my revolving door of homeschoolers

Yes that’s how it feels right now. I just sent one off to school who really wanted to go and now have another little girl home with me. And we are all loving it. It was a big decision to make this month but we had always known that if there was anyone to homeschool then it would be our little girl who has an intellectual disability. She had a wonderful start to school and an amazing teacher last year and we thought we would continue this year but things just weren’t going as well as last year. I knew we had bigger goals we wanted her to achieve and that we needed to do more. Every day when the email came in of what they did that day I knew she could have done much more and not needed to be away from us for 8 hours. And options are very limited when you don’t really fit anywhere – lack of support in mainstream schools and knowing that its a battle to get the help your child needs. Not severe enough or not the right diagnosis for certain schools, support classes or distance education options.

But we feel lucky that we are already homeschoolers because we knew we had the best option right here at home. And that made it a very easy decision. We are doing things a little differently compared to starting with my twins. We have tutoring twice a week at a centre that specialises in special needs which she is loving. It’s more work than she was doing in the classroom but she has it packed into an hour and gets the 1 on 1 she really needs. We are also using Complete Education Australia and their Foundation program (kindy) which is very hands on and suits where she is at. Some of the work is too hard for us so we will save that for later. We’re also using some school readiness books from my favourite bookshop.

For social activities we have a homeschool meet up every thursday, cheerleading on a friday, gymnastics on saturday and swimming on sunday and of course she is surrounded by her brothers and sisters and always has a few of them at home with her each day. Today was Shrove Tuesday and she loved it so much that we had to do 2 lots of pancake making and eating. One in the morning and one in the afternoon.

So far so good, I know I received a few questions about our decision and I know with a baby coming that it seems like totally the wrong timing but actually it was really meant to be and after a day of feeling sick about it all I woke up the next day with a great sense of peace. And best of all a little voice tells me ‘I stay here, no school, I stay here’….and she’s happy. And that is what matters too.

If you are after any more information or have a homeschooling question just ask. You might not know that you can be eligible for the AIC payment for special needs which is helping us towards the cost of private tuition so worth looking into.