By Sonja Otto My husband is a novelist. It was his dream to be a writer from when he was around seven years old and wrote a series of stories titled The Detective Known as Brad (hardly surprising with a childhood of reading The Famous Five and The Three Investigators). His stories (and titles) have come a long way since then, but writing is
By Clare Dunstan This year I thought I had it all together… Yes I know, how foolish of me! In my mind the kids could just continue on with the work they were doing from last year, it had been going well, nothing needed changing. How wonderful not to start the year with the typical scramble for new books. Or so I thought. The
Nicole B Sunday: Used jack hammer, crow bars and cement saw to smash up concrete with dad and friends—part of our home renovation project. Watched anime series in between. Swam at the beach. Watched Labyrinth film with the whole family. Monday: Guitar practice Prepared breakfast and lunch to take out for the day. Went to the hairdresser and got pink highlights as a celebration
Annie Regan I love the deep, lasting friendships that my kids make, the sense of community and inclusivity, getting to know other parents and kids, having lots of time to relax, exploring new places with friends, eating ice cream, going back to the same places and developing traditions, or going to new places and discovering new things – every camp we’ve been on has
By Pamela Ueckerman One of the most frequent questions I get about our journey through home education now that my boys are a tween and a teen—aside, of course, from the inevitable and soul-wearying question about socialisation—is, “Will you home school through high school?” It’s a valid question and my answer is always, “If that’s what they want,” which is usually met with more
Am I a Bad Dad? By Ash B I’m a pretty simple, average dad, no expert, but like so many of you, I want the best for my family. The hassles of school had caused me to consider home educating on many occasions prior to beginning our family’s journey. One of my main objections to home educating was personal, it suited me too much
Our life is anything but Instagram worthy. I read the amazingly post-able blogs of home educating families, that must have fifty times the energy of my family, with mixed feelings of inspiration (at what’s possible), insecurity (I’m not capable of that), and a touch of cynicism (tell us the downside)! We’ve got 11, 9, and 5 year olds. Our week consists of a flexible
Spotlight on Home Ed Alumni Jessica Shepstone Hi, my name is Jessica Shepstone. I graduated from home education in 2010. I am an art teacher who runs home-based art classes to children of all ages (primarily home-educated). I started home education when I was 11 years old, having attended school from Prep to Year 5. I enjoyed school, had good friendships and great teachers.
Infinite Sky By Pavlina McMaster Imagine, if you will, that you are a child. You are intensely curious about the world around you. As you grow, you explore the world around you; you follow your parents and family around and learn about how the world works. You observe what happens when you drop things from your high chair, and experiment with different materials—do carrot
Home Ed Groups – The Co-op of my dreams By Bridget Muhrer When my family started our first year of home education, I thought we had our co-op set up for the long term. We had a group of seven friends that were all starting at the same time, and we had had lots of meetings and made lots of plans. We knew what
A week in the life of our home educating family By S. Miranda Monday Eiri (7) and Tal (4) play quietly (like elephants) downstairs before Mum and Dad get up. Dad works from home, so the kids get to have breakfast with him, while I go for a morning walk or sleep in. After helping clean up after breakfast, Eiri does a segment of
Discovering Learning Opportunities on Phillip Island By Pamela Ueckerman Phillip Island, Melbourne’s playground island, is well-known for its little penguins, Seal Rocks and the Phillip Island MotoGP. Having family who live on the island, we visit multiple times a year and love to see it in all its different guises, and over the years, we’ve found many other fabulous opportunities off the beaten track
This Little Piggy went to Market Rachel Vautier If you had met my daughter years ago, and said hello, her answer would have been ‘oink’; pigs….and origami…..were two of her biggest loves. April’s love for origami, the overflow of that paper love all over our house, and her requests to sell something out the front of our house like she had read about in
The benefits of Peer Led learning By Chelsea Reis Earlier this year, I came across a Facebook post promoting a nine week, online short-story writing course for home educated kids and teens. What surprised me was that the facilitator, Emilie Nyguen, was a 14 yo home educated teen herself! I was immediately drawn to the idea that my 8 and 11 year-old, life- long
Using Your Local Library By Saba Hakim Yesterday at our local library, Eassa, along with a group of other primary aged children, was writing instructions for a robot to make a jam sandwich. The robot was our library events presenter in disguise— wearing a cardboard costume. The session started with an explanation of the task, and direction to write instructions. Some children chose to
Week In The Life … By Janet W We kind of fell into home education quite by accident. We are parenting for the second time around after our tiny premature grandson arrived and it became obvious very quickly that we would be raising him. As the stay-at-home parent the education decision was mine, but I’m fully supported by my husband. Our boy Charlie is almost
By Jess D My homeschooling journey started in 1987 when we were living in the UK for 18 months. I was seven years old at the time, and my parents were considering taking a position in Africa. They didn’t like the idea of boarding school for us kids (I had two younger siblings at the time), but my dad was quite unsure/against homeschooling. After
Games for English Kirsty James In addition to the verbal games outlined in Pavlina’s article (In The Dark – Word Games for Home Education), there are many options for pen and pencil games, as well as card, board and online games for students of all ages. Some games focus on specific skills such as spelling or vocabulary, whilst others are broader and include soft
Tracey G ‘I will only do it if I know I won’t be hindering them from becoming an astronaut, orthopaedic surgeon or anything in between.’ These were my ‘famous last words’ words as my husband and I discussed the option of ‘trialling’ home education. Having had a private school education, tertiary opportunities, and a wonderful job in the medical-health profession, I was adamant this
New to home Education – Our Journey Catherine J. Our family is made up of me (Catherine, 37), dad (Darren, 40), Noah (son, seven), Joy (daughter, five) and Jemima (daughter, four). We have been home educating since January 2022. It was prompted by the uncertainty of how schools would fare throughout the pandemic, and the difficulties associated with remote learning. We decided it would
