Our Homeschool Journey

Even before the kids came along, the hubs and I had decided that when the time comes, we will eventually be going down the homeschooling route.

Education has always been MY thing (my passion and my profession) and it just didn’t make sense for me personally to send my children to daycare and school only for me to teach other people’s kids. We also want us as parents to be the main influence in our children’s lives, we want our children to grow up as close friends and to value family more than anything else and we can’t think of a better way to achieve these than homeschooling, as compared to sending them to mainstream schools where they will be spending so much time away from the family and not have that extended uninterrupted quality and quantity time together to build relationships.

One of my hobbies pre-kids (now my main hobby is sleep 😂) was to read up on different homeschooling approaches, listen to homeschool podcasts etc in order to get a better understanding of what path and route I wanted to take when the time comes. I was (am?) quite partial to the Charlotte Mason approach (nature walks, a lot of learning from living books), influenced by Reggio as a kinder teacher (environment as a third teacher, emergent curriculum based on interests) and in the last year really read up a lot about unschooling after hearing lots of great stuff about it (the idea of learning through daily life).

I might eventually be doing some sort of a mish-mash approach and taking bits and pieces of what I like from the different styles of homeschooling out there. But one thing is for certain, there will be A LOT of play in our home, especially unstructured free play. When I come across remnants of play like this, the beautiful symmetry of a 21mo’s construction, I cannot imagine a homeschool approach that isn’t centred around play.

Any homeschooling/ would-be homeschooling families reading this? What is/ will be the homeschool approach or style in your home and why have you chosen it? It is still a couple more years before we’ll have an official homeschooler in our home but I want to get a better understanding of what approaches are out there now so we’re more prepared when the time comes 🙂

From time to time, I will also be sharing more about different components of what I’d be incorporating in our homeschool as I read up and find out more, so please follow along and connect if you too are keen on exploring this route for your family and would love to exchange and share ideas (especially if you are residing in the Perth region in Australia!)