This was a question I would put into google before we were homeschooling….and as the enrolment papers for my little boy sit in the kitchen it’s something I have to come back to. How do you convince someone (aka your other half or a concerned family member) about homeschooling. For most people it’s pretty out there, it’s unconventional and most people put their children into school because….well that’s what you do. That’s how most of us grew up and that’s what the norm is. And so for me I had a big job to convince someone that yes we can do this and we should do it.

Deciding to homeschool is a very big decision and probably one that your family and friends aren’t doing. Perhaps you’re the only person you know in real life who homeschools or wants to homeschool. And perhaps the only thing holding you back is someone who doesn’t agree with it. What’s my advice?

Be clear about the reasons you want to homeschool. There are lots of reasons and a wide variety of people who homeschool so make sure you know why YOU want to homeschool and what kind of style you would like to follow. Some people use distance education where school work is submitted and marked and there are dates for projects and assignments. Others use a workbook approach or follow a set curriculum or create their own curriculum using a mixture of books and then you have unschoolers who really don’t do school at home but something very different that follows their children’s interests and talents. Oh and the great thing about homeschooling is that it’s flexible so you can change how you do things if it’s not working out as expected.

Join local homeschool groups, there are plenty of preschoolers and mums with babies so join a local group or two and start going to activities. I feel a bit spoilt for choice living in a big city because there are lots of groups and I’ve found a great smaller group near me that meets each week (we even went out for a mums dinner!) and I have my Catholic homeschooling mums too who all have big families like ours and I’m also part of a special needs homeschool group that I haven’t met yet but find great support from them online. So start making those connections so that it doesn’t feel like a big leap into the unknown.

Watch Ken Robinson’s Ted Talks. He’s so funny and knowledgable and the videos are very convincing.  Because another way to approach the homeschooling vs regular school debate is to take a different angle and look at what is wrong with a lot of schools at the moment. You can find his most popular talks here, here and here. Why are schools failing some children? Why is more and more money being spent on testing in an effort to raise standards? Why is there so much pressure and work in the earlier years of primary school? Why isn’t there funding for inclusive education? What values are being taught in school and do they meet our family values?  And what about creativity and letting children follow their natural interests. BTW I’m not anti school and have 2 children who love school and are in school but I don’t believe it’s for everyone and I think it’s very different from when I went to school.

Start your homeschool room, buy resources (you can find some great ones in the Australian homeschool buy/sell/swap page on FB) and at book sales etc. I think this booklist is the best and why not start with educational games, toys, art and craft supplies. Show that you are committed and this is what you want to do.

Don’t nag. Ha ha I’m a nagger but anyway giving it time and space might be the strategy that works for you.

Collect great articles, stories by homeschooling families and so on. Because we’re Catholic I found a lot of Catholic /Christian homeschool websites and businesses and I was able to find stories of families who are homeschooling and looking at the success stories, the struggles and how they do it helped me (and someone else) see that large families can and do homeschool.

Give it a trial period, if you are committed to homeschooling and providing a great environment at home with the right resources and dedication then you don’t have anything to lose if you give it a trial period. For some families there is an urgency to removing a child from school and so your hand can sometimes be forced before you’ve fully understood the registration requirements in your state and got everything sorted but if it means a happier child and home life then it’s worth it. And they can always go back to school. One of my twins really wanted to go back to school and play footy at lunchtime with other boys. He got a spot at the local school and loves it, he isn’t doing as much work as he did at home or as challenging but he’s happy and wishes saturday was a school day! And we’re all fine with it.

Do the sums. If you’re married to a numbers person then look at the financial side – the current cost of education vs homeschooling. You can homeschool on a very tight budget thanks to online resources and 2nd hand books and materials. Take out the cost of school fees, uniform and transport from your budget. We do more excursions than they did at school and it only costs me about $60-$100 a term for excursions for the homeschoolers and we have so much fun. For us we have put our money into good books, a curriculum from the US and now tutoring twice a week but it’s still much better for our finances than having children in school.

