Rebecca Gelsi My daughter and I have only just begun our home ed journey. She’s autistic and school has been challenging for years. She’s in Year 10 but I’m resisting that panicky (and unfounded) feeling that she’s somehow going to miss out. We’re unschooling and waiting for learning interests to emerge – in the meantime I’m encouraging her to enjoy and extend a couple
By Katy Pearce As home educators we can experience a lot of opposition. I found it wasn’t just family members but outspoken friends as well. As soon as we decided to home educate, that’s when we started receiving the comments. I think what hurt the most was the negative comments we received from our families and from people who I thought of as close
A warm welcome to new home-schoolers 6 tips to help you as you begin your journey By Belinda Lee What an interesting year 2020 has become. If you have joined us this year, I would love to welcome you to our community and we hope that together, we can support you and make you feel part of our community. You may be thinking, ‘I’m
By Mary Every now and then someone asks how other home educators manage home ed and household tasks such as cleaning and cooking because they’re struggling to get on top of everything. This is especially true of families with younger children who are new to home ed, families who do not have any support nearby or families with an older child where the parent
Nabeela Fathima Wahid It was a chaotic start to the morning, a frenzy of activity dotted with the clatter and noise of each family member trying to cram in a multitude of chores into a single moment. The announcement of an unexpected visitor threw a spanner into the works and despite the dejection and frustration, we knew it was a matter of just getting
By Kirsty James Learning to write is a broad theme, covering such diverse topics as forming letters, learning correct grammar and syntax, and essay writing. This article is just a starting point, and illustrates not only some of the ways in which different families have approached these tasks, but also the variety of possibilities. In general, home educated students do less physical writing than
Annie Regan Digital technology is one of the many tools we use for home education and it has made our life and learning easier, and expanded our world. Finding Information: We often look up information on the phone or computer when we are wondering who, what, why, when, or how. Sometimes we have a discussion first and then search to find out more detail
Kirsty James We like to laugh about the stereotypical home educated kid: those poor unsocialised darlings who will never get a job, make friends, or learn how to line up. However, I think the more dangerous stereotypes are the ones against which we measure ourselves. When you read HE blogs or articles, it is easy to feel that everyone else is doing a better
Heidi McCormack Why? I guess the first thing most people want to know is why we started home educating, and why now? That’s an easy and a hard question to answer. Easy because once I knew this was right for us, it made perfect sense. Hard because it was quite a journey to get here. As I’ve aged, I’ve become more self aware and
Pamela Uckerman On the first day of the school year in 2019, when my boys were entering grades three and two, I dropped them at school, went home and cried. After six blissful weeks of summer, the complaints about school and the horrible mornings were back. They attended a beautiful Montessori school and we had made a lot of sacrifices to keep them there.
Welcome to all of those new families considering home education, or who have joined the community during the pandemic and have had little chance to see home education at its best. Normally when we join a new community, we have time to observe from the sidelines. It’s a chance to work out the dynamics and behavior expectations of the group. Many of you have
Mairi Girgis. I was never going to “homeschool” my kids myself. I didn’t research home education before I started. When I started I had a lot of misconceptions, I didn’t think I’d have the patience to teach my children, and I was looking forward to having all my children in school and going back to study and work. I distinctly remember attending a school-parent
