Category: school

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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…!

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An open letter to the Clown’s teachers

Last Friday was the end of the school year for all three Clowns – again!  They seem to have clocked up several months holiday for 2018 already…  And now they have their summer holidays stretching out for two months in front of them.  Tough life, right?!

It’s been an interesting year already, not to mention disruptive and full of hurdles.  They are all looking forward to this break before starting school again in August!

We have been so lucky to have amazing teachers this year and I wanted to let them know just how much we appreciate their dedication and care.  It was harder than I thought, to put into words just how much Marc and I are thankful for these teachers that have helped to shape the Clown’s perception and expectation of what international schooling can look like.

Dear Mr S, Miss J and Miss N,

Parenting and teaching are tough, sometimes thankless jobs.  We make decisions daily, and hope that we are making the right ones for our children.  We trust our gut, and hope that we are teaching them to be good people.  But the results won’t be measurable for a few years to come, while we watch and wait for them to grow.

It’s hard to express how grateful we are, as parents, to know we have made a decision that is proving to be tangibly good.  That we have the opportunity to see, almost immediately, the effects of our decision to hand our kids over to you and the staff at AISB.  It’s an amazing thing to witness.

Thank you for taking our children under your wings and helping them enjoy coming to school everyday.  All three Harvey kids are sad to be leaving your classrooms today.  But you have prepared them well and they are looking forward to what their next years at AISB will bring.

Everyday they come home with great stories about their friends, what’s happening in their classes and what they have learnt, confirming for us that we made the right decision to enrol them at AISB.  For this, Marc and I cannot thank you all enough.

Moving countries, changing schools, and having to cope with so much disruption hasn’t been easy over the last six months, but you have helped make the schooling component of that change so much more positive and just better.  Better than we had expected.  Better than the kids thought it would be.  Better than we all imagined.

Thank you so very much.

Owen and Ella backstage at the end of year concert
Reuben receiving an award at assembly

It has been a thoroughly challenging first six months of 2018 for the Harvey Clowns…  That’s probably an understatement, if you asked them!  They have each taken their individual challenges in their stride, and we couldn’t be more proud of the way they have handled themselves in so many new situations this year already!

The second half of 2018 brings even more change and challenges, which I’m sure they will grab and run with!

Mx