Jobs of the future. My husband and I are both accountants and he’s seen first hand through his own work that jobs have been moved offshore and done by graduates who are much cheaper. Employees lost their jobs and had to train up overseas staff to do their job (all in effort to cut costs). We’ve lost count of how many restructures he’s been through but that’s life in the corporate world these days. So perhaps looking to the future and that we don’t know what jobs will look like for our children might be another avenue to think about. What do your children want to do when they grow up? What jobs will be available in the future? Do you need to sit in a classroom for 13 years to have a job in the future? There are lots of pathways to university and further study without needing to attend school and sit the HSC (or year 12 equivalent).

Do it for the benefit of the family The greatest benefit of homeschooling is a stronger family. Bigger kids help the younger kids, everyone learns together, bonds are strengthened and you get to learn together. You can take days out and instead of saying goodbye to your children you get to be with them. Instead of being stuck in a classroom being told what to do they get to have a say and go outside when they want to or make a cake when they’ve finished their work or find a great art or craft project to do. And it’s not like school holidays where you might hear ‘I’m bored already’. We have a structured morning where our bookwork has to get done and we do our creative things in the afternoon. And when we get stuck on something we can spend more time on it until we’ve got it, then we can move on. The class won’t move on while we still don’t understand a concept because we are doing things at our own pace and adjusted to where we are at. 

That’s not an exhaustive list  and I could add a few more but it gives you something to think about if you’re having to make this big decision right now or in the future!

Nearly the end of term, nearly Easter, 8 weeks until baby number 7 arrives and we’re all doing well here. We’ve settled into our homeschool routine and school seems like a distant memory. I take notes of everything we do each day in a little notebook I keep and one of the biggest realisations has been just how much ‘out and about’ we get done every day. Instead of being ‘locked away’ and away from us between 7.30 and 4 we are ducking into the shops or the post office or visiting the OB or the dentist and our behaviour is getting so much better in all situations. It’s just another benefit I wasn’t expecting to happen so soon. Another tick for homeschooling a little person with special needs.

We are counting to 10 perfectly, we are starting to identify more of the numbers to 10, our cutting is getting so much better, we get through a lot of things each day and I love that art and craft is run by my older girl. One afternoon she told us she was teaching the kids how to make plastic straw flutes and she told me what she needed and then had 3 little helpers at the table, youtube on and got to work. We also did 3 batches of scones in one weekend and the big girls take control and everyone joins in. I just need to train them better in the art of cleaning up messes.

Each day we do some educational games which she enjoys. These don’t have to cost a lot and I picked up a few in the clearance section here.

The pregnancy is going really well. I’m trying to remember to wear my compression socks each day for my varicose vein that has decided to play up, I’m having a growth scan next tuesday because little baby isn’t so little (story of my life), we are apparently back to the drawing board on the name even though I have the perfect one chosen and I’m starting to gather up things for the hospital bag and working out where all of the baby things are around the house and what I still need. Oh and my weight gain is off the charts as I’m weighing what I did when I gave birth to the last 2 boys. That’s how I knew I was having a girl though…..always bigger with girls.

There has been a little bit of knitting, I made this adorable hat for a baby shower. I’m convinced it’s a bit too small so told the mum to be that I’ll have to make a larger one. The pattern is a free one called Beloved which you can find here and a super easy pattern to make.

And that’s about it.

I’ve reviewed  a few of the books that have really helped me and put a few resources that we are using. Unfortunately there is no special needs curriculum that you can just buy to homeschool and in NSW an IEP isn’t enough for a homeschool plan. You need to meet the curriculum (in all subject areas) and I have to say it was daunting. But buying a ready made kindergarten curriculum and adapting it and finding other resources and just getting started has given me plenty of confidence.

I hope this helps…..I do have to say that most of the resources come from the US as there are more homeschooling families there and from my internet searches a lot of homeschooling families and resources are geared towards children with autism. It took a bit of researching to find books and resources for children with intellectual disabilities and that is how the books for children with Down Syndrome came up in my searches. These have been my favourite books. Look at the strengths and weaknesses of your child and their developmental age and work from there. There are a lot of FB groups even groups for certain curriculums for children with special needs.

