A little home education update

Posted on September 10, 2025 by ofamily

I thought it was time to write a little update on where we are with our home education journey.

My oldest has now finished her IGCSE’s (I am really proud, she got A*’s for English, History and Biology and A’s for Physics and Maths). She is now starting her A Levels and has chosen to study English Language, Maths and Biology. We are trying something a bit different with her A Levels and for the first time we are using a distance learning course. The main reason for this was I wanted her to get external feedback on assignments. I am still quite involved as it is really self study with tutors marking assignments so I am trying to keep up with her work in case she does have questions and also so we can discuss what she is learning.

My youngest is entering his Year 10 (well if he was in school it would be Year 10) and we are working towards his IGCSE exams for English, Maths, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Geography and Environmental Management. He has chosen to do 7 subjects mainly because he finds them interesting and he is also a faster worker so he tends to get through the content easily.

It is going to be quite a challenging but interesting phase of our home education. Both kids working towards exams and me trying to keep up with them. It is very different to how we started but that is the beauty of home education, as your kids grow and change so the way you style your home education adapts.

I honestly never thought we would be here. It was never my master plan to home educate. We choose to home educate because we believed it was the best option for our kids. I still believe that. I still believe that home education was the right environment for my kids and it has been an honor to be a part of this journey with them.

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An Eagle in the snow – a what if story about the World Wars.

Posted on September 3, 2025 by ofamily

I remember reading this book with my kids a few years ago and it sparked a number of discussions around very interesting topics so when I spotted it in our local library again I had to get it out and reread it.

An Eagle in the Snow is a masterpiece that combines World War I with World War II in a moving story which raises the question of – What if Hitler had not survived the First World War? But the question is not as straight forward as you would think.

When we first read this book years ago the kids and I ended up discussing this idea in great detail and from a number of different angles. It turned into a whole discussion of when is it right to kill someone, can someone be guilty for events that they might do in the future and if you are in war do you still kill the enemy even if they are injured or unarmed. Aah there is a whole range of questions that this one little book raised.

An Eagle in the Snow starts off in the Second World War where you meet a family who has just lost their home in the blitz. You read about life during the war, hiding out in bomb shelters and then going to see what remains even the devastation that they felt when they find their allotment destroyed and their horse killed. Because they have lost everything in the blitz the mother and son decide to take a train to an aunt’s house. On the journey the train gets attacked by a German plane and takes refuge in a tunnel. While in the tunnel another passenger starts telling them a story about his friend Billy and the First World War.

It is a beautiful tale which deals with many aspects of the First World War including how it must have felt to try and put your life back together after the war. However the key point comes when Billy discovers that a German soldier who he chose not to shoot turned out to be Hitler. Naturally Billy starts going through a lot of emotions including regret and guilt.

I don’t want to give too much away but it really is a beautiful story and it deals with life in the Second and First World War.

And the ever important question – how true is it? It is based on a story that both Hitler and the British soldier involved confirmed.

We highly recommend An Eagle in the Snow, it is a great book to read when your kids are studying the World Wars.

Admin – I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we use and recommend.

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Terrible True Tales Tudors

Posted on August 20, 2025 by ofamily

I quite liked the idea of these Terrible True Tale books – they take a true event and then write a story around it. I always thought they were great to read if you were studying that time period so when I heard there was a new one out – Terrible True Tales Tudors, I said I would review it (this is NOT a paid for post I just agreed to read a review copy of the book and give my thoughts on it).

The book itself contains four short stories, each one set in the Tudor times and each one based on something that did actually happen. The stories themselves are aimed at kids in the 7- 10 age range, so there is nothing explicit or too brutal in them, they are historical fiction stories written for young kids.

Each story is followed by a short explanation of what it was based on and an idea for a fun activity you could do afterwards.

The first story is a fun story which raises a question of switched identities, could Prince Edward (who was killed) have been switched and a decoy Prince murdered instead. I love these stories because it can really get the kids thinking about what could have happened, it can be a great start for lots of creative writing. And I also liked that the mean character in this story gets punished for the way he treated the servants.

The second one is all about how some people would con others out of their money. In this case a father, mother and son have a scheme going where they fool people into giving them money only for them to be spotted by someone from the palace and they ended up being taken to Hampton Court Palace to entertain Henry.

The third one touches on how random people could accuse innocent people of being witches and without evidence theses so called witched could be burned at that stake. I enjoyed the twist in this story because the so called witch ends up tricking the people who wanted to sacrifice her (I always like a story where the innocent win and the bad character gets punished).

