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

The new Orchard year is nearly here! Orchard Homeschooling returns back to learning on Tuesday 1 September. Over the summer, a great deal has been happening behind the scenes. Lessons have been planned, weekly learning has been prepared and everything is gradually being put into place ready to welcome our families back. For some children, 1 September means returning to a familiar Orchard routine. For others, it will be their very first Orchard week. Either way, there is no ne

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

Let me tell you a true story. A few years ago, I worked in a very smart school where everyone had to follow the dress code very carefully. If female teachers wore sleeveless dresses, they had to wear a cardigan or blazer over the top. One summer day, the temperature went above 30°C. The classrooms felt like saunas, and the playground was so hot that just standing outside made you feel unwell. There was hardly any shade anywhere. In the morning, the headteacher sent a message

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...

When it comes to learning, not all teaching roles are the same. A school teacher, a tutor, and a homeschool teacher all help you learn and grow, but they do it in very different ways. Understanding those differences can help you see why one hour of work a week is never enough to keep up, especially if you are learning from home. School Teachers vs. Homeschool Teachers A school teacher works with a whole class at once. They follow a set timetable and a curriculum that is made