How things have changed this year

This year has transformed us greatly… as a family. We have learned a lot. About the beauty and value of discipline and effort especially. And our way of life has nearly become unrecognisable!

For our whole relationship, we’ve travelled often and lived a very relaxed life, not abandoning work but never pouring ourselves entirely into it either.

This last year, has seen us turn a corner and change direction in many ways. Our focus has been on the strength that comes from living with focus , discipline and quiet concentration.

From here, we’ve moved more towards the Classical Educational approach, for we’ve found it’s fruits which has allowed us to feel confident in this choice, especially in terms of character formation.

We have been using The Good and the Beautiful Curriculum for a few years now, which has been just lovely compared to many we’ve worked though.

Now, coming to the end of another curriculum year, as we usually do with our Homeschool year, I’ve been learning about the many great and wonderful curriculums there are now available, which I’m excited to explore.

From now on we’ll be moving over into Apologia Mathematics and Literature based studies next year level. For all other subjects, we love what we’ve been doing, so it’ll be more of that fluidity for non core areas.

This term we’ve begun an Art Class for the girls, which has been nice, and we use Lisa Mills for Auslan, Story of the World for History and IEW – Institute for Excellence in Writing, which we’ll continue with also.

We have also joined a new Australian Catholic Girls Guild – St Joans Guild, as of April and are very excited about watching that grow, alongside our girls and all the amazing things they’ll continue to be doing as they work through the skills within the program.

Lastly, we’ve now only just joined a Homeschooling Co-op for the very first time, after hearing glowing reports from our friends who started it last term. The children have enjoyed it very much, so I’m over the moon with that!

They get to spend a whole day with a large group of other children doing Drama, Music, History and Sports, so it’s something they are very happy to be doing with their friends.

Aside from this, we spend an hour generally every day at least, walking our Dog, with the children either now riding their bikes or walking, so confidently feel we tick off our quota for Health and Physical Education.

This is more so given that we’re both Physical Therapists and as such share rehabilitation stories most every day amongst the family.

In addition to this, our girls have been attending an online Mini Medicine School, so we’re thrilled that they are learning all sorts of things, and have been really enthusiastically enjoying it!

Other than that, we generally take the girls to the park often on nice days and they attend a Dance class most weeks, and are continually learning the value of being active, especially hearing about the many stories of surgery we share from our clinic and beyond.

With this, I felt called to share how our direction has changed, so that a new perspective can be shared, after 6 years of homeschooling!

So, though I’m unsure as to when the next update will be… I hope this finds you well, and at peace, with your own choices for your unique family. Until next time.