Workbooks

We don't have a whole heap of workbooks but we do have a few for practice simply because there's no point in doing the work if someone has already gone to all the effort. We use workbooks for Spelling, Maths, Handwriting and language (eg conventions, punctuation etc). 

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Getting Started....

I realise that I am blogging a little out of order here but things have finally settled down and I have had a chance to sit down and write some longer posts.

From the idea to homeschool Will to the decision to starting homeschool took from a Wednesday afternoon to the following Monday morning. It was super fast and as a result I threw together a programme very fast with minimal planning and we are now in the process of fleshing that out.

Before Will finished school I went and got some stationery and a few workbooks. We also have some supplementary books from the library and his school books. We also got him a desk and chair. We rearranged some things in the playroom, making table, and scrapbook room to accommodate his school work. And I re-familiarised myself with the huge load of stuff we have in our house for learning.  We joined HEN which is the Home Education Network for Victoria, Reading Eggs, Mathletics, and RemidaWA. Down the track we'll also get a Scitech membership.

 

I made a basic outline of an ideal week and what we hope to include. This has already been modified quite significantly because of the limits placed on us when Tama is home- he is a very real distraction and he also likes to have his own  book work if that's what Will is doing- so we do less bookwork when he is home and Will does more independent work- eg Mathletics and Reading Eggs. 

 

My focus for now is mostly on Literacy, numeracy, self-directed learning (topic), fine motor activities, and living and moving. And so most of my original planning was done around those. Will expressed a desire to build on the learning we had already been doing around the local Bird life- something that the boys have both been interested in since the start of the year.

 

Our first homeschool day without Tama included a bunch of assessments so I could see where Will was at in his reading, maths, and spelling among others... he's doing really well. Which to be honest was a bit of a surprise because his teachers spent so much time on their 'issues' with him that we never did get to hear how well he was going. 

What we are doing:

 

Literacy:

Reading activities with books from the Library. 

Shared novel: James and the Giant Peach. 

Library once a week.

Silent reading.

Bedtime Stories.

'Topic based' reading.

Reading Eggs (online).

Poem of the week.

Story Writing and Letter writing.

Spelling list and activities 

Nb. We are doing some of this consistently and some  goes by the wayside if something comes up- like an Excursion or Science week etc.

 

Printing practice 4x a week as this is something that needs a lot of work. 

 

Numeracy:

Mental Maths 

Practice activities in number 

Place Value. 

Maths games

Mathletics

'Topic'

Our bird study is a combination of Literacy, Science, art and technology. I like to try and work through Blooms Taxonomy of learning with this sort of work, because really whatever Will choses to study is for me more about teaching him how to learn- than the actual topic, that's just a bonus. 

 

So we might start just working out what we already think we know, what we want to know, and then gathering knowledge and information. For example identifying the birds around us and their homes.

 

Then we move on to understanding what we've learnt. For our bird study we are classifying our birds by their habitats and also their feet/legs. Describing them, comparing and contrasting.

We're going to apply that knowledge by designing some bird sculptures for the garden. And creating some images of feathers with pencils and watercolour paints.

 

We're going in analyse the places we found the birds and the types of feet they have to find any connections. 

 

We'll synthesise the information by creating our bird sculptures and also bring our excursion photos together in a project form- yet to be decided by Will. 

The final evaluation stage will be going back to our original brainstorming rubric and assessing if what we knew was correct, whether we answered all our questions, and what other information we gained.

This time around I have set the parameters/tasks/goals for this work- but I intend for Will to take more control and leadership next time around. (He's decided on Geophysics and Nuclear Physics).

Fine-motor

One of the areas that Will struggles with is his fine motor skills. So some of the activities we do are aimed at building his hand strength and helping him to hone his skills. This includes the work with tools on the 'Making table' (our art zone), Potions Table and wood work, working with Clay, playdough, free choice drawing, Block and lego challenges, and some of the tasks he is assigned when we cook.

Living and Moving

This includes but is not limited to: cooking, dancing, swimming, hockey, cycling, board games, outside play, helping at home, singing, walking, shopping, gardening, listening to music, and trampolining.

Our school hours are not limited to week days or 9-3. We often go well past 3 on a weekday depending on what is happening, what we are doing. And weekends often include hockey, outside play, bike riding, excursions, cooking etc. We very rarely do school work on a Monday- it's like a recovery day post weekend- and often when I do planning, preparation and my own things on the computer.

School for us very rarely looks like this!
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We're doing it again!

After a chat with Will's Occupational Therapist last week about her findings from Will's in-class observation we made the very easy decision to take him out of school and home-school him for the foreseeable future. Maybe only six months, maybe 2016 as well (with Tama) or maybe longer- we'll evaluate as we go along.

I should say from the outset we don't have a problem with our primary school at all, in fact I rather like it and will miss the people quite a bit. But what we believe is that Will's educational needs are not best met in a busy classroom full of children, noise and distraction. And because he has a mum at home who is a teacher- we may as well take advantage of that. The added bonus is that if we are homeschooling next year then Tama can join us which will be great as I don't think at four and a half he is ready for the full on academic programme in the West Australian pre-primary programme.

