Category Archives: socialisation

Australian National Curriculum but not that one… Montessori!

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I’m putting together the re-registration papers for M. She’s apparently a high school student this year but ‘grades’ mean little to us anymore.

Although I’m suppose to put together half of the program for this year that will satisfy the NSW BOS curriculum, in 2014 we will be expected to use the Australian National Curriculum (although only 4 of the sections are published and ready to use). We heard that the National Montessori Curriculum has been approved as an alternative to the ANC. Here’s the kicker… after calling the BOS to ask “can we just use the Monty Curric pleeeeeeeeeease?” the response was “regardless of which curriculum you use you’ll still have to meet the NSW Syllabus guidelines”.

National curriculums yet each State and Territory will STILL have their own Syllabus. Political much?

In all honesty we look at ALL curriculums, we talk to Uni lecturers, other home educators and teachers, ask about and in the end we do what works. This is what we’ve been up to lately.

Tutor Your Own Child Blood Tutor Your Own Child Bugs Tutor Your Own Child Paint Tutor Your Own Child Timeline Tutor Your Own Child Lucy Tutor Your Own Child Craft

First day of School?

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first day of school 1980

As THOUSANDS of children head off to school today, it’s a great time to remember what that institution is… it’s ONE of the venues your child attends where they learn. Your home, the world, their friend’s house, the shops… the park, the beach, the *insert here* is another. LEARNING happens regardless, no matter where they are.

However, schools deliberately try to make children learn, and this doesn’t always work… which would be fine except schools ALSO test your child’s learning. That brings stress into learning. Tutoring YOUR own child can help to reduce that stress. It can improve test results, make learning easier and school more enjoyable. Tutoring is ‘assisting a student to understand what HAS been taught’, not teaching from scratch.

As you kiss them goodbye and then wait until you see them again, see if you can remember what it’s like to be excited to go school…. remember that first flush of new pencils and new school bag…. those new books!!!! The anticipation was INTENSE, hey!!!!

Then came the stress and then the boredom…. between the stress and boredom IS WHERE YOU FIT IN!!!! Catch them at the first sign of stress and help them to cope… that’s what tutoring REALLY does.

Happy to answer any questions you have, your questions may help others. Hope today is AWESOME for everyone!

Notes for the parent tutor

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Do you remember the video for Pink Floyd’s ‘Another Brick in the Wall’? ( here’s a link for the video cliphttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U) Watch this with your Schooled child and discuss with open communication your experiences as a Schooled child. Consider reclaiming your role as their FIRST teacher. Tutoring your own child is about helping them understand not just what’s taught in class but how to understand the world. What I’d love for you to know, Parents, is that in ‘their eyes’ we brought them into the world, they are only here because we decided to create them. They look to US for help on that sometimes frightening job of learning about the world but then they get put into a School and are away from us, isolated from the ‘real world’ as we call it. Then we expect them to learn in isolation from the ‘real world’ how to live in the ‘real world’. It’s not just a school thing, it’s for any family that restricts what their children can and can’t learn about, but it is also a ‘School thing’ as at no other time in our lives do we get segregated into ‘same age groups’ and forced to learn at a teacher’s pace, day in day out.

We used to have children knowing it was a lifelong commitment to another person, the way we used to view marriage. It’s part of becoming an adult to leave your own childhood behind and become ‘responsible’ for another human. Now we have a baby and go back to work, somewhere between 6 weeks and 6 years later. Women are punished socially for not returning to work in some circles, in others returning to work is the crime. Mummy Wars are the new competition that are added to the war on image that’s been playing out for decades.

Clearing up the realities for a minute, just forget about what other’s think about how you’re living your life, the reality is that no one else will do the job of ‘raising our children’ for you. Sure they’ll ‘babysit’ and they’ll ‘educate’ but as far as ‘being there for them’, well that’s our job. Delegating is a choice and the consequences can be life changing. Our children still look at us to be the one’s ultimately responsible for them until they too are grown and ready to be responsible for someone else.

How much damage does it take before you can’t reconnect with your child? Don’t let the opportunity to turn things around vanish without your full consideration. Wishing you all the very best with your journeys.

Here is the full length movie of ‘The Wall’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQE3vcwU97g

What we do…. and then some

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In the wee small hours…before crashing into bed (probably literally at this stage) I’m reminded that I need to share more of what we actually do with home education if this blog and my website link are to be in anyway useful.

Well their dad was a blacksmith when she was born!
 
Oh wow… that foil covered shield looks shiney!
Battle time… the only time they fight!

 

  • Monday Morning Meetings… we gather and go over what each of my munchkins want to do with their week academically, socially, inside, outside… what ever really. Then I raise the topics of what I feel would be good to cover and we discuss all of what we’ve raised. From this we write up a plan of things I need to do, they need to do, places we need to go, things we need to buy etc. Usually we come up with other things during the week but I have a written record of the conversation so I can monitor what is going on during the week, make comments, suggestions, give reminders etc. This process works best for us and stops us falling into the common unschooling trap of everyone going off to do their own thing, nothing gets done, gaps in sequential learning develop and well… we genuinely miss each other! It may seem strange, but when we’re off doing our own thing we may not see each other all day! Now that both of my children are capable of independent research they get heavily invested into what they are doing. Another aspect is Continue reading →

Conference Reef and stuff!

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It’s time for me to publish a post on my blog. What shall it be about hmmmm? Well I’m not really motivated to do more than say that life goes on, ups and downs…. oh we attended the Australian Unschooling Conference. It was very intense, sublime and the setting was awesome.

We swam in the warm waters of the Great Barrier Reef and although it broke my heart to be there, knowing what tourism and CSG etc is doing to the natural wonder I managed to balance out my own personal dilemma of contributing to the tourism.Once there I saw that the area we saw was fairly dull and up further was much brighter… I like (tongue in cheek) that we may have been ‘kept away’ from the pristine parts… but it’s still something I struggle with. I still feel as though a dream of mine has been fulfilled.

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