Homeschooling Discussion & Experiences #1

[Heaven]

Exactly JF! The point of testing is because in a school setting they can't be sure what every child knows. Teachers do the best they can of course, but you can't give them that much individual attention I suppose. I guess they need to test them to see who might be falling behind. But then, I don't think a test is the best way of finding that out anyway. I am just so relieved we decided to HS. I remember the pressure of school and exams and am glad my kids won't have to do that. It was useless to me too. I would cram the night before, write down as much as I could remember, and then 5 minutes after the exam it would all be gone.

LOL, good quote. That is exactly my plan. I think my job is to pretty much teach them how to learn. Or maybe not even that, just facilitate their learning. I am like you, I provide them with opportunities and maybe I have an idea in the back of my mind of what I want them to get out of it, but the majority of the time they learn so much more than I expected, or take it in a whole other direction. I think what they learn isn't so important as being good at learning. Once they can do that, they can learn anything! They are so curious right now, they love learning, and I hope to keep it that way! I think without the pressure of tests and being forced to learn things they're not interested in, or in a way that doesn't work for them, I might just be able to do it!

[Heaven]

Another good one: STOP STEALING DREAMS: Seth Godin at TEDxYouth@BFS - YouTube

[Jellyfish]

Loved it. That was what I was trying to write but possibly got side tracked in my blog; the what is school for? What are our goals here, the why? A very important question with a very assumed answer.

Plus the whole holding back thing. That is so me and my experience.

I feel like we are definitely right on the edge of change. It is so exciting. More and more people are realising that we need change or even just that we want change. That this isn't quite right.

Need to send this to my dad, he loves TED.

[Shanti]

Jellyfish, I'm excited to see you are going to
Be homeschooling also!!
I am so excited about it all.
It's been over a year of reading & researching
into it all & now it just seems so natural to take
this path..... its empowering taking the 'road
less travelled' too

[halltribe]

Hi all - thought I would jump in here as I haven't posted on this site for ages. My signature is also out of date (but can't remember how to update) with a new baby added to my brood. I have homeschooled for 15 years and love it. I am currently schooling my 12,11,10,9,6 and 4yo preppy. My oldest has finished his schooling and I have 2 preschoolers. I love, love, love my homeschooling journey with my kids, we have so much fun. I just want to encourage all you homeschooling mums out there to just enjoy your kids. x

[Heaven]

Shanti- we are mainly just really excited now too! It's going to be amazing. The whole lifestyle really appeals to me.

halltribe- Wow!! That's a lot of homeschooling, lol. I bet we can learn a lot from you!!


Well, we have told everyone we will be homeschooling now and I have had NO negative reactions!! I thought there would definitely be some negativity from a couple of family members and that some of my friends without kids would think I was crazy, LOL. But nope!! Everyone is just so supportive. I am really surprised, obviously there's a lot of people out there with negative opinions of HS and don't understand what it's about. But, to have the support of the people that actually know us and what we're doing is really encouraging!!

Another video, the follow up to one I posted before, love these: I Will Not Let An Exam Result Decide My Fate||Spoken Word - YouTube

[halltribe]

Sounds like you are all smart girls who have done your research. I know of a few who jump in thinking it is easy and drown. I often have had people ask me about schooling at home and I tell them not to take it on lightly. It is not always easy and a huge responsibility but so fulfilling and I wouldn't change a thing.

[Jellyfish]

I've recently gotten a huge boost of motivation thanks to pinterest lol. I've made a few different colour matching activities for DD2 (16 months) that combine a sensory experience with colour matching and fine motorskill development.

Here is the beginning of one (waiting for paint to dry) that will involve wooden pegs with colour swatches to peg onto the right colours, they then get stored in the white tub thing.
Here are two, one that involves sliding popsickle sticks in and out of sleeves, the other will be moving coloured pom poms with different utensils into the little coloured tubs. And here is how it all stores together, my own ingenious design lol.

