Thank you SO much for your reply!
I will be registering when we start school officially as I am one of those people who likes to stick to the rules. I'm known as the goody-two-shoes in my family!! *grin*
I have searched for homeschooling groups in my area online and found a bunch of people and had full intentions of trying to attend some groups and email some of the members but it has been a rough few months with my 10 month old teething furiously and really not sleeping and life has just seemed a tad difficult. It is on my To-Do list to get in touch with some of them and try to meet some new people.
So if I want some of these books on home schooling I guess I'll probably have to go searching for them in book stores! *grin* Will most mainstream book stores carry them or be able to order them for me?
Where is NSW are you located?
Thanks again for all your information - is gives me some things to think about and some stuff to get started on.
Hi again!
I understand the baby thing - I have an 11 month old daughter and this year has flown by!!
Well I'm not sure if you will find many HS books in shops - I haven't - but I live in regional NSW (Orange atm, Lismore previously). I've found them online and at HS conferences - perhaps your bookshop could order them in. This website is a good place to start: Always Learning Books Catalogue Getting Started with Homeschoolin.
I'm giving you a link to a great essay about school and homeschooling by John Gatto Taylor - it's interesting reading and succinct: The Odysseus Group People's Education Debate & Discussion Center
This Aus website seems to have a good collection of books too! (not sure if they sell!) Kids First Australia: Book List - Recommended Reading
Another fantastic book that I personally wish everyone would read is Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich - when reading this one must make allowances for the period in which it was written
(early 1960s - pre computer age) but it is truly remarkable and revolutionary !
Hi Banshi
Thanks for all the information! Some night soon (I hope) my son will sleep at night so I can get some computer work done. As it is I'm typing this message one-handed while holding him in my other arm!
I am in the Sydney area!
May I ask how/why you decided to home school?
My friends and family are all asking why we are planning to home school and while I know the reasons in my heart and m head, I struggle to adequately communicate that to other people.
Hi,
Well, I began homeschooling as my son was bright and he was: a) not understood nor catered to at school, ie he wanted to read books in kindy, the class had to sing 'a is for apple a, a, a' - he was bored and the teacher complained that he was distracting himself.....
B) he was bullied by a group of year 6 boys who all ganged up on him and hit him with sticks and cricket bats - after I saw his face and the bruises - I never ever was going to send him back there! And this was at a private school with small class sizes and a 'zero tolerance' stance on bullying - it still happens, schools are unnatural, that many people confined together all day - it's too much. Few adults spend 6 hours per day with 30 people all the same age, all in one room, all at once in their working lives ( oh, I forgot, then they have to lunch with up to 1000 people in a yard at lunch breaks etc).
From my experiences with my children (they chose to go to school for a few months when my eldest was in yr 6 and my dd was in yr3 - they were curious and the school had a good rep so I let them - academically and socially they were fine - but the bureaucracy was annoying) schools really try, and some of them try harder than others, but in my opinion a 30:1 ratio (students:teachers) is just not good enough, nor is 20:1 - children thrive when learning at their own pace, whether that's faster or slower than 'normal'.
I no longer believe in institutional education - it obscures a child's talents by comsuming too much of their time with jumping through hoops to make themselves mediocre - which is what teacher prompted class tasks really do (everyone - draw a chicken - what if a child would rather be reading a book, running, making lunch, playing violin - is the chicken drawing exercise going to give the child a memorable experience? maybe one or two in the class - for the remainder of the class the poor kids' time is being wasted! Another example I saw in my dd's classroom: ' everyone here's a diagram of a heart, colour it in and label it like I have on the board' - this kind of stuff teaches in a shallow way that bores most of the kids most of the time and they switch off and think 'gee, science is boring' - when you are homeschooling you can go as deeply into a topic as your child wishes, allowing much greater experiential learnoing and if they are disinterested you can move on - minus the busywork filler).
