The Aftermath

This is our main 'classroom' for doing Tama's much requested 'activities'. This of course is after a morning of doing stuff!

Homeschool Meet-up

We attended the start of year Homeschool meet-up at a park in the city. We checked out the sales and Tama chose a home-made Geoboard to buy. I got a fractions set and a clock stamp. Then we enjoyed some lunch away from the noise and commotion to give Tama some time to take it all in.

After some careful observation he eventually felt confident enough to join in on the action. He thoroughly enjoyed himself. :-)

Tama's favourite tree at the park.

Play Room

This is our playroom....

It houses all out toys, blocks, games, most of the kids books (the big kids also have a book shelf each in their rooms), musical instruments, art table and a lot but not all of our art gear. It's a huge space and we're lucky to have it. Not all of our toys/games are out at one time. We have two pantry style cupboards (on the right in the bottom picture) one for toys and one for games- these are locked because if they weren't everything would be out... trashed on the floor... and the kids nowhere to be seen. I rotate the toys when we're getting bored with what's there- or to suit what we're focusing on at the time- eg Dinosaurs with the Woolies Dino cards or The cash register when we're doing money for Maths.

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This week on the homeschool web....

Moving and touching helpful to learning... I guess the wrigglers and the fiddlers can't stop their nature!

Super cool resources for learning about fractions.

I'd like to get this alphabet for the boys I love that there are 10 of each consonant and 20 of each of the vowels.

I want to remember to observe some snails... the boys would love it!

Another thing to remember Bird Week starts October 19th! I think the boys would be into doing a bird count.

Will doesn't seem all that interested in gardening at the moment but I'm also book marking these competitions for later use just in case.

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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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This week on the home school web...

 Tying shoe laces - Will needs some help... some ideas here and then here.

I do love the look of  these My First Montessori Books. I have a couple on my wishlist  at the Book depository- I'd like to have a look at the fractions and square numbers ones.

I love the idea of using spinning tops as a fine motor activity. 

101 reasons to homeschool. :-)

Grace and Courtesy is something we could do better at our house.

I want to get both Will and Tama more involved in their own food prep and other self-care stuff. Tama can get himself dressed and Will is capable of making his own breakfast but there's no reason why they can't prepare or help prepare their own lunches with a few modifications to our pantry/fridge set up.

Love these ideas for extentions to the ways we can use our nature table.

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I think....

'Freedom to Think' should be our home school motto.

Image drawn by Chris Riddell from Freedom to Think website which is a super cool concept encouraging and sharing children's creativity.

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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Why we love Homeschool Reason #1

On Wednesday we went to buy a Ukulele as Merenia will be starting lessons soon.

We went at 9am.

Which we so wouldn't have been able to do if she was at school.

We came home and she jumped on the net and started surfing ukulele websites and looking for instructions, chord charts and sheet music.

Which we so wouldn't have been able to do if she was at school.

She spent the whole day practicing and teaching herself. (and much of Thursday and Friday as well.)

Which we so wouldn't have been able to do if she was at school.

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!