Homeschool Transitions

Here we are at Week Four, the final week of the Not Back To School Blog Hop. If you missed the first few weeks why not go back and check them out, there's been some great posts shared by some of my fellow Aussie Homeschool Bloggers.

Week One we chatted about our hopes, dreams and goals for the year ahead.

Week Two saw us talking about how we school.

Week Three our focus was on resources for the year ahead.

This year we are transitioning into much more serious work. My eldest has entered his final three years of home schooling and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't just a little bit freaked out by that for various reasons.

He and I have chatted at length about the future ahead. We've both agreed that ensuring he has a strong educational base to leave here with is of the utmost importance to all of us.

That's not to say that we've spent the past ten years of our home ed experience sitting around twiddling our thumbs because we certainly haven't. We've simply done things differently over the years to what we are doing today.

"Today is about more structure, more focus and more accountability on both of our parts."

Is this an easy transition for us?

No, it isn't. I'm tired already and we aren't even halfway through our first term. I am already checking the calendar for our next school break and he is most definitely feeling the added pressure.

But we are simply forming new habits and doing so takes time, hard work,  diligence and perseverance. New habits are not formed over night.

Would we have found this easier if we'd been doing what I guess could be called a more standard model of homeschooling over the years? Without a doubt I believe so yes, as it would simply be a natural progression. Do I wish I could go back and change how we have done things over the past ten years. Without a doubt, NO!

I wholeheartedly embrace the notion that children need play and lots of it, even when they are teens. They need loads of time to tend to themselves, to be bored, to explore, to seek out their own interests and to simply just be. Most often the way to achieve this is by lots of unstructured learning and bucket loads of down time. All of which we have experienced over the years.

I also feel we are finding this much harder simply because we are coming off the back of a very haphazard year.

Now don't get me wrong, I do not believe in any way that I have placed to high expectations on either myself or my tenth grader. I know some of you showed concerns when I shared our resource list, but I will come back to how we are using those resources in another post.

He is still doing far less 'sit down at a desk' academic type work than some of this other home schooled and public schooled peers. Granted he's also doing more than others too. But this is not about what anyone else is doing. It is only about him.

Through our entire homeschooling period one of the most important things to me has been one of 'enjoying life'. That really has been of our big driving forces in home schooling. To not be bound by school terms, school rules, school work and everything else that goes along with attending regular school. We are free to do as we please and simply live life on our terms, not one dictated to us by the institution that is school.

I always said that as a home school family if the kids get to a stage where they don't have enough time to simply enjoy themselves then they might as well be in school. Sitting at home on their own completing school work all day every day is no fun for anyone. At least if they were at a high school they would get to talk to other teens.

I have always vowed that our home school would never become like that and so we find ourselves in that tricky place of transitioning.

Of ensuring we keep the wonder, the fun and the excitement alive. Ensuring there is plenty of 'play time' and time for friends, yet making certain that the academics are not being left behind.

Whilst it is still only early days in the year some of the things we have done to help us ease into our new routine is - - >

A thorough weekly check list for the tenth grader. This gives him the freedom to work on what he chooses, but by having a full week's overview he can easily see what he may be favouring and what subjects he isn't getting in enough of.

Using this though is going to take some work. Whilst we've tried checklists over the years, they've never been something we've stuck with so it will take work and even then I can't be sure it is something we will continue with.

The checklist is not only for him though it also helps me to see where he is at and I use the info on the checklist to plug everything in to a private blog he and I have.

The blog is our primary record keeping tool. I am currently adding in every thing he does in his day onto the blog. This means being diligent in snapping photo's, keeping up with everything he is doing, scanning documents and then adding all of this to a post each week.

I must admit though I am really loving being able to open the blog and see what he's accomplished. In previous years there was a little part of me that wondered how much we were actually doing and now I know because it is right there in front of me.

We also need to start a portfolio of sorts, but as yet I don't really know how we will go about that. For now I think at the end of the first term we will go through what has been completed and decide what is worthy to go into the "high school years portfolio". That one needs some more thinking on though.

The other challenge for us is that we still have two younger kids in the house and so we find ourselves in the position of having two kids that have completed their structured work and are off doing things of their own interest whilst the tenth grader is still going at it with his work. That also means that for me I am still 'switched on' for a much longer period in my day than what I have been in the past.

Being certain that we have a serious focus whilst work is being completed, that we are keeping track of work that has been completed in an adequate fashion and also adding in more assignment based explorations is challenging. I also know that the accomplishments at the end of the week are great.

The other factor is he currently doesn't have a direction he is working towards. Now that is totally fine my be and him, but it does leave us in a situation of not really knowing what is going to be important or not. And so for this year at least we are exploring what we can, ensuring we have a wide enough, yet deep enough coverage in the subject areas for him.

