Category: Family

The Mayers on Premier Gospel’s Family Hour


We were invited to be interviewed for The Family Hour on Premier Gospel Radio in the UK. If you don’t normally tune in, it’s a great station with awesome presenters and good mixture of Gospel music and talk. (Listen to the live stream)
We mainly spoke about our four month adventure in St Kitts, but also covered things like large families, marriage tips and other topics!

You can listen back to the show here: 

It’s always really weird hearing your own voice on the radio. I wonder if regular presenters feel the same way!

Was there anything we spoke about that you’d like to know more about? Or maybe something we didn’t cover but you’d love to ask? Let us know in the comments, via Twitter or Facebook

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Hello There!

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Thanks for visiting. You’re probably here as me and my family were recently featured in “Britain’s Favourite Black Newspaper”, The Voice.

I remember reading it on and off over the years as my Mum and Dad often buy it and now we’re actually blessed to be featured in it! Shout out to Marcia Dixon for asking us 😊.

My blog is a mixed bag of thoughts and observations but I’ve tagged all the St Kitts related ones so when you click the St Kitts link, it shows you all the relevant posts. Shout out to my extended family, far and wide, I love you all!

Just for fun, let me know in the comment section what brought you here, or connect with us on Twitter (Phil) and Twitter (Lisa)

Phil

Guess who’s back?


We’re back on cold and frosty UK soil! Brrrrrrrr. I’m going to be back blogging real soon, but in the meantime let me update you with how many things I’ve ticked off my list from the last post.


We’ve done pizza, and fish & chips so far. Trying to keep things healthy over here 🤔


Fast internet and constant mobile data, oh how I’ve missed thee!


And finally, life on the open road!

It’s good to be back, catch up with a few friends, re-arrange the house and all the good stuff.

Now it’s back to life…back to reality!

5 Things I Miss About The UK

Our stay in St Kitts has been absolutely awesome…but there are still a few little things I’m looking forward to again.

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1. Yes! Food is at the top of my list. And fried chicken too. And chips. Ahhhhhhh #drool. But you know what. I really need to stop eating this kind of thing, so strictly for special occasions. Like first day back. And 2nd day back. That type of thing 😊

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2. I miss a Full English Breakfast. Premier Inn, watch out when the Mayers are back in town! Not only is it tasty, but with there being 9 of us the Kids Eat Free deal suits our pocket too.

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3. Did I mention the internet is slow here? And did I mention we’ve just been upgraded to 70mbps *yay*
Oh, I might as well throw in my mobile data package in this section too. The little tech things that I miss.

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4. A nice hot bath! Showers are awesome, but baths are awesomer! Some bubbles and light reading (note: using electronic devices in the bath is not recommended. I mean, who would do that anyway?)

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5. Driving! I actually haven’t driven at all for nearly 4 months. I miss it. The purr of the engine, the growl as you move through the gears, the wind on the open road, the speeding tickets. Wait a minute. I live in London. The A406. The M25. Maybe catching the rickety busses to Basseterre isn’t so bad after all!

Apologies for the blog delay, normal service resumes next week Monday (or Tuesday. I’ve been unwell plus the time zone thing keeps catching me out)

Lions & Tigers & Bats!

I shared this with my Facebook friends recently…

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Have you ever been scared out of your wits but had to keep it together because you’re the strong one? That was me last night as a bat flew around my daughter’s room! Thankfully she was half asleep and thought it was a cockroach when she came to tell me, so that’s what I was armed for 😕. The way I backed out of the room like a stealth ninja when I saw it was a bat😲

Now, there’s prayer and there’s prayer!!! Does everyone find that SERIOUS prayers need a strong African or Caribbean accent? 😂😂😂
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But everything ended OK. No dads were harmed and the bat was escorted out of the room safely and quietly with no screaming from me😊

Note: I was too scared to take a picture in case the flash went and scared it again, so it’s just a bat off Google!

5 Things We’d Change If We Started Homeschooling Again

[BONUS POST] While our journey of home educating our children has been a great experience, there are a few things we would change. Here are 5 of them.

  
Your teacher knows everything, your teacher knows everything…

  1. De-schooling. When you’ve been involved in a cult for any length of time, you need de-programming so you can begin to make sense of things again. (Now whether you think the school system is a cult or not is up to you 😜). We didn’t really take any time out, other than the summer break to really do nothing, and have a good rest before figuring out how to move forward as parents, and what to do with the children. Our initial efforts were a bit too “school-like” for our family, but by God’s grace we have found a good balance now.
  2. Take more advantage of the flexibility. We have done things here and there but this extended 4 month holiday is a great example of things it’s almost impossible while your children are in school. We intend to do more!
  3. Spend more time grounding us all in the love of God. As we’ve matured as Christians, we’ve realised that behaviour based on rules and punishment can only go so far, where as a home based on the love of God, and love for one another brings a totally different dynamic. We now intentionally make a home a place of honesty and reconciliation, but it would’ve been awesome to have go this sooner.
  4. Spend more time working on character than academics. This flows out of point 3, but basically when you have a right heart towards schoolwork and know your parents’ hearts, things go much easier.
  5. Be a little bit more organised. We’re not too bad, but sometimes we don’t remember where we got some online material from if we’ve printed it out, or downloaded a pdf [content creators, please make it easy to go back and find your stuff!]. I’m the tech guy so I’ll figure this part out…which leads nicely to my next post about tech. This one is just the final final conclusion to the series you can find here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4

Until next time

Phil

Why Do We Homeschool? [Q&A Part 4]

So here we are at the end of this series on “Why Do We Homeschool?” and this one answers some of the BIG QUESTIONS as well as some that didn’t seem to fit elsewhere.

