Hi girls, just poping in to subscribe and thank everyone for the info thus far I'd love to homeschool but not sure what our situation will be when the time comes. In the mean time I'll be learning as much as I can from you guys. In my ideal world I'd like to home school and have a social 'school day' once a week or something with a group of other home school kids, just to keep up that social aspect and to learn from other home school teachers/parents. Sounds like you are all doing a wonderful job with the arrangemtns you have. Thanks again
Hi, I've lived in Lismore/Ballina, Canberra, Blue Mountains/Penrith and Central West NSW and all those places have had a homeschooling group that meets once a week. You can find your local group through the board of studies, HEA or HEN. Getting together is lots of fun.
With the social side of things, i think homeschool is better. Because at school they only interact with children their own age. Homeschooling lets them interact with all age gruops, which personally i think is better.
You can register them for a sporting team and most places have groups of homeschoolers who go on regular excursions to keep up with the kids social life.
Banshi:
For some reason I can't PM you to give you my email address! Can you PM me with your email address and then I'll send you a message? I would love to see what you are doing with your 7 year old to give me ideas on how to create my own curriculum.
Antheia:
I PM'd you my email address as I would love to see what you have created as well!
Thanks to both of you lovely ladies for offering to share your hard work to give me ideas and a head start with my own planning.
One of the other reasons I don't want to put my children in school is because I don't like how teachers talk to them and treat them. Students are yelled at (even screamed at) and I'm quite sure that hampers the learning process.
I taught a LOT of preschool in the 3 years I worked as a casual (especially the last year as I was pregnant for most of it and my supervising teacher put me on infants so I could rest a bit more through the day) and I was disgusted at how they were spoken to. They are still babies at the tender age of 4 and yet they were being yelled at all the time.
Also, going back to a comment you made Banshi - it drove me crazy that EVERY child had to do EVERY activity during the "desk work" time whether they wanted to or not!
Okay, this message is random and I'm getting interrupted by both my boys so time to sign off and hopefully I'll get some time to work on the computer this afternoon or tonight. My 10 month old was VERY ill last week and although he is well now we are in a horrible pattern at night now. He was awake from 11:30pm until 2:30am and then woke (more or less for the day) again at 5:30am!
I noticed at our local shopping centre that one of the bookstores is having a clearance sale and has a bunch of primary level textbooks on sale (some for about 50% off) so I was wondering if it would be worth it to pick some of them up? I recognized some of them as the books the schools I use to work in have used.
Do you use textbooks for your teaching?
I don't want to buy them if they won't be helpful so thought I would ask first...
Thanks in advance for your thoughts and comments...
re the textbooks - if any look useful to you then buy them - I like to have some textbooks and workbooks (some get used and some don't....it's part of the learning process) they can add to your ideas (and it looks good when the BoS authorised person visits too!). The ones I find useful are maths textbooks - my daughter likes the colourful pretty ones, she finds plain maths dull so they get her a bit more interested, also some english workbook/textbooks are good for children learning to write and read - but some are boring. I have found that some text/workbooks that my son liked my daughter didn't, and vice versa - my son hates colourful workbooks - to him they seem patronising and stupid but to my daughter they seem pretty and fun!
i usually look through the books with the children and pick the ones that they like!
Thanks Banshi!
I'll go back to the shopping centre this coming weekend and have a closer look with hubby.
I liked the look of some of the maths books and I think there was a writing/reading book that looked good too.
What have you done in the way of Handwriting with your children? Did you teach them the same handwriting they would have learned in the schools? Or something different?
I noticed this bookstore carries the handwriting book I'm familiar with but I'm not 100% happy with that form of handwriting.
SO much to think about - I'm ever so glad BellyBelly has started this thread AND that I have time to figure some stuff out before DS turns 6!!
We've been homeschooling for just over 18 months. DS had three years at school; DD had one year at school before we pulled them out.
I am a school teacher with 17 years experience and no way would I send the kids back to institutionalised education.
I find it hilarious that we get the same two questions with regard to homeschooling every time. The first question is "why would you want to do that?" as if spending lots of time with your kids is a bad thing, closely followed by "what about their socialisation?"
Neither of those things have been a problem for us. People are always commenting on how social our kids are; they'll talk to anyone about anything, anytime. We love spending time with them (yes, it is exhausting but it is also worth it) and it has brought our whole family closer together.
We use a loosely classical approach and love it.
Hi all we homeschool Ds13 and dd6.
I have popped in to subscribe to this thread and I'm affraid I have to duck back in later on and leave my two pennith worth.
Evening all just popping in again.
Thanks for this thread BB. Nice to be able to chat to others about homeschool related stuff as well as BB stuff.
Age gap between children.
It's a non issue for me.
We have a routine and we always follow the routine as boring as it is, so the kids know what comes next and they don't have to ask me all the time.
dd is 6 so she needs a lot of help right now and still needs prompting and ds does need help from time to time. But he gets himself started and asks for help if he needs it.
I guess you could say we tag team it. I help each of the children when they need it but sometimes they have to wait till I have finished with the other.
We do study stuff together such as Historyand some unit studies. Both the kids really really enjoy it. The biggest difference is theat ds digs a little deaper into them than dd but thats cause he's older and capable, enthusiastic and super interested.
One child is first year primary and the other first year secondary, so very different educational needs. But it's not as hard as it sounds really. At first I was truly worried but now we have settled in it's fine and really I'm not sure what I was so worried about. Yes the children are at different levels, very different, but really it's all about routine for us.
Dd finishes her work a lot sooner than ds so she gets to run off and play while ds and I do the harder stuff.
At this stage it has not been an issue.
Popping in to ask a question of any and all who read this thread.
I got a GREAT bargain at our local library yesterday and was able to get my hands on about three dozen National Geographic magazines (most year 2000 or earlier) for only $4!
My question is how do I use them!!
Should I keep the magazines intact and store them until my children are older (as a lot of the content is not appropriate for younger children) or should I tear them apart a bit?
I was thinking of perhaps going through them and carefully removing the photographs of any and all animals and perhaps laminating some and putting some in an envelope for craft and projects???
What do you all think?
For someone who used to teach primary school I am feeling like a failure at the moment!!
Hi All,
It is very quiet in here but I'm hoping someone will have some thoughts/suggestions for me.
DS1 is writing very well now and is so enthusiastic about it and spends a good portion of each day doing some writing.
However, he insists on writing in all capitals except for the letter "i" which he insists must be lower case.
How much should I encourage him at this point to write with both capitals and lower case?
I havent' had a chance to read all of the posts in this thread but I will get around to it
My first born won't start school (prep) until 2014 when she turns 5 so we have another couple of years. We have a wonderful public primary school just 5mins walk from our house which has a fantastic reputation in our community & a great private school for when our girls are in high school years, however lately DH and I have been looking into the homeschooling option and considering it. I am at the research stage, finding out as much as I can about it, the different ways to HS, the different styles of HS, what it involves, the commitment involved, how it impacts the other siblings in the family etc.....the social aspect of homeschooling etc.....
Thanks for all the great references and links in this thread, I have a lot of reading to do!!!!
I'd love to homeschool but not sure what our situation will be when the time comes. In the mean time I'll be learning as much as I can from you guys. In my ideal world I'd like to home school and have a social 'school day' once a week or something with a group of other home school kids, just to keep up that social aspect and to learn from other home school teachers/parents. Sounds like you are all doing a wonderful job with the arrangemtns you have. Thanks again
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