Modern Homeschool Today

We had an awesome holiday recently on the Gold Coast. One of the highlights was two days at Seaworld. This was our first trip to Seaworld since our eldest was 3 so it was a different experience with the kids old enough to sit and enjoy the shows such as fish detectives. We scored a seat right at the front and were so close to the seals that the boys could almost reach out and touch them! One of the newer attractions at Seaworld is dinosaur island and the dinosaur discovery centre. The dinosaurs are life sized which is truly amazing to see and the discovery centre is fantastic. I was explaining some of the exhibits to the boys and how they learn what dinosaurs used to eat by their poo. At the end, I asked the boys what they learnt about dinosaurs and DS3 piped up, "I learnt that dinosaurs eat poo". Not quite son, but good try! This has inspired  the boys to learn more about dinosaurs so we are re-visiting some books and studies on dinosaurs.  The dolphin show ...

We are moving house and saying goodbye to our faithful homeschool room! Our new place doesn't have a designated space...yet... so we are going to miss this room! I obviously took this photo before the wall was filled with artwork and posters and the computer desk is missing the laptop!   My love.......Ikea storage tubs! I'm excited about the opportunity to design our new homeschool room so it's goodbye to our old room and looking ahead to something new!

I think most homeschoolers ask themselves this question from time to time. Are we doing enough? It's hard to measure everything we do as so much of our days are just regular life such as a trip to the shops, bike rides, walks on the beach collecting shells.....and how can we measure the value of conversations with our children or the sibling relationships that grow and develop each day? We can't. Some learning, the important stuff, can't be measured on a standardised test. And isn't the avoidance of these measures at least partly what drew us to homeschool in the first place? When it comes to 'how much is enough?' we sometimes have to wrestle with our own beliefs about education when we imagine the 6hr classroom day compared to our own days at home. We returned from a week on the Gold Coast over the weekend so decided to take this week pretty easy as I'm also in the process of re-evaluating how we homeschool. I constantly fall into the 'are we doi...

We don't watch TV much these days but we did happen to see this segment on unschooling on the project where it was described as "stupid" and "irresponsible" by panel members. I don't identify as an unschooler but I respect the diversity that exists in the homeschooling community and embrace many natural learning approaches in the way we home educate. I've seen the merits of unschooling in my own boys through what they create in their 'free' time. I see their passion and enthusiasm when they pursue something that interests them rather than something I've told them to learn and it takes learning to a whole new level - a much higher level. In defence of unschooling is "stupid".......... To be fair, an unschooler saying they let their children do what ever they want does at first, sound crazy. However, what others imagine this to look like is usually incorrect. Unschooling doesn't mean letting kids do whatever they want ...