Curriculum

Living in Victoria we're incredibly lucky as there are very few hoops to jump through as far as home educating your child goes. Basically we send in a registration form and away we go! It was extremely daunting at the beginning; what do I teach him, how do I know what to do, but as we're getting into a swing I'm starting to find our groove and panicking less, though I'm sure there will always be those occasional moments of self doubt we all have.

I like to describe our style of learning as creative eclectic learning. I use the Connect The Thoughts Curriculum  for Creative Writing, History and Science and we are working on Maths through MathsOnline. I've had to take him back to grade 6 maths as he has just missed some basics at school as they've raced through units which he hasn't understood and so doesn't have the foundations he needs (and he HATES maths so really I just want him to be able to do the stuff he needs for everyday life). As much as he hates maths, the MathsOnline program is very user-friendly and he's actually admitted to learning stuff (even to randomly adding things up in roman numerals or discussing different polygons in the car without realising he's applying maths ;D yay!)

Connect The Thoughts is absolutely wonderful, I could hug the guy who made it. We are pretty heavy-duty atheists so it was essential that we find a curriculum that wasn't religion-based. Easier said than done! I didn't want to just use a standard classroom textbook, I wanted something that would be interesting and challenging. Enter CTT, it's fully secular, the kids learn about different religions in parts of it (history - creation myths, science myths vs facts)  but it's more comparing the beliefs and myths and N has loved doing this. He's just finishing up the basic science overview and is about to start on a semester of Geology and we're currently working on pre-history in History; the big bang, the universe etc. I'm learning as much as he is! It's a combination of reading, locating countries (so actually learning Geography; I was appalled at how little he knows about other countries through school!), learning definitions and then answering short questions which we do as discussions rather than writing as he can get more indepth if we talk about things.

We're not doing a separate English as such, but he does Creative Writing through CTT a couple of times a week and so he's learning grammar and spelling through writing essays and real-life application. Last week he wrote a 1440 word essay because he just didn't want to stop! The CTT curriculum will give a guide as to what to write about; a word, a sentence to start off and then the child is free to write absolutely whatever they want from that starting point. It's all about letting the child choose and having the learning starting form them. We're both loving it!

So they're our basics. He also spends time with a good friend of mine once a week. K is an amazing textile artist and she's teaching him doll-making (he just loves creative work and discovered a love of textiles while at school). He's also working at his grandmother's cafe one afternoon a week to gain some socialising skills in dealing with both the customers and the staff, and learn about the real world. In free time he builds with legos, he does 3d modelling with minecraft (just recently he designed a full village), he draws, and he creates working replicas of guns and crossbows from duct-tape and cardboard. We don't watch regular tv but we watch documentaries on SBS on-demand and ABC iview. He's constantly amazing me with facts he gets from just everyday life (there's nothing about ravens he doesn't know about!).