"No reading at the breakfast table"

Last week on 60 minutes I was watching a segment about 'Unschooling' with my two older girls.  They were fascinated and a little outraged, because they quite enjoy the learning that goes on at school.  You can watch the segment here if you're interested  http://video.au.msn.com/watch/video/schools-out/xtt4pc6 .  I found it interesting.  Unschooling sounds like a lot less work than homeschooling and I'm always up for the easier option ;) The girls and I were talking on the weekend about how little school Miss 11 has attended this year due to her illness.  She counted that she'd been to a total of the equivalent of five full school days.  We decided that she could now claim that she was participating in our own version of 'unschooling' because she sure hasn't done anything resembling formal education in the past two months. We had fun coming up with vaguely educational outcomes for her efforts over the past few months.  Here we go: - Watche...

Earlier this year when I started my Year of Less is More , I was anticipating lots of time for thinking by myself, coffees with friends, time to reorder my house, extra time for the kids.  I wanted my idea of 'less' to enrich our life, to bring 'more' to our lives.  And to a certain extent, slashing our schedule to almost irresponsible parenting levels has resulted in many positive outcomes. But as I mentioned in an earlier post our daughter has been very unwell.  For six weeks she's been at home. Every week we tell people that 'We're hoping she can make some part of the school day next week'. And then another week sort of slips by and our doctor isn't confident yet that she's up for it. She's certainly improving, which is enormously encouraging.  But as the weeks have ticked by, her life has slowly been reduced to waking at 9am to eat breakfast watching the previous night's episode of 'The Block', followed by Minecraft on ...

Yesterday my beautiful girl started high school.  She went to bed the night before having a little cry because she was feeling so nervous about it. But she woke up, calmly ate breakfast and got herself ready.  It was a great answer to prayer - many people had prayed for her overnight. This has not been a straightforward decision.  I have felt doubts that we're doing the right thing by her sending her to the local school.  Even though we feel happy and feel reassured by other parents and teachers who work there, that she will be happy, we didn't fight the good fight (outlined here ). She didn't sit an exam to get in.  It's just our local. But today I went along to a morning tea for the parents and almost the first mum I spoke to was a librarian!  Who it turns out knows another good friend of mine from the neighbourhood. It's little things like this that are reassuring.  We want to stay local as much as possible.   This is what we wanted ...

Our number 2 child starts high school next year.  I've written more about our decision here . All we did was tick the box on the form for our in area state school.  We like the school.  Principal seems on the ball.  Teachers like teaching there.  Kids we've met from other families are loving it.  But only three kids from her primary (in area for this high school) school are actually going there. It seems to have got to the point that actually going to the local is unusual.  Sometimes what you know always seems worse than the unknown in this case. Have you seen the kids truant?  Well they do that everywhere.  Have seen kids hanging out the front smoking?  Sorry to say this, but that also happens everywhere.  Have you heard kids swearing as they wandered home from school?  Also everywhere.  Welcome to the world that is the joy of adolescents. So if you're thinking about high schools, don't dismiss your local too qui...

O dear - I have a great sense of deja vu.  Back here again.  We've just spent the last few weeks trying to think about a high school for our second child.  A daughter and different to our oldest child.  We always knew she'd go somewhere different to our son, so we had to start from scratch when it came to looking for a school. We've decided to send her to the local school that we're automatically in the eligible area for.  All I had to do was tick the box on the form and send it back to the school.  It felt a bit too simple.  Just our local comprehensive girl's high school.  She can walk to school, or ride her bike if she wants.  It's public.  It's all a bit too low key and straightforward.  Surely this cannot be right.  Where is the endless visiting of school's open days?  Auditions?  Tests?  Scholarships?  Have we taken the path of least resistance?  Have we not tried hard enough to get her into ...

I might have the answer!  My 9 year old has been designing ads for a play she's writing for her Scripture class at school.  They made me laugh.

