Home education doesn’t prevent your child from experiencing any of those values though. Far from it. Prior to pre-school, what do you do with your child? I’m sure you visit family and friends, totter around the community, shopping, attending GP, Dental and Health visitor appointments, visit parks, play groups, places of interest; have repair men, plumbers, electricians, milk men, window cleaners, gas men, all coming to your home; attend Church or Temple etc There’s parents and baby groups, parent and toddler groups, woodcraft folk, rainbows, brownies, cubs, scouts etc After school clubs, Gym, dance, drama etc they’re not all for school attendees only :o) I’m in Manchester and the Home Ed network in and around Manchester is HUGE. There’s something to do every day of the week, and often there’s so much, it’s hard to choose what to do, and more often to find a day to stay home LOL Especially with a handful of children in a family all going off to do different things :o) Social contact does NOT stop! For most of us, the fact that social contact is developed in a ‘real’ setting, is an added benefit that we choose home ed for. I mean, in what other arena in life would our children be placed with only their same age peers for contact but in school. None LOL. So, why try to emulate that rather than what they will experience in real life? Good manners, decent morals and standards are fostered by what the child experiences, parental standards, home life etc These standards, and attitudes of respectfulness and generosity and charity, sharing, being nice to people, being friendly, they’re learnt by what a child is exposed to, why couldn’t that happen in a normal, every day life setting? In fact if the nurture of decent values were my only reason for sending a child to school LOL I wouldn’t! My children enjoy the company of babies to geriatrics. They don’t pigeon hole people by age. In fact, I think society is feeling the sting of that kind age segregating mind set :o( In real life, people are in contact with all ages, with all backgrounds and home educated children are immersed in that real social contact not kept from it. Children of all ages will play together, there’s no age related snobbery of big kids not wanting to play with little kids, or speak to or pay attention to the experience and wisdom adults who have been there and done that :o) The image of the precocious and lonely home ‘schooled’ prodigy, hot housed at the kitchen table to is very far from the actual daily practise of home educators. In my experience, sharing germs is just as easy for a home educated child, although the prevalence of vaccinating prevents many children from the benefits of such a thing :o(

although home educating your child may be legal/valid etc, it is so vitally important that your child learns to interact with his/her peers and learns to respect other adults in positions of authority, i believe that the perfect balance, if you really wanted to keep your child at home, would be to work out a strategy where he/she can benefit from both. Its also important to remember that interaction with other children will help to pass the germs around and improve your childs immune system.

Of course, if all this preparation for pre-school just doesn't feel like the right thing for you and your little one, there's always the option of home education! It's a perfectly valid, productive and just as legal an option as choosing to send your child to school (if not THE default option ;o) and it's such a shame that more people don't know about it right from the outset. I’m sure it’s an option that would suit many families, yet they just don’t get to know that we have that choice :o( Websites like this would be the ideal place to let parents know of their options and if I'm honest, I'm not just surprised but deeply disappointed to see that there are no articles on home education already in place. Being one of the first places new parents would check out, I would have thought this new venture of ‘Gurgle’ would be as accurate as possible. I hope we can we look forward to an update on info on our educational options?