Some other things I am now working on are some activity/busy/latch boards of differing levels of difficulty for both girls (DP helping with those). Some clothing practice activities (buttons, zips, belts attached to fabric). Sandpaper letters for DD1. I'll be making her a set of popsickle stick sleeves too but centred around letter recognition. Matchsticks and a container with small holes for sorting for DD2 and might expand that to other shape sorting soon. Sound cylinder matching, smell cylinder matching. A box of texture cards. I am moving to ditch most of our plastic junk and simplify a little. I'm really thankful now that I kept a big box around where I threw anything that 'might one day be useful' because it is letting me create a whole bunch of stuff with little to no cost!

What is everyone else up to? I know my kids aren't even school age lol but learning doesn't suddenly start at 5 right? As you can probably tell from above DD2 is currently all about colours and DD1 is all about letters with an ever present side focus on motorskill and sensory development. We have also been doing a whole bunch of messy play. The more mess the better in this house! And I've already got a few things set up for this week - spaghetti painting, cloud dough, slime and a bunch of different ways to have fun with shaving cream lol.

[~ Mylitta ~]

Jellyfish - Are those activities from Montessori pages? They are all very Montessori-style We have a lot of Montessori activities in our house and DS and DD1 really enjoy them at Montessori as well. I love so much about Montessori and the way it teaches and combines so many learning skills into each individual activity. Even once the kids finish at their Montessori (they'll do up to the end of Cycle 1 which is when they are about 6, then it looks likely that we will home educate) I'll continue with a lot of the Montessori philosophy. I've just borrowed another couple of "Montessori in the home" books from a Mum at the kids school.


Does anyone else get really worried that they won't be able to "pull it off"? I have days where I stress that I won't be good enough. That I won't be disciplined enough. I try to remind myself that I'm already doing a lot of things with the kids already, and that I have quite some time to continue researching, planning and developing our home education journey (DS isn't due to "start school" until 2015 because he misses the school cut-off age by 2 days). I still can't help but doubt myself at times.

[Jellyfish]

Yep! Doing a lot of DIY Montessori searches because they do have great activities for combining a lot of different development areas. Modified some of them slightly mostly so they can pack away independently or to extend/simplify them for DD1 (4) or DD2s (1) current stage.

This morning DD2 was showing extreme desire to touch a contact art creation we made during DD1's birthday party with all the kids so we brought it down off the wall and they have been playing with it since! Now bringing over a bunch of different items to see what noises they can create running along the different textures lol. Here, here and here.

We also made a kite about a week ago that has been a great talking point for weather and wind and such. Plus heaps of fun! Even for the adults.

I worry about being organised and motivated enough occasionally. More so originally when I was tossing and turning with the idea, now that I've committed to it and began putting in to practise some of the things that will carry through to our 'schooling' I am feeling more confident. I've always been pretty creative and my kids seem to respond well to the things we do. I keep noticing how much we already seem to do and learn as is. My eldest is a typical inquisitive 4 year old so leads the way for what we look into in depth and I don't actually have to do much except run with it. We are planning to do things mostly organically and just let it sort of develop on its own for their first few years of proper 'schooling' just like we are now. Lots of textural, sensory, creative, messy fun.

[Heaven]

JF- I will not be held responsible for the pinterest addiction you are developing. LOL I get SO many ideas from there. And I would forget everything I see if I couldn't look back at the things I've pinned!

Mylitta- Yeah, I have felt like that. When we were deciding to HS or not I thought of all the possibilities and worried I wouldn't be able to do it. The older they get though I just see how naturally it happens that I think I will manage. It's like how I couldn't possibly imagine how I would cope with 2 kids before I had them, LOL, but you just work it out. We are so used to giving the responsibility of most of their education over to schools that it seems HUGE! We will be entirely responsible for providing their education. I think just the enormity of that makes you worry, but I have no doubt we can do it! I'm sure like any part of parenting there will be hard times and easy times but this seems like the best option to me right now!

We have been learning about Autumn here. DD1 asked me one day 'Mum, next time you go to the shops can you get me a book about the seasons?' LOL. She really does lead the way herself! So we have had lots of Autumn craft and reading going on. I also got a free trial of Reading Eggs and thinking that I would like to see what it's like for use maybe next year I let DD1 have a go. Well, she loves it and wants to do some every day. She has learnt so much and now knows most letter sounds and some of the sight words. Can't believe how much she has learnt from it actually. She now tells people 'I'm learning to read you know!!' LOL. So, just going with that along with our normal craft and play. Fun!

