Home education resources
When we started, I had twenty tabs open and no idea which one to trust. Everything told me to plan more, buy more, worry more.
These are the resources I wish someone had handed me instead. They are written for UK families, they assume you are doing your best, and they are designed to take something off your plate rather than add to it.
Start here · free
Know Your Why
Seven questions to ask before choosing home education. A short reflective workbook to help you get clear on your own reasons before anyone else's opinion arrives.
It is not a checklist of whether you are allowed to home educate. It is a way of working out what you actually want, so that the next conversation with a relative, a teacher or yourself starts from something steadier.
It is free, and it stays free. There is nothing after it.
About fifteen minutes to read, and rather longer to answer.
Where shall I send it?
Where are you right now?
Start wherever you are.
There is no right order. Start wherever you are, and come back when something changes.
You’re weighing it up, and everyone has an opinion.
The letter’s gone and tomorrow morning is suddenly yours.
You’ve stopped panicking and started wondering what a week should look like.
It works, mostly. You’d just like to see how far you’ve come.
Your child is fine. It’s the two or three regulars you haven’t found yet.
Somebody has quoted you a number, and you’d rather check it yourself.
The resources
Five things, made carefully.
Each one is undated, printable, and built to be used rather than admired. None of them will tell you what to teach.
The First Term
A gentle guide to your first weeks at home.
The hardest part isn’t the teaching. It’s the week where you’ve stopped doing school and haven’t started doing anything else yet, and you’re not sure whether that’s a disaster or exactly right.
- What deschooling actually is, and why rushing past it usually backfires
- Thirty days, gently paced — one small thing at a time, never a curriculum
- What to say to the relative who asks what your child is “doing all day”
- Space to notice what your child does when nobody’s setting the agenda
Printable PDF · A4 and US Letter · undated · instant download
More about The First Term
Home Education Records & the LA Report (England)
A calm way to keep track, and something to hand if you’re ever asked.
There’s no legal requirement to keep records. Many families choose to anyway — partly because it’s genuinely lovely to look back, and partly because it’s easier to answer a letter when you’ve already written some of it.
- Simple weekly and monthly records you’ll actually keep up with
- Prompts for describing real-life learning in your own words
- A worked example of an annual report, with the thinking behind each part
- Fillable on a tablet, or print it — same file
Fillable and printable PDF · A4 and US Letter · undated · instant download
More about Home Education Records
Rhythm, Not a Timetable
An undated planner for families who don’t run on bells.
I tried a timetable for about nine days. What actually worked was a rhythm — a shape to the week loose enough to survive a bad morning.
- Term, month, week and day, on one system
- Undated, so it never goes out of date and never needs replacing in September
- Room for more than one child without turning into a spreadsheet
- Blank space on purpose — the pages aren’t trying to be filled
Fillable and printable PDF · A4 and US Letter · undated · instant download
More about Rhythm, Not a Timetable
Finding Your People
How to find, join and start home-ed groups near you.
Friendships don’t arrive on their own. The families I’ve watched struggle are almost never the ones whose children can’t make friends — they’re the ones who haven’t found their two or three regulars yet.
- Where to look for what already exists near you, in the order worth trying
- What to do at a group in the first three weeks, if you find that part hard
- Telling a group that’s wrong from one your child hasn’t warmed to yet
- Starting something yourself — two families, one regular slot
Printable PDF · A4 and US Letter · undated · instant download
More about Finding Your People
Exams Without a School
A workbook for planning it yourself, from the primary sources.
The two things that catch families out are the cost per subject and how far away the nearest centre that takes external candidates turns out to be. Both are answerable — but only by asking, and early enough.
- A timeline worked backwards from an exam series, with your own dates
- A page per centre: what to ask, what they said, and when you asked
- The cost laid out subject by subject, so the total is visible first
- No fees and no deadlines printed in it — those change, and it tells you where the real answer lives
Fillable and printable PDF · A4 and US Letter · undated · instant download
More about Exams Without a SchoolThe product images are previews of the layout. The pages shown are representative — not the finished files.
The records resource is written for England. Rules differ in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — I’ve noted where, and I’d always point you to your own local authority’s current guidance.
Why these exist
A note from me.
I made these because the versions I could find all seemed to assume I was behind before I had started. They asked me to plan a year when I could not picture a Tuesday.
I worked in education before I was a home-educating parent, so I have sat on both sides of this conversation. I host the Home Ed Collective, a series of recorded conversations with other parents, and I co-founded Termly.
None of that means I know what is right for your child. What I do believe is that home comes before education — that the atmosphere and the relationships come first, and the learning grows out of that. Everything here is built on that assumption.
How it works
Instant download
Buy on Etsy, download straight away. Nothing arrives in the post.
Print it or type into it
Every resource comes as a printable PDF and a fillable one, in A4 and US Letter.
Undated, on purpose
Start in February if February is when you’re ready.
Yours to use at home
One family, as many children as you have, print as often as you like.
These are published through Termly, the home-education platform I am building with my husband Ed. Same person behind them either way — Termly is just where they live.
Questions
Do I have to keep records?
No. In England there is no legal requirement to keep records, set hours or follow a timetable. Many families choose to keep some kind of record anyway. That is what the records resource is for — for you first, and for having something to hand if your local authority ever gets in touch.
Will this tell me what to teach?
No, and deliberately. There is no single right way to home educate, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.
Is it right for my child’s age or key stage?
Anna to answer — the honest range these resources actually suit.
Will it work if my child has additional needs?
The pacing is deliberately gentle and there is less on each page than you would expect, which some families find helps. But I am a parent and an educator, not a clinician, and I will not pretend to know your child.
Why Etsy and not here?
Etsy handles the payment and the download, which means I can spend my time making the resources rather than running a shop.
Why does the shop say Termly?
Because the resources are published through Termly, the home-education platform I am building with my husband Ed. Same person behind them either way.
Can I get a refund?
Ed to confirm — Etsy’s actual policy for instant digital downloads, stated rather than paraphrased.
If nothing here is what you need today.
That is a perfectly good outcome. The workbook is free and it will still be here, and the conversations on the Home Ed Collective cost nothing and ask nothing of you.