Homeschooling Children with Special Needs by Sharon Hensley

This was the first book I bought and I have to confess that I started reading it and had to put it away for a while. I really don’t like the terminology she used ‘mental retardation’ as it’s outdated and the book wasn’t giving me warm fuzzies. Then I picked it up again and went straight to the resources and realised that is why I needed the book. Some of my favourite books have come from the resources section of the book so I think it’s worthwhile for that reason. You can find 2nd hand copies on amazon/eBay and it is really worthwhile getting.

Teaching Reading to Children with Down Syndrome

This was one of the books mentioned in Homeschooling Children with Special Needs and it is an absolute must if you are going to teach someone with special needs to read. It has so many activities and ideas and starts from the very beginning teaching the alphabet to ultimately having the child create their own books and read them. You could be at any level of learning to read and could pick up this book where you are. For less than $30 the book is so thick and full of great ideas and fun ideas. That’s how we’re going to get someone to read. If conventional methods aren’t working then this might be the book for you.

Teaching Math to People with Down Syndrome

Since I was impressed with the reading book I bought this book. Not just for children with Down Syndrome but children who need a different way of learning. For us we are still learning to count to 10 in Year 1 so I need something I can start with now and that can move with us as we learn more concepts in maths. Lots and lots of examples and templates in the back of the book, games and ideas and covering lots of maths concepts. A really great one to have in your library

Teachers Pay Teachers

How did I homeschool last year without this website. It’s amazing. There are free downloads but most of the ones you want you need to pay a few dollars for. They are fun, bright and have cute pictures so make learning fun. We’ve bought some book covers, lessons for maths, english and religion and it’s a great way to plan lessons and cover skills starting from Pre – K to senior years. Absolutely love this website and am a huge fan. You’ll need a printer to print everything off and I also got some wonderful alphabet and number games that I printed in colour and laminated and at $3 each game is so much cheaper than paying for an educational game from the shop. I’ve now started using it for year 3 when we are stuck on a concept or need something a bit more exciting than our textbooks.

Literacy Planet

All of my kids are enjoying this website. Membership came with our Complete Education Australia purchase and the games and activities start from preschool upwards. Because we are still at a preschool level we are using some of those and then making our own word list and then the program puts that into games so you can learn your simple words (for us it was cat, dog, fox, mum, dad etc). Lots of fun and a great activity when someone has hit the wall or needs a break (but it still counts as learning).

Complete Education Australia

I did look at distance education as an option for homeschooling as I’ve never taught someone to read and write before but decided the work would be too hard and after an assessment we decided to go with something else. Complete Education Australia is a homeschool provider so you pay $160 a term and the materials are all sent in pdf. All the lessons are planned out for you and it’s very hands on. We will do kindergarten over 2 years and I like having the maths, science, geography, history and art all planned out. In our first week we were recreating Monet artworks with watercolours and this week we are cutting out and sticking a skeleton together. Some of the work is too hard for us but apparently Complete Education Australia will help you adapt the work to the level of your child. Because we are doing it over 2 years I’m just saving some of the tasks for later on. I’m really impressed with it. I print each week on a Sunday and put it into my folder and then I have a planning sheet that I spread out the work over the days of the week so I can tick everything off.

Homeschooling Special Needs Australia

This mum has a wonderful success story of homeschooling her special needs son. She shares lots of resources and its worth reading her story as it’s a great one.

Facebook Groups

There are a lot of Facebook groups with parents from around the world who are homeschooling children with Special needs. There is an increasing trend for children with special needs to be homeschooled as schools just can’t always cater for special needs or children aren’t coping in the school environment.

Now that I’m actually doing it I love it. I was quoted last year as saying I couldn’t teach kindergarten as I wouldn’t know how to teach a child to read -it’s definitely easier to pick up homeschooling once your child can read and write – but now that I’m doing it is so much fun. I have a dear little girl who loves being home with us and is happy. So happy. We don’t have cranky mornings or afternoons being so tired from all the travelling and she’s doing fun things and what she loves.

And I just wanted to add in Simply Classical is a new to me find that I am just loving. Find out more here but the assessments and learning plans look very comprehensive and I’ve never seen anything like it for children with learning needs before.

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.