THE GARDEN ROOM
THE ADVANTAGES OF HOME EDUCATING YOUR CHILD
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Please note that as we do not know the gender of your child/children, we will refer to 'her' and 'him' interchangeably throughout this site.
ENVIRONMENTAL ADVANTAGES
Fresh Air
Here at HEE, we believe that it is healthier for your child to spend a larger portion of her childhood outside in the fresh air and sunshine than she would were she to attend a typical school.
Home educating ensures that you and your child are able to take advantage of warm sunny weather then focus more on indoor learning on rainy days.
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If your family’s lifestyle is a health-creating one, you are probably careful to minimise the use of strong chemicals within your home.
If you would prefer not to expose your child on a regular basis to the solvents, cleaning products, artificial air fresheners, fumes, floor polish, paint, disinfectants and other toxic chemicals that are typically used within large institutions such as schools, then educating at home will suit you all the more.
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It is a scientific fact that the degree to which the human brain can function is directly influenced by the degree of oxygen it is receiving. The air quality of air in any room containing over 15 people is questionable at best and certainly does not support maximal function of the young brains. By home schooling your child you can provide him with the best air quality possible and, in doing so, provide his brain with the oxygen it needs to function properly.
In summer you can open windows wide to allow full circulation of air or even take lessons out into the garden.
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Sufficient Sleep
Children have varying needs for rest according to many influences, not least of which is growth spurts.
We believe it is vital to their mental and physical development to be allowed to sleep when tired.
In your home environment your child has the opportunity to listen to her body’s needs and sleep when sleepy rather than be trained to ignore tiredness so as to conform to predetermined lesson times.
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Auditory Ambiance
Many children very much enjoy having gentle classical music playing while they study and it is thought that it can actually enhance learning. This is a very simple thing to implement at home and is not part of the typical school experience.
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Nature – The Best Classroom
For those who live in rural areas, there is a rich diversity of learning opportunities provided by nature. If you are home educating, you will have more time to embrace and enjoy these privileges
Even city dwellers will have the time to make better use of the flora and fauna found within local parks.
Time spent in nature is especially vital to young children in order that they identify with the cycles of life and find their place in the world.
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We believe that if children grow up with a strong connection to the natural world then there will be a brighter future of our planet once they grow up to make powerfully impactful environmental choices.
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Health-creating Movement
It is unnatural and unhealthy for anyone, including children, to regularly sit for extended periods of time. Habitual enforced sitting can result in inferior development of the hip flexor muscles, poor flexibility in the hamstrings and gastrocnemius (calf muscles), weak abdominal muscles, hyper extension of the cervical vertebrae, reduced circulation, and general muscular atrophy.
These mal-developments result in poor posture (and consequent impedance of the digestive organs leading to compromised nutrition), circulatory vulnerabilities, de-oxygenation of the brain and, potentially, learning difficulties.
Although you will need to provide a chair and table for your child, you will be able to ensure that the time he spends sitting is interspersed with dynamic movement far more than he would experience in a typical school.
Long periods of enforced sitting also causes drowsiness.
When children become sleepy and lethargic in school class, it is likely that they will be chastised.
When a child habitually demonstrates lethargy at school they may in some cases be diagnosed with ADHD and put on medication.
By home schooling you can respond to your child’s signs of sleepiness by either allowing him to sleep or move (depending on the cause).
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Aesthetics
The degree of inspiration a child experiences is, to some degree, influenced by the aesthetics of their environment.
The interior construction and location of a typical school is, understandably, limited by budget and geographical necessity, usually resulting in a bland aesthetic appearance. Efforts are then made to provide visual inspiration accommodating the interests of both boys and girls. This is difficult as what appeals to the individuals in any given group will vary tremendously.
If you educate at home, you can provide visual inspiration that is tailor made to appeal to your child’s unique preferences.
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Bone Development
It is very well established within the scientific community that for children’s bones to develop properly they need sufficient exposure to full spectrum sunlight.
England is not generally renowned for its sunshine.
If children are in school during the only daylight hours in the winter, it is exclusively at weekends that they are exposed to any significant amount of sunlight.
By home schooling your child you can take advantage of the sunshine on the occasions when it makes an appearance all year round and thus enable her bones to develop strongly.
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Note: Allowing the sun to burn your child’s skin is always contraindicated. Avoiding the sun between the hours of 11am and 3pm during days when the UV index is high, or covering up sensitive skin during these times, is the healthiest choice.
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CURRICULM
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Home educators in the UK have the freedom to design their own curriculum, should they wish to do so. There are a number of specific approaches to education such as Steiner Waldorf and Montessori. These may appeal to some families while others prefer to follow the mainstream, government directed, model.