[Jellyfish]

Heaven, you are totally responsible but that's a good thing! Still riding the motivation wave. Your DD1 is such a personality, she is really great lol.

Have the inlaws arriving friday to stay a week, they are both big fans of me (what a turnaround lol) and seem intrigued about our plans so should make for some interesting conversations.

[Jellyfish]

Mustn't let this thread die! Having so much fun lately. Did have a little crisis of faith recently when DD1 had a pupil free day and said "miss my kindy friends when not go kindy" but resolved to start getting more pro-active about meeting more homeschoolers lol.

How are we all?

[bellany]

Just popping my head in. We are about to go back to home education. Im in the process of registering.
My son has autism and the school have been having constant issues with him. Its at the point now where he's not making progress and is a disruption to the class.
I think tailoring his education to pique his interest will be key snd something school can't do.
He has many obsessive interests that will be great tools in keeping him motivated.

Look forward to chatting with you all

[Heaven]

Hi bellany! Good luck with your registration, which state are you in?

Not much going on here for a while. No motivation with morning sickness :/ Only a couple more weeks and that should be gone, feel sorry for the poor kids, they're probably bored!!


Read this article last night...

Calling for a learning revolution

• Bruce McDougall
• The Daily Telegraph
• June 15, 2013 12:00AM

EDUCATION trailblazers are pressing for Gonski funds to be poured into a radically different method of teaching using individual learning plans based on students' personal interests.

Their targets are thousands of secondary students who are at risk of dropping out of school because they cannot cope with the demands of a rigid curriculum.
Former Davidson High School principal Chris Bonnor said the greatest need in schools was to change the style of teaching and learning - because the system was failing too many children.
"We are losing kids who aren't engaged in what is really an industrial revolution, 19th century schooling model," he said.
"You pour them in one end - it's called Year 7 - and they go from one subject silo to the next.
"Kids learn in different ways. Externally imposed curriculums and what are often boring methods of teaching don't catch them."
Under the auspices of the not-for-profit organisation Big Picture Education Australia, personalised learning is being road-tested in schools nationally, including a number in Sydney, with marked success.
"It works like this. A switched off adolescent kid hates school but loves bicycles," Mr Bonnor said.
"In a personalised learning program you build their curriculum around bicycles. You put the kid in an internship for a day or two a week in a bike shop and make sure the curriculum for the rest of the week is built around his passion.
"There's a lot of science in bikes, there's mathematics in bikes, there's history in bikies, there's poetry in bikes ... you can write stories about bikes.
"By using that as the hook you interest them in learning."
Mr Bonnor said most kids were reasonably well served by mainstream schooling but many who became disengaged or disaffected were being lost to education.
Co-founder of the Big Picture Education Viv White said the aim was to help drive a school improvement agenda: "It's like a whole new design for a secondary school. We start with the young person's interest and map back to the curriculum."
One student who is studying law on the program has a Supreme Court judge as his mentor.
Big Picture Education is running 40 programs across Australia, including three whole-of-school operations in Tasmania, one in Victoria and one in West Australia.
In NSW programs are up and running in Sydney's inner west, in the city's southwest and in Newcastle/Hunter Valley areas.
Mr Bonnor conceded education innovations like personalised learning have higher upfront costs.

Well, duh. Sounds like homeschooling to me.

[bellany]

We are in tas. I used to home school my eldest but that was a few years ago.
She is excited about home schooling abd he is not interested in thr least. I know it's going to be a big routine change which will suck but I hope he enjoys it quickly.

[~ Mylitta ~]

Even though I'm still over a year from having a "school age" child, I'd like to join a home schooling group so that I can be prepared and get ideas for the future. So far I'm happy with the school-type stuff we do at home, but I'd like to be a knowledgeable and prepared as possible.

The problem I'm having is actually finding a local group! Does anyone know how to go about finding local home schooling groups?

[Jellyfish]

It can be tricky, Im still putting my feelers out there by just browsing sites and facebook groups basically. I dont really know how to start to dive into it all really especially when we havent really started, started yet so I havent lol. I am working up to that point.

Feeling lucky that Heaven lives close so Ill always have at least one person that gets it with similar age kids that seem to get along with my kids haha.... never move away...