Homeschooling Fun and Strict Government Rules!

Home's Cool

Today, 15th August 2012, we had our first ever funded activities day with our home schooling community. We usually go just to hang out with other families and play and laugh but today was different. Our little group finally got government funding so we're putting it to good use with an activities day once a month.

4 activities were on offer for all the kids and they could pick which one they wanted to attend. There was Graffiti Art ~ Textiles ~ Drama ~ Science

The classes were outside in the fresh air under the trees and the blue skies :) No walls for homeschoolers ;)

The first session went from 10am - 11:30am

For her first session, Cori choose drama and the "teacher" was Dan. The group played out a variety of games involving big dramatic movements and communicating with each other. Oh the laughter and the smiles :)

Shayla choose textiles and was taught how to make a "rug" with wool, odd bits of materiels and tools. Shayla is still working on her project as there is alot of work involved with each strand. Here is what she has made so far :)

After that, we had a gluten free sausage sizzle :) YUmBo!

And then the 2nd sessions started (12 - 1:30) where both Shay and Cori did "science" with Graeme.First Graeme did the theory side of things and taught the kids about weight, joules, newtons (and funnily enough he used apples ) Heres the big catapult

and here are the ones the kids made. They got to shoot marshmellows at a bullseye and then eat the marshmellow. A little boy wanted MORE to eat and then the kids learned about how much sugar the marshmellows contained and that sugar is actually a poison because it has been depleted of its life forces, vitamins and minerals.

Graeme talked about NOT using the catapult to shoot anything else! A marshmellow is the safest thing to use because it's soft and won't do any damage ;) 

As I was making my way between the girls and their various activities, I got to talking with some adults along the way. One of the ladies has been studying the different types of home schooling requirements for different states within Australia and here in Queensland, the guidelines we are MADE to follow are just rediculous! I absolutely agree, which is why I was hesitant in registering my girls in the first place ~ but I HAD to! It was either register them with the Home Schooling Unit OR have a visit from police and a possible court appearance.

However, in the state of Victoria, all parents have to do is sign a piece of paper that says "I take full responsibility for the education of my child"

and that's that! (but no, we dont want to move to Victoria ;)

Needless to say, many from our home schooling group are getting together to help the Queensland Educational systems try to understand that there has GOT to be a better way rather than using the system of compliance that they currently have in place.

After checking on the kids and helping out, I walked again and met a new lady that was just thinking of doing home schooling with her 7 year old son. Her son has long blonde hair and gets bullied at school because of it. He had 6 days off out of 10 and when he returned, that very week at the assembly hall, the entire school was told that if any student has more than 3 days off in a row without a reasonable explanation, the police will be called!

Now if that doesn't sound like a controlled environment .... I don't know what is!

We LOVE home education. Sure, there were dramas filling out the forms to register, letting them know EVERYTHING the government wanted to know .... but now , Sooo much fun, and the best part is, I didn't have to correspond with the Home Ed people for another 10 months and then once a year :) (I think my 10 months is fast approaching :( O well, it's better than having my kids in an institution being dumbed down to conform to a herd mentality !

INJoy xxxxx