Educating...my kids!

Education and schooling is a minefield and parents can get lost easily! How to cope and how to support your child best? I'm no expert but I here are stuff that I do that seems to work.

I print the curriculum from the government website for that year so I know what they are going to learn. For topics excepts Maths and English, I try to plan trips. When Lucky was learning about Sutton Hoo and their burial grounds,  I took her there to see it in person! When Mahi was learning about robots at his Lego class, I took him to the Imperial Festival, etc... I find that when kids can visualise what they've learnt, they learn it better!

For maths, I tend to print worksheets to help at home. Worksheets I use are K5learning,  mathworksheets.com. We also use lots of exercise books such as CGP, Bond papers for English and maths. For science, we do lots of experiments or visit museums where appropriate. Homework the school gives is not enough and I find that at parents evening, you always have to push the teacher to say what your child needs more work with! I started the worksheets when she's in year 

1 so now i know where she needs more help and more focus! Every morning before school,  they do some mental arithmetics work!  After school, they do the work I set however now that Lucky is in secondary school, she concentrates on her homework mainly and tells me the topics she struggles and we do more work together on those topics. This exercises I give them not only puts them ahead of what they are learning but it sets them up for the next year! 

When they were in nursery or reception, I  had a different set up! You really need to use your creativity to make learning fun! So it was using  arts and crafts, cooking  along with lots of reading!

I know it looks like hard work but i find that school education is not enough for our kids. As someone who has been to schools in different countries, I can tell you that UK ranks last! If we want our kids to succeed in the future, we need to support them at home. For me and the kids, these are the thing that work! It's hard work but nobody said parenting was easy!