independence

drive

I love my job. I think it is because there is so much to watch and think about. I get so much energy from the children. It’s like their excitement is contagious. It feels like you are somehow involved in the most exciting project ever and there is no boss to take you back to…

I believe this..

We can not teach someone something unless there are one or more of the following conditions: The thing is actually relevant to a learner’s genuine life. The learner genuinely finds the subject/thing actually interesting (this one is hard as you don’t always know what you will find interesting) and this can also be because the…

Another benefit of homeschooling..

I was at a quilting retreat in the weekend and there was a woman there who had had to put her kids in The Correspondence School because her husband had a job in the middle of nowhere, she was not someone who chose homeschooling, and her kids did regular school before and after this period….

the week that was

About an hour ago I was feeling totally successful. I felt we had accomplished a lot during the week. Our meeting on Monday was actually kinda fun – I went through the areas of the NZ curriculum (that I said I’d use in my homeschool application) and we thought about whether we had done something…

it’s not fair

We have been back home from work in Wellington for 2 days. So far every morning Helena bounces out of bed and goes off to do one of her weird and wonderful tasks… In fact the moment we walked in the door off the bus she was making flour and water glue to start doing…

Today Helena caught the bus into town by herself and brought some tissue paper, took her books back and went to her book club ALL BY HERSELF…. all by herself. We have done a little work to get here.. we use to catch the bus at the same time and pretend we weren’t together. We…

extending learning

It’s a thing extending the children… that idea that they need to be moved forward never staying where they are, and the horror of them slipping back!! I am not totally adverse to this idea as I like getting better at stuff, but I also like being OK at lots of stuff, like cleaning! I…

things we can’t get from homeschooling

Group projects- kids working together to achieve something better together than they can alone Culture, in particular developing a culture that actually promotes the making of mistakes and emphasises collaboration Learning from other children, especially those at a similar zone of proximal development. I do not think we can necessarily get these from most schools…

they learn from what we do

When I wrote my homeschool application I had such grand plans. One of which was that we would somehow build our own tiny home and I imagined Helena by my side measuring, sawing etc. Of course reality was someone else built us a sleepout sized building with no internal finishing…. and I paid cash, so…

leaving her to it

Recently I have been leaving Helena to her own devices, more than usual, as I am painting the house (she has been offered $ to help) and working on the sleep out (I thought she would be interested but no..). I am modeling er something I hope. Helena has found her own project and it…