https://linktr.ee/the_homeschoolingmentor

MasterMama, Birmingham (2026)

26/08/2026

Three problems. That's genuinely it.

I've been helping mums homeschool since 2020 and whatever a mum brings me, it traces back to one of the three on these slides.

Here's what I want you to notice about all three though.👇

Not one of them is solved by buying something.

That's the part that costs mums the most because buying is the thing that feels like progress. Another curriculum. Another bundle of printables. Another folder of activities saved and never opened.

Meanwhile the actual problem sits untouched and it isn't a shortage of resources. It's that nobody has ever told you which decisions come first.

I know where that leads because I met the end of it for years as an intervention teacher.

Children of eight and nine, labelled behind. Not one of them was. Every one had been taught something before the foundation underneath it was ready and the gap that created had been growing quietly for years while everything looked fine on the surface.

By the time I met them we weren't teaching skills any more. We were rebuilding a child's belief that they could learn, and that takes far longer than the skill ever did.

That's what I want you to avoid, and it's completely avoidable.

The mums who feel calm in October aren't the ones who bought the best curriculum in August. They're the ones who got these three things straight before they started.

Clear on what they want for their child. A rhythm that fits their real week. Learning matched to the child in front of them rather than the average one on the page.

That's the whole 3M Method. Three things, in that order, instead of a hundred decisions at once.

👉 Comment 3M to join my free training and I'll send you all three workbooks.❤️

Work through them before we meet, then bring them along with your questions and I'll help you figure it out for your own child. The training runs at the beginning of September, before you start.

💾 Save this one. Then tell me which of the three is hardest for you right now.

25/08/2026

Finland doesn't teach a child to read until they're seven. They also produce some of the best readers in the world.

Both of those are true and most people can only believe one at a time.

So what happens in those years instead?

This is the bit that changed how I taught and it's the reason I now help mums homeschool rather than teaching in a classroom.

The EPPE Project followed thousands of children through their early years to find what actually predicted how well they'd do later.

It wasn't how much content they covered, or how early they started.

It was something called sustained shared thinking. A child deeply absorbed in one thing, working it out alongside an adult, uninterrupted.

Think about that. What mattered most was a child being given time and someone to think with.

And this is exactly what I experienced when I was teaching.

The lessons that changed children weren't the ones where we covered the most. They were the ones where a child got stuck on something interesting and I had room to stay there with them.

In a class of thirty, that room barely exists. There's a curriculum to get through and twenty-nine other children needing you.

Homeschooling your child, it's Tuesday morning.

That's the advantage nobody mentions when you're wondering whether you're qualified to do this. You can't give your child thirty classmates. You can give them the thing the research says matters most and a school genuinely cannot.

Which is why I don't teach mums to follow a curriculum. I teach them to build learning around their own child. What they can already do, what they're ready for, what they love, how they learn.

That's what a personalised education actually means, and it's the whole reason homeschooling works so well at this age.

👉 If you're planning to start homeschooling your 3-6 year old this September and don't know where to begin, comment 3M and I'll send you an invitation to my free training.

In ninety minutes you'll know what your child is ready for, what to teach and when, and how to plan a whole year around them. Come live and you'll get my Yearly Planner to do it with, plus your own questions answered on the night. ❤️

24/08/2026

"Quietly falling behind" is a strange phrase, so let me tell you what it actually looks like, because it is nothing like what most people picture.

It isn't a child who can't do the work.

It's a child who can do about seventy percent of it.

They keep up. Nobody is worried. They answer in the easy bits and go quiet in the harder ones, and because they're four or five, nobody reads that as anything other than a personality.

The missing thirty percent doesn't announce itself. It just quietly stops the next thing from landing properly.

Then the next thing after that.

I spent years as an intervention teacher, which means I met these children later, usually at eight or nine, when the gap had finally grown big enough for someone to notice.

And here's what I want you to know, because it's the whole reason I do this work.

Not one of them was behind when they started.

Every single one had been moved on before something underneath was ready. Nobody was careless. The curriculum simply had a schedule, and children don't.

By the time a gap is visible, it has usually been forming for years, and the child has already drawn conclusions about themselves.

That's the part that takes longest to undo. Not the phonics. The belief.

So when I say the difference isn't the curriculum, I mean it precisely. A good curriculum aimed at the wrong starting point produces exactly this. So does an expensive one.

What prevents it is embarrassingly unglamorous. Knowing where your child actually is before you begin. Building a rhythm you can keep. Teaching in the way this child learns.

That's the 3M, and it's the whole thing.

You have the advantage I never had with thirty children in front of me. You can see the missing thirty percent, on the day it happens, and stop to fill it in. ❤️

👉 Comment 3M and I'll send you the link to my free training in September. Thirty seconds, and you'll walk away with the full framework, my Yearly Planner to map your own child's year, and your own questions answered live.

💾 Save this if you're starting in September.

11/08/2026

Almost every new homeschooling mum makes the same mistake first.

