
Better Together
Better Together – Excerpt from book: Modern Miss Mason by Leah Boden Since the resurgence and growing popularity of Miss Mason’s philosophy amongst Home Educators in the USA in the…
How risky is home education really?
As people who have chosen to go against modern-day norms, home educators are often regarded as risk-takers. However, given all the research and evidence around how learning happens for children…
Reach Out and Build Community
Guest Blog Post by Molly Ashton Deep within most of us, I believe, there is a yearning for community. To be part of a group of people who do…
Giving myself up for the sake of my children?
Guest Blog Post by Brittany Burton Several years ago, a friend of mine was considering home education for her eldest son who was 13 years old. Up to that point,…
“But where will the whiteboard go?!” Moving from school education to home education
Matt and I are adoptive parents to three wonderful daughters all of whom, if they were in school, would be in secondary education. But they’re not in school. Our story…
A Working Mum and a Home-educating Dad – How We Make It Work
My wife and I are not ‘normal’. Amongst our peers and our family members we are the outliers, the ones that have chosen a slightly different ‘lifestyle path’ to everyone…
Community
The word community evokes different emotions. For some the thought of ‘community’ brings up warm sentiments, for some their experience has been negative and at times, painful. With such a…
The start of a learning adventure
Guest Blog Post by Fabienne Vailes On 17th January 2022, we started our journey and adventure into home education and officially de-registered our son from secondary school. He is 14.…
Journeying in Freedom
Guest Blog Post by Stacey Piercey I can remember the moment we decided to homeschool our three boys. It was late June 2009. I had returned home from picking up…
The difference between learning and school
Guest Blog post by Rebecca Chambers of R.I.S.E. Academy* Learning is definitely a lifelong journey and where I find myself today, I could not even have imagined five years ago.…
Keeping the Big Picture in Mind: Part 2
In Part 1, I explored the importance of priorities and motivators in our home education approach, and cannot stress enough what a hugely positive impact it can have on you…
Keeping the Big Picture in Mind: Part 1
People home educate for different reasons. Some parents know before they even have children that they want to educate their children themselves, whereas others find themselves home educating because a…