QUICK GUIDE to teaching your children at home!

Interested in homeschooling, but still not sure? Read All You Need Is...'

The information in this guide can also be found in Beverley's comprehensive The Educating Parent Resource Directory, a free download.

• About Home Education
• Is it Legal? Registering
• Getting Ready: learning plans, environment and resources
• Assessment
• Keeping Records

The Nature of Home Education

Beginning with the assumption that, having considered your reasons and options carefully, you have decided to take full responsibility for your children's education, my aim is to lead you through the steps necessary to successfully begin and continue your home educating adventure.

Through the information here, I hope to help you feel more confident about your ability to provide your children with an excellent education, tailored to their unique and individual learning needs.

Rather than add to the myriad of curriculum resources available for home educated children to use, my aim is to help demystify the learning and teaching process and to remind parents of their natural ability to help their children learn.

We started home educating our eldest, then five years of age, in early 1986, using a school-at-home approach, basing it on her kindergarten experiences and what we remembered from our own school life. Gradually, influenced by the writing of John Holt, Raymond Moore, Alfie Kohn and others, we relaxed into an unschooling, natural learning lifestyle.

Even though I am not qualified as a teacher, my confidence as an educator is derived from approaching the education of my children as a teacher would: I conscientiously planned, recorded and evaluated their educational programs.

As a learner I value the tools of observation, reflection and goal setting. These stood me in good stead and I know they will be of immeasurable value to you as you educate your children.

It is easy to go out and purchase a box of books or sign up to an online curriculum and sit your child down and say "you are now a homeschooler, learn".

However, it is a different thing to be an effective educator, meeting and responding to your child's unique learning styles and needs. As a home educator you need to be there with your child, observing how she learns, what she already knows, what she needs to know next, helping her to make sense of and understand the world about her.

The need for tests and exams to measure her progress is reduced or eliminated as you help your child understand the ups and downs of the learning process, how learning happens for her, and how she can help that happen more effectively.

We can be passive home educators or we can be active learners, learning alongside our children, enjoying every minute of their educational journeys.

The Educating Parent is dedicated to helping you become the latter. I want you to be a hands-on parent because being and doing that has brought us incredible joy. We are now helping our children home educate their children and enjoy a special relationship and connection with our grandchildren that is immensely rewarding.

As parents Robin and I are not exceptional people: we don't have tertiary education qualifications and our work experience is limited to clerical and retail jobs.

What probably sets us apart is our do-it-yourself attitude to life which helped to develop a vast range of different skills in many areas of life. We describe ourselves as active learners who look forward to what each new day brings. Self-reliance and self-confidence were high on our list of priorities for our children as young parents.

Home educating hasn't always been easy but it has always been rewarding. We are richer in many ways because we trod this path.We have learned an enormous amount along the way.

Some lessons were learned by observing how our children and other children learn. We listened carefully when people have shared their stories with us and we've learned from their lessons too. As far as possible we continually adapted what we were doing in the light of new understanding and knowledge.

And that is the nature of home education: flexible and adaptable!

Home education offers parents the opportunity to give their children a high quality education that is responsive to the child, parent, family and community. It is an education option that is truly accountable.

You get out of it what you put into it: the more attention, time and energy you invest into planning, recording and evaluating your home educating experience the greater the reward and sense of satisfaction you will achieve.

Read the next page of this guide: preparing to home educate.