Save time and simplify
your homeschooling life...
Learn from experienced
homeschoolers how to write your own curriculum.
It really is that easy!
Use this website with Beverley Paine's Getting Started with Home Schooling - Practical Considerations to help you develop your own educational curriculum to suit your family situation, beliefs and lifestyle. The checklists can help you identify your children's current educational skill level in each subject area, as well as find any 'gaps' in their learning, plan what they need to cover or keep track of what has been learned. As you can appreciate this website is continuously under development... It's our aim to add pages on a regular basis in all curriculum areas: check back frequently. We hope you enjoy the articles and activities and find the links and recommended resources useful. Over the next year we will be working our way through each subject area and writing fresh, new content. |
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"Thank you so much for your wonderful website! I was getting quiet frustrated with finding appropriate information on homeschooling - thanks to your website we are now on the right track... Using your checklists for reassurance helped me to have the confidence to come up with my own programme that suits our needs." Rachael "I'm a frequent visitor to your website... I gain valuable knowledge from your website, luckily recommended in the very early stages of our homeschooling journey." Geradine "I checked out your website today and was incredibly impressed by it. I can tell it will be a great resource for our family for many years. THANKS for all the hard work that has gone into making homeschooling easier and much less isolating for families like us." Cynthia |
A Shrinking World - A World Full of Words
© Beverley Paine, 2004
Fast cars and aeroplanes aren't the reason the world is shrinking at such an incredible rate. It all began with the printing press.
My homeschooling booklets will be read by hundreds of homeschooling families. My website is viewed by thousands. A daily paper may be viewed by millions. The information superhighway used to be a dusty track, used by a tiny elite. Now everyone can zoom along at great speed!
When I was a child and wanted to know something I could go to a library and access expert opinion from around the world. When my mum was a child, libraries weren't child-friendly places and she had to ask her mum, who had less education than herself, or her teacher, who was often too busy with up to sixty children in each class. When my child wants to know something he dials up the Internet: here he can find opinions from experts and experienced individuals, all keen to share their knowledge or skills. The information he can access is no longer culturally bound - with a click he can translate foreign language websites.
It all begins with a home that is equipped with the basics: a dictionary, a thesaurus, an atlas, a street directory, a telephone directory, a community directory and a relatively up-to-date encyclopaedia and regular trips to the local library. A child used to looking up information in these resources will naturally find her way around the Internet to source useful information.
If you can't afford a computer or Internet access, don't worry - you can always access one at the local library. Our tourist information office also has computer with Internet access people can use. Or you might have a friend that you can share access with, to cut costs. You could also lobby your local neighbourhood house or community centre to fund communal Internet access.
Learn to love the English language. Learn to relish in its delights. If you haven't read Shakespeare aloud since your school days, when you learned to hate it, borrow one of his plays from the library, wander home through a park and read it aloud. Watch one of the contemporary movies, or go to a theatre production. We saw A Midsummer's Night Dream at the Botanical Gardens - the children, some as young as four, were captivated by the play. Muck about with tongue twisters, puns, and riddles; chant and sing silly songs and rhymes; give speeches in a strong assertive voice. Horde old copies of the Reader's Digest and hone up on your word skills - or go on-line and test your skill. Look for unusual words wherever you find yourself and make a note in your trusty pocket notepad to find out their meaning in a dictionary. It will tell you how to pronounce them too. Write poetry in the garden with a thesaurus by your side.
In a home full of books, where reading and writing and listening and speaking are valued and practiced by you, the parents, every day, most children learn to read with very little conscious effort. Show them how much you enjoy and love to read and learn and they'll catch the bug soon enough. It may be at age three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve or thirteen. When they catch that bug you won't be able to stop them from reading, especially when you want the chores done!
Take a deep breath, sit back, curl up in the armchair with your adorable children, read them a book or two, and. relax. Reading in such an lovingly created environment will happen naturally.
on this website is of a general
nature only and is not intended as
personal or professional advice.
BOOK SALE
Beverley's books will be available through her website Homeschool Australia until sold out. It is not anticipated at this stage that further editions or reprints of her books will be made.
Getting Started Manual
Unschooling Books
Educational Games
Natural Learning
Practical HS Booklet Series
Curriculum
Reports/Portfolios
Homeschool Diaries
Conference DVD
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