In my ten years associating with homeschooled kids I've learned that every person, child and adult, has abilities and talents and these are best fostered out of the school system. Also, when I see homeschooled children playing together they never go off in neat age brackets, they mix in large loose groups, they never bully each other - they don't need to, I feel that they do not behave as bullies because they feel secure. Their parents never left them at school at 5 feeling lost, alone and scared. They feel happy about themselves, they do not have to compete with anyone - I just find homeschooling better on so many levels, emotionally, academically, socially - and the lifestyle is less stressful - that 8.30am deadline and 3.30 deadline are always in the back of your mind.
I also dislike the way in which school compartmentalises society: kids are at school, babies at daycare or at home with mum/dad, adults are at work, the elderly in homes - I dislike institutionalision of humanity - I feel it robs us of experiencing the fullness of life.
Hi!
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and feelings as far as your decision to homeschool is concerned!
I feel much the same way about many of the points you made - I just can't seem to communicate it well when people ask me face-to-face why I'm planning to homeschool.
I'm already really sick and tired about people commenting on how I'm going to socialise my child and the newest one was a lady from my church who asked how my son is going to have friends if he doesn't go to school???
Excuse me?? He hasn't gone to school as yet, but he has friends already, from mother's group, playgroup, and children's church!! I should have been brave enough to say - by homeschooling I have the power to help my child choose quality friends - rather than being lumped with a HUGE group of children and be under the influence of people I don't want him to spend a bulk of his time with.
Before I had children I worked as a casual teacher in the public schools and the catholic schools and bullying was a big pet peeve of mine. I felt horrible reading that your kindy aged son was bullied so severely by year 6 boys. Did the school (try) to do anything about it? Or simply turn a blind eye?
My son is very bright and I do believe that he would find school boring and would act out and get in trouble. I also don't feel that schools teach boys in a way that is helpful to them so having two boys so far I would be really leery to put them in school. Right now he has a natural love of learning and I just KNOW that would be ripped out of him within weeks of entering school and that just breaks my heart.
I am enjoying chatting with you and I hope that you don't mind me continuing to ask you questions and run ideas past you as I prepare to embark on my homeschooling experience.
Do you (or have you) used a set curriculum at any time or do you (have you) created your own the entire time you have home schooled?
If you created your own curriculum how do you show that the child has mastered each KLA for their age? Do you make your own tests? Or create a portfolio to show what you have taught/they have learned over the year?
10 month awake for second time tonight - more later
If anyone is interested, i have a huge list of books, websites and other recommendations for homeschooling. I have also made my own curriculum if anyone wants to take a looksee to see how you can cover each syllabus.
Regarding the bullying the school was useless: first, they kept ringing me saying 'your son keeps going out of bounds' -yep, that was because he was escaping from bullies, but HE got into trouble; secondly, they didn't notice the bullying or help him in any way until he was severely attacked, then they made excuses, such as, 'one of the yr 6 boys has a troubled past' - blah; thirdly, he wasn't telling me about it because the boys had threatened him and his friend with severely violent threats should they tell. So overall I feel the school handled it badly, the teacher once asked me if 'you even bother setting rules for your children?' - because he wanted to visit the library to read during recess - which was against the rules.
Regarding your comment: 'Right now he has a natural love of learning and I just KNOW that would be ripped out of him within weeks of entering school and that just breaks my heart.'
Going to school has permanantly altered the way my son views education - before school he saw it as exciting and he was proud of his acheivement, after school anything that could be neatly recognised as 'school work' he just hates - he still loves learning at 15, reading and playing guitar and he stays up late having in depth conversations re books we have both read/are reading, film, politics, spirituality, etc - but pull out text books and he switches off! Which is very sad - I wish he'd never gone! My younger two children will never go to school - it teaches children that learning is dull! When he went to school for a while in yr 6 he was 'identified as gifted and talented' which was the worst thing they could have done - everyone is g&t in some way and for him it just switched him off from formal learning all the more, like , 'i'm already smart, so why bother'
I have never used a set curriculum but I do use some textbooks sometimes - I'm happy to email you a copy of my 7 yr olds curriculum if you are interested!
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