Wednesday, March 23, 2011

THEAC

People keep telling us how relaxed the Tasmanian Home Education Advisory Council is regarding registration but it still surprises me that we haven't heard back from them yet. Still waiting for them to get back in contact with us to give us a date for our first monitoring visit which is supposed to occur sometime in March (and it's now nearing the end of March!). I've been nervous all month waiting for that letter LOL. I suppose I should just be grateful that they don't make it difficult for homeschoolers like the boards do in some other states, huh?

Am still trying to find the method of record keeping that suits us. Having spoken to other Tas homeschoolers, it's good to know (once again) how relaxed THEAC is about all this. At the moment I'm just keeping samples of Shmoo's work, a list of library books we've borrowed, a photo album of education-related photos, and checklists of the completed components of our unit studies. Am pretty sure this will be satisfactory for THEAC.

All the time I'm having to adjust my expectations of this homeschooling thing... the expectations I have of Shmoo. We've ended up taking more of a natural learning approach than I expected, because that's what works better for Shmoo. At the same time, the unit studies approach has been working well too... I choose a something that the kids have been really into lately, load up on subject-related library books, loosely plan some fun activities and 'excursions' and we take it from there. They've been really enthusiastic about the themes so far (and the next theme is dinosaurs - they loooove dinosaurs, particularly Loo who will be having a dinosaur birthday on Friday!). Anyway, whatever we're doing, so far it's working well!

3 comments :

  1. Your boys are lucky to have such a dedicated Mummy! You're doing an awesome job!

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  2. So glad to hear that they are relaxed, we are registering Ella next year and it has been worrying me! I am going along to the meeting in Burnie, are you heading along too would be great to meet you?

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  3. Aww thanks Kate :)

    Allana, we're not planning on going to the Burnie meeting at this stage but we're hoping to make it to the playgroup in the park tomorrow if it's not raining (hm, what are the chances?!). We've got a few things on in the next couple of weeks but we could always arrange a playdate sometime after that if you're interested?

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