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Getting Started with Home Schooling: Practical Considerations

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Limited places available at National Homeschool CampFest 13-18 March Bowna (Albury) NSW - book now!

© Beverley Paine

The number of research studies demonstrating the effectiveness of home learning for academic and social success increase each year. For many families the unintended outcomes far outweigh perceived academic benefits. These following homeschooling outcomes, combined from national and international research including John Peacock's major Australian study, The Why and How of Home Education in Australia , have been consistently listed:

• closer family relationships, with children playing a more positive and significant role in family life, and an emphasis on family making skills;
• parental personal fulfilment and increased learning opportunities for parents as well as children;
• greater understanding of personal responsibility;
• natural fostering of co-operative and team behaviours;
• an empowering process for both parents and children;
• greater freedom from arbitrary time limits such as terms and year levels to pursue educational activities and interests;
• increased opportunity for one to one interaction with more skilled peers or parents, which lead to cognitive challenges and gains;
• children are able to ask more questions, with more time allowed for answers to be found, leading to increased motivation for learning;
• children and parents engage in more complex language in the home learning environment compared with classroom settings, and this improves the intellectual and language development of children;
• children have been consistently shown to rate equal to or higher than average on standardised achievement tests in the USA;
• home educated children's self concept has been shown to be significantly higher than schooled children, indicating that home education does not socially deprive children but produces socially well adjusted young people;
• children are less peer oriented;
• increased involvement in community activities;
• greater attainment of independent learning skills, self-motivation and organisational abilities.

Schools promise of these outcomes but fail to guarantees achievement for all students. Schools continue to fail students, citing many excuses - family problems, individual learning difficulties, lack of adequate resourcing, under-financing by funding bodies. Homeschooling families find failure an unacceptable outcome. The drive to succeed in the homeschooling endeavour is very high, with parents continuously searching for better and more successful methods, resources and outcomes. Unlike teachers, parents are directly accountable to the homeschooled student, in an immediate way, every day. Problems with education are not left to fester indefinitely. Homeschooling allows considerable flexibility in delivering excellence in education - flexibility schools can't match.

See the following articles for additional information :

• Australian and Overseas Research Links
• Solid Evidence to Support Home Schooling Michael Farris

You may like to read a couple of frequently asked question responses Beverley wrote in reply to some emailed questions:

• FAQ: What is your homeschooling life like?
• FAQ: Does this stuff work? I don't dig this homeschooling idea at all and reckon that homeschooling leads to socially retarded kids...

If you want to know more about how Beverley and Robin homeschooled their children their book, Learning in the Absence of Education (a title picked by their then ten year old son) contains many essays on how their children learned to read, write, spell, how the family managed daily life, dealt with socialisation issues, etc.

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If you like what you
read here, you can
order Beverley's books!

	Choosing Homeschool Curriculum
	Getting Started - how to write your own learning programs
	Natural Learning Answers
	Beverley's E-books
	Learning Without School - how 30 families homeschool
	The Homeschooling Trail - Christian unschooling life
	Learning in the Absence of Education - how we did it
	Practical Homeschooling Booklet Series - your questions answered!
	Educational Games Booklet Series - make learning fun!
	Practical Homeschooling Language Development Series
	Natural Learning Series
	Homeschool Diaries
	Ready to use Portfolios / Report Cards
	Sample Learning Programs
	Stock Clearance

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Workshops for parents, activities for children, time to relax and chat to us about our homeschooling experiences.
March 13th-18th 2012

The Homeschool Australia suite of websites is paid for by the revenue from Google Ads. Without this we could not continue to provide over 700 pages of information and articles to home educators.

Camp With Wings for Teens
15th-Sun 22nd Jan 2012
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