Whatever your preferences, a most important aspect of home education is the freedom to design learning in accordance with your child’s unique needs and learning style.
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Subject Matter
In England, home educators can choose what subjects they want their children to learn. As far as the authorities are concerned, providing that the child has been prepared to ‘integrate healthfully into the community’, the criteria for a child’s education has been met.
Not all families want to include the range of subjects taught in typical schools. For example, some families feel strongly that learning history is important so that the child has a sense of familiarity with the background of their ancestors. Others consider history vital for other reasons. In comparison, some families want their child to be protected from the history of wars, and other human atrocities. These families do not want their child taught that wars are acceptable and just ‘simply part of life’. Likewise, the glorification of bloody battles is not something they want their child exposed to.
It is up to the home educator regarding what they want their child to learn.
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World Peace
Here at HHE, we believe that the vital education necessary to create a more peaceful and compassionate world is not sufficiently recognised, or addressed in typical schools.
Effective communication skills, negotiation strategies, the art of diplomacy and graceful conduct are skills we highly recommend to be included in your home schooling curriculum.
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Thinking Ahead
In view of the global climatic changes and what may result from the exhaustion of the world’s fuel resources within your child’s lifetime, you may want to consider providing him with the knowledge and skills necessary to thrive, should such crisis occur. This is not something addressed to any great degree in typical schools. The inclusion of subjects relevant to coping with the challenge of a fuel crisis, and its potential consequences, may appeal to you.
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Religion
As a home educator, you are in a position to raise our child in accordance with your religious or spiritual beliefs.
Most schools strongly encourage devotion to one religion, even when other religions or spiritual perspectives are discussed.
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Encouragement of Interests
Here at HHE, we embrace the fact that children need to attain proficiency in certain core subjects in order to contribute and function effectively in society. However, we also think that for a child to be able to pursue the subjects that most interest them, and to which they demonstrate a natural inclination or talent, is by far in their best interests.
In contrast, typical schools strongly encourage children to focus on developing their knowledge and skills in subjects they find difficult, potentially resulting in the child’s loss of confidence and self worth.
The point is that, as a home educator, you are at liberty to incorporate or exclude any subject although the rudiments of English, Mathematics and some Science are necessary in order for the child to eventually ‘integrate healthfully into the community’.
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Congruency in Personal Safety
Many home educating families believe that it makes no sense to teach a child to adopt an appropriate level of caution when faced with strangers and then to leave that child day after day to be cared for by a group of people – the majority of whom - the family have never met or hardly know!
Speed of Learning
In a typical school environment, all children must learn at the speed of the average learner in the class.
Home schooling your child gives him the freedom to learn each individual subject at his own speed. As a result he is neither ‘left behind’ and discouraged, nor bored as he waits for others to ‘catch up’.
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Evaluation of learning
It is extremely difficult to fully evaluate the learning (knowledge, experience and skill) of individual children when teaching a large number simultaneously.
Home schooling your child allows you to comprehensively evaluate her learning of each subject, thus enabling you to tailor her lessons according to her individual needs so as to maximally ensure her progression.
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Tests and Examinations
In typical schools children periodically undergo tests and examinations that are designed to be generic for any given group of children. The children are then put through the test or exam when the teacher evaluates that the average child in the class is ready to take it.
For children who find any particular subject more challenging, and are not ready to take the test or exam, they fail to score sufficient marks, loose confidence in their ability to master the subject, probably develop a dislike for the subject and, as a result, may develop learning difficulties in that subject or even exam phobia.
As a home educator, you can provide your child with tests or examinations only when you have evaluated his individual learning in the subject concerned and are confident that he will pass easily. Such an approach will boost his confidence and probably increase his interest in the subject.
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Streaming
Any approach to grouping children in classes according to their aptitude/speed of learning/skill/talent in a way that becomes known by the other children is severely detrimental to the self esteem of those less able, and teaches those more able to be judgmental.
By home schooling your child he does not experience streaming and, as a result, will hopefully grow up to respect everyone regardless of his/her discovered or undiscovered talents.
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Experiential learning
Whereas in some subjects the extent of experiential learning that can be offered to children at school is very limited (due to practicalities and the large number of children involved), home schooling your child enables you to offer her many experiential learning opportunities in a diverse number of subjects.
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Play
It is only in recent times that the enormity of how important play is in a child’s psychological, emotional, mental, and educational wellbeing has begun to be fully recognised.
Copious amounts of play are vital to children if they are to understand the world they live in, be able to communicate effectively, manage their emotions, properly learn social skills, and develop their imaginations and creativity.
The opportunity home education provides for maximized quality and quantity of imaginative play, is one of its greatest assets; especially where young children are concerned.
