PE, art and music at home: the specialist subjects you already cover

If PE, art and music are the subjects keeping you awake, you are not alone. These are the three that parents worry about most, usually because they do not think of themselves as sporty, artistic or musical. You do not need to be any of those things. What you need is much simpler: regular movement, real materials and a willingness to sing badly in the car.

This article walks through each subject in turn, with UK-specific suggestions, honest costings and a worked example of what one week can look like.

Do I need to teach PE if we are not sporty?

No. There is no legal requirement for home-educated children to follow a PE curriculum, and no inspector will ask you to produce a gymnastics lesson plan. What matters is that your child moves regularly, and most home-educated children move far more than their school-attending peers simply because they are not sitting at a desk for six hours a day.

For children under six, Practical Life activities (the Montessori area covering care of self, care of the environment, grace and courtesy and control of movement) are PE. Carrying a full jug of water across the kitchen, sweeping the floor, kneading bread dough, walking along a line of tape on the floor: all of these build gross-motor strength, coordination and balance. Your child is not doing chores; she is working for her own physical development.

For older children, Going Out (the Montessori term for child-planned excursions into the community, typically from age six upwards) provides natural, purposeful movement. Walking to the library, cycling to a friend's house, navigating a bus route: these count.

What does PE look like for home-ed families in the UK?

It looks like life. When parents search for homeschool PE UK options they often expect a formal timetable; what they find in practice is that movement is already woven into the day. Here are some of the most common options, all either free or very low cost.

• Walking. The simplest and most underrated. Walk to the shops instead of driving. Walk the long way round. Walk in the rain. If you do not have a car, you are already covering this.
• Parkrun juniors. Parkrun is a free, weekly timed 5K run held every Saturday morning in parks across the UK. The junior version (2K, for ages 4 to 14) runs on Sundays. No sign-up fee, no kit requirements. Your child can walk the whole thing.
• Swimming. Most local councils offer pay-as-you-go sessions, and some run discounted daytime slots. Worth checking your local leisure centre's website for term-time pricing.
• Bikeability. The national cycling proficiency scheme, funded by the Department for Transport, is free for children in most areas. Home-educated children can access it; contact your local provider.
• Forest school. Structured outdoor sessions run by trained leaders, usually in woodland. Excellent for movement, risk assessment and nature connection. Costs vary (typically £10 to £25 per session). If the cost is a stretch, regular visits to local woodland with a flask and a pocket knife do much of the same work.
• Yoga and dance. Free videos online, or local classes. Many home-ed groups run informal dance or yoga sessions in village halls.
• Garden and park play. Climbing, digging, running, building dens. Unstructured outdoor play is PE.

If you do not have access to a car, green space or affordable swimming, the core remains walking. A daily walk to and from the shops, the library or a friend's house is enough movement for most children.

What does Montessori art look like at home?

Art in a Montessori setting is not crafts. There are no templates, no colouring sheets, no adult-directed projects where every child's butterfly looks the same. The child works with real, open-ended materials and makes her own decisions about what to create.

The materials

What you put on the shelf matters. Real watercolours (not poster paint), good quality paper, clay, charcoal, pastels, a set of brushes in different sizes. The adult shows technique: how to hold a brush, how to load it with paint, how to mix a wash, how to clean up afterwards.

The adult does not show content. You demonstrate how to use the tools; the child decides what to make.

For children in the first plane (the Montessori term for roughly birth to age six, when the child learns through the senses and movement), the emphasis is on process and exploration. Colour mixing, mark-making, working with clay, cutting and gluing with real scissors and real glue.

For children in the second plane (roughly age six to twelve, when the child becomes more interested in the wider world, culture and how things work), you can introduce specific artists, art movements and more advanced techniques. Nomenclature cards (sets of labelled image cards used in Montessori for building vocabulary and classification skills) of famous artworks are a gentle way to build art appreciation without turning it into a lecture. Your child can study a Monet, try the technique, and move on.

What this is not

It is not Pinterest. If you find yourself cutting out templates at midnight so the craft looks "right" tomorrow, that is adult-directed art, and it is not what we mean here. The child's work will look like a child made it. That is the point.

What does Montessori music look like at home?

Music in a Montessori setting is embodied. It happens through the body, not through a screen. Singing, clapping, moving to rhythm, matching pitch by ear, handling real instruments.

