Hi! My name is Milly and I am here to tell you all about my life as a home schooled kid. Lots of people think home schoolers are creepy or weird. Maybe that is true, or maybe my weird is just different from your weird. Either way, I’m fine with being called weird. After all, it is really just being different and I like having the opportunity to live life differently.
Running With an Idea
Home schooling, to me, is total freedom to learn exactly what I want, when I want, and how I want to learn. Everything I do is relevant to my every day life and if I don’t know something, I just ask someone (like Google or mum), or just give it a go and work it out as I go along. Take growing our dahlias as an example. Three years ago, I had never heard about dahlias. In fact, the only flowers I knew about were the daisies and dandelions growing on our front lawn. Then my sister Gracie decided to start growing them. And here I am now, with more than 3,000 dahlia plants, running a full fledged flower business with my 2 sisters, where we collect our own seeds from our own dahlia farm for our own dahlia breeding programme. Having the time, space and freedom to follow these types of projects is why I love my home schooling life.
A Warm Welcome
Not only has starting this dahlia business taught me all about dahlias and how to grow them, (Did you know, that there are over 20,000 different named varieties of dahlia in the world and it all started from just 3 open-centred dahlias found in Mexico around 300 years ago?), but it has also boosted my confidence and socialising skills. Us three kids really wanted to bring people to our home and share our love for dahlias. Mum wasn’t too keen and wanted to just sell tubers online. But we thought differently and mum allowed us to take charge and make our business our own. So pick your own weekends began! When we opened it was important people picked the flowers properly so Gracie and I had to introduce our garden and show them how to do it. This really boosted my confidence as here I was an 11 year old teaching adults something they didn’t know. I especially like it when people bombard me with questions and I know the answers or when people ask me my opinion as they are seeing me as an expert.
Practical Learning
When I think abut my day to day, its amazing how many school subjects come up naturally. Maths (however much I hate it) comes up all the time. And it turns out if maths is relevant and practical I don’t actually mind doing it. For example, I had to measure our rows and calculate how many cuttings we needed to take and seedlings we needed to grow plus extras for those that might not make it. I even learned how to do the 3, 4, 5 triangle when I helped to build the tunnel house foundation. It needed to be square after all! Learning really can be done anywhere and anytime. Actually, now I think about it, most of the time I don’t even think about thee fact that I am learning or ’doing school work’.
This kind of life might not be for everyone, but I am very lucky to have the opportunity to experience it. I hope I can share this magic with as many people as possible. Home-schooling has made me thrive and I feel very fortunate to have a family like mine.