We have our oldest child at a private school (after she felt unchallenged at our local – very good – public school and kept asking ‘for more’), our middle child is home-educated (her choice, after trying a public and a private school – she also developed terrible anxiety – which we had to seek professional advice for – and she was also tested as being ‘off the scale’ in some areas of aptitude – we laughed, knowingly, at the high ‘vocabulary’ skills score, as she’s hardly ever quiet!) and our youngest is too young for any decisions!

We value education highly, but one size doesn’t fit all – and we are only just beginning on our own parenting journey of discovery!

We love our unique, highly individual, creative children very much (just like any loving parents). We simply wish for our children to be happy in this rapidly changing world.

We also hope they grow to be flexible and adaptable, to love learning for life, to run with their imaginations, be creative and makes changes, when needed, to forge ahead.

OUR EXPERIENCES TO DATE

February, 2012 to present:

Eight months into our first year of natural learning. – Reflections on this year so far.

Notes from our Home School Journal – 22 June, 2012

Notes from our Home School Journal – 17 June, 2012

Notes from our Home School Journal – 2 June, 2012

Notes from our Home School Journal – 25 May, 2012

Learning, Rock-pooling and Something ‘Pink’! - 22 May, 2012

Photo a day May – Where I stand – 21st May, 2012

Homeschooling – Term 2, Week 2 (on Sophie’s blog) – 6 May, 2012

Sunshine Monday at the Chocolate Fish – 30 April, 2012

Week in the Life | Thursday – 26 April, 2012

Things I’m Loving: Laying Low – 14 April, 2012

Notes from our Unschooling Diary - March, 2012

Schooling & Unschooling – Our Week – 16 March, 2012

Things I’m Loving: Nature Abound – February, 2012

September – December, 2011: We try private school for our middle daughter:

Loving that school’s out for summer! - December, 2011

I hope she’s not thinking about me as much as I am about her - September, 2011

May – September, 2011: We pull our middle daughter out of public school (not yet six, so doesn’t have to legally be attending school in New Zealand)…

Things We’re Loving… August, 2011

January – May, 2011: Our middle daughter starts at public school…

Sophie has a cold… (warning, school rant!) - May, 2011

Interesting to watch and read:

I love this post from ‘Ross Mountney’s Notebook’ – Stories from a homeschool life – and particularly her answer to ‘Should we Home Educate?’

I found this article immensely interesting and helpful -’The emotional needs of the gifted child‘ by Annemarie Roeper.

Research finds no advantage in learning to read from age 5

Understanding Children & Stress: Moving Smart

Quotes that have left an impression:

What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children’s growth into the world is not that it is a better school than the schools, but that it isn’t a school at all. – John Holt

We’re not trying to do “School at Home.” We’re trying to do homeschool. These are two entirely different propositions. We’re not trying to replicate the time, style or content of the classroom. Rather we’re trying to cultivate a lifestyle of learning in which learning takes place from morning until bedtime 7 days each week. The “formal” portion of each teaching day is just the tip of the iceburg. – Steve and Jane Lambert ( Five In A Row )

School is the advertising agency which makes you believe that you need the society as it is. – Ivan Illich in “Deschooling Society” 1970

I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn. – Albert Einstein

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world – Albert Einstein

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be rather a sort of amusement; this will better enable you to find out the natural bent of the child. – Plato

What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child. – George Bernard Shaw

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world – Albert Einstein

Knowledge which is acquired under compulsion has no hold on the mind. Therefore do not use compulsion, but let early education be rather a sort of amusement; this will better enable you to find out the natural bent of the child. – Plato

What we want to see is the child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child. – George Bernard Shaw

I have come to believe that a person’s schooling is as much a part of his private business as his politics or religion, and that no one should be required to answer questions about it. May I say instead that most of what I know I did not learn in school, or even in what most people would call learning situations. ~John Holt

My schooling not only failed to teach me what it professed to be teaching, but prevented me from being educated to an extent which infuriates me when I think of all I might have learned at home by myself. ~George Bernard Shaw

I still say the only education worth anything is self-education. ~Robert Frost