Sue Wight - Home Education Network

March 7, 2016

Home educating teenagers is not that hard

By Sue Wight Home educating primary-aged children was easy as far as I was concerned. I spent time with them, read to them, played games with them, talked lots, encouraged their interests, took them to interesting places, and stood back and watched the learning happen. But home educating teenagers? I knew nothing about that! That would be hard – what about the Maths, what […]

March 3, 2016

Advice for newbies

By Jess Pritchard “What advice do you have for those just starting out?” It is the inevitable question, asked again and again. I clearly remember asking it (in some form or another) myself, many times, of many different people. And now I am being asked it. So here is my advice. In dot point: 1) Don’t be afraid of mess. It goes without saying […]

January 23, 2016

Other Ways

By Dindy Vaughan Not every child is happy at school. Some struggle along grudgingly, some fight the system, some opt out and refuse to achieve; and mostly their parents worry. In many cases it comes down to ‘school refusal’. The state of Victoria currently has not hundreds, but thousands of school-age children who are simply refusing to go. The majority are not rabble-rousers and […]

January 13, 2016

But What About My Life…

By Lyn Saint On making the decision to home educate their children many women often bring up the question – but what about my life, should I devote the next 10-15 years solely to bringing up my children – what about me…? As we all know, society today does not appreciate, acknowledge and respect women who are fulltime mothers – quite the opposite in […]

December 4, 2015

Learning in a Warming World

By Susan Wight We are living in a warming world. Climate change is observable pretty much everywhere: air temperature is rising over every continent, the oceans are heating up and expanding, and ice is melting on land and at sea. The climate has already warmed by 0.8 degrees. This may not sound dramatic, but in the delicate balance of life, it is. Humanity depends […]

November 23, 2015

Home Education: A Choice for Life

By Lyn Saint There has always been a lot of confusion with the public’s perception of what homeschooling is. As the name implies, people expect to do schooling in the home and therefore expect to be able to purchase homeschooling as a package for their children. Many are often quite confused and even alarmed when they find out that homeschooling is in fact all […]

October 31, 2015

Multi-aged Learning at Home

One of the hardest things I find about home educating is juggling the differing needs of my four children. The challenge is to be able to engage children of very different ages. I have found that the older they get, the easier it is. It is the toddler I find the most challenging! To make my life easier, I have tailored the different curricula […]

October 28, 2015

Legal info state by state

Home education is legal in every state and territory of Australia but the details and requirements vary. For details of the legal situation in your state see our Legal page.

September 3, 2015

Educating Dyslexics

Dyslexia exists in the home educated population just as it exists in the school population. If your child doesn’t seem to be picking up reading, give some thought to whether this is a problem. Late reading is actually common in home education (see our Learning to Read section for details). If the child is learning in other ways, perhaps sit back and wait a […]

September 3, 2015

Dealing with Opposition

This is never easy. As soon as you pull your children out of school, it seems as though your parents, your friends, your neighbours, even the local check-out operator suddenly have an opinion on how children should be educated and most of them won’t match with your concept of home education. Take a deep breath. There will be opposition; it is just a question […]

September 2, 2015

But What if my Child is Dyslexic?

For many home-educating families and prospective home-educators the fear of dyslexia is a significant problem. “It’s all very well to wait for spontaneous reading, but what if my children are dyslexic?” they might ask. “Won’t they be better off in school where they will get proper help?” Dyslexia is a type of specific learning difficulty in which the person has difficulties with language and […]

September 2, 2015

Home ed on a budget

By Sue Wight It doesn’t have to cost an arm and leg So you’ve decided to home educate, but now you are worried about how you will ever afford all of those flashy curriculum resources, especially if home education means living on one income as it does for most families. The good news is that home education does not have to be expensive. You […]