Hello and welcome to our little homeschool on the web! My name is Claire and I am the main writer for AngelicScalliwags Homeschool. I have been blogging for the past ten years and home educating for double that.
Welcome to our Homeschooling Family’s Home on the Web
We are Angelicscalliwags, a homeschooling family of seven. Home educating my five children has been the biggest, most wondrous adventure of my whole life. It has also been the most humbling, emotional and exhausting thing I have ever done! I am passionate about homeschooling, although not because I am anti-school. I loved my school years. However, I’ve loved homeschooling my angelic scalliwags even more. It is not always beautiful, it is not always functional (!) and it most definitely isn’t always perfect. But it is always a privilege.
Since you are here, you’re probably curious to know a bit more about us. So grab a warm drink, snuggle up and let the chit chat begin.
Our Homeschooling Family
I’m Claire and I started angelicscalliwags in 2012, just after I had been diagnosed with cancer. It was my way of making sure the children had a place to look back on their childhood, as well as a means of sharing our life with our relatives in Northern Ireland.
Gary and I have been happily married for 25 years and have five children, all of whom have been home schooled since the very beginning. Three are now adults and busy following their dreams
For the past few years my blog has had to take a back seat as my youngest twin became more and more unwell.
Charlotte currently has ten chronic illnesses under her belt and has had strict instructions not to gather any more! Fortunately, she seems to be on the mend which has allowed our family to return to a modicum of normality.
Book Units
I was pregnant with my eldest, Thomas, when we decided our children would not be going to school. I started to research other options and I came across home schooling. There was something about it which really appealed. So I researched and researched…
Our twin girls arrived nine months and three weeks after Thomas. I loved being a mummy. The decision to homeschool was consolidated during those early years. We had so much fun together!
At around the age of three, I began using a workbook curriculum, ACE, mainly because I wasn’t sure what I was doing. By the time they reached four, we were all ready for a change. Deciding to go down the book unit route, I bought the entire Five in a Row curriculum with the manuals. With wonderful picture books in hand, the adventure began…
Mr Men Book Units
Homeschool Book Units
Book Units proved to be the perfect fit for our homeschooling family. Flexible and educational, they utilised all my creative strengths whilst giving enough structure to minimise the affects of my chaotic tendencies.
We focused on one main book each week as a spring-board for creating a preschool adventure box. This was a box full of toys, activities and read-along books all themed around the Book Unit theme for the week.
As the children grew, so did the size of book. We slowly moved from a solely Book Unit approach to a History Unit approach. And this meant we included all the great writers throughout history. The homeschool adventure continued…
History Unit Studies
Starting with the Dinosaurs, we began learning using unit studies. I was hooked almost immediately! This was such a great, simple and all encompassing homeschooling method. Moving our way through prehistory, we learnt about the Stone Age, then moved on to ancient history. We’ve covered all the major ancient civilisations: Mesopotamia, Ancient Egypt, the Indus Valley, Ancient China, the Celts, Ancient Greece and the Ancient Romans.
We continued into the Middle Ages, through the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration. The children learnt all about the Elizabethan Era before heading into the modern age with the Industrial Revolution. We traveled Eighty Days Around the World whilst learning about the Victorian Era. And finally, we covered the Edwardians and the First World War.
And what a huge adventure it was!
Angelic Scalliwags Newsletter
Sign Up and join the Angelicscalliwags community! I write a monthly newsletter which contains snippets of homeschool news across the world; freebie note pages and (second-hand) book giveaways, opportunities to write for me and/or be interviewed for my blog, and behind the scenes stuff that won’t go on my blog.