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Frequently Asked Questions © Beverley Paine, January 2009 Gentle Transition to Natural Learning "I'm interested in natural learning... My children are aged 2, 7, 10 and 13 years. I am so exhausted after getting chores and maths and English that by the afternoon I need to get everyone out of the house to a park or visit with freinds or put them on the computer or watching television so that can pay the bills, make phone calls, etc." I'm all for 'parking' the children for an hour or so each day to do the essential chores that need a bit of peace and quiet, or to have quick nap. :-) Sometimes, however, it is possible to arrange it so they are playing quietly, either on their own or together and achieve the same goal without using the telly or computer. Learning naturally - utilising the process of informal learning - means that the children learn what they need to across the curriculum simply by living. Most of what they do during the day teaches them maths and English, especially if we make sure that the environment and resources we provide for our children is full of opportunities to naturally engage maths and language skills. You may like to investigate switching over to a unit study approach, which lends itself to working with different age groups at the same time. It is a lovely cooperative learning/teaching model too. For a while it may seem like you aren't doing much maths or English - it is hard to deschool our way of thinking and to recognise informal learning processes. So I suggest that you play lots of board, card and dice games. Perhaps you can half the number of hours you ask your children to do their maths and English lessons and use that time to play this type of games with your children instead. When children are making and creating it is easy to encourage them to do a bit of writing and recording - you don't need much, no where near as much as they demand in school, just enough to show you that even without doing 'bookwork' your children are progressing in their maths and language understanding and skills. Spending an hour reading aloud to all of your children (at the same time) will offer a good deal of respite. Plus, most parents find that after such a session their children like to go off and play quietly on their own. That's a good time to get those chores you need to do done, like paying the bills. Household and gardening chores are best done cooperatively as a family, at the same time, with everyone helping each other, rather than setting a list for each individual and asking that they work alone... Household and gardening chores make up a significant part of the curriculum. Once again, it takes time and practice to confidently translate those activities into educational jargon - well worth the effort though! When we first began homeschooling I bought a teacher's manual with a whole year of lesson plans for grade one students: I was shocked to see just how much busywork was created from learning how to clean teeth! We make learning and teaching tiring by unnecessarily complicating it. I simplified what we did by typing up my list of educational objectives and goals for each child, and the type of person I wanted them to be when they became adults. This helped me trim all the unnecessary stuff school said we must learn and the methods that were convoluted and tedious for the children (and me!). Learning isn't always fun but it shouldn't be boring!
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Pioneering members of the home education movement in Australia, Beverley and Robin Paine are passionate advocates of true educational choice for families. They began homeschooling their children in 1986 and three years later started the South Australian Home Based Learners network.Beverley wrote Getting Started with Homeschooling in 1995-97 and since then continues to write books and booklets on home education. She balances spending time helping home educators with working in her garden and renovating her home, as well as continuing to build her collection of writing on a variety of homeschooling subjects. Beverley maintains an extensive collection of websites as well as several Yahoo groups supporting families teaching their children at home. In 2007 Beverley joined the HEA and became a committee member in 2008: she also edits and produce the HEA Newsletter, HEA magazine, Stepping Stones for Home Educators, annual Resource Directory and other HEA publications. If you'd like to keep in touch with what Beverley is up to her in her life, sign up for the Homeschool Australia Newsletter or visit her Facebook page.