Ann Leach

Home educating wears so many disguises. Sometimes it looks like books and papers all over the dining table. Other times, it is a week of adventures with very little book work. Most of the time, it is somewhere in between. This week, for us, was filled with adventures, and exhausting, but we loved it. Monday, Kenn and I attended an all day training class and Isabelle spent all day at a home educating friend's house. she packed her lessons in her backpack, and somehow managed to come home with them completed while also enjoying a whole day of play. Tuesday, Isabelle and I left early (for us) for the city to meet up with the home ed group and watch the Pandas documentary at the IMAX theatre which is in the Melbourne Museum. Of course, we stayed on to play and chat with our friends. It was a long and gratifying day, working on friendships. I think we were finally home about 4:45, just in time to start supper. We completed one lesson on the train. Wednesday is Park day. A...

"Learning all the Time" by John Holt Our public school system and mainstream culture wants us to believe that children can only learn what they are taught, by teachers, preferably in a classroom setting, but when we sit back and observe children, we can see that they are, in fact, learning all the time. They were learning long before we enrolled them in school, preschool or started teaching them at home. We don't have to teach a child to sit up, to stand, to walk, to talk, to hold a spoon. They are born as natural learners. They observe and copy. They self-teach. Our role is to model, to facilitate, to encourage (but not overly much), and to observe and do our own learning. Great book. I highly recommend it to teachers and parents, well to anyone who has anything to do with children. What are you reading? Ann