The Montessori bells

The Montessori bells (a set of pitched bells tuned to the diatonic scale, used for pitch matching and ear training) are the centrepiece of Montessori music education. The child matches pairs of bells by pitch, orders them from lowest to highest, learns the tone names and eventually composes simple melodies. The work is beautiful and precise.

The bells are also genuinely expensive, typically £400 or more for a full set. If that is out of reach, a diatonic xylophone or a set of tone bars (individual pitched bars, usually wooden or metal, that can be arranged and rearranged by the child) will let your child do the same core work: matching, ordering, naming and composing. Be honest with yourself about what you can afford, and do not feel guilty about the substitute. The learning is in the listening, not in the price tag.

Singing, rhythm and silence

Daily singing is the simplest and most powerful music activity you can do. Sing in the car, sing while washing up, sing nursery rhymes, folk songs, rounds. Your voice does not need to be good. Your child needs to hear singing as a normal, everyday thing.

The silence game (a Montessori activity where everyone sits still and listens to the quietest sounds in the room) builds deep listening skills. Try it after lunch: sit together, close your eyes, and notice what you can hear. The fridge humming. A bird outside. Your own breathing.

Movement and rhythm work includes clapping patterns, marching to a beat, dancing freely to music, and moving slowly or quickly in response to tempo changes. For older children, notation can be introduced through tone bars and written note names.

What about music apps?

Music apps are not a substitute for embodied music. They can supplement: an ear-training app, a notation game, a tool for listening to orchestral instruments. But the core of Montessori music is physical.

The child holds the mallet, strikes the bar, hears the pitch, moves the bar into place. That sensory feedback is the learning. A screen cannot replicate it.

What about cost?

Honesty matters here. Some of this is genuinely expensive, and some of it is nearly free.

PE: essentially free. Walking costs nothing. Parkrun is free. Bikeability is free in most areas. Swimming is the main expense (typically £3 to £6 per session at a leisure centre). Forest school costs more if you choose to use it, but it is not required.

Art: £30 to start, £100 or more for a full shelf. A starter set of real watercolours, a pad of decent paper, a few brushes and a block of clay will cost around £30. Over time you might add pastels, charcoal, different papers, a small easel. A well-stocked art shelf runs to £100 or more, but you can build it gradually.

Music: free to £400+. Singing costs nothing. A borrowed glockenspiel or a second-hand xylophone covers the pitched-instrument work for under £20. Tone bars run to around £40 to £80 for a reasonable set.

The full Montessori bells are £400 or more. Most home-educating families manage perfectly well without the bells.

If money is tight, start with what is free: walking, singing, a few sheets of paper and whatever paints you already have. Add materials as your budget allows. There is no minimum equipment list for a good education.

What does a typical week of PE, art and music look like?

Here is one week for the Kaur family in Sheffield. Preet is five, Jas is eight. Neither parent considers themselves sporty, artistic or musical.

Monday. Walk to the library and back (40 minutes round trip). Preet paints at the kitchen table for 20 minutes after lunch using watercolours and a big sheet of cartridge paper. Jas reads a chapter book in the corner. Everyone sings along to a folk playlist while making dinner.

Tuesday. Jas does a watercolour wash, experimenting with how much water changes the colour. Preet sweeps the kitchen floor (Practical Life, and real gross-motor work). After tea, the whole family claps along to a rhythm game: one person claps a pattern, the other copies it.

Wednesday. Swimming at the local leisure centre (£4 each, daytime off-peak). On the walk home, Preet carries the swimming bag. Jas spots a mural on a building and they talk about what colours the artist used.

Thursday. A quiet morning. Preet kneads bread dough. Jas practises scales on a glockenspiel borrowed from a friend, matching each bar from lowest to highest and back again. They do not own Montessori bells, and that is fine.

Friday. Walk to the park (20 minutes each way). Preet climbs, runs, balances on a low wall. Jas brings a sketchbook and draws a tree. In the afternoon they try the silence game together, sitting on the living room floor with their eyes closed, listing every sound they can hear.

Saturday. Parkrun juniors. Preet walks most of it. Jas runs ahead and waits at the finish. Free, sociable, outdoors.

No specialist training. No formal lessons. No expensive equipment (apart from a £4 swimming session and a borrowed glockenspiel). The Kaur family is not sporty, artistic or musical. They walk, paint, sing and listen. That is enough.