Had my final meeting with A's teacher on Friday, just to check in with her about any areas I should focus on etc, and to say goodbye really. She seemed genuinely very sad at losing A from her class, which is quite touching. I do have great regard for her as a teacher. She also expressed concern about A's social life once she leaves - a familiar issue! I explained that we would keep in touch with friends from school, and that A had other friends from outside school, and would be taking part in some of the activities organised within the local home ed community, as well as local clubs and groups. Don't know if that reassured her at all.

This discussion did reawaken some of my previous worries and doubts: A is a very sociable child - will home education offer her enough opportunities for a full social life? The short answer is that we wont know until we try it!
I've been thinking a lot about this matter since the meeting, must admit that my first reaction after leaving the meeting was "what if she's right?". I know that A will miss her classmates, many of them have been in the same class since kindergarten, and it will take some adjusting to - not being in that class/group environment. But I then reminded myself of a period a little while ago when A was distraught about being left out of her group of friends, and the fact that one child with particular issues or needs can really affect the rest of the class in negative ways. So there are two sides to this.
My hope, I suppose, is that more time to herself to develop and pursue her own passions and interests will be a positive move for A's education and growth as a person. Mixed with plenty of social activities, with people of all ages, rather than the enforced social group in school with only those of the same age, ideally she will experience an even fuller social life than before. It seems to me that it will be a more balanced life, placing more importance on her as an individual rather than the importance of fitting in with the group and all being the same. (Off on a tangent here, but the headteacher of a local school made me laugh recently when we went to look round, talking about their uniform she said "We like all our children to be the same here, no one should be different". I knew what she was trying to say, but it still made me laugh as it was probably the worst thing she could say to me as a prospective parent!)
However, I am also very aware that A may not see it the same way as me, and may decide that she wants to go back to the classroom at some point. Her needs are what matters, and I will have to respect her choices.

How to begin??

Well, here it is, finally.
I have been thinking about starting a blog for some time now. I began looking into the idea of home education for my daughter last year when I realised that I couldn't carry on struggling with school fees to keep her at the Steiner School she's attended since the age of 4. My initial thoughts were that she would go to the local state school, but then I had that same uncomfortable feeling of dread as when she was due to register for reception class. This is not particularly a reaction to 'state' schools, or our local schools (which seem generally quite good), but goes much deeper and is concerned with how children are 'educated', and what mainstream, conventional schooling does to children as individuals.
I started off looking at home ed as a possible option if things didn't work out at the local school, but through reading and research, and contact with the home ed community, as well as discussions with my daughter, I decided to give it a try.
Going back to the reason for starting the blog - I came across many blogs detailing the lives of home educating families, and found them an invaluable source of information and inspiration. So I suppose this is partly my little attempt to offer the same to others. It will also be interesting to keep track of how we evolve - I have no rigid plan of how we will approach things, we both have lots of ideas, and in time will develop a way of learning that suits my girl. She finishes school next week, so after a nice long break we will start to move into some kind of routine, but it will not be formal or rigid.