Curriculum in simple words is the content of a course of study. It is a plan of activities that serves to guide towards a learning outcomes.
National curriculum is set by the government to be implemented in all schools to all children at the same time in their school life. Because of this it is standardised and what children learn does not take into account any differences and specific needs. It make sense for government and teachers in the classroom environments where there is need for standardised targets and framework. But what about home educators? Is it helpful or not really?
Well… the answer depends on your own circumstances, priorities and approach to learning.
However, at every level of study and in every teaching style, I would find places for a curriculum!
As a source of reference to the expected standards, as well as just a good start! Having a curriculum as a foundation upon which you base child learning can be useful.
Use it as a helpful tool at the beginning of your education, when you are not yet sure what you want to achieve, and use it as a point of reference during your education.
As a basis for planning, the curriculum will serve as the building blocks from which you will devise your own plan.
You can use the content of the ready curriculum and find different approaches to deliver it maybe by looking for hands on experiences in your environment or spending extra time and designing your own activities for areas that especially interest your child.
You can use any ready – made curriculum for some subjects like Maths and English but approach other subjects in more practical ways. Science and baking goes together very well and everyone is happy with having the end product for dessert!
Some parents (and bless them for creativity!) prefer not to have any pre-designed program of any sort and allow children to led the learning, through day to day activities, projects or any other methods. In our house we like the structure of ready – made curriculum and time-tables but always try to find ways to consolidate learning via hands-on experiences, linking subjects together as well as finding connections to real life. Wait till I tell you about fraction pizzas, game of train companies (for this one I have to fully give the credit to my boys who thought it through… ) or other practical ways to incorporate learning into everyday life.
If you are interested in our choices of curriculum check out this post.
But how the initial planning looked like for me at the beginning?
First of all, I determined which subjects were important to us and checked what the school’s curriculum for these subjects looked like. I knew I would like to have English, Maths, History and Sciences which are standard subjects taught at schools. I also wanted to add my native language lessons, catechism and nature studies, which are not included in National Curriculum. I started looking through samples of programs and books from various publishers from both England and the USA.
These step took me long time as there is so many resources that sometimes it may feel overwhelming. Again, it is good to think of your priorities in education and focus on those programs that will help you to achieve your goals. Ask yourself questions:
- what do I want my children to achieve academically,
- what are their interests,
- what are they strengths and weaknesses?
We are Christian family and I was naturally attracted to those publishers with Christian ethos as well as those who offered a lot of good literature and real life references.
In the end, I chose the ones that suited me best at that time – it was a mix of different programs for different subjects and some of them did not reflect the British Curriculum. For example, for English I use American Curriculum called The Good and the Beautiful but I still reference to National Curriculum to make sure my boys are on track for what is consider a standard at their age. If needed I supplement with other resources like workbooks or subscriptions to UK educational websites.
It is worth mentioning that exercise books from English publishers like CGP, Collins, Letts are already prepared for the National Curriculum and build in difficulty in steps. They could be helpful to make sure that our children are not missing on a particular subjects or topics. As a matter of fact many parents who have children at school use these resources to additionally practice with their children what they are learning at the moment at school.
However, these books themselves are not a substitute for education! They are mostly academic in content so will not offer practical learning, and could easily become boring – we use them as a backup of other more rounded and balanced programs.
One of the advantage of ready-made curricula is that many of them offer various methods of delving into the topic. For example, learning descriptive language by studying beautiful paintings, preparing drama performance from famous children’s books or creating art pieces from the area of your geographical studies etc…
Curriculum is a tool to help you to educate your children, can be modified or designed entirely by yourself and suit your and your child individual learning style and goals. And one final thought on curriculum – I continually research programs, look for new ideas and review how the system we implemented works for us!
Home educators are not required by law to stick to English National Curriculum but it is available for your references here: www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-curriculum.
