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. Feedback and comments welcome. 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 which will also be reproduced in a reasonably priced handy reference booklet from our Practical Homeschooling Series. |
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"Congratulations on a terrific website. It's a great resource." Steven "By sharing your experiences, we are into our third year of homeschooling and enjoying it thoroughly." Marina "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 |
Build Your Own Home Library
© Beverley Paine, 2004
We all want to help our children become successful and active readers. Studies have shown over and over again that the following factors are important indicator of reading success:
• Parental expectation that the children will read successfully
• Parental involvement in the children's education
• Parents who read aloud
• Books in the home.
If a child is surrounded by books, and the parents regularly access those books for a variety of reasons, reading will become a natural part of his or her life.
If you have a decent supply of books at home you will rarely suffer from the frustration of not being able to access information to those intriguing questions children ask every day! Select books wisely for the accuracy and accessibility of information. You don't have to spend a fortune: libraries are always updating their catalogues and selling off old books at library sales. It's a quick and easy way to build up a comprehensive reference library.
Let your family and friends know that you're always on the look out for books. When they clear out their shelves or attics they'll think of you and bring you a box or two. If you don't want to keep them all, pass them on in the same manner, or take them to an opportunity shop. You'll find a lot of pre-loved treasures lurking in op shops. I've often found books I loved as a child and couldn't resist buying them to show my children.
Some books we've found essential include:
• A pictorial encyclopaedia for younger children
• Dictionary and thesaurus
• Recently published atlas
• Solar system and star book
• Natural history books - pocket guides to identify birds, plants, flowers, insects, spiders, frogs, snakes, trees
• Gardening books
• Self-sufficiency books, including camping and bushcraft skills
• Health books - baby books, how we grow, nutrition, illness, first aid, etc.
• Home decorating books
• Practical Art books
• Practical Craft books
• Cooking and menu planner books
• Favourite picture, story, chapter books, novels, plays and poetry
• Magazines, newsletters and newspapers
• On-line magazines, newsletters, newspapers, user groups and mailing lists.
• The Internet.
We supplement these with books from the library every week on topics we're currently interested in as well as a large range of fiction. Our library has an extensive tape and video collection too; our library bags are usually bulging!
To make your books last a life-time, teach your children how to handle them with respect. Clean hands are a must. Discourage tearing, folding down corners, colouring or writing in books not designed for those purposes, especially library books. Work together to repair any damaged pages or bindings, or to cover books in clear plastic.
It's silly to expect that a child eating or drinking will be able to keep a book clean, so make it clear which books can and can't be used when eating. People love to read when eating, and it's good to encourage this, so long as it doesn't completely destroy social communication within the family! Until he was a fluent reader, Thomas would often complain if the rest of us read at the dinner table. We do our best to make dinner a social occasion now, but everyone tends to read at breakfast and lunch!
Help the children their own bookmarks, or buy them bookmarks as a special treat. They make great stocking fillers at Christmas, especially if the bookmark is matched to a much wanted title! Your favourite gardening book can have a permanent pressed flower bookmark, or you could use a pretty feather the children found as a bookmark for the bird book.
I can't emphasise enough that books have to be accessible. It's not good locking them away in a glass cabinet, although if you have century old classics or first edition comics you are collecting for sentimental value or investment, do keep these safe! By and large though, children need to be able to reach books, touch them, turn their pages, and read them.
on this website is of a general
nature only and is not intended as
personal or professional advice.
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ABN 17 503 397 443
Beverley and Robin Paine
PO Box 371 Yankalilla 5203
SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Thank you for visiting!
Pioneering members of the home education movement in Australia,
Beverley and Robin Paine
are passionate advocates of true educational choice for families.
They began homeschooling in 1986 and three years later started the
South Australian Home Based Learners
network. Beverley continues to write for homeschooling newsletters
and magazines as well as hosting several websites dedicated to promoting
and supporting home education in Australia. Her aim is to demystify the
education process and make it accessible to all parents. Enjoy Beverley's
wealth of practical knowledge, homeschooling and unschooling tips and
ideas through articles and books and online at
www.homeschoolaustralia.com.
Since the late 1990s Robin and Beverley have been building their home education
publishing business - Always Learning Books - from home with the help of their son Thomas.
"Education is not a preparation for life. Education is life itself." John Dewey
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, pages, or advertisements.
Please visit the following websites for information on homeschooling in Australia:
Homeschool Australia : SAHEN : Australian HS Curriculum : About the Paine Family
Text & Images on this site
Copyright © 1999-2008 Beverley Paine.
All rights reserved.
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