She chooses the curriculum, then tries to make her child fit it.

And no...

That is not a mum doing it wrong. It is the only order anyone ever shows you. Every group, every article, every ad starts at the curriculum.

But a curriculum cannot fit a child you haven't mapped yet.

Here is what actually decides whether a curriculum works for your 3-6 year old 👇

👉 your why, what you genuinely want this year to give them
👉 where your child actually is, not where their age says they should be
👉 what they love, because interests are the way in, not a distraction
👉 how they learn, whether they need to move, talk, or see it first
👉 how much prep time you honestly have, not the time you wish you had
👉 how you want to teach, structured or gentle or somewhere between

Nothing on that list is about the curriculum. That is the whole point.

And this is exactly what I experienced when I was teaching.

In fifteen years in education I taught the same scheme to hundreds of children. Same book, same order, same lesson.

It transformed some of them and quietly overwhelmed others.

The book never changed. The child did.

That is also why two mums can swear by two completely different curricula and both be telling you the truth. It fitted their child. It says nothing at all about yours.

As an intervention teacher I saw the other end of this too. Children who had been called behind, who were nothing of the sort. They had been started in the wrong place, in a scheme that was never built for them.

So before you spend a penny, sit with those six questions. Write your answers down, roughly, on one page.

Then look at any curriculum and ask a different question. Not is this the best one, but does this match the six things I just wrote.

The decision goes from months of scrolling to about ten minutes. ❤️

💾 Save this before you buy anything.

👇 Which of the six had you never thought about?

Comment GUIDE and I'll send you my free curriculum guide. It walks you through the different options so you can choose the one that actually fits your child.

10/08/2026

There are three separate skills hiding inside what we call concentration. Most of us only ever notice them when they fail.

1️⃣ Working memory
👉 Holding something in mind while you use it. "Go upstairs, get your socks and bring me the book." Three items, and your child arrives with none of them.

2️⃣ Inhibitory control.
👉 Stopping the first impulse. Not grabbing. Not shouting the answer. Not touching the thing you just said not to touch.

3️⃣ Cognitive flexibility.
👉 Switching. Stopping one activity and starting another without the whole morning collapsing.

Diamond and Lee (2011) reviewed what actually strengthens these in young children. Not worksheets. Not being told to concentrate.

✅ Games with rules.
✅ Movement.
✅ Music.
✅ Anything where a child has to hold a rule in mind and stop themselves breaking it.

And this is exactly what I experienced when I was teaching.

When a child could not settle, I stopped looking at the child and looked at three things instead.

👉 How long the task was.
👉 Whether they could see the end of it.
👉 And whether the instruction had more parts than they could hold.

Shorten it, show them the finish, cut the instruction to one step and the same child who "could not focus" would finish the work.

Here is the part most mums are never told. These three skills predict how a child copes with formal learning more reliably than knowing letters or numbers does.

A child who can hold an instruction, wait and switch tasks will learn almost anything you put in front of them. A child who cannot yet will struggle with the very same lesson.

So if your mornings keep falling apart, it is worth asking whether the problem is the work at all, or how much executive function that work quietly demands. ❤️

💾 Save this. It changes what you see when the next lesson goes wrong.

04/08/2026

A child can know every single letter sound and still not be able to read.

It looks like something has gone wrong. It usually means one skill underneath was skipped.

One piece of research changed how I taught reading permanently.

In Oxford, Bradley and Bryant (1983) tested hundreds of four year olds on something that had nothing to do with letters. Could they hear rhyme, and spot the odd word out by its sound. Cat, hat, pig.

Then they followed those same children for years.

Think about that.

How well a child could hear sounds, before any reading teaching had started, predicted how well they would read later on.

And this is exactly what I experienced when I was teaching.

As an intervention teacher, the children sent to me for reading had almost always been given more phonics. More flashcards. More repetition of the letters.

So I would stop and check something else. I would say two words and ask if they sounded the same at the end.

And a lot of them could not tell.

They were being asked to blend sounds together that they could not yet hear apart. No amount of extra phonics fixes that.

Phonics is the map. Phonological awareness is the ability to hear the ground it describes.

Many mums start at the letters, because every reading scheme opens there and nobody tells you there is a stage before it. You were never shown this. It is not in the box.

Here is what builds it, and none of it needs a worksheet 👇

👉 clap the beats in names, but-ter-fly, three claps
👉 say two words, ask if they rhyme
👉 I spy with my little ear, using the first sound not the letter
👉 swap a sound to make a silly word, cat, bat, mat
👉 pause before the rhyme in a familiar book so your child fills it in

Five minutes of this in the car does more for your 3-6 year old's reading than an hour of flashcards. And when the letters do arrive, they land on something solid instead of floating.

That is the difference between a child who finds reading hard and a child for whom it quietly clicks. ❤️

💾 Save this before your next reading session.

👇 Can your child hear which words rhyme? Try one round today and tell me how it goes.

03/08/2026

Every learning struggle sits on top of a hidden foundation.