  

How much involvement do outside bodies (local council/government/etc) need to have? Do you have inspections or have to report to anyone?

In the UK, every borough has differing levels of involvement and attitudes towards homeschooling. It very much depends on which government is in power at the time and whether they are pro or anti home education. Outside bodies don’t NEED to have any involvement but there are often calls to change this as there have been some awful cases of neglect reported in recent years. They are the result of poor parenting rather than choice to home school and so we are still free to educate our children as we see fit without inspections or reports, at least for now. A majority of questions were surrounding this hot topic!

What if your kid wants to learn something that is outside your sphere of knowledge? How do you teach subjects that you don’t know/aren’t good at/never studied yourself? How does it work when they are older and when teaching gets more complex or challenging? How will you teach your teenagers their GCSE’s in all those subjects so that they can excel? In secondary school they have specialist teachers for each subject. How do you train yourself to be a specialist in each subject? At what point do you acknowledge your limitations (unless of course you are one of those people who are good at every subject) and get a personal tutor at home to teach them or at what point, if any, would you send them to secondary school? Do they still take exams or another form of assessment?

LM: Good questions! Every homeschool parent and child has to work these ones out. Of course we cannot provide a fully comprehensive all round scope of education by ourselves, so we’ve tentatively said, as long as employers can see that they can read and write, we’ll help them all to get maths and english GCSE, and maybe a science one as their core subjects.
It’s totally possible to teach GCSEs from home, particularly if you covered the subject as a child yourself. There is no shortage of material such as free resources, past papers, and study guides. It just takes some swotting up in a subject before you teach as a parent. Sometimes a few of us homeschoolers club together to give our children small group tuition. 

Where they’re interested in something out of your depth you pray for God to provide opportunities/experiences/tuition and normally He does. PM: Our job is to make sure our children are educated, not that we do 100% of the tuition ourselves. LM: When I panic and think #ohmygoshamifailingmychildren I remember that Jesus never took one GCSE but completely changed the world, He never did drama class or extra courses in psychology or political science but had to completely rely on His Father for what He needed. Will they still reach their full potential? I still believe so, just not taking the usual route and timescale you’d expect. PM: The typical route of GSCE, A-Levels,Degree = “High Paying Job For Life”is a myth. There are often other routes to achieve your end goals, so investigate them! Consider how much of your education you use on a day to day basis
LM: Also, taking less subjects means their time can be more tailored to what the children actually enjoy and have an inclination towards. At the moment mine are hard at work studying Snapchat, Instagram and ooVoo! Keeping in touch with their friends is all-important right now while we’re 3000 miles away.

For children/parents who feel they must finish school with 9-11 GCSE’s they can always be enrolled in Secondary school from around year 9-10. I think that’s the most common option. We’re hoping our eldest will go to the local college that now accepts 15 year olds to take a few important GCSEs. Also looking at apprenticeships and work experience this year as no-one is really sure what they want to excel in yet.

Sorry for the ramble, but I hope this makes some sense.

    
What happens when they get to Uni age? Or can you homeschool to degree level? What are the older kids thinking about university? What would they like to study?

LM: You can home educate to whatever level you like if you love your subject and can make the time. In the UK the legal obligation is from 5-16 so we have one more year to go with our oldest…just 6 more to go, by the grace of God!

PM: One would like to study painting and drawing and acting, one doesn’t know if they want to go to university, but might do an apprenticeship or something as they are aware that isn’t the only route to success, and one has no idea at all!

Thanks for waiting a bit longer for this weeks post. And thanks again for asking such great questions and reading until the end of the series. For easy access, here are the links for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and the bonus blog, Part 5

The next few posts will probably be on the challenges of technology 😐.

As always please share and ask any more questions in the comments.

Until next week

Phil


Why Do We Homeschool? [Q&A Part 3]

We’ve reached the 3rd part of the “Why Do We Homeschool?” series [check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you haven’t already].

Big shout out to my lovely wife and co-writer Lisa who answered most of these questions on Facebook already so this didn’t take too long to put together.  Spongebob and Mr Krabs swimming in money…is this what we do?

How do you get paid for it?

LM: There are no tax breaks for homeschoolers, I’m afraid. You would’ve thought you could be recompensed, as your children aren’t using your local education authority budget, but I think it’s better this way anyway; at least in the UK by law (at the moment) you still get to provide education for your child pretty much how you like without government interference. I guess it would be ‘He who pays the piper’ and all that…

PM: So there are some things that would be free that you have to pay for (like books) and some things that you no longer need to pay for (like uniform). The good thing is you can take advantage of off-peak activity deals and holidays during term time! Image “Left Out” by Charamelody, used under CC BY, licensed under Creative Commons BY

What do you do about interaction with other children? How do you respond to comments like “children who are home educated lack social skills”?

