Concerns and Confidence

Our Journey

Our Journey Prema Saraswatil Our journey should have started when our only child was four. But looking back on it, my ingrained schooling experience, friends, and family persuasion allowed me to brush it off for another six years.  I was working fulltime and our three-year-old was in full-time day care/kinder. He loved every day of it. There was constant play, games, and creative outlet

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Home Ed Stories

Why Running a business while Home Educating is Madness

Megan Blair Running a small business from home can be challenging at the best of times. Running a small business from home while you’re home educating your children adds a whole different level of challenge. Running a small business from home while you’re home educating your children and you’re a single parent is beyond just challenging. It’s absolute madness!  For many years writer, Anaïs

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Your Guide to Co-ops

What is a co-op and is it for you?  A home education co-op (co-operative) can be a fantastic way for your kids to make connections and be exposed to a range of group activities. What is a co-op?  An Australian co-op is quite different to an American one. Co-ops in the US are often parent-run schools where parents teach classes – complete with projects,

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Advice for Home Educators

The C’s of Co-ops

Joanna Bindon Over the 10 years of home-educating my three youngest children, my family has been almost continually involved in some type of homeschool group, which are now more commonly termed “co-ops”, short for “co-operatives”. Some have simply been groups meeting for a social play with an activity or two thrown in; others have been family groups where we shared in a regular activity

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Home Ed Alumni

Lunch with … my mother (and my father comes along for the ride too)- Spotlight on Home Ed Alumni

Lunch with … my mother (and my father comes along for the ride too) By Yi-Shuen Chan   My seven-year-old son, not known for mincing his words, hits her with a doozy the moment Mum sits down, ‘Which is better, home education or school, and why?’ ‘Sammy,’ I tell him gently, ‘you know she’s basically preaching to the converted, right? Everybody who’s going to

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Advice for Home Educators

Nothing Accidental

Nothing Accidental Karen Glauser-Edwards Our son is neuro-divergent … he is high-IQ. Not twice-exceptional, just high-IQ. And whilst many might ask, ‘So what?’, those parents sharing a space with those kiddo’s living their lives to the right side of the bell-curve will undoubtedly be able to provide an answer… or two! Too many years of mainstream schooling saw us trying to advocate and fill

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Advice for Home Educators

Following their Interests 

Following their Interests  Annie Regan In a recent conversation with a schooling family, I was asked the usual question about how I know what to teach the kids, and I gave my usual answer along the lines of, ‘We just follow their interests and all the learning is covered as part of that’.  While this is definitely true, I realised that the picture that

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Home Ed Stories

Mother and Son Podcast

Mother and Son Podcast By Rachel O’Brien  Home educating was something I originally thought I could never do. With so much stigma attached to it, it seemed like a task meant for the wonder women (and men) of the world, something well out of my scope of ability as a mother. Add to that a neurodiverse teenager and it seemed like an impossibility that

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Advice for Home Educators

Home Education and Mum’s Chronic Illness 

Home Education and Mum’s Chronic Illness  Kylie Anderson Let me introduce myself. I am a home educating mother of five. We have been home educating for 13 years and my children are now 17, 15, 9, 7 and 4. I first had symptoms of myalgic encephalomyelitis/ chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) in my late teens while doing VCE. I’d have periods of fatigue so severe

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Home Ed Stories

A week in the life of our home educating family… (BM)

A week in the life of our home educating family…  By Bridget Muhrer  We’ve just completed our very first year of home educating, and my six-year-old son K is excited to be starting Grade 1 (many home educating families don’t talk about school grades with their kids, but it feels right for us). When we first planned to start, K had no siblings, and

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Advice for Home Educators

Home Education Style ‘Whatever works’

By Martina McNeill We are newly registered home educators. Again! Our youngest son has had a stint at school for almost six years, but 2022 finds us home educating. Again.  If you’ve ever spoken to a home educator who has been at it for more than five minutes, you might have heard them say, ‘It’s a lifestyle, not just an education’. Well, that describes

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Home Ed Stories

A week in the life of our home educating family (KJ)

A week in the life of our home educating family Kirsty James Three of my children are now at university, so home ed looks very different for my remaining teen, Rosa (15). There’s no more traipsing around after her siblings, the whole week is planned around her activities. Our style is eclectic, and ranges from academic classes to days of nothing much. We discuss

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Home Ed Alumni

The End of Home-Ed: Where Are the Parents Now? (RT)

The End of Home-Ed: Where Are the Parents Now?  By Rosemarie Tipping Home educators sometimes wonder what life will hold after the home-ed journey is over. Some feel lost, even down, particularly when the ending is unexpected. Others feel excited, having made plans for new adventures. We hope Rosemarie’s words offer some inspiration and also comfort to those who may be feeling blue about

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Concerns and Confidence

Nature Journaling

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

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Advice for Home Educators

Autistic Families & Home Education Or why Home Educating is a good fit for Autistic families

By Heidi Ryan It has often been argued that traditional or mainstream schooling is beneficial to autistic children due to the consistency and routine offered for those who do well with predictable routines. In fact, even specialist schools focus on the positives of conformity, meeting neuro- normative targets and ‘doing what everyone else is doing’. Success in school is viewed as meeting predictable milestones,

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Advice for Home Educators

Countering Home Ed Opposition

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

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HEN News

Victorian Home Education Up 66%

Figures tabled in parliament this week show a huge growth in home education. (Up by a massive 66% from last year) We’ve graphed the rise over time using figures from VRQA Annual Reports going back to 2008. These figures come as no surprise to HEN,  as they reflect the rise in enquiries that we have seen this year. Our support team has been busy

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Advice for Home Educators

Changing Learning Needs

By Annie Regan As an unschooling family, our learning method hasn’t really changed over the years. They learn from the environment around them, making connections to things they already know, following their interests and using things they discover to branch out into new topics and activities to pursue, and not distinguishing life from learning. They have always learnt from playing games, reading books, watching

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Advice for Home Educators

One Year On

By Nabeela Wahid ‘I can do this, Mama! I just need to try harder.’  ‘I can’t believe I did this!’ ‘I love this challenge!’  These are not positive affirmations from a TikTok video, rehearsed and performed for an audience to amass followers and likes. These are the utterances of a child no older than ten. Behind these words lies a gargantuan shift of mindset,

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