I asked what you wanted to know about our first 6 months of home ed life and phew! You guys sure did come up with a lot of questions to answer!
Here are a handful of them:
What is our daily rhythm?
Highest high and lowest low?
How do I separate/cope being teacher and mum?
How am I doing?
How do I earn whilst home educating?
I found it really interesting that almost all the questions were orientated towards me and not the kids. Actually aside from the daily rhythm EVERY question was geared towards me and not the kids!
So Our Daily Rhythm is going to be a separate post (you can find that HERE) and this one I'll explain how I have been doing and adjusting to life as a home ed mum.
My biggest struggle has been unschooling myself and lowering expectations of what I SHOULD be achieving. At Calliopes age (5) she doesn't need to have structured lessons that are split into subjects. She doesn't need to be doing workbooks or have perfected CVC words or even basic phonics. I don't need to be scheduling out every hour of day into blocks of productivity. She's not going to fall behind because there isn't any one else that she COULD fall behind. It's just her, she's unique and thriving in her own areas and that is what I need to embrace.
When we started in September I planned our days from 10-3, excluding clubs. Looking back it just wasn't realistic and I was setting myself up to fail AND for Calliope to start resenting "school work time". Expecting her to sit and do x number of pages of a work book "because that's what you do, right?" was just hurting both of us, causing a lot of stress and tears. Currently we don't do any work books.
This was my lowest low point. Knowing that I had caused such resentment towards work books (that she did initially enjoy) by pushing too much.
But from every mistake there's a learning opportunity. It's made me realize we had to try a different angle and just HOW many different angles there are. It took this mistake for me to really see the benefits of home education for what they are: Freedom. Freedom to teach in a way that works for Calliope and at a pace that suits her.
On the flip side of that recently we've had our highest highs off the back of that failure. By letting her go at her pace and giving into what she enjoys we've had a breakthrough in LOADS of other areas. The iPad is something that I have a love hate relationship with but ultimately is a wonderful teaching tool. Since we've started the Reading Eggs "Fast Phonics" course Calliope has gone from strength to strength and is now growing in confidence with reading, connecting almost every word she says to the phonics used in them and I'm no longer concerned about her "keeping up" because I can SEE the steady progress she is making. We also now do a Plassroom class once a week which is a virtual phonics lesson with a real teacher. This is a 1:1 lesson that Calliope loves to do and has made me realize I can outsource somethings and that doesn't mean I'm failing, in fact it means I'm doing a good job by recognizing where we both need help!
The next thing I wanted to talk about is how I separate being both teacher and mum. The answer is simple, I don't! I really feel that it's our job as parents to be our children's first teachers and guide them right from day one.
I'll admit that I DID try and take on a "teacher" role in September, that first month of formal home ed, when we were both trying to figure out what would work for us... and as you've already read, that didn't work. Instead I've looked at how other home educating families work as a unit, people who have been doing this for YEARS or have even finished educating and are now empty nesters. The theme that I saw worked best for most people was child led learning, with the parent or carer there when they were needed to act as a facilitator.
How we work right now is that aside from phonics and the occasional math class (from a giant floor book in the form of a game) I let Calliope do what she wants, explore what she wants and then when she has a question we research that together.
An example of this was how we learnt about dragon flies. Whilst pond dipping we scooped up an interesting creature that was unknown to both of us. A quick check in our pond creature handbook meant we found out it was dragonfly larvae, but we couldn't see it very clearly. So then I asked how we could see it more clearly, Calliope got a magnifying glass. It was better, but still not perfect. So we searched online and found a close up image and saw that it had a pincer, so why would it need that? Which lead to us watching a video all about the dragonfly life cycle, finding out they eat mosquito larvae, can live in ponds for years before fully grown and that by doing all of this it keeps our pond mostly pest free!
I didn't prompt any questions, they all came from Calliope and a fun activity turned into a sneaky biology lesson. Never doubt a child's natural curiosity. Their willingness to learn is an innate part of them and will only be hindered if WE let it be (case and point, the workbooks).
All this to say, most children don't need a teacher to learn. They need someone who cares and that comes under the umbrella that is parenthood.
So.... How am I doing?
The really hard hitting question and the one that made me stop in my tracks because... well I just hadn't asked myself and it's a tricky question to answer?
Overall I'd have to say I'm doing wonderfully. Home educating has opened up a whole new world and way of living that I didn't think was possible until a few years ago. It's given us freedom as a family to travel and explore our areas much more than we used to. I'm learning just as much as the children and embracing the things that I don't know as learning opportunities. I've finally found my people in the home educating community that I can talk to about my parental fears, bounce ideas off of and also rely on for help when needed. I even went on my first night out without my husband or kids in almost 8 years because this is a group I truly click with.
There are lots of other factors that make life difficult, in fact I'll soon be starting 20 weeks on CBT to deal with some issues that I have around self esteem and past trauma, but for me home educating isn't one of them and has been nothing but a blessing to me.
How I earn
This is a subject that I could talk about all day as there are so many options, some of which I have put into place and some that I know have been successful for others but I'll try to be as succinct as possible with this summary.
