Homeschooling and online education

Frida and Moa attends a Swedish school that provide online education that follows the Swedish curriculum.  Moa is in year 6 and Frida is in year 8 according to the Swedish school system which corresponds to year 8 and 10 in the British system. We are now two months into the first term so here comes our first thoughts on studying the elementary school online.

First of all there is no schedule that the students need to follow so it is up to you to plan your school day/week, e.g. when, for how long you should study a specific subject, when you should have a break, when the school day should start and end etc. In short you will have a lot more freedom while at the same time be responsible for much of the planning and execution.

At the beginning of the term the school provides all the material, assignment, objectives etc. for the whole school year so that you have something to plan against, compared to the "normal school" we are used to when the teacher hands out assignments during the term. We found that having all the material and assignments in the beginning of the term is so much better because it gives you a lot more freedom.

But a lot more is required of you as parent and mentor because you have to support the kids with the planning and support them during the school day. We expect the time required from us as parents will decrease as they learn to plan themselves but compared to normal school you will have to invest a lot more time.

We have found the school day to be a lot more efficient because there are a lot fever things that will distract you (fever students), you can get help very fast (provided you as a parent are there to support them) and you do not either have to change classrooms etc.The big drawback is of course that you will not have any friends to socialize with. We will get back with a lot more details on this subject...