Home Education - Our Journey
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How To Raise a Family of Readers
How to raise a family of readers? Reading in our household is an integral part of our family culture: our children are read to from birth through to their teenage years, reading independently is nurtured, and reading as a pastime is highly valued. Our children are surrounded by books as our home literally contains thousands of books: books purchased, gifted and found at book sales. Both my husband and I are readers as are our children; conversations, activities and movie watching are entwined around our love of reading. Simply, reading is something we do as a family. Reflecting upon how we have grown a reading culture, I decided to ask…
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Homeschool Burnout & Recovery
Nearly twelve years ago we achieved our dream, one we’d been working towards for years. We finally purchased our rural property! It was the best of both worlds, 147 acres/49 ha only 15 minutes from town. The property was everything we had looked for with the variety we wanted. It was; cleared, semi-cleared and bush, there were flats and hills, a creek and dams. Plenty of land for the children to explore and enjoy, a dam to swim in complete with a flying fox and canoes, space for a dune buggy to roar around in and trees to build a tree house in, places to go camping, freedom to be…
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The Way We Learn
Joining up with fellow Aussie homeschool families once again to bring to you our unique perspectives about a variety of ‘not back to school‘ topics, hosted by Kylie from Our World Wide Classroom. This week we’re chatting about ‘The Way We School,’ talking about not only our philosophies but how this looks in the reality, what our home education routine really looks like. We have been home educating for nearly two decades now and our Home Education Journey has undergone many changes along the way. The dreams and visions we began with have either gained clarity along the way or been abandoned. Other areas we didn’t even consider of importance…
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It Takes a Community
Twenty five years ago my mother began home educating my younger siblings, this was a pivotal time to be home educating in NSW, Australia. Home education was little known and illegal, my mum fought for rights that her children and in turn her grandchildren have enjoyed. A couple of years after mum made this brave decision, the political climate in NSW changed and we won the right to home educate. Our freedom to home educate is not something I ever take for granted having been right there on the front of the trenches, seeing ‘the good fight fought.’ Shortly after these changes the home education movement saw a boom and obviously my…
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Striving to Find and Maintain Our Stride
This month’s Homeschool High School Carnival is hosted by Cherished Hearts at Home and some of us are chatting about: Finding our Stride.…Homeschoolers with highschoolers, particularly long term homeschoolers tend to find a groove. How has your family’s educational philosophy evolved over the years? Where do you find yourself in the highschool years? We began our home education journey full of enthusiasm and ideals, certain we knew the way to ‘success’, however, we had some lessons to learn;) We were heavily influenced by the philosophies of Natural Learning (unschooling), Unit Study and Charlotte Mason, and whilst these served us in the younger years, though with varying degrees of success, by the highschool years it…
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Launching a Later Reader
A few weeks back I asked my readers for advice regards motivating a later reader. “Any great ideas on how to motivate an 8yr old girl to read? She is so close to reading independently but doesn’t want to put in the hard work, ’cause it is hard at this stage. I’m open to bribery suggestions;)” I received some great suggestions, they included, bribery with cake, bingo sheets, paying 1c/page, ‘motivation’ with a Maccas meal, further ideas via a link or hosting a reading competition with a book as a reward. The last suggestion was from our Anna Maria and reminded me of our ‘Bookworm Competitions’ that we began five years…
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Fostering Independence
This month’s Homeschool High School Carnival is hosted by Living Without School and we are chatting about: Nurturing Independence in High School…. To what extent do your highschoolers collaborate in planning their studies, how do you encourage your highschoolers to take the reins of their education, what tools do you use and how is this input communicated? We have always involved our children in the planning of their studies, by highschool they are full collaborators in directing their education, I discussed this a little previously, “Planning for our high schoolers is simply a matter of keeping our goals in mind. We plan on a term by term basis, this allows for flexibility to follow interest…
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The Mission, The Strategy, The Focus
Participating in the Homeschool High School Carnival, in fact this is our launch edition! Sharing my thoughts today about: The Wide View….How does your family’s ‘big picture’/goals/educational philosophy affect/guide your planning and translate into what your highschoolers do on a daily/weekly basis? Do you generalise or specialise? Like many home educating families we began this journey with ideas, thrilling, inspiring ideas, with plans to set our little corner of the world on fire, along the way our journey has taken twists and turns, some as thrilling as hoped, some rather unexpected. Travelling the journey we have tried to keep the ‘big picture’ in mind, we believe that God has a plan…
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Writing Elsewhere Today
Today I’m honoured to be featured at Learning Alongside in April’s running ‘Interview with a Home Educator series.’ April posed some real reflective questions such as; Why did you choose to home educate your children? Do you follow a particular learning style/philosophy? Has there been any major obstacle you have had to overcome to pursue homeschooling? and What is one piece of advice that you would give to a new homeschooling parent? If you haven’t already discovered my answers to these do pop on over, and be sure to read the previous interviews with other Aussie bloggers. A great way to find more Aussie home ed bloggers, best of all April…