As always, plans change, we will always remain very fluid and at any given time if his direction changes then everything he is doing will no doubt change to suit that. These next few years are all about meeting him where he is at and constantly reassessing what we are doing on a daily basis. Actually as I type that I realise that that part of home school is no different.

So for now this is where we are at. A place of forming new habits as we both enter what is new territory for us.

Be sure to read the other bloggers posts linked up below. Simply click on one of the square images to be taken to their blog.

Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie

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The Way We School

It's week two of the Not Back To School Blog Hop for 2017!

Have you all been and read the posts from the first week of our not back to school blog hop? If you haven't done that yet please go and check them out. You will find the links to them here at the bottom of this post.

This week our theme is

The Way We School

Like most homeschooling families, this has changed many times over, during the past eleven years for us. I try my hardest to be fluid, to meet the kids where they are at and to find ways that work for all of us. Simply doing what works, as opposed to what everyone else is doing, has been my mantra for quite some time now.

For now what has been working for us is a 4 pronged approach to homeschool. Those 4 prongs are made up of co-operative peer group learning, morning basket family group learning, independent rotation learning and doing one more thing.

I'll give you all a quick overview of each of those prongs and how we roll with them.

Co-operative Peer Group Learning

This is an area that has grown exponentially for us over the past couple of years and for my teen especially has become an imperative part of his education. I am a strong believer that we all need a peer group and even more so as our children age. That's not say that I agree with sending off them for 6 - 8  hours a day 5 days a week to spend all of that time with their peers. No way! But we do need peers, they help us see the world through their eyes, to learn from, to grow with, to bounce ideas and thoughts around. To be there for us celebrate to good times and hug us in the not so great times. Our peers help us navigate the world around us, they assist us in learning how to deal with others both in good times and bad. If we forego those experiences as a youngster then how will we ever learn to navigate the world that is full of strangers out there.

However, co-operative learning for us needs to be quality, it needs to be able to mark off a true day of school. Yes we are absolutely having fun, but we are also learning and learning at a deeper level, not just gathering with others for socialising and calling it educational.

So we currently partake in 2 co-operative learning days a week, during school terms. One runs for 6 weeks and the other for 8 weeks. One is very small with only 4 families involved, but it allows for a real closeness to grow. The small size also gives us the opportunity to really dig deeper in what we are studying and truly spend time on the things we need or want. For example our teens in that little group have spent the last 2 years working solidly through Australian History and a Creative Writing Program. We have time to take our time, we don't need to limit what we are doing to a short 8 week block.

Our other co-op is larger, with around 35 children across a wide group of ages in attendance. This co-op is a bustling hive of activity and all of us enjoy our co-op days immensely.

Morning Basket, Family Group Learning

I've mentioned our morning basket time a bit here on the blog, simply it is a way for us to gather together as a family. To bring all the various ages, abilities and interests of my kids together. A time to begin the day, to bond and to grow together.

As the kids have grown they have needed to branch out and work more independently, morning basket has been our way of keeping at least part of our day for us to all be together.

Independent Rotations

This part of our day is exactly as it sounds. Independent Rotations follows straight after our Morning Basket time. Basically each of the children complete independent work and then I rotate through seeing each of them.

Each child heads off to their own area to work independently. For my 8 year old this means still having me very close by, but slowly he is becoming more and more independent in his work.  As soon as he and I are done, he has some free time.

I then move on to my middle child to go over her work and to complete anything we have that we do together. We also use this time to do more reading aloud, when it's just us and she can choose a book she really wants to read.

Then she joins her little brother for a spot of free time and I head over to see what my eldest is up to. We don't meet every single day, but at least twice a week he and I will sit down together to chat about what he's up to and where he is headed.

By that time it is well and truly lunch and we are all ready for a break.

Doing One More Thing

Now this is one area that I am really not very good at. We always start the year out well but I do tend to let this slip by the wayside. So once again my plan is to be more intentional with our 'doing one more thing'.

All this simply means is that after lunch we do something else. It doesn't mean that it is an afternoon spent tied to the books. So basically it could be an art project, some history reading, a documentary to watch, a science experiment to complete etc etc.

In my head I see us rotating through topics and subjects for this part of our day and I have begun writing out some plans for this, but in reality it is more likely to be, let's just see where it takes us.

And that then brings us to the end of the day, or the more structured, formal learning part of our days anyway. It's been working well for us and it is a routine we will continue to put into place until it longer works.

How about you? Do you have a routine like structure to your day? Please share it the comments so others may be inspired. Or if you blog, why not join us in our blog hopping fun.

Be sure to read the other bloggers posts on 'how they school' by visiting the links below.

Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie

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Hope, Dreams & Goals For Our Year Ahead

Well the start of a new school year is already upon us! Once again I have teamed up with some of my Australian Homeschool Blogging friends to bring you four weeks of 'not back to school' blogging fun.

