Monday, October 7, 2013

New Opportunity

Honey is home. Today is her first official day.





I have given much thought to how to play out this last term and due to her nature I have decided to spend most of it 'unschooling' her.

Her idea of homeschool is School At Home. She wants us to emulate school traditions and processes at home. We have had a few discussions about how it is going to be NOTHING like that and I do think she has some anxiety about how this new life will play out.

She is extremely academic and has thrived at school. Leaving for her was not a quick, knee-jerk response. It was a journey which I will ask her to share with you at some stage. Needless to say she has to learn to trust the process and trust me. Trust that I will get her where she needs to go (and further) and this may take some time.

Today we make collages and beginning a 'visioning' exercise. In these boards
they place anything that resonates with them around homeschool. A little window
for me into their dreams, fears and expectations.

We have agreed there will be no threats from either of us for this term (I wanna go back to school / I will send you back to school!) and that we will spend time re-looking at what learning and education really means to us. We will turn things upside down and back to front - like going to the beach or mountains all morning and come back and do school at 3pm.



Paradigms need to be shifted. Not just for her but for all of us. We also need to settle into the routine of being 3. It is a large adjustment for me to move from schooling one child to two and it does not escape me that next year it will probably be three!

4 comments:

  1. what about the extra mural activities like sport, plays etc?

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  2. I'm with Anne. Extra mural activities might help her adjust asvwell. I think your thought out strategy is going to work. Good luck to the three of you.

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  3. Her extramural and sports activities remain unchanged. N

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  4. do you read Under the Sycamore? Love, love, love her blog - she has recently started homeschooling her 4 (out of 5) kids. And although not a homeschooling blog she does touch on some of the activities they do.

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