The fourth story touches on Shakespeare and how one of his plays was used as a signal to try and start a rebellion. This is a story which I had never heard of before so I found it fascinating, I also enjoyed the way they depicted Queen Elizabeth.

All four stories give you a good idea about life during the Tudor times and get you thinking about events that happened and sometimes wondering “what if”.

I think this would be a great book to read if your kids are learning about the Tudors and I think the stories will definitely raise a few questions and get your kids thinking about possibilities.

For anyone interested here is an Amazon link – Terrible True Tales Tudors

Admin – I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we recommend.

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Edexcel IGCSE Chemistry Student Book

Posted on August 5, 2025 by ofamily

Chemistry is one of the new IGCSE subjects that we are doing this year (by new I mean it is not a subject that my oldest did for her IGCSE’s so its a new one for us to do). And I must admit it is probably the subject that I am most concerned / nervous about. So I have started looking for resources, and this is one of the ones I have chosen – our Collins Edexcel International GCSE Chemistry Student Book.

My oldest used the Collins Edexcel International GCSE Physics Student book and she quite liked the format (the explanations and the questions) so I chose this Chemistry book based on our good experience with the series.

The Student book has been split into the same 4 sections as per the specification – Principles of Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Physical Chemistry and Organic Chemistry. And each of these 4 sections is then split into topics. This means it lines up very nicely with the specification, which if you are anything like me and want to keep checking that you are covering everything, helps.

Okay format wise it looks exactly like our Physics book so the things that we liked in the Physics book are also in the Chemistry book. They have short questions scattered throughout the text – we liked these because we found that answering these questions as you worked through the book was a good way to check that you have understood what you are covering (and answers for these questions are at the back of the student book).

They also have the “Science in Context” pages and the worked examples through the chapters (both are features which we liked in our Physics book).

At the end of each topic they have included the End of Topic checklist – this is a great summary which we always used and the End of Topic questions. Again these questions are a great way to check that you are on the right track (we always did these end of topic questions in our Physics books). But I do need to point out that the End of Topic Questions and the Exam Style questions which came at the end of each section do NOT have their answers included in the book. Apparently these answers are all in the Teachers Guide. This is the one downside of this book. As home educators we have to buy all of our own resources and a lot of the time we can not afford to buy the expensive teacher’s guide for every subject (I hardly ever bought teachers guides because of the expense) so I do get irritated when they put answers in another book which you are expected to buy. With the Physics my oldest and I tried to check her answers ourself and that is what we will try to do with the Chemistry (not ideal but….)

So first impressions are, we like the format of the pages and how they have structured the book (splitting it into the 4 sections and then the topics). I know it covers everything that we need so it ticks all the boxes. I find the pages user friendly and the explanations easy to understand so and I think it will be a good starting point for our IGCSE Chemistry.

For those of you interested you can get this book directly from Collins – our Collins Edexcel International GCSE Chemistry Student Book or from Amazon – Edexcel International GCSE Chemistry

admin bit – I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we use and recommend.

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IGCSE Geography workbook

Posted on August 1, 2025 by ofamily

August is here which means time to sort out all the books that we are going to need for the new year. For my youngest that involves the books he is going to need for his IGCSE subjects. We will be using the same books that his sister used for her subjects (with a few extras added in) but he is doing 3 subjects that she did not do, so those require new resources. Geography is one of the “new” subjects which I need to gather resources for and based on what I learnt doing the IGCSE subjects with my oldest I know that I want lots of questions (and they need to have answers). Honestly you can never have enough questions and searching for questions on the internet can be very time consuming (been there, done that and now trying to avoid doing that again). So with that in mind I thought this IGCSE Geography workbook would be very useful for us.

First things first, what topics does this workbook cover.

Well – everything. All the topics are in here, which is perfect.

I do want to point out they state that the answers can be downloaded from their site. The answers are not on the site but if you email them they do send you the answers very quickly (I did that and it was not an issue).

Format wise – this is a black and white, write in workbook. Please do not get confused this is NOT the student book, there are NO explanations. These are questions for the kids to answer once they have covered the relevant section in their student book. We have not used it yet but after paging through it I did like that they have included a variety of different types of questions and they have included questions where Maths skills are practiced (these are always good ones to practice)

I think we are going to find this book very useful (I will write an update once we have had a chance to actually use all of the Geography resources) but from past experiences I know I am going to want questions and lots of different questions for my youngest to practice on, and this helps to tick that box.

So where can you buy this from?

Directly from Collins – IGCSE Geography Workbook

Or Amazon – Collins IGCSE Geography workbook.

I have not seen these at my local bookstores but that may just be my local bookstores.

Admin – I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we use and recommend.

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