 Through experience we've worked out that the first term of kindy is pretty tiring and the child starting school needs lots of time at home.  This is mainly so that they can have lots of downtime, to relax mentally and recover from coping with lots of new rules, relationships and structures.  This means that we're reluctant to pack in loads of after school playdates, even though it's probably the time to be doing them (in terms of new friendships etc). This is what our little girl has been doing for the past fortnight in her spare time.  Teaching imaginary classes, marking rolls, reading them books, disciplining them, getting them to line up.  Here she is teaching her 'class' a new song.  It is quite interesting to watch -we've learnt a lot about what's going on in the classroom.  As well as who the naughty kids are - their names get repeated often!  

As you may have picked up I'm normally pretty relaxed about my kid's education.  This came home to me this week as I chatted to a first time mum about an assessment program for kindergarten that they use in NSW schools called 'Best Start'.  Only my younger two have had to go through this program.  Chatting to this mum she told me that she had been practicing with her son for the test.  Her son attends a different school to mine and they were told during the orientation program what they would need to do for the test.  I actually had little idea what the test actually entails and plus, I never knew it was a 'test'.  I thought it was a strategy for assessing kids to see if they had particular special needs that the school needed to address - at either end of the spectrum. In this kind of a 'test', average is a good outcome.  I like average.  I know that many people who read this blog are struggling with issues at either end of the spectrum. ...

So how do you feel as a Christian if you end up having to send your child to a public school?  Or choosing to send your child to a public school?  In some circles this can be seen as the 'less Christian' option.  It can be a polarising issue.  I often get asked about sending my kids to public schools.  'Are you happy with it?  How is it for your kids?'.  There's a desire to be reassured that our kids will be OK, when there are so many other apparently more Christian options out there.  It can be hard to feel confident that our kids can still be Christian in a public school. And this is where this book comes in.  The Pritchards are parents to eight children so often people assume (especially since it is American) that they would be homeschooling.  But after much prayer and discussion with others they decided to send their first child to the local school and haven't looked back.  And they are very, very committed to Christian parent...

One of the struggles I'm facing as my kids get older is to be empathetic to people who have younger kids than mine.  I know it's hard, I remember that it was hard, but NOW also has its challenges, and they often feel just as overwhelming as those early years.  It can be tempting, at times, to go, 'you thought that was bad - wait until they're 13'. Which is not actually true in my case.  And is immensely annoying to hear when you are sleep deprived with tiny kids (so I don't say it).  I actually much prefer 13 to the psycho toddler years when complete irrationality reigned at every point.  It's just that there are always aspects of the 'now' that are stressful and scary too. The tendency though, is for me to be slightly vague and fairly unhelpful at answering parenting questions.  I've been mentally developing a list of questions that I don't think I'm helpful at answering.  But probably should be.  I'm often your 'go-to' g...

I nervously participate in the drop off chit chat.  I don't know ANYONE because I have not been to any welcome events or anything much really since the start of Year 7. I also start to realise that I don't KNOW anything much about what my son is doing at school.  The group of parents start discussing a French assignment that involves producing a travel brochure about Paris.  They've all been pitching in with ideas for their kids - places that are a bit out of the ordinary to discover in Paris.  O ha, ha, ha - chuckle, chuckle goes everyone.  Imagine only putting information about the Eiffel Tower in.  Chortle, chortle. I keep smiling.  I don't have a clue what they're talking about.  He's most likely put in the Eiffel Tower - but I wouldn't know. After the party I check with him.  Have you done a French assignment?  He says, sure, it's due tomorrow and I've just got to print it out.  Excellent. Now, what's the opposite of he...

Tip #2 When someone says to you, "Oh we're thinking of applying for a scholarship at X private school", don't respond with, "I can't believe you're deserting the public system". It just doesn't help. Tip #3 When someone says to you, "Oh we're thinking of sending our child to X public/private (but not full-on Christian) school", don't respond with "But aren't you worried about their faith ?". It also just doesn't help.

