Children undoubtedly learn from their parents but very few of us will devote time and energy to taking on the mammoth task of educating the next generation.
We spoke to three sets of parents who took charge of their children’s education and set up a family classroom within their own four walls. “Finn had been going to preschool for over a year when he said he didn’t want to go to [big] school. We visited various schools but none seemed like a good fit, so we decided to home educate.“We have a large number of books in the house and the kids pick them up and put them down when they want to. I often read from the newspaper to spark their interest and hand over an article if it’s exciting to them.
“Every day is different and we don’t follow a curriculum. Depending on the children’s interests we sometimes use school books although generally materials come from the adult world. Cara spent a large portion of her day on maths for the last few years and now that’s flipped over to reading and writing. Finn started to read when he was very young and now he does a lot of writing on the computer.