By Arthur Grant We often notice how little prompting kids require to learn outside the classroom. Simply setting them free in nature does wonders for their curious spirits, as each overturned rock and never-before-seen leaf piques new interest and inquiries. Their instinct is to explore and learn, and structure isn’t always needed for learning to be meaningful and beneficial. The term “unschooling” puts a
HEN surveys the home education community to help shape our future work. While we operate mainly in Victoria, our stats can be useful to home educators anywhere in Australia. HEN works hard for the home ed community. If you’re not yet a member, please consider joining.Membership is only $25 per year including digital Otherways Magazine (or $45 with printed copies). 2019 results:
By Wendy Morriss I spent 30 years home educating my three children who are now 32, 29 and 19 years of age. It was an amazing experience; one that I will always remember and would recommend to anyone. I liked going to school myself because I was raised in a violent household, so school was an escape. My husband, however, constantly talked about his
So, you haven’t yet taken the home ed plunge. It would be nice to have a guarantee, right? The thing is life doesn’t come with guarantees. It would be really nice to be able to examine a home education prospectus and see pretty graphs and tables detailing the success rate but that isn’t possible. The best you can do is observe home educating families
By Cynthia McStephen If you are new to the whole idea of DIY education, you may be wondering what this home education stuff is all about. Of course, life varies wildly between different families anyway. So, by extension, home education, like every other aspect of family life, covers a huge spectrum. Instead of a catch-all definition, here’s a list of some of the things
Victorian home educators can now access free physical and digital language resources through the Department of Education and Training’s languages library – Languages and Multicultural Education Resource Centre (LMERC). They have resources from early years through to senior. Interested families are encouraged to visit the library and complete a membership form to receive a library card for immediate use or join online. [gview file=”https://home-ed.vic.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/LMERCInfoSheetFINAL.pdf”]
By Cynthia McStephen Excuse me, I just have to crawl into a hole for a while before I can tackle this subject. I’m sure you won’t mind. It’s the weight, you see. It’s the sheer effort of dragging around the huge expectations the world has of me as a home educating parent: ‘You must be so organised’, ‘I don’t know how you do it
The greatest benefit of home education By Lyn Saint So what about socialisation…how will your kids learn to fit into the real world! The question is so simple and yet the answer so complex. Any one of us that has been asked that question knows how difficult it is to come up with an answer that will satisfy not only the askers but deep
By Sue Wight Whether we home educate from the start or as a result of school problems, we observe our kids learning firsthand. Most of the time, that’s all the evidence we need. But many of us have occasional doubts and have relatives who want to know if we are limiting the children’s future. Governments and media also want solid data on home education
[gview file=”https://home-ed.vic.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/VHEAC-Communique-25-June-2019.pdf”] Also available in Word format
By Marshall C When my wife Brooke and I first met she was raising her four children as a solo Mum and had been homeschooling for the better part of a decade. My first impression of Brooke’s children was of confident, well spoken kids (on their best behaviour to be sure after Mum made it clear that this one was a “keeper”). As I
By Brooke C. When I started home education (fifteen years ago) I used to dread being asked the *S Question*. You know, “How will your kids learn to socialise if they don’t get to go to school?” I dreaded it because I found that if I had time (and the inclination) I used to launch into a positively soap-box worthy rant explaining that the
By Sue Wight If there’s one aspect of informal learning in home education that stands out above all others, in common with infant and adult informal learning, it’s conversation. On the face of it much of this is social, everyday talk of the kind that normally goes unnoticed. But it’s surprising how much of this kind of talk contains opportunities for learning, especially as
By Cynthia McStephen “Hello there from Radio Home Ed Land, where there are a million different reasons and styles for every million home-edders. Today the topic is ‘Why we do what we do’ and sitting opposite me in the studio today is … hmmm. Actually that person looks remarkably like ME.” It can be a strange experience to want to interview yourself, to have
By Jackie Crosby Permaculture is about design, observing nature and working with nature. When we built our home, we faced it north (southern hemisphere), learnt about various building mediums and settled on recycled double brick for the heat transfer. We looked at our energy flows, and decided to have the vegetables growing near the kitchen and where the children play, as that’s where I travel
