Once upon a time, the animals decided that they must do something heroic to meet the problems of a “New World” so they organised a school. They adopted an activity curriculum consisting of running, climbing, swimming and flying. To make it easier to administer the curriculum, all the animals took all the subjects. The duck was excellent in swimming, in fact, better than his
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 Kirsty James Looking through the photo book documenting the first year of Tyabb Homeschool Activity Teens co-op (THAT), I realised that there were two recurring expressions on the faces of the kids; happiness and concentration. Whatever they were doing – pyrography, cheese-making, polymer chemistry – their expressions were the same. They were learning, and having fun. Sometimes when we look back on activities,
Carleen Sing home educated her five sons. Their story has been told over many years through Otherways and the family also appeared in a 60 Minutes segment on Unschooling in 2014 and an article in The Daily Telegraph in 2015. Here we look back at their journey… My husband and I both trained as primary school teachers, and it was whilst teaching that I began to question
By Pavlina McMaster We came to home education like many others, carrying scars from a school system that was eroding my child’s self-esteem, and our sanity. School, though short-lived, had been a time fraught with stress, anxiety, and the regression of everyone’s skills, not least of which were mine. As an autistic adult, I had come to learn so many things that many neurotypical
Straddling Home Education and School By Cynthia McStephen The look on her face said it all,“OK you lot, just carry on having fun, why don’t you, while I go off and morph into a school mum for a while.” It was one of those great, local home-ed group get-togethers, where the children were off doing some complicated and creative multi-age activity they’d just invented,
By Sue Wight Rachel Brady gave up on home education after two weeks and sent her children back to school. Her home education experience is not representational. Around 20,000 Australian kids are currently being home educated, thousands more already have been. For some families, home education provides a valuable short-term solution to an immediate problem, but many educate for a substantial time. The average
By Gnat Atherden My father recently asked me to describe how my children learn. I hate getting caught up in validating natural learning by comparing it to formal learning, so I ended up telling him that ‘lessons for us never begin and never stop’ and ‘natural learning happens 24 hours a day, 7 days a week’. I think that whilst these statements are true,
By Kirsty James Our family always joked about “those poor home-schooled kids with no friends”, as we drove from one playdate to another, but slowly as the kids got older our social circle decreased. We made new friends, but we had to try harder and travel further. My eldest is 18 now. He has a few friends who were educated at home, but he met most
By Anne Hall Our family became involved with Sailability four years ago after seeing a HEN advertisement. Teenagers were wanted to go out to the glorious Lysterfield Lake Friday mornings and try their hand at sailing aiming to take people who needed assistance out on the lake for a sail. Sailability organisations are not-for-profit, volunteer-based and, through the activity of sailing, enrich the lives
By Kerstin Scheel Eighteen-year-old Claudia was in and out of school but the system never met her needs. We had several stints of home education which, although challenging, was the best option available for much of the time. Claudia has Down Syndrome and educating her has been a continual battle in terms of both appropriate provision and funding. During the prep transition process, we
Anonymous What I love about home education is that there is room for each and every one of us, in all our glorious uniqueness. We have the freedom to work out what is the best educational fit for each individual and family, rather than trying to contort that individuality to fit into a normative system where one size is supposed to fit all. We
I first had dealings with the Home Education Network when Belinda Cowie booked a gold prospecting tour. This tour gave the students a hands on experience with gold panning, metal detecting and fossicking activities. The morning was a huge success and we received lots of positive feedback from the group. The group included adults, teens, children, preschoolers and toddlers and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the day.
Following our hugely successful Medieval Camp in 2016, Kryal Castle had this to say: Testimonial from Kryal Castle
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 Marie Cosgrove I’ve always valued being different but now my girls say they just want to be ‘normal’… My home ed journey began long before I had children. I was first introduced to the idea by my sister–in-law, who was home educating my two nieces. At the time I was teaching in a primary school and struggling with a system I felt didn’t
By Carolyn Franzke (Otherways Magazine, issue 140) I used to be a teacher. I taught maths and science, and sometimes other subjects too. I was on the curriculum committee, attended lots of conferences and ran staff meetings about the value of a quality curriculum. I studied for my Masters in Education and wrote a thesis about the value of digital portfolios in improving the
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
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
By Lyn Saint ‘How can I give my child a high level of education when I didn’t do very well at school myself?” is not only one of the most asked questions, but many adults today assume that, just because they failed or dropped out of school themselves, that they are uneducated. As a notorious school failure and drop-out, these were also my thoughts
