Education -
Real life - Ripley's Yarn
(It’s true,
as well! Ed.)
The reasons
we started home schooling....
The idea
possibly began with a book about Charlotte Mason sent to me by a good
friend, (thanks, Megan) who is home schooling. My husband, Peter, and I
attended a home-schooling conference in Perth in early 1998and enjoyed
particularly Leonie Westenberg’s session on “getting started”. The
idea appealed to me to be able to follow our children’s interests rather
than having them forced to do whatever the teacher’s interests were.
I read a few
more books from the library which were inspiring; especially John Holt’s
books and Anna Kealoha’s “Trust the Children”. Our daughter Heidi
had already completed Grade 1 at a small public school and I was happy at
first - the school was very multicultural and fairly close by. However,
her teacher repeatedly declined offers of help in the class (eg. for
reading or whatever -most of the children had English as their 2nd
language) and I was a bit disappointed at not being able to be involved in
my daughter’s schooling.
Grade 2
started for Heidi and she was in a mixed 2/3 class. Jonathan was in
Pre-primary. Partway through term 1, a friend we’d met at the ‘Home
school conference’ came to visit and invited us to go to the zoo on
Friday, with the home schoolers. I was on canteen duty at school that day.
I tried to swap but no-one would, so I went to work in the canteen
thinking “I’d much rather be at the zoo with the kids”!
The canteen
duty turned out to be a pivotal point. Conflicts in the school yard
between teachers and students and hearing of the ‘f ’’ word being
called out frequently (positive socialisation....?) decided me then and
there to commence home-schooling the following week. A few months
previously my sister had died of cancer at 35 years of age. This had quite
a profound effect on us all. It made us realise time is short - you never
know when your time is up. Time spent with our children is precious.
Children are a gift from God.
We are hoping
to work overseas some time and thought it would be good to try home
schooling in case it is the only choice wherever we end up; boarding
school is not an option for us. Both Heidi and Jonny were keen to try home
schooling. This was an encouragement to us, so we started!
Strategies for
Home Schooling:
Our first day
of HS was very exciting. Among other things we had planned was
‘ice-skating’. This proved great fun and an excellent introduction to
some other HSers. As Pete and I both worked part time we could therefore
share the schooling. We decided to take 3 months away from Perth and go
travelling. We drove and camped around the North-West coast up to Darwin
and down through the centre of Australia via Coober Pedy and Ceduna and
back across the Nullarbor - sort of a half Australia trip. Heidi and Jonny
wrote journals and drew maps and took photos and painted pictures. Their
journals are now a wonderful memory of our holiday. They learnt to snorkel
in beautiful Coral Bay; rode camels along Cable Beach and observed
dinosaur footprints in Broome; saw enormous salt-water crocodiles in
Darwin; visited an ‘Underground Church’ and discovered opals in Coober
Pedy.
We caught and
ate fresh fish, slept under the stars, observed Aboriginal paintings on
Uluru; tasted goanna, emu, crocodile steaks, kangaroo and honey ants;
cooked damper and marshmallows on the fire; met people from all different
walks of life; attended a rodeo, etc. Heidi has a particular interest in
birds and she documented 83 different types of bird identified in her
‘Slater’s Field Guide’. Jonny is especially interested in mammals,
and observed endangered ones, such as Bilbies, at
the Wildlife park in Alice Springs.
Our tape
player broke the 2nd day of the trip (we hadn’t even hit the
corrugations yet!), so Heidi and Jonny learn to play recorder and ukelele
during our 3 months away. When we returned to Perth we all decided to
continue with HS. The Education Department Officer who came to visit was
helpful and I used her as a resource source -asking her lots of questions;
she sees lots of different HSers. We don’t have a set curriculum but
have a rather ‘eclectic’ program at this stage, covering the ‘eight
learning areas’. We make a plan at the beginning of each term as to what
topics, items of interest, we’d like to study. I also keep a daily diary
of what we actually do.
Resulting Benefits in our Children:
Beginning of
this year, 1999, Peter took up a full time teaching position in Esperance.
This was a bit different for us and I wasn’t sure how I’d go doing the
HS full time. Heidi and Jonny were keen to try our new local school (600
students) so off they went in their uniforms. It was quite a good exercise
sending them to school - it made us realise they hadn’t suffered being
HSed. They fitted in okay and Jonny’s teacher was amazed at his reading.
She did a test which told her he was a 7.8 (What’s that mean?). She told
me he was reading at a grade 3 level (7 yrs and 8months) even though he
had just turned 6. Heidi too was easily one of the ‘better’ students.
Parents were asked to help with the reading this time!
By the end of
term or part way through, Heidi and Jonny both asked to return to HS.
Jonny was a bit bored by his little reader books and didn’t like being
moved into grade 2 for spelling when his friends were in grade 1.By then
I’d met up with some other HSers, (there’s quite a few around
Esperance) and felt ‘Yes!’ We can read any books we like and spend
more time doing music and go to the beach for ‘Phys-Ed’ if it’s hot.
A wonderful
benefit for us at this time in Esperance is that we’ve been able to do
lots of piano (keyboard) - Heidi and Jonny go even before breakfast to
have a play! Another benefit has been being able to visit a whale when it
was in close to West Beach at 10am on a weekday. (We also saw about 20
Southern Right Whales in 1998 in the Great Australian Bight!) And we can
watch fishing boats unload. Being part of research programs like ‘Sea
Dragon Search’ - a community monitoring project initiated by the
Australian Marine Conservation Society of WA - and also the ‘Marsupial
Night-Stalk’ during national Science Week, have been exciting exercises.
As for
‘socialisation’, we have had quite a number of people stay with us
this year, including my 90 year old Great Aunty Bron and 5 year old Daniel
who is Ethiopian. Daniel has been with us 3 months so far. Heidi and Jonny
love to cuddle babies and thoroughly enjoyed playing ‘scrabble’ and
cards with their Great Aunty Bron. They also play chess with Grandad and
have up to 10 local children over nearly every afternoon after school to
play skippy, walk on stilts, cuddle chickens, etc,.
Another
benefit I see is the kids learning to do chores, and cooking ginger-bread
shapes, crocheting beanies, etc,. I found it hard to find time to do these
things together when they were at school. Well, Heidi and Jonathan still
keep journals and we are still enjoying home schooling.
|
