School of the Dining Table

Today we started a new chapter of schooling for the Clowns.
Welcome to the School of the Dining Table!

We have a bit of a nomadic few months ahead of us and we decided that home schooling the Clowns would make travelling and exploring much more flexible and fluid for the whole family.

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Let the day begin.  With some online testing!

After much research and deliberation, we have decided on using the curriculum and year guides created by the team at Complete Education Australia.  Making sure that the Clowns were staying in line with the Australian curriculum was a big part of our decision to utilise CEA’s resources.  While we are not classroom teachers by any means, we are very confident that we can stick pretty close to the CEA format and keep the Clowns moving forward successfully.

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Desertion at the Dining Table… The Clowns all had a swim to break up the morning.

We have a couple of weeks to experiment with the new routine and structure while we are at home, but I think we will have a much better plan of how long we should be spending on certain areas for each child after that time.  I’m sure there will be a lot of random times the Clowns spend on school work (flight time, driving time, grabbing a table at a cafe with wi-fi…)  and there is a lot they can do online, which also means less luggage for us all!  As much as Marc and I aren’t super keen on loads of course work done on devices, it makes more sense while we are travelling to keep things as simple and light as possible.  The bonus is, they can access everything they need or we can print out enough weeks worth of curriculum for when we know we won’t have great internet access.  After today’s first run, I’m thinking I might print and bind four weeks of work together at a time, so we always have it handy.

I’m sure there will be many, many things we change throughout this learning adventure, and as long as we cover the work required, we’ll all be doing great!

Also, Google and Pinterest are my new favourite things…!