Home Education
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Embracing Our Unique Creativity
As women we often have a tendency to compare ourselves, to look at others and think “Mary has it together so much better than I, she is always so patient and calm, she always stops to listen to her children, she bakes her own bread and feeds her family nutritiously, teaches her children to embroider and weave, plants her own crop and her children are involved in so many more enrichment activities than mine. I’m just a failure as a mother, I hardly do any of those activities with my children and I lose my temper and I don’t….” The truth is we are all unique, we have each been…
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Learning Room Sneak Preview
Monday morning I spontaneously decided to begin the learning room revamp and so we began painting. My plan was to wait until all was complete before revealing, however I can’t wait to share with you and thought I’d give a sneak preview. Fresh paint and a smaller table thus far.
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Learning Room Needing a Revamp
We are very excited to finally have a learning room once again, after 6 years of makeshift quarters. All three of our learning areas flow off each other, the first door on the right takes you into the study, and the second door into the library. I’m contemplating pulling down walls and opening up the library and learning room to one another, though that plan has pros and cons. Actually the back wall (with the display shelves) will be coming down and opening up to the room beyond. Whilst it is true that a dedicated learning area isn’t necessary to home educate we have found over the years that we…
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Kindling & Fanning Scientific Minds
The well known quote “education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire”, encapsulates our educational philosophy, a less erudite phrase that also sums up our approach is, “there is more than one way to skin a cat.” These two phrases shine forth quite strongly in our approach to understanding and learning about scientific matters. Our science journey begins in the early years by encouraging exploration of the world around us. Living in the bush our lifestyle naturally lends itself to plenty of nature study opportunities, we combine this with the reading of many living books as well as books from our DK collection. A well written living book is…
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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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Creating Synergy
Whilst co-ops are an important resource for many home educators in the States, they don’t play a major role in Australia, although they exist in the major cities I haven’t experienced any in rural Australia. Periodically local home education groups may gather and parents share and impart skills, but formal co-ops certainly haven’t been part of my experience within the home education movement of the past 30 years. Co-ops haven’t flourished in rural Australia for a number of factors, primarily our numbers are low, in our region, population 50,000 we have approximately 10 home educating families. Then many home educating families aren’t interested in mixing and there is a general unwillingness to sacrifice…
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Handwriting Boot Camp
In ‘A Day in the Life of a Homeschooled Teenager‘ I mentioned ‘handwriting boot camp’, and Charlotte asked for more detail. The handwriting of the majority of our boys has long been a point of despair, issues addressed over the years have been numerous. Incorrect pencil grip, starting letters at the incorrect ‘clock’ position, sloppy and careless formation, incorrect posture, lack of spatial awareness leading to incorrect spacing between words, non-uniformity of letter sizing and inconsistent use of capital and lower case letters are the main culprits. Several years ago when reading You can Teach Your Child Successfully: Grades 4-8 I was inspired by Ruth Beechick’s suggestion of tackling handwriting by holding a ‘boot camp’. ‘Boot camp’…
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Plating Up
In our early years as a family, many an afternoon I would ring my husband at 4.30pm at work and ask him, “What will we have for tea!?” Not planning properly and frozen in decision making, we consequently bought pizza on far too many nights! I came to realise that the key to success for us in our cooking juggle was organisation. On the days that I thought about tea immediately after breakfast and removed meat from the freezer accordingly, were the days all went well (at least in the meal arena;) It became apparent that I functioned far better with a plan, I was not good at making…
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Language Arts Foundation
This month’s Homeschool Highschool Carnival is hosted by Every Bed of Roses and some have chosen to chat about: Language Arts in High School.… What does your language arts program look like? What influences your choices/selection? (Not focusing on Literature nor Writing, both to be discussed in sepearate carnivals) At first thought, discussing our Language Arts program without focusing on Literature or Writing seems rather devoid, yet our LA program is multi-faceted, after reflection I realised there is much to discuss. The title Language Arts is a broad term, encompassing not only the foundational basics but also the development and fruition of possibilities. We have shared previously how my husband and I…
