We’re a bit of an arty family in this house. One thing I’ve really wanted to do was to combine art with our regular (and sometimes less exciting) subjects like Language Arts and Math.

This term we’ve started using The Moffat Girl’s Ready2Read program to help get Erin’s reading to a level where she can work more independently (or at least read a book she’s interested in). The program uses a word family flower garden, but we don’t have any coloured ink in our printer so we decided to do some crafting to create our own versions.

Here are our results:

This term we’re having a look at human pre-history starting this week with Lucy, an Australopithecus Afarensis hominid who lived 3.2 million years ago. Erin really seems to be enjoying our investigations and is itching to start on next weeks lesson.

Each lesson will be based around the hominids featured in the BBC’s Walking With Cavemen series. I’ve personally found this series a little confronting. Logically I knew that our distant ancestors were ape-like in appearance, but to see it on the small screen was interesting. Erin, being only six, doesn’t have any of these hang ups.

Below is the notebook sheet I created to go along with First Ancestors.

As always I’d love to see the results if you use the worksheets!

Last term we started out fantastically. We’d worked out how to maintain Erin’s interest and started to plow though our work, but then at week three something changed. We’d started weekly swimming lessons and that seemed to through the whole week out…of course there was also the massive uni assignment that I had due.

I’m trying to be better prepared for next term. We have a new math curriculum to work with as well as some great sight word and word family teaching packets to learn from.

The biggest thing we’ll benefit from is a work plan. If I know what needs to be done week-to-week I should, in theory, be able to keep us on track. The trouble is, it keeps changing!

This is not a typical day in our house, but it was today.

Erin’s resistant to handwriting and usually can’t sit still for very long anyway so when she asks me to scribe I’m not surprised. It’s when she takes her pencil back and insists on doing it herself that I’m…well pleased really. It’s come a long way over the last term and she’s become keener to do it but still, on days when she’s already hoping on my leg before we start, I don’t hold much hope.

As we work our way down the page she repeats “It doesn’t have to be perfect” under her breathe, occasionally looking to me to confirm this statement. We talk the whole time she’s working. I’m mainly reading the questions to her and she’s mainly taking us on a tangent which may, or may not, bear a vague resemblance to the work we’re doing.

Half way down the page we’re asked the colour the closed shapes. I curse in my head and give an explanation about what a closed shape is. I’m not very successful because, when I repeat the question, she points the squiggly line so we talk some more. Eventually we agree that if you put the squiggle in a circle it would be a closed shape.

By this point Erin’s fidgeting and rolling around on the lounge so I let her run around and move on to the second page of Unit 2. She tries to write for herself, but the urge to move is just too much so, in the end, I ask questions and write the answers that she gives while she walks in circles.

We give Reading Eggs a go and then finish by reading Splat the Cat and the Duck with No Quack by Rob Scotton and then Erin takes over the iPad playing Rocket Speller which she says she loves.

Despite everything today has been pretty good. Actually, since I let go of the plans I had for my perfect homeschool things have worked a lot better. Since I’ve stopped having Erin sit at a table to work we’ve gotten more done and she’s “forgotten” less. Since I stopped worrying about handwriting she’s become less resistant to workbooks—actually, now she loves them and we get a lot more done than we used to.

There are no typical days in our house. Some days we’ll breeze through a pile of work, other days things bur up after only half a page. I try to take it as it comes. What else can you do?

Most recently we’ve watched Dino Gangs on SBS and she’s decided that she’d like to be a palaeontologist when she grows up. She says she’s going to discover new dinosaurs, including a “T-Braceosaurus.”

Last week we had the opportunity to go to Explore-a-saurus at the QLD museum with SEQ Homeschooling. We had a ball.

Though they loved the animatronics, what my girls were most excited by was the opportunity it dig in the sand and discover dinosaur bones.

Though they both look like stunned mullet they really did have a great time and Erin came away more excited and determined than ever to become a palaeontologist.

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We’re fairly relaxed homeschoolers. We selected a curriculum at the beginning of the year, but have not stuck religiously to it. This year we’re using:

• Explode the Code
• Reading Eggs
• Targeting Handwriting
• QLD Targeting Math
• Excel Basic Skills English and Math
• IXL Online Math
• Kumon: My first book of cutting
• Kumon: My book of easy telling time

I have to admit, I’m not entirely pleased with Targeting Math and will not be buying it again next year. Instead I tend to take the lessons from the book and translate them into physical activities. Asking a child to look at a picture and tell which object is heavier is fairly abstract and maybe even a little confusing so, instead, we’d use household items that Erin can hold and even weigh. It’s more enjoyable and she seems to learn faster.

I had no idea snakes had two sets of eyes! That’s just brilliant!

“Homeschooling has helped Morgan blossom both socially and academically,” said Jane Stavrinoudis, Morgan’s mum who home educates through Brisbane School of Distance Education. “BSDE have accommodated his learning strengths and weaknesses and fully cater to his sensory issues” she said.

Each year more and more parents are removing their children from mainstream schools. There are many reasons, but one common theme among parents of children with special needs is that their child’s requirements are not being met at school. Home education provides a viable alternative for many people, offering flexibility and the ability to cater to each child’s particular needs.

Noted author and special needs educator Dr Thomas Armstrong said, in an interview with Homeschool Magazine, “The great thing about homeschooling is that it provides the opportunity of giving the child something very different than they were failing at in the schools.” Parents are able to select a curriculum suited to their child, while offering one-on-one tutoring that is rarely available in an at school environment.

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Special educator Kristen Veltmeyer says “The situation special needs kids are in is not necessarily anyone’s fault, however the gap is quite large. Often, to qualify for Special Needs schooling children need to have an IQ which qualifies as an Intellectual Impairment, meaning their IQ is under 70. Without this, they are required to learn in the mainstream classroom.”

Kristen Sullivan’s nine-year-old son, Jack, needs frequent breaks from his school work and finds it difficult to follow instructions unless they’re given one at a time. To accommodate his needs Ms Sullivan search for a curriculum that would allow him to focus on just one problem without becoming overwhelmed.

“We’re using Precision Academics. It has a lot of repetition and is very visual which suits Jack perfectly as he’s a very visual learner” said Ms Sullivan.

Ms Veltmeyer says that one of the biggest benefits to home educating children with special needs is “being able to tailor the learning to suit their pace” compared with teachers in mainstream schools who are required to split their attention and preparation between children who are keeping pace as well as “those who need extension work and those who are struggling. In addition to this you also need to plan for special needs.

“Many children that I work with struggle with social skills, sensory processing in busy environments and anxiety. By teaching from the home environment, these factors can be taken away and a more confident child emerges.”

With an IQ of over 130 Morgan began each year receiving straight As, but as the year progressed and his coping skills were tested by teachers and other students alike his grades and mental state went downhill. By June of 2012, despite being on the maximum adult dose of both antidepressants and anti anxiety drugs Morgan had begun talking about self harm.

He couldn’t cope and his parents were faced with a big decision, increase his medication—which only worked to a point—or change his environment.

After six month’s learning at home Morgan’s grades are back to where they should be. He’s won prizes in both history and math while his teachers at Brisbane School of Distance Education prepare extra work for him to complete in the coming year. Better yet, he’s medication free.

Erin V Science

One brave little survivor.

Perhaps her new science project would be how to survive the zombie apocalypse by replenishing the worlds food supplies starting with one meagre carrot?