In comparison to New Zealand starting to home school in Western Australia is a breeze. We gave the Homeschool office a call and they emailed the registration form to me as well as the Curriculum documents I requested. I filled in the form (2 pages of basic details like address, birthday etc) and posted it back to them with a copy of Will's birth certificate.

In three months we can expect a visit from the homeschool moderator for our area. She will check out our programme and our progress.

The people I spoke to on the phone were positive and encouraging and they are available to help should I need it. The stark contrast to the New Zealand way of doing things is quite something!

That said it hasn't been without it's challenges. I have set up a skeleton curriculum in the space of 5 days and am working on fleshing it out now that I have done some assessments on Will and have a feel for where he is at. I gave away or sold all my very 'teachery' resources when we moved to WA something I am regretting a bit now- what I would give for the learning objective cheat sheets that I had- or even better the WA equivalent. I said last week that teaching is like riding a bike- I was wrong!! It's like trying to relearn a second language that I haven't spoken in quite a while. I am also trying to adapt my teaching style as I develop our curriculum as well. My personal views on education have changed a lot and I'd prefer to be quite unstructured in our days- but I can see that wouldn't be a good approach for Will.

Probably the biggest challenge will be the constant companionship- I was very much enjoying the 'kindy days' and will miss that space from the constant chatter!

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Finally Legal!

Phew! I can't tell you how much stress this piece of paper caused me!

Application Filled and not quite rejected

Just before we went to Christchurch I sent off our application for Exemption I believe it was about 8 pages of guff designed to make the powers of bureaucracy at the Ministry of Education. I should have sent it earlier I left us with just over 15 working days to get it back before school started, but it was hard work.

The law states we must teach Merenia as regularly and as well as she would be taught in a state school. And that's all it says. The MOE get to interpret and decide how we can prove we are going to do this.

One of the things you have to do is present a years curriculum plan and with our plan to unschool and our curriculum therefore being Child-led I was struggling with how to honestly present information I didn't know. I called the Student support guy to ask what I was supposed to do. Big mistake. We both spoke a completely different language and I really struggled with his staunch passion for the 'state school way' and he just completely didn't understand me at all.

One of the examples that I gave him from Merenia's list was the fact she was keen to learn about Helicopters and I said that until we got into it I didn't know if she wanted to learn about Heli mechanics, Flight, Les' Heli related job or about being a pilot- and that quite possibly Merenia herself didn't know either. So how could I say what our first year curriculum might entail.

His reply was that it would be absurd to try and teach a 9 year old to be a pilot.

Um, so NOT what I had said.

By the end of the phone call despite me keeping my composure we parted most certainly not as friends. With my new found knowledge not gained directly but by inference I wrote our application in which I surmised from thin air what our first years curriculum might include and I wrote in edu-speak so as to make the educator who'd be reading it as comfortable as possible. I thought I had done well but I wasn't really surprised when the letter came back with a request for more info.

Perhaps most frustrating was his statement that: "In your application you state- "We don’t intend to adhere to school terms or hours...." which could be interpreted as an intent not to adhere to the requirements of the legislation."

What we actually said was.....

"Merenia’s education will be essentially constant from the moment she wakes till she falls asleep, most likely, knowing our girl, with a book in her hands. We don’t intend to adhere to school terms or hours especially as we have an older child who will also benefit from the activities and opportunities that will presented to Merenia. Also as we will be sharing the workload for teaching Merenia a reasonable amount of her learning will happen during weekends and evenings when her Dad is home from work. Just as our 2 year old is constantly learning from the activities and actions that occur daily Merenia will also be almost continually learning."

In my reply to him on Thursday I wrote:

"I’d like to assure you that on the contrary while children only spend approximately 11% of their time in any given year actually in the classroom it would be unthinkable for us for Merenia to spend such small amount of time actively learning. We were simply saying that the learning experiences and activities that Merenia takes part in would not happen *ONLY* between 9am and 3pm each term weekday. But that she would also spend time in the evenings, weekends and holidays. By structuring our programme to work like this we are able to offer Merenia a richer learning experience as she will be able to have one on one time with each of us, rather than in a Monday – Friday/9-3 style school timetable in which she will share one parent with her 2 year old brother ."

I hope that he understands it this time around.

I also had to provide more information on the content of our curriculum as well. Although I honestly couldn't see why and nor did he really explain it either. He read my email about 30 minutes after I sent it on Thursday morning but has yet to reply. I expect he will probably do it in writing in about 15 days and will probably ask for yet more info.

It's funny the ministry suggests they will take approximately 15 working days to approve your application/ask for more info if required. But if you are asked for more info you are expected to reply within 10 days of the date they wrote the letter or you are automatically declined. Something I find intriguing because if you get declined you then have to appeal to the head honcho... I'd quite like to do that because I think Gary is just picking on us because of the phone call.

