By Catherine Durant Art appreciation is a topic we love to explore in our house. Alannah (10), Max (8) and Eloise (3) always enjoy delving into the life of an artist. I have been amazed at how much the kids take in. There has been many a time that they have pointed to a print on a wall or in a book and told
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 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
By Kathleen Humble There is quite a difference between the way I thought I would teach chemistry and the way my son, Canary, prefers to learn. Canary is very visual-spatial in his thinking. He absorbs knowledge when he can see it and touch it. He doesn’t mind listening, but he can’t just listen – there has to be a visual component, or lots of
By Kirsty James My 16-year-old son is passionate about woodturning, and is a member of the local Guild. Two years ago, he barely knew that woodturning existed, but thanks to various kind and helpful people in our local community, he has learnt a new skill and found what may become a lifelong interest. At the start of 2016, a friend and I were keen
By Sue Wight Story writing can be encouraged from a very early age. When your children are drawing, you could ask them to tell you the story of what is happening in the picture and write that down. If your children like to tell stories, you can begin to write them down and make them into books as early as you and they enjoy
Victorian home educated students can access the inter-school and interstate programs with School Sport Victoria by providing a copy of their VRQA registration letter to SSV. Families are responsible for the costs involved. Home schooled students can access: 1. SSV Swimming, Cross Country, Golf and Track and Field (District level for primary-aged kids and Division level for secondary aged students They then progress through the competition levels
Home Ed Activities Around Victoria Home education doesn’t mean all learning happens in the home: the world really is your classroom! Victoria offers many free and low cost activities. You can plan your activities as a family or link up with a group of home educators to go along together. Many venues that cater to school groups also have education materials available on
By Cynthia McStephen What do you get when you cross a multi-language-based vocabulary with an entirely regular grammatical structure, and throw in a dash of peace, love and the whole brotherhood of man bit? Esperanto, actually. The world’s most widely spoken constructed language. For the uninitiated, Esperanto was the brainchild of Dr Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof, who developed it in the 1870s and 1880s. He
A film for ANZAC Day from the children of V-B, France, to Australia with love: “Do not forget Australia” What would French school children know about Australia? Quite a lot actually! In a small town in France, a class on nine and ten-year-olds has won the Sadlier Stokes Award for a documentary commemorating events that took place there one hundred years ago. A post from the
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 Our family follow a natural learning style of home education and feel quite comfortable that the children are learning all the time but, like many home educators, we have the occasional doubts about maths. Recently these doubts led me to persuade one of my sons, Matthew, to do some maths on paper. As a small child he loved maths, in fact
Financial Education at Home By Rob Wight If teaching your children about money has been on your “to do” list for some time, don’t delay any more – now is the time to act, no matter how old they are Given we spend so much time with our children, I believe home educators often have the best opportunity to lead the discussion about
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
Reading is a perennial topic amongst home educators. Many find that children do pick up reading quite naturally in the normal course of a home learning situation. Others are adamant proponents of a phonics method. ‘Late’ reading is not uncommon amongst home educated children. In school late reading is considered a problem and can result in children falling behind in all areas of the
