The Educating Parent (merging Beverley Paine's Homeschool Australia and Unschool Australia)

What does Home Education look like?

If you're a home educator, you might like to join The Educating Parents Homeschooling and Unschool group. For all others, there are lots of images out there, and I love Lusi's over at That Homeschool Life . I'm currently working on picture books that show what real home ed looks like. When you imagine homeschooling, what images come to your mind?

Often it's the spaces we 'set up' for our children, in our homes. But it's also the spaces we access outside of houses.

Because we're choosing to not use a school for 200 days of a year, our children access a broader variety of spaces. We do also access classes, and our children can experience group work, sports carnivals, sports days, plays and musicals, band, science lab work etc, alongside park days, hours in a library, play dates during school hours, play dates with school using friends after school hours, travelling locally, Nationally and Internationally. There's literally no limit. It's just that parents will need to put the work in to organise 'opportunities for learning'.

Recently, a parent asked what real home education setups looks like. What does an average day look like?

It's one of those questions where you get to see home education for what it actually is: a process.

On the outside, the physical look of it can be messy or Pinterest worthy, and it will tell you nothing about the actual 'process' of learning going on.

First, when looking at it, there are TWO broad categories.

The aspirational and the real.

We are all both.

If you're a home ed parent dropping into my house, you'll see my real.

If you're the AP (I'm in NSW) you'll see the aspirational.

When you're looking at any lovely pic, you're likely to see the aspirational, especially on Pinterest.

When you're asking what most days are like, you'll see the real. THERE WILL BE A LOT OF CRAFT throughout your home.

Teens will become young adults without rebellion if they're allowed to find what interests them, and they are supported in a very real way.

It's an awesome journey.

Take photos of the pretty set-up spaces, smiling faces, the learning and all the awesome stuff.

Take photos of the mess and the real and the funny.

The days are long. The years are short.

Some of my best photos of my now 19 and 22-year-olds, of our 16.5 year journey, were the messy ones, where they are relaxed, and enjoying their childhoods.

It's less about what you do for and to them, and more about their freedom to learn. It's holding space for them to 'naturally learn' because learning IS a natural human process.

An analogy is giving birth. With the right conditions, a woman's body will birth a baby. Any intervention or over thinking can get in the way of that natural process. Sometimes she will need assistance, but only when and if required.

With the right conditions, a child will learn. Any intervention or over thinking can get in the way of that natural process. Sometimes they will need assistance, but only when and if required.

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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.