SPRING NEWSLETTER 2021

If you're seeking a part-time enrolment please complete the following steps:

 * Complete an Expression of Interest Form (this is to go to the school) and can be found on our website - Home Education Registration – Office of the Education Registrar (oer.tas.gov.au)

* Obtain an In-Principle Approval (using the In-Principle Approval Form) given by the enrolling School Principal.

 * Submit an amended HESP to explain how your program will change with the 
addition of school. This will be different from person to person depending on why your child is 
attending school part-time. Along with your amended HESP you must include the signed        In-Principle Approval Form. 

Dyslexia Awareness Week will be held on October 7-12 2021!

The annual event is aimed at building an understanding of what dyslexia is, what it means and how we can support those with dyslexia.

Dyslexia is a common learning difficulty faced by people when reading and writing. Dyslexia can take many forms, for some dyslexia can slow down the pace of reading and writing, while for other more severe sufferers they may experience visual interruptions with words and letters - they can appear very blurry and illegible. 

Around one in ten people have dyslexia.

A common misconception of dyslexia is that it affects intelligence, this is untrue. People with dyslexia often have slightly larger brains, and are more creative!

If you know someone who is dyslexic show them some support by practicing patience or try engaging in some compassionate conversation about what it's like for them.

Northern Region

Date - Thursday, 25 November 2021

Location: St John Ambulance Tasmania - 2 Innocent Street, Kings Meadows

Southern Region

Date - Thursday, 25 November 2021

Location: St John Ambulance Tasmania - 177 Main Road, Moonah

North-West Region

Date - Thursday, 25 November 2021

Location: St John Ambulance - Lauriston Arcade, 126 Best Street, Devonport

There are many misconceptions about natural learning, or as I prefer to call it, learning naturally. I want to talk about these, rather than define what learning naturally is, as I think it’s important to break down the barriers of misconception that prevent communities of learners from having meaningful dialogue with each other.

A useful place to start delving into the complexities of learning naturally is by sharing with you what I believe natural learning is not…It is not allowing the children to choose what, when and how to learn things on their own. It is, however, allowing the children to participate in decisions made about what they want to do, and how, and when, and it gives them the opportunity to have greater responsibility within the framework of the family for their own lives. Children are not left to be responsible for their own learning, but are encouraged to explore and learn responsibility, knowledge and skills, and to develop self-motivation and self-discipline gradually according to their developmental needs.

Learning naturally is not focussing on the child’s life as the centre of the family. Natural learning allows the process of building families, and thus communities, in a time honoured and tested way. It emphasises the development of beneficial and cooperative relationships and associations. It is centred in family and community values and respect for all people.

Natural learning is not something that we can do with our children. It is what happens, despite what we do. There is a general misunderstanding in the homeschooling community that unschooling or learning naturally is simply a matter of letting children do whatever they want, or not setting out anything for them to do - that is, completely unstructured learning. Some people think that natural learning means children are supposed to educate themselves. However, it doesn't happen like that. We allow life, with all its complexity, to guide the content and direction of our learning.

In order to feel confident educating my children as we walked along the path of homeschooling, I studied education and child development, both on my own using library books, the internet, and talking to other educators and friends who were teachers, and also at University level for a couple of years in the early nineties. It was important for me to know what my children were learning and why, and how to help them set and achieve their own learning goals. I discovered much about individual learning styles and about how learning occurs and applied this to each learning situation.Some people believe that natural learning is a “do nothing” or “anything goes” approach." I’ve found that “anything goes” quickly leads to children feeling so out of control that conflict arises – it isn’t long before my guiding hand is needed to bring their life back into balance. The key element to learning naturally is the natural hierarchy of experience guiding the inexperienced. Some call this the apprenticeship model of learning, or mentoring. We are our children’s first mentors, their first and most trusted teachers.

Some people believe that learning naturally means abandoning a structure. I’m not sure we would have survived homeschooling as a family without a solid structure or scaffold in place! In practice this meant setting long term goals – we envisioned the type of adults we wanted our children to become and the type of children we wanted them to be. We set yearly educational goals for each child, as well as short-term goals that encompassed anything from a week to a few months. Goals like learning to read simple sentences, know the times tables, learn first aid, etc. Our short-term goals were often stated as projects - build a fox proof duck yard; learn about the solar system; or the history of South Australia. We set daily objectives – both educational and lifestyle, and often recorded these as a list of things we wanted to do that day. Our days, weeks, months and years were definitely planned and structured, although from an observer's viewpoint it would have looked like we were doing whatever we wanted to each day based on what our immediate needs were.

This generally meant talking to them, showing them, helping them, challenging them, encouraging them, and listening attentively to them. I never left my children to learn things by themselves – I always made sure that guidance and help, if needed, was at hand.If the learning is meaningful and in context children will work on a concept until they have mastered it, even though the tasks involved may be unpleasant, frustrating or difficult. This is a fact of life and it’s one that children accept from the cradle. Not all things in life are pleasant. Our current obsession with the fad “learning must be fun”, one of the most wicked tools of the companies that make profit from education, demeans the natural intelligence of our children and ourselves. We celebrate the learning that each moment brings and reject the notion that learning has to be fun, or happy, or cheerful, or easy…

Most of us begin with ‘school at home’ because that is what we are comfortable with and what we know. It’s a great place to start. All families move on to find the structure and routines that best suit their individual family values, needs and lifestyle. We select from a vast variety of learning tools. John Holt, the writer and educational reformist who coined the word ‘unschooler’, believed in textbooks as a useful method of instruction. As a natural learner I’ve learned from textbooks and courses, both in class and as a distance education student, as have all three of my children. The difference is that we are in control of our learning processes – we negotiate with our mentors the learning objectives. We make the learning tasks personally meaningful.

Self-education is a good term for what I now call 'learning naturally'. I don't like the term 'natural learning', even though I occasionally use it as it's too vague and nebulous - all learning is natural. Learning occurs 24/7 (as my daughter would say). If you're breathing, you're learning. You can't help it.

Please refer to The Educating Parent (merging Beverley Paine's Homeschool Australia and Unschool Australia) for more information about natural learning and the rest of the article What is Meant by Natural Learning.www.theeducatingparent.com

Taken from the article by Beverley Paine "What is meant by natural learning"(theeducatingparent.com) - condensed version created by Catherine Azon-Jacometti with permission from author.