Found out today who the kids will have as their teachers for the year.  I'm not concerned by the whole thing - they get who they get - they're in a class with the kids they're in a class with.  Sometimes great - sometimes not - but they always survive - learn things from the hard things. Anyway, I was feeling happy for my No 4 child because he's got a lovely teacher but all he was excited about telling me (many times) was, 'But Mum, the classroom has a smart board in it'.  My little computer junkie. So apologies to the real life educator - she's a bit of a side interest to the technology!

So friends ... let's launch back into the crazy world of schooling (am feeling robust today). We're going to send our son to a public (government) high school.  In some circles (especially Christian) this is quite a talking point.  So I'm going to share the reasons why we chose the public system.  Just because I want to throw our thinking into the mix.  NOT to place judgement on other's decisions.  In talking to my friends this year about how they've made their decision about high school - it is very rarely a straightforward, easy decision. I really want to emphasis that while schooling is an area that we are very excellent at judging one another on ( experienced first hand in my earlier post ), I can't see a clear right or wrong way to go on this decision.  All of us make a decision based on the information we have in front of us at the time - we can only do our best with that information.  Each of us are unique (as are our children) so the dec...

Last night I had the great privilege of seeing my two older kids play at the Sydney Opera House.  Aidan plays the trumpet, Neave the clarinet and their school band was selected to play a piece at the NSW Department of Education's Primary Choral Festival.  A huge choir (700 kids) performed most of the items but other bands and soloists performed between the choir's items. Aidan is at the front left (slumping in his seat). Neave is on the right in the  second row. Hope you have good eyesight! Our school is an average size school for Sydney.  But we have an amazing band program which is entirely parent run and funded.  We get lots of support from the teaching staff.  Our school librarian went with the children to the rehearsal in the morning and was back there again from 5.30pm to supervise the kids for the evening.  I spotted our school principal in the audience with her husband. It was a brilliant concert.  Kids singing and performing toge...

Wow - if you want a topic to get everyone talking in blogland then go with schooling! Ten years my peers and I would endlessly discuss which sleep strategies we agreed with.  Or how often to breastfeed our babies.  Or if we were for/against home birth/natural birth/epidurals/c-sections.  Or what was our preferred time-out strategy for toddlers. And now I feel I've moved into the great schooling debate.  I'm sure it's a stage of life thing. What I learnt from my earlier discussions ten years ago, was that (a) there wasn't really a wrong or right method and (b) thinking and discussing with others helped me form my own opinions about what did or didn't work for me and my family. I suspect it might be the same with schooling.  We all have strong opinions but at the end of the day there isn't a right or wrong on this one. I think it's good to have robust discussion and exchange of ideas so we can work out what we think for ourselves but also get an insigh...

Occasionally I get asked what I think about home schooling.  Let me say from the outset that I'm not against it at all.  I was actually homeschooled for Year 3 because I wasn't coping with the local Indian school and I wasn't old enough for boarding school.  I have lots of friends who do it - some out of necessity (eg. missionary friends in remote places with no options) or out of choice (because their child doesn't cope with the mainstream school system).   So I'm fine with the whole concept. I have great admiration for families that choose to provide that education for their kids.  It is hard work and a significant drain on time and emotional energy (usually for the mum).  I also think that it can be a great gift for children who would otherwise get lost in a conventional educational institution. But why wouldn't I do it?  Partly because I did homeschooling myself and found it quite lonely.  I missed the social interaction of school a...

One of the great things about getting older is that I feel a lot more settled with my life story.  I don't feel so reticent to share it with others.  In fact, as I've got older I'm valuing more and more my childhood rather than desperately wishing I'd had a 'normal' childhood in Australia. I lived in India between the ages of 5 and 14.  My parents were missionaries and we lived in a Bible college in a little Indian town in the middle of India.  Between 9 and 14 I went to a British boarding school for missionary kids which was a two day train trip away from home. When I was almost 15 I started attending school in Australia.  I had a posh accent and soooo desperately wanted to assimilate - quickly.  I lost that accent fast and started to try and learn about life in Australia.  What it meant to be Australian.  A real Australian.  Not just one that celebrated Australia Day and ate Vegemite.  It wasn't easy. I found the later years of hig...