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Eyesight
Specialists in natural eyesight teach that spending extended periods of time looking within a small range at a constant distance is detrimental to eyesight.
The damage to eyesight from Power Point presentations, not to mention computer screens, has also been identified.
By home educating, you can prevent your child from spending many hours a day staring at a black/white board or the light of a screen and thus support the maintenance of his natural vision.
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Adult influence
Most parents, especially with children too young to independently develop their own structured world-views, prefer their children to see things the same way they do themselves.
It is highly unlikely that your child’s schoolteachers will share all of your family’s unique ethical, moral, religious and political viewpoints or belief systems. By home educating, you can be sure that your child receives congruent viewpoints and ideas that match your own perspectives and social boundaries.
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Peer Influence
The speech, conduct, belief systems, perspectives and behaviour of every child are influenced by their parents/guardians. However, they are equally influenced by their peers.
To regularly expose a child to the same large group of children, and their associated mindsets and behaviours, is to allow that child to be indirectly raised by other children’s parents.
If you prefer to raise your child yourself, home-educating enhances your ability to do so while also providing your child with a rich and varied social life amongst people of all ages with whom you selectively choose to associate.
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Broad spectrum age interaction
Whereas children attending typical schools interact almost entirely with children of their own age, home schooled children interact with all age groups from babies to older adults. As such, home-schooled children are far better equipped to interact confidently with people of all ages throughout their lives.
We believe that in a healthy community, older siblings can be observed caring for the younger children of other families, and younger children can be observed looking up to their older peers as role models.
If you want your child to grow up to be socially confident and demonstrate a broad capacity for embracing all ages of the community, then home education is your best option.
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Self Esteem
Here at HHE, we believe that children are born with precious and delicate self-esteems that need to be compassionately and gently nurtured throughout their childhoods in order that they become strong, happy, and confident members of society.
We believe that being empowered with your child, rather than having power over your child, will provide the best soil from which her self-esteem may flower.
Most school teachers are driven to resort to the 'power over' approach due to the challenge of maintaining order in classes with a large number of pupils.
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If your family’s lifestyle is different from that of the most (such as being vegan), your child would be a potential target for ridicule from her peers, were she to attend a typical school.
Home education protects your child from such prejudice.
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Children learn, from a very early age, to be sexist. The collective belief found amongst most young boys of typical schools is that girls are second-class citizens, inferior people, emotionally weak, and physically pathetic. While the collective belief female children have about boys is equally as negative.
If you have no desire to expose your child to this type of sexist mental conditioning during her most vulnerable years, then opt for home education.
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Violence
In schools there is typically a significant and ever-growing problem with bullying, fighting, and other demonstrations of violence.
If you want to protect your child from such destructive, harmful and cruel behavior, choose to home educate.
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Uniforms
We believe that the compulsory uniforms required for attendance at a typical school serve to dampen the individual identity of each child and conform them into a homogenised herd.
By home educating your child, you can help her to develop great pride in her appearance and develop her own beautiful style of dress.
Given the right support and guidance your child can become skilled at selecting her own clothes on any given day according to the activities and climatic conditions.
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Illness
The majority of children who attend a typical school miss out on significant periods of their childhood as a result of having caught an infectious or contagious illness from their school peers. In fact, many microbial conditions repeatedly circulate within any given school for extended periods of time.
By home schooling your child he will experience far less of these types of illnesses and thus enjoy his childhood more fully.
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Obesity
The number of children whose health is seriously compromised by obesity has become a main topic of concern amongst health care professionals today.
The many sedentary hours children who attend typical schools spend daily in the confines of a classroom contribute massively to our nation’s childhood obesity problem. Additional causes of obesity amongst children are the habitual uses of refined sugar, confectionary, soft caffeine-containing drinks and other stimulants.
Inactive, sleepy and lethargic children commonly use these substances, subconsciously, in order to stimulate themselves.
By home schooling your child you will be able to observe his attention spans at any given time on any given day and be aware of signs that his energy is flagging. By providing him with the appropriate quantities of sleep, fresh air, exercise, and healthy nutrition that his growing body and mind need, his learning will be enhanced.
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Holidays
If you are self employed and have the freedom to holiday during mainstream term time, home educating will make it possible for you to do so and reap the delights of avoiding overcrowded beaches and other jam packed holiday destinations.
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Family relationships
Home schooling enables you to be fully present in your child’s life, rather than being just an evening and weekend parent. It provides opportunities for the maximal development of healthy and happy family relationships.
By making the choice to home educate, you will be able to be together as a family for more hours per week than you otherwise would, were your child to attend a typical school.
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