Home Schooling Part 5: A Week of Rest, Small Wins and Lego

Originally written in October 2014 as 'Home Schooling Part 5' — Updated for clarity and reflection in 2026.

Last week was a difficult one. In my previous home schooling post I mentioned that William had refused to work on Monday. His alternative plan was simple: watch TV instead of doing anything remotely educational.

There are many ways to approach home schooling. I follow a semi‑structured route. Literacy and numeracy have a clear framework, while topic‑based subjects are more flexible. We use activities, investigations, photos, and hands‑on learning to explore ideas without being tied to rigid plans.

There is a lot of debate about whether you should “unschool” a child before reintroducing structure. I’ve read more than enough on both sides of the argument to create flexible plans and lessons. For us, I couldn’t see it working. I’ve always believed that home education should be shaped around the individuals involved, not around a philosophy that doesn’t fit their needs.

We follow a semi‑structured approach. I would much rather William choose something unstructured within our topic than default to TV. Thankfully, he did exactly that.

Even so, I was wary about how the rest of the week would unfold. Fortunately, William settled back into his work and the rhythm returned.

We continued our geography theme, Our Local Area, and visited our local church. We took photos of features we felt every church should have and compared what our church included. Afterwards, we created a list and photo map on the computer. The plan is to compare these features with the church near his mum’s home.

In R.E. we carried on with our Old Testament focus, returning to the story of Noah and the ark. Alongside this, William has continued to make progress in music — recorder, piano, and general singing and dancing. Music remains one of the areas where he relaxes and expresses himself freely.

In my last post I set myself a few targets:

1. Take William out on a trip and involve him with other home‑educated children and parents.  

I’ve managed to book him into a weekly Lego club at the local library. It’s designed for children his age and it’s the first structured activity we’ve joined outside of our own learning. I’m genuinely looking forward to doing this with him.

2. Plan a substantial trip out.  

I haven’t achieved this yet, although most afternoons we still go out exploring and investigating. It isn’t a full trip, but it keeps learning active.

3. Connect with other home‑educating families.  

This continues to be a challenge. Many of the groups I’ve found are very mum‑focused, and there are still negative comments about dads in home education spaces. It’s a barrier I didn’t expect, and it makes it harder to build the connections that would support and enrich what we’re already doing.

2026 Reflection

Reading this again, I can see how much of home schooling in those early years was shaped by uncertainty. I was trying to balance structure with freedom, confidence with doubt, and my own limitations with William’s needs. What stands out now is how much pressure I put on myself to get everything “right,” even though I didn’t yet know what “right” looked like for us.

The Lego club made me smile. At the time it felt like a small step, but looking back it was one of the first moments where William began learning alongside other children in a way that suited him. It wasn’t about socialising for the sake of it — it was about finding spaces where he could be himself.

The struggle to connect with other home‑educating parents also feels different now. I can see how isolating those early years were, not because of the learning itself, but because I didn’t fit the mould people expected. I was a disabled single dad home educating a young child, and that combination didn’t slot neatly into the groups that existed. I understand now that the problem wasn’t me — it was the narrowness of the spaces I was trying to enter. 

What I didn’t realise then was that the community I was desperately searching for was just around the corner. It wasn’t in the local activities, especially those where mum‑focused groups felt excluding, but in the wider blogging world — particularly on Facebook, Twitter (Now X), and Instagram. That’s where I finally found connection, I met other single parents and home schoolers, even home schooling Dads. Not just a community, but friends, and, without knowing it at the time, my wife, Hannah and future stepchildren.

What I appreciate most, looking back, is that despite the challenges, we kept going. We kept learning, exploring, adapting, and finding our own rhythm. This post captures a week where things could easily have fallen apart, but instead we found our way through it. That became the pattern for so many years that followed.

You can read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6,  Part 7, and Part 8 here.

Alternatively, if you want to read more about our home schooling adventures later on, click here.