Parents' Page - 5 weeks to go until the summer holidays!

As home schoolers, we all recognise about the feeling of our enthusiasms for learning at home waning as the summer holidays come over the horizon. While it’s important to be outside, being active – at this item of the year we would normally be walking the River Thames and training for the Charity Bike Ride, we would be visiting the Globe to a Shakespeare, holding our annual fishing day etc. Instead we have been locked down and working and I have to say well done to everyone’s efforts. Recently, we have clocked up over 392 hours of English and maths. We have answered over 54,000 questions and read a record breaking number of books this year. However, it is still really important to also play outside and enjoy summer activities like picnics and garden games, even if it is just in the garden. Many of you have been enjoying growing fruit, vegetables and flowers with the Garden Club and cooking healthy foods with the Cookery Club.

We have just five weeks to go until the summer holidays and the news if full of stories about combating learning loss and helping students retain the concepts they’ve worked so hard to learn in school! I happy to say that both our home schoolers and in schoolers both have been keeping up the pace. There are one or two this week, who are just being to lag, and basically who can blame them after 12 weeks of lockdown – it has been intense!

A large number of our homeschooling families have been approached, by the local authorities, to prove the learning taking place. We have been busy putting together the evidence that they require. It is an easy enough task to do because we have been collecting the evidence via our learning diaries, by our educational theme packs, photographs and project work. This issue has been that everyone has been asked on the same day rather than over a few weeks, which is what customary. Reports are being prepare as quickly as possible around the teaching taking place.