Over the coming weeks we will all be blogging about our year ahead, and what we envisage that to look like for us. At the bottom of each 'not back to school' post you will find links to the other bloggers that have joined in. Simply click the image and it will take you to their blog and their post on the same topic.

This is such a great way to get a well rounded overview on differing ideas. Two heads are better than one, so the saying goes and when it comes to planning for and setting up your year ahead this is definitely the case.

If you are interested you can view past Not Back To School Blog Hops at this link.

Our first themed NBTS post is one of looking ahead, one of dreams of the future and of the goals we've laid down, not only for ourselves, but for our children, our family and our homeschools.

And so as Walt Disney said:

We've had such a tumultuous eighteen or so months that our lovely homeschooling groove really has fallen by the wayside. We kept up our academics as best we could but it was very haphazard and snippets of time were grabbed when we could get them. Then there is the constant battle of the screens in all of the their various forms that have invaded our days and have affected how they pan out.

Now I take full responsibility here for that one. I spent many years fighting screens, and not allowing mindless game playing, until finally giving in to the dreaded peer pressure, which at the time was Minecraft. This it seemed, has opened the flood gate. I know I am in a place where it can't be closed and in all honesty I don't want to close the gate completely. There are many valuable uses for the various screens and let's not forget the joy my kids derive from them. We all need a little mindless downtime here and there.

As most of you are aware we were also experiencing some major life trauma's and my guard was down a great deal of the time. I just didn't have the emotional capacity to worry about my dying friend and how much time my kids were spending on screens. After all my kids are all fighting fit and healthy, my best friend was dying before my eyes. And so the kids easily gravitated to their screens more and more. Whilst part of me regrets allowing that to happen, I am choosing to give myself some grace here. Last year was a majorly 'sucky' one and I know I was doing the best that I was able to do given the circumstances.

We've also moved from a very home centered school day to one where we partake in two relatively academic co-ops. These have been a wonderful addition to our lives in many aspects, but in part they have also made learning at home with just one's brother or sister appear a little boring.

So, whilst I do have a long list of hopes, dreams and goals for the year ahead, my number one focus will be on bringing back the joy into our homeschool. Bringing back our focus, our routines and connecting our hearts once more so that our days at home together, albeit different, are just as joyous as the days we spend with our co-op friends, or the time the kids are playing with their screens.

It's called balance isn't it and that is my main driving force for the year ahead. Bringing back the balance.

What about you? I'd love to hear what your hopes and dreams are for the year ahead. Please share them in the comments.

Don't forget that there are some other wonderful Homeschooling Blogs joining me in this post, just scroll down a little and click on the images to be taken directly to their posts about their hopes and dreams for the year.





Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie

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Easing In To A New School Year

You can now find this article by clicking here

Homeschooling Help Booklet - Free Printable

I've been helping out a couple of friends with preparing for their year ahead in the homeschooling world. For those of us that have been doing this for years we know how crazy it can get when trying to make the best possible decisions for your children, your homeschool and your family environment.

It's easy to get caught up in the frenzy of what all your homeschool friends are doing and comparing your list of ideas against theirs. It is always in these moments where we need to come back to us. To our children, to our family and to the things that we hold dear.

To help my friends in a way that is as least overwhelming as possible I put together a very simple Free Homeschooling Help Printable Booklet.

It contains all the important stuff when it comes to thinking about the year ahead. Not only what we will utilise for specific grades but it also covers some of the heart stuff. The things that are truly more often, more important than the subjects and the resources.

The booklet is twenty pages, with a very no frills design. Simply print it off, grab a cuppa and start completing it. If you're anything like me though you'll work on this over quite a few different sittings.

If you have friends that are new to homeschooling or that may be feeling a little overwhelmed please share this blog post with them.

 Download The Free Homeschooling Help Booklet Here

Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie

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Homeschool Blogs To Read

Well the new year is definitely under way and whilst we are still on school summer holiday break I am busy gathering supplies for and organising our year ahead.

For the second year in a row I have decided to team up with the Homeschool Review Crew once again, to bring you all some great products, that we use and review in our home.

I love reading homeschool related blogs, so much great stuff to glean from them. if only there were enough hours in the day to read each and every post that all of you wonderful homeschool mumma's take the time to create.

This year I thought I would share some of the blogs that are also part of the review crew this year. You're bound to find something here that interests you. There's such a wide variety of bloggers and the areas in which they focus on.

So go, grab a cuppa, or if you're in Australia, a cool icy drink and enjoy some time getting to know a few new to you homeschooling blogs.

I'm looking forward to another fun and productive year on the review crew. Can't wait to bring you our first lot of product reviews.


Happy Homeschooling,
Kylie

Come on over and join me at

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Have you looked at my Pinterest Boards lately?


Visit Our Worldwide Classroom's profile on Pinterest.