By Pavlina McMaster Whenever we tell people that we home educate our children, they almost invariably ask, “But what about socialisation?”. What they usually mean to ask is, “But how will they learn to be social?”. There is a difference, and home educated children are well-placed to be both, in a considered, thoughtful way. What is Socialisation? Socialisation is the process whereby children and
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
How to Run Your Next Home Ed Camp or Excursion By Colita Scott Home education camps and events are all about giving your children an experience to remember. For me, the best parts of school were the school camps and excursions. A lot of home educated kids feel the same way. Too many new home educating families ask me ‘so what’s available for my
The updated Guide to Home Education in Victoria is now available in Word of PDF. [gview file=”https://home-ed.vic.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/GuideToHomeEducationinVictoria-2018.pdf”]
Dear New Home Educator, Congratulations on your decision to educate your children from home. You’ve borrowed a pile of books from the library and scoured the internet for advice; you may have bought some supplies already. Great…except that every ‘expert’ seems to recommend different things and now you feel overwhelmed by the choices. Right? Relax, you’ll be home educating YOUR children YOUR way and
By Bekah Carman In Victoria we are required to provide “regular and efficient instruction that taken as a whole, substantially addresses the [8 key] learning areas”. I recently released a post that discussed the value of looking at the Victorian Curriculum in order to figure out how to fulfil the requirements of teaching to the Key Learning Areas (KLAs). As discussed in that post,
By Bekah Carman In Victoria we are required to provide “regular and efficient instruction that taken as a whole, substantially addresses the [8 key] learning areas”. These learning areas, which we call the KLAs, are English, Maths, Science, Technology, Languages (other than English), Arts, Health and PE, and Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS). The problem with the requirement to instruct in the 8 KLAs
By Sue Wight Something odd is happening in the world of unschooling. Sarah has heard that if her children want chocolate biscuits for breakfast, they will eat a balanced diet over time without well-meaning interference from her. Meanwhile, she’s struggling to buy enough chocolate biscuits to keep up with them and is torn between her concerns about nutrition and a reluctance to impose restrictions
By Sue Wight We all learnt to speak via the immersion method. Babies become aware of vocal patterns and connect them with visual cues from facial expressions and body language and are on their way to cracking the code of their mother tongue. The process is driven by the desire to understand, to communicate, to be part of the group. Watching babies and toddlers
By Susan Wight Towards the end of the year, I often catch up with old friends. Getting together always emphasises just how different our lives now are. They talk of meetings, workloads, changing policies, best-practice and so on. Their end-of-year display of cards and gifts from appreciative clients or students always takes me by surprise. Jealous? No, I’m happy with my life and don’t
By Susan Wight Somehow this question puts us on the back foot and we find ourselves mumbling, “Umm, well no I’m not a teacher…” Why? Why do we give in to the assumption that we need some kind of certificate to ‘teach’ our own children? I don’t believe we should, but somehow many parents suddenly feel unable to defend home education when this question
By Susan Wight Play is children’s work and yet it is curiously undervalued in our society. Many adults fervently believe that there can be no ‘educational value’ in something that children choose to do. Their concern about home educating without a curriculum is that children might ‘just play’. Adults are sceptical that play, which looks to them like merely a pleasant pastime, can really
