A Million Resources for Home Education
My purpose here lies in sharing with you the beautiful resources that enhance my learning and that of my little ones. Here are just a few of the books I adore from our growing home library. The children’s story books “Wild Child” & “Doug Unplugged” both capture the heart of home education so perfectly! Both my little girl and I have loved these, as they do a fantastic job of “normalising” home “school”.
Unschooled, Simplicity Parenting and Free to Learn were all fantastic but most of the books I have read are on my phone or audio books, so bare with me while I gather my collection and share my reflections with you. Part of the reason I began this blog was to keep these pearls of wisdom, and go deeper into the philosophies as I apply them in real life.
Documentary
Class Dismissed – Homeschooling Documentary
Online Learning
Some of the things we’ve come upon and utilised include a great many homeschool youtube channels and fantastic resources including Outschool, which I feel is fantastic for values based learning. It’s so easy to just go deep into your own interests and find other homeschooling families who offer experience and advice in such areas.
DISCO Learning is a 4 week video call / webinar series by Lucy AitkenRead. I have just been devouring this course and I HIGHLY recommend!
Books
Below is a list of a few books that I highly recommend.
- Unschooling Rules
- Dumbing Us Down
- Free to Learn
- How Children Learn by John Holt
- Unschooled
- The Unhurried Homeschooler
- The Call of the Wild and Free
- There’s No Such Thing As Bad Weather
- What is Unschooling
- Curious Unschoolers
- Home Education by Charlotte Mason
- The 5 Hour School Week
- Most Likely to Succeed
- How Children Fail by John Holt
- Teach you Own by John Holt
Recommendation: The Books Every Homeschooling Parent Should Own by Fearless Homeschool
Sue Elvis’ Stories of an Unschooling Family’s Resource page
Blogs
Here is just a few of the wonderful Unschooler blogs or social media accounts I can also recommend:
Basically they ALL have a focus on Respectful Parenting, which I feel is a big draw card and driving force behind many parents choice to unschool as an extension of this, allowing childhood autonomy and freedom seldom respected in common culture.
Stark Raving Dad (curated content)
An Offgrid Life – Homeschooling & Homesteading
Paola Brown – Homeschooling, Homesteading & Homeopathy (Homeschool Curriculum)
Websites:
Classical Homeschooling Curriculum
Facebook Groups
Homeschooling Littles Australia
Home Education Network (Victoria)
Posts / Articles
But What About Socialisation? – HEN Home Education Network
You Can Homeschool in Less Than 2 Hours Per Day – Raising Wildflower Kids
A Day In the Life of a Waldorf / Steiner Homeschooler – Fearless Homeschool
“lop off a few additional hours for morning announcements, school picture day, dealing with crowd management, that half hour lecture every teacher gives the class at some point when they are losing their minds (who can blame them?), the Halloween party, passing out the Valentine’s Day cards, pizza parties for “good behavior,” celebrating birthdays, and so on. If all those things together take an average of one hour per week, in a 36-week school year, that’s 36 more hours gone, bringing the total instruction time to 596.5 hours.
For homeschoolers who have a relaxed lifestyle, the weekend/weekday distinction is not as important as it is for schooling kids. There is no stressful week to recover from. “
Products & Curriculum
The first question so many people ask me is… what curriculum do you use? And… Do you have to send in or submit your (child’s) work? Well, the short answer is No. The long answer is, there are endless options of curriculum to suit the millions of family values people have. All you need to do in Victoria is have your learning plan approved by the VQRA in order to successfully register as a “Homeschool”.
Personally, I am such a sticky beak. In fact my Mum nick named me “Beaky” when I was a little girl. So… I like to know what I’m (not) missing.
Below is a list of investments I’ve made to bring inspiration and ideas to the seeds I plant for my children (in education terms). We’ve completed a number of various activity books that have lead us to quite fascinating learning journeys. We’ve also used what we’ve felt drawn to in a couple of the curriculums. Largely though… we dabble and snoop, whenever it suits.
Some of these, we pick up (have picked up) only very occasionally (some just a few times) as we have such an abundance of resources that we don’t rely on any curriculum for our learning. To be perfectly honest… Life has always been our best learning tool. I say… Let curiosity be your child’s “curriculum”!
What we’re doing in 2025:
Mathematics: Apologia (Catholic Based Curriculum)
Literature: Learning through Literature
History – Keeping: Story of the World
LOTE: Lisa Mills Auslan Online
Science & Health: Dr Robin (Outschool) Mini Med Club
Health & Science: The Good and the Beautiful (Christian Based)
Art: Classes / Tutorials / Sits downs together
What we’ve used until now:
(Math, Language Arts & Science) I have nothing but good things to say about this. It truly is easy to use… open and go. Not preparation time… very family friendly and with Christian friendly values of wholesomeness, kindness, appreciation and consideration.
This is a Christian, American curriculum which is also FREE. If you do however prefer the books, you will need to buy them and factor in shipping to Australia. From what I hear, it’s much cheaper than printing lessons individually.
Lisa Mills Online – Auslan Course
(Online course) Still use it frequently. Fantastic.
Teacher Superstore: Home Education Bundle
(Home education bundle set) Used this for our eldest’s grade 2 & 3 – which she completed a year ahead, however when switching to The Good and The Beautiful, we had her repeat year 3 in her actual Grade 3 year, as the Curriculum advises not to skip ahead in foundation years regardless of reading level. We find the Good and Beautiful Language Arts in particular really well put together. This is especially so given we are an artistically inclined family.
Steiner Home Education Curriculum Au
(Nature and Rhythm based inspiration) We used this for Kinder to Grade Prep. We lean toward many aspects of Steiner / Waldorf education principles given our Artistic appreciation so took a lot away from this model of education, weaving it into our home education life wherever practical.
Your Natural Learner Curriculum
(For Prep / Pre-school Inspiration) The main takeaway from this curriculum to date has been the recommended reading that goes with it. We sought out much of the reading list material to inspire us on our own reading journey, especially pertaining to Biography (that inspires). To this day we LOVE the Who Was HQ Bok series, particularly as History lovers (only now given our eldest turned out to be a natural history lover).
Beast Academy – Maths Curriculum
(Extensive Grade 2 Advanced Math Games) Sourced the book set for grade 2. Use it in grade 1 but moved quickly onto other learning resources. Still looks like an awesome curriculum, if you are into Maths… just didn’t really dive too deeply into this.
Australian Curriculum Supplies
(Basic Workbooks)
Paola Brown’s Homeopathy Homeschool Curriculum
(A favourite, comes with games and resources)
(Online Game Subscription) Used very little and very briefly as we are not screen heavy at all. We use such little screen time that it quickly gave our eldest sore eyes. Likely due to her not using screens very much.
(Our favourite – includes recipes and loads of online content) Still weave this into our life learning..are on the second round of reading the set.
(Basic activities for Literacy & Numeracy) Completed a grade (2 I believe) a year ahead of time. Enjoyed and found little fault with it personally… though I have heard of others not at all liking it.
Teach your monster to read app (used a few times and quite enjoyed)
Holistic Home Education 