Welcome to The Educating Parent Beverley Paine's archive of articles about homeschooling and unschooling written over a period of 30 plus years

Free download a quick guide to getting started with homeschooling and unschooling by Beverley Paine The Educating Parent in this excellent Resource Directory
Introduction to
Home Education

 

Free directory of Australian homeschooling and unschooling support groups organised by national, state and territories National and State
Support Groups

 

Plan, record and report all in the one document! Always Learning Books planners available in each year level to suit your homeschooling needs, includes curriculum checklists
Yearly Planner, Diary & Report

Let Beverley and friends help you design and write your own curriculum to suit your child's individual learning needs, learn how to prepare lessons, unit studies and more, record and evaluate your children's learning in this series of 3 parent workbooks developed on Beverley's popular homeschool manual Getting Started with Home School Practical Considerations

Homeschool Course for Parents

this Always Learning Year 7 Plan is everything you need to get started a comprehensive collection of curriculum aligned resources and links to activities, lesson plans and unit studies for your year 7 homeschooling student
Homeschool Learning Plans
go back to The Educating Parent home page click here to learn more about what The Educating Parent offers to help you start and continue your awesome homeschooling or unschooling adventure click here to subscribe to Beverley's substack blog with new entries added every other day click here to join the largest Australian online homeschool community The Educating Parents Homeschooling and Unschooling Facebook group

Having Trouble Getting Started with Homeschooling? Stuck in the 'planning stage'?

By Beverley paine

Having trouble getting going with home ed? Feeling stuck in the planning stage? It can be hard to get our heads around how to actually 'do' it, we can spend a lot of time researching, talking and generally getting bogged down in all of that, never taking that first step...

I can relate to that stuck feeling. For a long time I was a lot like Rimmer, a character from Red Dwarf, a novel and TV series written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. Rimmer needed to pass an examination to further his career on the mining spaceship. He neatly wrote out very organised study schedules, spent so much time doing that he never actually had the time to do the study required and thus kept failing the exam, much to his chagrin. My life was littered with well organised and clearly articulated but unfulfilled plans.

At some time though, we have to stop and address the real problem, that of avoidance. For me this meant asking myself some hard questions, such as "why was I sabotaging my attempts to do what I wanted?" The answer was related to fear. Since childhood I had been afraid of failing, of not being 'good enough' and the high standards I set myself meant that I was never satisfied.

I used to quit while in the planning stage, although to me it didn't look like quitting, just 'shifting direction'. I would con myself that I wasn't doing it right and start again, usually using new or 'better' different tactics or resources. Instead of doing anything productive I spent my time judging myself.

I'm not going to blame myself entirely for this self-defeating habit. As a child and into my late teens my experience as a school student reinforced this nonsense. More time is spent in schools planning, organising and going over what is supposed to happen in the lesson than actually studying!

And as an eight-year-old I had worked out that I could get a better grade by making my work 'pretty'. I was one of those 'neat and tidy' students that had learned how to play the 'education' game to my advantage. The amount of thought and effort I put into planning and presenting my work seemed more important than the content.

My advice to you if you're stuck at this stage is to stop planning and thinking about what you need to do. Instead sit down with your children and 'be' with them. Play with them. It could be anything: playing with their toys, a board or card game, or simply being silly making up crazy songs or stories. Take them for a walk. Go shopping. Spend some time wandering along the local creek. Take sketch books and draw what you see. Talk about those things. Notice things that look odd. Ask open ended questions that don't need answers straight away.

Then, when the children are tucked up in bed after you have read them ten picture books or three chapters from their favourite author, snuggle down on the sofa with a cuppa and a blank page in your notebook and start doodling a map of what you have achieved that day with your children. Do little bubble diagrams and briefly describe each activity. Write down the remarkable things your children said. Somewhere on the page jot down, perhaps in a different colour, your thoughts about what you think your children learned that they didn't know before.

By doing this simple fifteen minute exercise you are creating a permanent record of your homeschooling 'plan'. The more you do it the more obvious the 'plan' hidden in the patterns of words on the pages in your notebook become. Seasoned home educators call it 'retrospective planning'.

Over time you should slowly get control over that carefully conditioned need in you to draw up tidy, organised plans enabling you to have more time to play and learn!

Browse our comprehensive library of articles!

keep up to date with new posts to this website daily by clicking here to subscribe

Support Groups: National SA VICWANSW QLD TAS ACT NT
Registration Guides: VIC NSW QLD SA WA TAS ACT NT

Looking for support, reassurance and information? Join Beverley's
The Educating Parents Homeschooling and Unschooling Facebook

Need a ready made homeschool learning plan in a hurry for your homeschool registration? Try one of ours!

Need a ready made homeschool learning plan in a hurry for your homeschool registration? Try one of our Always Learning Books homeschool year level learning plans, packed with links to FREE lesson plans, unit studies and activities for each curriculum subject area, hundreds of suggestions, use what you want, only $18

Want to learn how to write your own education plans to suit your unique children's individual learning needs?

itap into Beverley's four decades of home educating experience and learn how to write your own homeschool curriculum and learning plans to suit your child's and your family's individual needs, a complete how to homeschool course for parents in 3 self paced workbooks each focusing on a different aspect of home educating, planning, recording, evaluating and creating lesson plans image shows 3 workbooks, plus samples of pages, and 3 children walking in bushland

The Educating Parent acknowledges Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to Elders past and present.

click here to become a Fearless Homeschool member giving you access to all past summit workshops as well as exciting new content and webinars, online discussion platform, and more

Twinkl downloadable Home education resources helping you teach confidently at home

say goodbye to home education registration stress with this ultimate rego bundle from Fearless Homeschool

make homeschooling a lot easier, zero to homeschool's excellent course is here to help

go back to The Educating Parent home page click here to learn more about what The Educating Parent offers to help you start and continue your awesome homeschooling or unschooling adventure click here to subscribe to Beverley's substack blog with new entries added every other day click here to join the largest Australian online homeschool community The Educating Parents Homeschooling and Unschooling Facebook group

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'.

The opinions and articles included on this website are not necessarily those of Beverley Paine, The Educating Parent and April Jermey Always Learning Books, nor do they endorse or recommend products listed in contributed articles, pages, or advertisements on pages within this website.

Without revenue from advertising by educational suppliers and Google Ads we could not continue to provide information to home educators. Please support us by letting our advertisers know that you found them on The Educating Parent. Thanks!

Affiliate links are used on this site that take you to products or services outside of this site. Beverley Paine The Educating Parent and April Jermey Always Learning Books assume no responsibility for those purchases or returns of products or services as a result of using these affiliate links. Please review products and services completely prior to purchasing through these links. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer, provider or party in question before purchasing or signing up.

Text and images on this site © All Rights Reserved 1999-2025