All this leaves us in something of a no mans land. Until she gets her exemption Merenia is expected to turn up to school. But I've already sold her uniform and I sure as heck am not about to buy her school books.

There is a whole bunch more I could say on this there are some truly wrong aspects of this whole process which are in place because the government provided no clear guidelines so the MOE had to make up their own which are all based on the state model of education which I believe (and the research supports) has some huge issues. It reminds me of the ERO inspectors visiting Arthur Street School and trying to get their head around the Montessori classes.

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Status Update

When I left off we had just spent 5 days at Timatanga, not long after that we attended a BOT meeting to discuss whether Merenia would be accepted to attend. I believe they would have been happy to have her but Les and I had already agreed that although we really like the school, and it was an easier option, we felt it wasn't the best option for Merenia at this time... we my revisit it again in the future though.

So Merenia is to be homeschooled. She had her heart set on Timatanga as she had made such great friends already but she took the news really well.

I have written the first draft of my exemption application, it's ok but needs some work as I think it sounds a bit wanky/teacher-y and that's not how I intended to present myself, unsurprisingly. I have also joined a couple of Homeschool Yahoo groups which have been invaluable in terms of information and resources.

So the plan for the next week or so is to get the exemption finished and sent in so that we are ready to go by the time school starts back. Once it is sent off then we need to look at how are days will look (busy but relaxed) and draw up a some very basic guidelines like limiting Singstar and Saddle Club DVD's etc. And we need to decide 'what' we need to join (Rodney HE) and sign up for (Choir and Ukulele) and what extra resources we may need (a ukulele, more clothes). :-)

We need to formalise some arrangements like Merenia's appointment as 'Head Gardener' for 2010. Tell school (Yipee!!) and then we are go!

Progress Report

Just up the road from the kids school is a little school with 20 odd pupils. From what we have learned so far the follow a very child lead/centred Summerhill/Sudbury valley style of education.

Mira's and I went and had a look at the school from the road during the holidays and along with Les we've had a few conversations about the school and homeschool and looked at the pro's and con's of both. Merenia's first choice at this stage is to go to the little school.

We have made a request to their BOT to consider Merenia as a possible student for the school next year. This week we found out that the Board is interested in speaking to us and next week I'm going to go and meet with the principal and will get to check out the school in liviong colour.

One of the challenges of taking this option will be helping Merenia adjust to self-directed learning. Although we'll have the same challenge with home school- the duifference is that she'll be in an environment with a bunch of other kids and could potentially be a bit disruptive. The suggestion is that it takes a month for every year of formal schooling for students to settle into homeschool- so four months around about for Mira's if we homeschool and maybe a little less if she goes to the little school as she will have the example of her peers around her.

At the moment I think she can see herself gardening at the little school and heading down the road from the school to sketch the horses in the paddocks nearby and hoping for some like minded girls and boys to act in the plays she has been writing recently.
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Why? Part 1

The question I guess that is one of the most important to answer is why we are choosing to take Merenia out of her State primary school and educate her at home. And the first part of the answer is because she's in the middle and its not ok to drift.

She is an average to above average student in most school curriculum areas and as such she will just drift along through school. Each year she will improve by a year and that will be that. Her teachers we are lucky to be able to say have all be very very good classroom practitioners and we have no complaints at all there. In fact as a teacher myself I have a pile of compliments for the ladies and gent that have schooled our girl so far.

But one teacher in a class of thirty can only go so far. And when that teacher is in a State funded decile 10 school in New Zealand that's not very far at all. Especially if they want to have the life they deserve. I know from experience that you could work all 24 of the hours given in a day, 7 days a week 365 days a year and still never actually do everything you possibly could for every kid in your class.

Of course no teacher has the super power needed to work all those hours and nor would I expect them to. So they do what they can (too much in a lot of cases where schools demand so much and then some more so that they can have pretty graphs and placate daft parents). And then they get in front of their classes and their attention gets pulled in 30 different directions. There are the 'bad' kids, the 'sad' kids, the dim kids and the bright kids too and there are the silly girls, the noisy boys, the kid with the demanding parents, the ADHD kid and the one with a medical condition too. It's never good to be around 'average' in any school... much better you demand attention for some reason, or other.

Merenia is one of those nice middle of the road average kids- I think she has the potential to be pretty smart- I see inklings of it and she has been identified for the capable learners group at school as well, but essentially if she continues to drift along the path that she is on she will never meet her full potential.
We know this.
We've known it for a while.
And the other day a couple of weeks back we realised as parents it's not ok.
It's not ok to just let her drift along and be what she ends up as by default.

And that's just the first reason.

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Holy Homeschool Batman!

So today I had my phonecall returned from the nice lady I called last week at the Ministry of Ed. She is sending us out an information pack and application for exemption. The plan at this stage if we decide to go ahead with home schooling is to start at the beginning of next year. We have lots of conversation going on about this every day; pros, cons, subject matter and 'school trips' (apparently we'll be going on quite a few of them).

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