The end of "farm in the burbs"

Well PJ is doing really well at homeschooling. He is getting into a real rythym with it. He does worsheets/books and written work in the morning and more freelearning (computer games, art etc) in the afternoon. He has calmed down lots and really seems to enjoy the work.

We have finally made a decision to move to the country on a property - hoping to set up our own little farm - nothing for money more just so feed us. we have looked at a few properties around the place. So I have decided to bring this sorry little blog to an end and start a new blog You can find it here. http://dellsdell.blogspot.com/

Ready for the New Term

Well the holidays are nearly over, the printer has been going all day. I have been busy getting K3's unit studies ready. Did I tell you I decided on the Solar system for Science and Egypt for History.

I think I have decided on a mixture of methods for homeschooling. Mornings are for more formal school at home - worksheets and such, and the afternoons are for more free learning - reading, unit studies, gardening, cooking etc.

I found a great website that helped with my science and history units. I am planning to try notebooking/lapbooking for these subjects. The science will still have some worksheets from http://www.learningpage.com/free_pages/home.html but k3 will also be making notebooks. I thought this would add a bit more fun to it and it can also incorperate some Art and Technology which helps with the ciriculum requirements. The new site is "Homeschool Launch", it is a place where other homeschoolers can upload and share (free) files they have made. Hee is the link to my page and then you can move to seach the site from there.
http://www.hslaunch.com/mypage/profile/7893

Well it is getting late, I will catch you all soon later

The Home Schooling Journey

The past 12-18 months have been a bit busy and as you can see I haven't gotten to my blog in a long time. Needless to say my garden looks worse than the blog - very neglected.

I have decided to be better with my blog and I am now including homeschooling in it. Homeschooling was not something I considered a real option for our family. Schools are fairly good where we live. However about 2 weeks ago I was thrown for a loop when one of my special boys was having trouble at school and out of the blue became agressive. Even though this is very unlike him it is very common with Aspergers children. (I have both my boys with this). The School asked us to remove him as they can no longer cater for his special needs. As my mum always taught me if you don't have anything nice to say then say nothing. So no comment on this further.

However this did cause a bit of a predicament, what do we do with k3 (kid number 3). If he wasn't coping with a class of 20 with the special ed department there when needed, how was he possibly going to work in a state school with class sizes up around the 30 mark and no support for him. With a lot of help from his old spec ed teacher we have found a school that will take him, but there is a waiting list. So in the mean time we are looking at home schooling him.

This has been a bit of a shock to my system but I can see the upside to it for both him and me. so I delved sraight into finding out how to go about this. I rang the Dept of Ed here in South Australia to find out how to go about this to be told that I will have to apply for and exemption to attend school. I also found out that he has to be enrolled at school at all times. Ahhh! but he isn't at school at the moment what do I do. I had to go back to his previous principal and ask to keep him on the books but listed as non attending (which you can do here for 4 school weeks apparently) That gives me some time to put the application together.

Well this has been a bit long so I will leave it here for now. More on the application later