When we tell Orchard families that we expect around 20 hours of purposeful learning each week, I think it can be difficult to picture what that really means. Twenty hours can sound like a lot. Or, if you are comparing your homeschool with a child who leaves for school in the morning and doesn't return until mid-afternoon, it can sound surprisingly little. So let's put those 20 hours into perspective. A school week isn't 25 hours of lessons A child may be away from home for si

Two of the questions parents ask me most often when they are thinking about homeschooling is: “But how am I going to teach them everything?” and How much teaching do we parents really have to do? The answer is — you probably aren’t. Homeschooling does not mean recreating a classroom at the kitchen table, with a parent standing at the front explaining every lesson. Nor does it mean handing a child a pile of worksheets on Monday morning and hoping for the best. There is a much

September is suddenly not very far away, and things are getting busy behind the scenes at Orchard Homeschooling. How are we getting ready for September? We are welcoming new families, getting our existing families ready for the new year and putting together the first weekly learning packs ready for Week 1 on 1 September. There has also been a lot of work going on with the curriculum over the summer. We have been looking carefully at what our children will be learning this yea

This is probably the question I am asked more than any other. "I'm not a teacher. Can I really homeschool my child?" My answer is always the same. Yes! In fact, most of the parents at Orchard are not teachers. You don't need to know everything. You don't need to stand at the front of a classroom. You don't need to recreate school at home. What you do need is a willingness to learn alongside your child. You already have the most important qualification to homeschool your chil

Well done, everyone, for looking after yourselves last week! We had the perfect storm of very high temperatures, high humidity and exceptionally high pollen counts. For many families, this meant poor sleep, reduced concentration and increased frustration, making learning much more difficult than usual. Now that the worst of last week's disruption has settled down, we have the final three weeks left until the end of term. During this time, we need to: Finish any work that was

Discover the Orchard Training Programme: A Complete, Flexible Approach to Home Education The Orchard Training programme offers a rich and structured learning experience designed especially for home-schooling families. Learners benefit from a blend of virtual classroom lessons , personalised 1-to-1 sessions , and a range of optional enrichment clubs—including gardening, cooking, and film—bringing education to life beyond the screen. Each week, our homeschooling learners receiv

Tomorrow marks the final day of the Autumn term. It has been a very long 15 weeks, with Covid and norovirus affecting us in the first half of term, followed by a particularly tough half term that ended with three weeks of flu. This flu has hit our younger home schoolers and their parents especially hard, with some of our families feeling the effects for over 3 weeks. Despite all of this, the resilience and commitment across our community has been remarkable. Over the course o

Week 15 - of our Rethinking Schools Series In this our final post on Rethinking School and this week we are turning our attention to the...

Week 13 - of our Rethinking School Series Last week, we explored the growing link between mental health challenges and the decision to...

Week 13 - of our Rethinking School Series Last week, we explored the challenges ADHD students face when formal support ends, and how some...