Not effort. Not ability. A foundation.

And when a child struggles, almost nobody looks underneath. We look at the thing that went wrong on the page.

One piece of research changed how I saw this permanently.

The EPPE Project followed thousands of children through their early years to find out what actually predicted how well they went on to do.

It was not how much content they covered. It was not how early they started.

👉 It was the quality of what happened in those first few years, before formal learning ever began.

Think about that.

What decided how a child did at eleven was largely built before anyone was teaching them properly at all.

And this is exactly what I experienced when I was teaching.

As an intervention teacher I sat with hundreds of children who had been labelled behind. I was meant to fix the reading, the writing, the maths.

But the reading was almost never the problem. The child could not hear the sounds inside words yet.

The writing was almost never the problem. The hand was not strong enough to hold the pencil steady.

I was being asked to fix the top floor of a house while the ground floor was still missing.

No amount of practice fixes a skill that is sitting on a foundation that was never built.

Many mums never hear about any of this, because curriculums are written to start at the letters and the numbers. They assume the foundation is already there. Nobody tells you to check.

So this week I'm going through all five with you 👇

👉 reading and the skill that comes before letters
👉 writing and what a hand needs before a pencil
👉 maths and why counting is not understanding
👉 focus and why it is a skill, not a behaviour
👉 confidence and how it quietly gets lost

If you are planning your first homeschool year, this is the part I would get right before you buy anything. ❤️

💾 Save this so you have the whole map in one place.

👇 Which one of the five had you never heard of?

Follow along, I'm covering one a day this week.

27/07/2026

Stop asking which curriculum is best.

After fifteen years in education and intervention work, I can tell you the real answer. It's the one almost no one gives.

Two mums can swear by two completely different curricula and both be completely right. That is not a contradiction. It's the whole point.

Follow me this week. I'm going to share what to understand before you choose anything.

Save this so you don't lose it. ❤️

16/07/2026

Over the years, I watched this happen more times than I could count.

A four year old, bright and curious, full of questions on the carpet. Then a pencil and a worksheet appear, and something in them quietly closes. "I can't do it," before they have even tried.

They could do it. They just weren't ready to do it that way yet. But nobody had told them that, so they drew their own conclusion, the way small children do.

They decided they were the problem. 💔

That is the part that still stays with me 👇

A four year old cannot think "this task is too advanced for where I am." They don't have those words. So when something is too hard too soon, they reach for the only explanation they have. "I'm not clever. I'm not good at this."

And once a child believes that, they stop trying. Nobody keeps working at the thing they have already decided they are bad at.

The gap in what they know was never the real danger. A gap you can close in a few weeks, once they are ready. What takes years to rebuild is a child's belief that they can.

Here is what worked, every single time I saw it 👇

1️⃣ Stop the task. Pushing harder only deepens the "I can't."

2️⃣ Go back to something they can already do easily and confidently. Something that makes them feel clever again.

3️⃣ Stay there longer than feels necessary. Let the wins stack up, then step forward gently from solid ground.

A child who feels capable will try anything. A child who feels they can't will avoid it all. Your first job was never to get them ahead. It was to protect the belief that they can.

Has your child ever decided they are "bad" at something before really giving it a go? Tell me below. ❤️

13/07/2026

Let me tell you what those first weeks of school actually looked like from the front of the room.

Every September, a new group of four year olds would arrive.

Some could already write their name. Some couldn't yet hold a pencil in a way that felt comfortable.

Same age. Same room. Worlds apart in how their brains and bodies had developed.

And then we'd hand them all the same worksheet.

The children who weren't ready didn't just fail quietly and move on.

They decided, very early, that they were "bad at this." At four. That belief is so much harder to undo than the skill ever was.

Here is the part most people never hear 👇

In Finland and Estonia, children don't sit down to formal reading and writing until they are seven. The years before that are built around play, talking, movement and real experiences. And far from falling behind, those children go on to top the reading rankings in Europe.

The early years are not a delay before the learning starts. They are the foundation the learning is built on.

Cambridge found the same thing when they assessed children at school entry. The spread at four is enormous, and readiness never arrives neatly on a timetable.

So when a task feels too hard for your child, try this 👇

1️⃣ Name the task honestly. The pencil grip. Sitting still to write. A page of sums.

2️⃣ Ask yourself: is my child not able to do this, or not ready yet? Frustration and avoidance usually mean not ready, rather than not able.

3️⃣ If it is readiness, put the formal version away and build the foundation underneath it first. Strengthen little hands with play before the pencil. Count real objects before the worksheet.

A child who is given time doesn't stay behind. They very often overtake the ones who were rushed.

Start with the child in front of you, not the age on the box.

What is the one task your child finds hardest right now? Tell me below and I'll tell you if it sounds like readiness. ❤️

MasterMama

26/08/2026

25/08/2026

24/08/2026

11/08/2026

10/08/2026

04/08/2026

03/08/2026

27/07/2026

16/07/2026

13/07/2026

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The School

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Listing takedown request