LM: Interaction is most people’s main concern for homeschooled children, but you know what? Kids are kids…they always end up getting together somehow! They’ve got old school mates, a ton of church mates, some of whom they’ve grown up with from birth, they’ve got athletics and gymnastics mates, and also home educated friends of all ages, (I think the homeschool lot are more mature because they interact with lots of different age groups, and the majority of home ed kids we know are Christians or from that background, so the behaviour is usually better – home educated children are often around adults more than just their immediate peer age group). And of course, they’ve got each other – their own 6 siblings, so they can learn how to cope with bullying, being left out, rejection and teasing one another – important life and work principles . I know very few homeschooled children who are poor at interacting, unless there are special needs or extenuating circumstances.imageAre you part of any home groups? Do the children get to do P.E. or other activities?

LM: We are and either as a family or through our local home Ed group there have been lots of educational and fun activities over the years. Actually we miss out on loads of stuff as there’s always something going on but we’ve done museums, theme parks, Kew Gardens, Hampton Court Palace, boat trips, zoos, theatres, you name it! Then there’s trips with church, family days out and holidays like everybody else, I guess.

PM: There are so many activities going on around us but you wouldn’t know unless you were looking. The list is endless. Some areas have more going on than others but you’re free to attend activities wherever you like.

LM: It’s amazing what opportunities the Lord has opened up where we don’t have the resources ourselves. They’ve played hockey in a fellow homeschooler’s mini-field, then there are church picnics when someone always organises an impromptu rounders match, or shooting some hoops at the park with local neighbourhood kids, they have regular swimming group classes, weekly kick-abouts with volunteer trainers from a local Premier League football club, twice weekly athletics for our older boys, who’ve excelled to run for their borough, and my older daughter loves her gymnastics classes.

Next week is Part 4 of this series which will be the last part so please ask any last minute questions you may have in the comments section, or tweet @philmayers.

Why Do We Homeschool? [Q&A Part 2]

The first post in this series looked at the question “Why Do We Homeschool? [Part 1]“.

Now to crack on with answering some of the brilliant questions our friends have asked via social media…

How different is school to homeschool? Do you have a uniform, lunch boxes? What does a typical day of homeschooling practically look like? How much time do they spend learning a day?

Every homeschool runs differently to meet the needs of each individual family. Some have uniforms and lunch boxes (we don’t), others work in their pyjamas. I would describe our approach as laid back, flexible and eclectic. So while a school typically runs from 9:00-15:00 Monday to Friday, the beginning and end of our day can vary. Also we sometimes work through school holidays or take time out during normal term time to go on outings or holidays, like the one we’re on now.

Schooling takes many forms including practical aspects like chores and character building alongside academic work. We have a “buddy” system where our older kids help the younger ones get ready  and spend some time helping them with activities or teaching them before starting their academic work. Most mornings the younger ones spend some time with Dad before I start work, while the older ones usually work with Mum or on their own. We normally cover core subjects every day; Maths, English and Science interspersed with Geography, History, Arts and Literature during the week. We’re normally finished by 16:00 at which point they have free time, extra curricular activities and help with dinner. Later on we also discuss our day, current affairs and faith whilst together at the dinner table.

How do you split your time between the different age groups?

Daily timetables, planners and rotas are essential to our well-being! We plan things from the subjects they’re doing, to what meals we’re eating for the month. These days I prefer to plan more and improvise less.  We use a mixture of shared digital calendars (thanks Google) and laminated printouts all over the house.

We teach using a mixture of self-led learning, group learning and one-on-one teaching, which sometimes includes tutors. Each child has different needs and levels of ability, so knowing their strengths and weaknesses as well as gauging what they need to know at each age is key.

Does/Doesn’t it ever get boring? What do you find challenging?

Not for us…maybe for them! For us there’s a lot of researching, planning and re-discovering the love of learning for subjects that we didn’t always have when we were at school. There are times of repetition sometimes to solidify a topic, or if someone isn’t getting something but that can also lead to creative moments of explaining things in a different way. There’s nothing quite like the feeling when someone has their “Eureka” moment. The challenging parts are less to do with the teaching itself than character, but we’re happy to spend more time on things when needed, pause when necessary, or move on and come back to things at a later date. As adults, we’re a part of the learning process too.

How do you decide the curriculum? Where do you get your resources from?

Our children range from age 1 to 14. We pick and mix our curriculums (I know purists will want to me use curricula but this is not an academic thesis 😊) using things such as CGP, Letts, National Curriculum, material that other home educators sell or give away, free and paid resources available on the Internet as well as things we are inspired to create and present to the children. We’ve also used tutors for a few short seasons.

We’ve covered about 10 questions there and there’s still more to come [Edit: Part 3 is here]so if yours hasn’t been answered yet, it should come up in the next post or two. We’ll be covering things like exams, outside bodies, level of education, social skills, interaction and more.

Thanks again for commenting and sharing. These posts have proved to be very popular!

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