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A Few Tips for Registering: writing a learning plan

by Beverley Paine

At this time of year the home education community is swollen by new families just beginning this amazing adventure with their children. If you are in that situation, here's a few tips that should lessen any anxiety you might be experiencing.

Prepare a basic learning plan for the year ahead, using dot points under the eight subject areas: English, Maths, Science, Society & Environment (Geography, History), Technology, The Arts (visual, performance, drama, craft), LOTE (language and culture other than English), Health & Physical Education.

Think about what your child will be developmentally and educationally ready to learn in each of these areas over the coming year and create some activities or unit studies around that. You can combine subjects, say English and History. In fact English is covered whenever you work on any subject!

Have a look at this diary from Getting Started with Home Schooling Practical Considerations:

"My young daughter was painting with her feet one day. She then compared her foot with her brother's and mine and talked us into foot printing our feet too. She then measured them which led us all to a discussion on imperial measurement.

Then she printed our pet mice and guinea pig's feet and compared them to her own and we discussed why they were different. We made animal footprints in play dough, filled them with plaster to make casts leading to a discussion and research on archaeological casting. This fitted in well with a museum visit we had planned.

My daughter had enough after studying all the different types of animal feet and making up [and recording] stories to illustrate this, but my son took a different angle. He worked out how to find the area of a footprint. He divided it up into many smaller areas and used mathematical formulae from the area of a square to the area of a circle segment.

All this from feet. Everything that my children discovered during this adventure; art, math, history, language arts, science ... they have retained. It was interesting, meaningful and fun."

Add a few well chosen student work-books, text-books or online learning programs.

Think about how you can build some activities around personal or family interests. Most can be easily related to one or more curriculum subjects. It could be sports, drama, environmental issues, hobbies, pets - whatever! And then add them in too!

Keep it simple, keep it basic!

There is no need to write reams: most of us go way overboard when we write our first home education learning program. We worry if we are covering everything our child needs to learn. But it is like most things in life - as we travel along the path the detail becomes visible, we fill in the gaps, switch direction to focus on something in more detail.

That's okay, it works, and the person interviewing you and assessing the suitability of your program knows that.

Create a personalised simple plan that includes learning objectives in all eight subjects that you can confidently talk about.

Click here to find examples of approved sample learning plans.

Ask for advice and pointers in our The Educating Parents Homeschooling and Unschooling online group about where to find appropriate resources: remember that the person interviewing you has teaching experience and will have lots of ideas. See them as a someone there to help you build an excellent education for your child, not as someone there to judge you, your child or your home.

Remember that your home education program is only a plan: it isn't set in concrete and is likely to have changed quite a bit by the end of your first month! The authorities understand this too - your end of year report doesn't have to look anything like your initial plan. And that's true for families who have been home educating for years as well as beginners: life happens and we all take advantage of whatever educational opportunity or resources come our way throughout the year.

Keep records of your children's learning and their progress. This should only take a few minutes several times a day. Try different approaches to keeping records until you find one that you are happy to use on a regular basis. Our confidence grows exponentially when we record our home education journeys. And it will mean a lot less work come the end of the year!

Make it obvious you have support from other home educators: leave homeschooling magazines and books on display and talk about your local and online support groups.

And most of all, don't stress too much. If your plan isn't instantly approved, ask why. Ask them to tell you what is missing so you can include activities and resources in those areas. Don't take no for an answer: negotiate. It has been my experience that families who persevere eventually get approval.

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Beverley Paine with her children, and their home educated children, relaxing at home.

Together with the support of my family, my aim is to help parents educate their children in stress-free, nurturing environments. In addition to building and maintaing this website, I continue to create and manage local and national home educating networks, help to organise conferences and camps, as well as write for, edit and produce newsletters, resource directories and magazines. I am an active supporter of national, state, regional and local home education groups.

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Welcome to the World of Home Education
and Learning without School!

We began educating our children in 1985, when our eldest was five. In truth, we had helped them learn what they need to learn since they were born. I am a passionate advocate of allowing children to learn unhindered by unnecessary stress and competition, meeting developmental needs in ways that suit their individual learning styles and preferences. Ours was a homeschooling, unschooling and natural learning family! There are hundreds of articles on this site to help you build confidence as a home educating family. We hope that your home educating adventure is as satisfying as ours was! Beverley Paine

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let experienced home educators Beverley, Tamara and April walk you through HOW to create a learning plan that builds on solid foundations that works for YOUR family AND ticks all the boxes for home educaton registration with part 1 of this getting started with home educating serioes of parent workbooks, Create Your Own Curriculum!
Let experienced home educators Beverley, Tamara and April walk you through HOW to create a learning plan that builds on solid foundations that works for YOUR family AND ticks all the boxes for home educaton registration!

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The information on this website is of a general nature only and is not intended as personal or professional advice. This site merges and incorporates 'Homeschool Australia' and 'Unschool Australia'.

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