I am not the main provider.
I work a 12 hour shift once per week. This brings in between £650-£800 per month
Gifted/Affiliate partnerships that I promote on Instagram (and on here)
Learning to be frugal
*I did also have my own business but I was putting in so many hours for such little return that switching over to 1 full day outside of the home was a more sustainable option for us.
I was a full time stay at home parent with my little sustainable business (that was unsustainable for me physically and mentally). I started working that 1 day a week in September to help with the ever increasing costs of living and to take some pressure off of my husband and realized how much easier life would be if I just closed down that business, focused on our children, put more effort into monetizing social media and started this blog that I have been dreaming of for a long time!
Honestly it's been really hard. I am not someone who enjoys being away from the home or my family at the best of times and nothing grates me more than when people say "Oh it must be nice to get some time to yourself. It must feel like a nice break". Yes David, I REALLY enjoy leaving my family for 12 hours on 1 of the 2 days a week that we get to be together, to run around a hospital with skeleton crew staffing, get belittled my management, shouted and sworn at by patients for things I have had absolutely no control over before crawling back to resume my motherly duties and spend the night with wakeful kids. It's a real treat. *Eye roll*. I know a lot of people DO find contentment outside the home but for me it's something I'm struggling with massively. The dream now is to be able to earn enough through social media and this platform to be able to stop that job.
How would I be able to achieve this? Affiliate marketing.
Now affiliate marketing is something that I am still coming to grips with myself. I have used it small scale on Instagram for the past couple of year with specific businesses that I know and trust ( and haven't gotten particularly far with in all honestly as my following is pretty small and the competition is pretty fierce!) These have been simple: If someone used my code to buy something, I get x% commission from that sale.
Once you start to go bigger scale there's a WHOLE HEAP of different ways that you can use affiliate marketing and almost every brand out there has an affiliate scheme you can apply for.
*This is my media kit that I send to companies I'm interested in working this. I don't add a price list yet as I'm still building up posts and want the exposure.
I've recently started using AWIN to search for different brands I can partner with and earn commission from advertising. There's no guarantee that a brand will accept you onto their scheme so here are my tips for choosing who to work with:
Only apply for brands you already use and would genuinely recommend.
Start simple. Use brands with links you can easily add to your website or social media without looking like a sales pitch
Don't be afraid to ask for an affiliate link.
This last point is one that I REALLY need to work on. For a long time I was accepting gifted products and spending a lot of my precious time promoting those products, often posting about them multiple times, whilst getting nothing else in return. If you're providing marketing for a company you deserve to be paid for that work. If a company is reluctant to pay you for your work they probably aren't a company you want to be associated with! This isn't to say that some companies should be ignored just for a gifted product, but there's no harm in asking about an affiliate scheme too (which many of them may already have)
I DO do a lot of content creation in exchange for gifted products (usually through Social Cat) however I have now started always asking right at the start for an affiliate link AFTER a successful collaboration so that there is earning potential for me and I'm not just doing work for what is essentially free.
This isn't something that comes naturally to me. I am by no means a sales person and trying to sell myself (not in a rude way) is something that I have a huge amount of trouble with, but like anything practice makes progress and I feel I've now got a good sales pitch to promote who I am, what I do and what I can offer the business in question.
I could go into way more detail with all of this from the point of view of someone very much new to this world so if that's something you would like to see then let me know!
Learning to be frugal with money also helped a lot to stretch pennies further, although some things come with an initial start up cost that won't make this a viable option for everyone.
We started by buying things in bulk and batch cooking from scratch, things like cans of tomatoes we now buy in sets of 6 x 2.5kg at a time and I can use a full tin to make one batch of curry. This means we don't end up getting take away Indian because we have convenient, home made ready meals to go! We also go to our local fruit and veg pop up who have "project" bulk boxes at discounted prices. Last year we got 4 boxes of blueberries for £2 each. Each box contained 10kg which we washed, froze and are still using in smoothies, pies, cookies, muffins, cobblers, you name it! We have a chest freezer that we bought (on sale) which allows us to buy and store these things, This has been such a gift but again was a big initial investment.
Things like reselling the kids outgrown clothes and toys also helps (although I am terrible for finding the time to sit and list them). Bringing our own hot drinks and lunches when we go out, walking into our local town, using our local library and taking advantage of free trials and discount codes when we do need to buy. For times like Christmas and birthdays I buy throughout the year to spread the cost whenever there are offers and the same applies for stocking up on craft supplies.
We don't have a lot of the costs that come along with sending children to school. No uniforms, field trips ( we do go on fields trips but the places we go are usually free), dress up days, packed lunches, stationary, school runs etc. There are other costs that come along with it but I think they're significantly less than we would pay otherwise.
That about sums up all I have to say from our first 6 months, how I earn and save money as a home ed parent.
Was that what you were expecting?
I hope I answered all of your questions. If there's anything else you would like to know please do leave a comment and I'll be sure to give you an answer!
Ellie
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