THEAC Chair Quarterly Newsletter - June 2024

You certainly know when Winter blows in!  Wasn’t the last day of Autumn a good introduction to what lies ahead for the next few months?!  I think I have voiced previously that, as I have got older, I find Winter to be the least enjoyable season in terms of the weather.  Some people love Winter’s icy cold greeting in the morning followed by the cool fresh, crisp days but I find the coldness harder to cope with as I grow older.  I certainly feel it when standing on the damp, frosty, foggy soccer grounds before 9am on a Saturday!  I almost wished the wind of last week blew us through the winter months and into the splashes of colour and renewed energy that Spring brings!  However, life is not like that.  We can’t pick and choose; we have to learn to live with the enjoyable and not so enjoyable moments and these moments are different for everyone. 

It is also a good opportunity to think about the positives and, while Winter is certainly a time where it can be harder for some to leave the cosiness of the home, it does also bring an abundance of opportunities for us to enjoy.  There is something comforting about what Winter does bring and that is usually renewed family time around a board game, baking delights in the kitchen and stomping through muddy puddles while out on a family walk!  Winter brings families together, it brings connectiveness and with that comes a feeling of belonging and comfort which is missing for a lot of people in this world today.

Life has got so busy in the world we live in.  It has become so fast paced and every minute seems to be stuffed full of activities.  I think as home educators we are lucky to have the opportunity to spend more time with our children.  To sit and watch them grow and develop and to share in all those wonderful learning memories!  I often think back to when I was at school and how different the pace of life was.  Shops shut at 12pm on a Saturday, not to open again until Monday…shock horror!  Saturday mornings were usually filled with school sports and then a mad scramble to get the milk and bread supply from the supermarket to last the weekend through.  Of course, back then there were more corner stores dotted along the streets and these were handy if you ever ran low on something but generally, we just coped without it.  The pace of life was much slower.  Having no shops open for most of the weekend enforced family time.  School sports were usually over by lunch time on a Saturday and didn’t hang over until the afternoon or Sunday as they do now.  It gave families more time to be just that, a family.

More time for discussions, more time to connect, more time for visiting other family/friends, more time to be ‘bored’ resulting in the best made-up games ever, more time to garden, or bake, or craft, more time to just sit and do nothing.  How many of us these days can sit and do nothing?!  It is a difficult skill to master but it is an important one for our children to learn.  Likewise, being bored is important.  Play based childhoods are important.  Making the time to be together as a family is important.  Some of the most memorable moments people have from their childhood are those moments that come from being together.  Whether it be the item you crafted together from bits and pieces found on a hike or baking the world’s best (or worst!) cake, creating a flower patch or plotting a veggie garden, being silly outside, these are the moments that stick. 

I remember during COVID there were so many more families out on the walking tracks, exploring and chatting and enjoying the slower pace that was forced upon us during that time.  Little fairy gardens appeared out of nowhere along our local walking track and provided discussion points for passing families as they admired the creativity of others.  Teddy bears seemed to also pop up in tree branches and seats dotted along the track.  Dog water bowls were put out for our 4-legged companions.  Communities seemed to really bond.  People started to connect despite the lockdown.  Once lockdown ended, and people slowly started to return to school and the workplace, fewer and fewer families were on the same walking tracks, the beautiful fairy gardens were slowly overgrown and teddy bears were left hanging unnoticed in the trees.  That period during COVID has mixed memories for us all but the one thing that really stood out to me was witnessing more and more families have the time to walk together, talk together, laugh together, enjoy together.

As home educators we have a wonderful opportunity to connect.  Connect with our children.  Connect our children with our relatives, our neighbours and our friends.  Connectivity provides stability and creates a comfort zone where we feel safe and comfortable.  It is that environment that enables our kids to learn and grow.  Cherish it.  Hold onto it.  Nurture it.  Your kids will one day thank you for it.

While the Winter months advance on us, challenge yourselves to make one day of the weekend a ‘family day’.  Plan to spend the day together over a board game and hot chocolate or plan a hike in the many wonderful parks that exist in Tasmania.  Get out of the house and leave the endless list of chores behind for a few hours.  There will always be another load of washing to do.  Whatever your activity is, make the commitment to spend time together and connect as a family, cherish the memories from it.  Your children will.

THEAC will soon be delivering pre-recorded DLN seminars through the Office of the Education Registrar (OER) website.  This has taken longer than anticipated to deliver to the home education community due to the limited availability of the Allied Health professionals and we thank you for your patience.  Please keep an eye out for these.  In addition to these, Jo Spencer and I have been in discussions with TasGifted and we are hoping to announce an exciting opportunity for gifted children within the home education community shortly.

I am also aware that the OER Team is working on a strategy to keep the home educating community informed about activities/resources available to HE students.  Home education in Tasmania is gathering in strength and numbers, and it is wonderful to have the support of the OER to seek out and promote these opportunities for our children.

The OER continues to see a steady number of home educated students in Tasmania.  As of June 1 2024, there are 890 families with 1487 children registered for home education. 

The OER are fast approaching one of the heaviest workloads for the year for our renewal registrations to be processed.  The team in at the OER do an amazing job so please be patient with them.  The Registration Officers look forward to their visits with you and delight in seeing so many differing programs out in the home education world! 

Please remember that you are not locked into the program you start out with.  It is a normal process for home education programs to change part way through the course of the year.  This can be for several reasons.  Children can easily lose interest in set curriculums, or you might find that the resource you chose just isn’t working out for you or the child, it might be that you move from a structured program to more of a child-led program or vice versa.  This is perfectly OK and acceptable and forms part of the evaluation process.  I know I have emphasised record keeping in the past, but good record keeping is imperative.  Keeping a record of the changes is important.  It doesn’t have to take hours.  Taking ten minutes at the end of each day to document the activities of that day will form a wonderful record of your program.  There are several ways to keep notes and what works well for one family might not work as well for another.  Find a system that works well for you.

I have recently listened to a couple of great podcasts and thoroughly recommend them.  In my previous newsletter I introduced Sue Larkey’s podcasts to you and I hope you have had the chance to visit her podcast list and listen to a few.  I have included the link below for those who might have missed it.  Sue’s podcasts are easy to listen to and she explains ideas and strategies well.  A few of my most recent favourite podcasts from Sue are also included below. 

The ‘teaching skills through cooking’ episode is fabulous and really pulls apart how a simple cooking activity can cover all areas of the curriculum.  For those of you who have children with sensory issues who don’t like to cook or eat a range of foods, this episode is also a must listen to.  Although these podcasts are not home education related, we can learn a lot from the information within them and really see how an activity can be pulled apart and used as an example to fit the standards for home education in your HESP.

I found the screen addiction episode fascinating, and this really is a topic of the moment within society right now.

https://suelarkey.com.au/podcast-listing/

https://suelarkey.com.au/understanding-screen-addiction/

https://suelarkey.com.au/managing-time-blindness-in-neurodiverse-students/

https://suelarkey.com.au/teaching-skills-through-cooking/

Another interesting podcast I listened to recently was called ‘Your Undivided Attention’ with Jonathan Haidt.  While this is not specific to home education there is a lot to be gained from it that is relevant to every family.

I wish you all a warm and cosy Winter, full of connectiveness and time together as a family.  Enjoy your ‘family day’ outings and create magical memories from them for your children to cherish and form a chapter of stories to be told to their children one day.

Denise Cox

Chair, THEAC.