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 |
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Homeschooling Helps Develop Empathy in Children
© Beverley Paine, 2005
Caring how others feel is a bit of two-edged sword and that's why most people seem to shun developing empathy. When we care how others feel and want to help them meet their needs we find these often clash with what we want or need for ourselves. It's a moral minefield - for adults as well as children. I believe we start life with an instinct for justice but it's eroded by life's lessons. As parents we often justify selfishness to our children, sometimes without even being aware of it. A certain amount of 'self'ishness is necessary to develop a strong sense of self identity and to determine who 'I' am within the crowd, or we get lost to peer group pressure from an early age. I feel that is the relative social isolation of young homeschooled children that avoids this dilemma.
With my own children I tried to stick to the Golden Rule... I'd ask them to think about "how I would feel or think if someone acted that way toward me or if it happened to me, right now". I add the 'right now' because it made them place themselves in that other person's place immediately - it was a powerful exercise in imagination. It took time - this isn't something you can do in a moment. It takes longer than telling a child off, or threatening them, or bribing them ("if you be nice you'll be a nice person and people will like you") Sometimes I'd need to take half an hour out of our day to imagine what it would be like in someone else's position.
Where possible I'd include these little imaginative journeys any where in our lives - while going for a walk, driving in the car, playing games together, exploring our backyard or the local community. I felt it was important to develop this ability early.
Sometimes though we get hurt by others and we learn, little by little, to shut down our empathy, to protect ourselves. It takes a great effort to stay vulnerable. From what I've seen and learned though, it's those most willing to stay vulnerable that are the happiest folk in life.
on this website is of a general
nature only and is not intended as
personal or professional advice.
Always Learnign Books
Beverley and Robin wish to thank everyone for their patience as they convert most of the Always Learning Book titles to e-book format. As each booklet becomes available it will be listed on this website.
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Text & Images on this site Copyright © 1999-2008 Beverley Paine. All rights reserved. Please note that the opinions and articles included in the suite of Homeschool Australia websites are not necessarily those of Beverley and Robin Paine, nor do we endorse or necessarily recommend products (other than our own) listed in contributed articles, links, pages, or advertisements.