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2021 Workshops

Reporting, community, mindset, maths – if you need to know about it, chances are we’re covering it!

Welcome! The 2021 Australian Homeschooling Summit ran February 15 – 26.

But don’t worry, you haven’t missed out – we recorded EVERYTHING and it’s all available for you to watch whenever you want!

Want to watch:

  • Access to recordings of all 30+ 2021 workshops and bonus sessions
  • All associated resource guides
  • Amazing homeschooling help!
  • Read on to get details of all the workshops
Australian Homeschooling Summit review testimonia
Australian Homeschooling Summit review testimonial
Australian Homeschooling Summit review testimonia

Welcome & Enhancing Curriculum

 Kelly George

Fearless Homeschool

Welcome everyone! I’ll say a quick hello then we’ll get straight into the workshops.

Curriculum can be incredibly useful, especially if you’re new to homeschooling. But it can also be boring and repetitive.

I’ll show you how to use any curriculum (or any thorough resource) as a spine, and supplement it and extend it with a huge range of creative, hands-on, and FUN activities.

By doing this you can reduce resistance and boredom while knowing you’re covering all the essentials.

 

How to Nail your AP Home Visit for Registration

Myfanwy Dibben

EdConsult

Home visits are stressful. With an average of over 98% of applications accepted, chances are you’ll be fine despite how anxious you may feel. After all, your entire lifestyle and values are wrapped up in your decision to home educate your child, so the outcome is critical. Join Myfanwy Dibben as she talks you through the process, while also giving you the confidence to push back if an AP oversteps the mark in requesting evidence beyond your obligation to submit. You’ll walk away with the confidence to answer even the curly questions successfully.

What is my child learning? - translating everyday life for recording

Beverley Paine

The Educating Parent

Your child is learning all the time, some of it planned but most of it unplanned: it simply happens as they process, reflect and evaluate how their actions effect what is happening around them and what they are doing. Let Beverley help you to recognise some of those moments by sharing some examples from home educating her kids and grandkids. Capture a few of these learning moments every day to build your confidence as an educating parent.

Creating Homeschool Community

Ann Leach, Tamara Kidd, April Jermey, Nat Mardon & Tamara Kelly

One of the biggest complaints we hear from people and that which drives them back to school is they have trouble connecting with other home educators. Unfortunately there is NO cohesive structure for home educators to attach themselves to and to be honest it’s unlikely to succeed because home educators are DIY by nature. So the purpose of this talk is to give you some strategies for finding your people and making a place for others once you are established. This talk is a series from a few of these core people – each looking at a different aspect of finding & creating community.

How To Teach Maths Confidently (Even if you Flunked it Yourself)

Esther White

Maths Australia

Whether you choose unschooling, or highly structured “school at home”, you can know for sure that at some stage you will have to teach your child maths. In general, it seems to be one subject that we stress over, avoid and often then revert either to rote learning, or to textbooks that merely teach formulas and how to get an answer. Then a few years down the track we realise our children have absolutely no understanding of what they are doing, and are in fact struggling and highly anxious about it as we cram their brains full of facts with no context. Come and learn how you can easily and effectively teach maths using an approach that incorporates evidence and research recommendations, alongside a sequential maths program that teaches mastery and confidence for life!

Erin Hassett

How to Raise a Family of Readers

Do you long for your children to be enthusiastic readers but don’t know where to begin? Would you like help in creating a reading environment for your family? Join Erin as she shares how her family of ten children have been raised to be readers and how reading is an integral part of their family culture. In this workshop, Erin will step through common challenges and how you can overcome them. She’ll even share with you how she got her most reluctant readers to fall in love with books. Join us and find out how you can incorporate reading into your family life from a family who have enjoyed reading together for decades.

Holding Space for the Self-Directed Learner

Heidi Conway

ChangeMaker Mums

Homeschooling – do you ever wonder if you are doing the right thing, in the right way? Are you struggling to choose what’s right for your teen? Come along to –

• Find out what ‘holding the space’ actually means, how important it is, and just how easy it is to do.

• Learn to let go of your own high-school experience and to create the ideal experience for your young person.

• Discover how the expectations of your parents, in-laws and spouse can be used in a constructive way and furthermore lead to great communication

• Ways to ensure your teen is clear on what specific fields they want to gain knowledge in.

• How to cope when you and your teen don’t agree, and

• Finally be able to relax and allow your teen to have a ‘successful’ life by following their real passion.

Seven Secrets to Simply Homeschool

Karen Willson

Simply Homeschool

Homeschool is full of questions: How do I know we’re doing enough? How do I know each child is getting what they ‘need’? How do I find balance between family, home, work and homeschool, and will I ever get time to myself? How do I even know where to start? How can I make homeschool work for my special needs child/high schooler/ resistant learner? We hear that less is more. We long for simplicity and focus. We need a long-term plan that helps us to make good day-to-day choices. Join us as we take a few deep breaths and consider what matters most. Unburden your doubts and anxiety with Seven Secrets to Simply Homeschool.

Montessori Home Education

This workshop will begin with a short introduction so that everyone has clarity on what the Montessori Method is and how to use Dr Maria Montessori’s philosophy and pedagogy in the home education environment. Tamara will list free resources for you to make at home, or purchase online, so you too can help your children whether they’re not yet born or approaching 24! Montessori is an approach that is hands-on and community-based, and is also known as Peace Education. Feel free to watch even if you’re only curious – there will be something here for everyone.

How to Rock Radical Unschooling, and why choose it.

Freya Dawson

Freya Dawson

As much as you’d like your child to sit down and use the workbooks you bought, the reality is that many children resist this. These same children are often highly resistant to rules or parent-imposed limits. Luckily, there is a style of home education that really suits these children and helps them develop into confident, self-motivated learners – they may be better suited to self-directed learning or unschooling. Freya used a radical unschooling approach with her sons for 15 years and will help you understand how it works, whether it will suit your family and what skills you need to make it work. You’ll also develop confidence to navigate issues around screen time, food, and bed times.

Homeschooling with Chronic Illness - Can It Be Done?

Homeschooling is not for everyone but if you or your child is diagnosed with a chronic illness, should this automatically preclude you from homeschooling? Lusi is entering her 13th year homeschooling her neurodivergent family, has chronic illness, has had a child with a life-threatening illness and still loves the homeschool journey her family is on. In this workshop, we’ll talk about:

– the pros and cons of homeschooling with chronic illness

– how to adopt a marathon mindset towards your learning-at-home journey 

– practical tips with free templates you can print and use immediately for your home, for you and for your child’s learning

– how to shake the parental guilt and respond to concerned family and friends

– strategies for ensuring your child has a rich learning experience even if you are chronically unwell

How to Balance being a Mum with being a Homeschool Mum

Belinda Letchford

Live Life with your Kids

When we start homeschooling there is an automatic tension between being a mother and the teacher. How you balance these two roles will shape the relationship you will have with your child. In this workshop you will:

– Learn to appreciate the value you bring to your child’s education because you are the mother

– Learn how you can maintain being mother while teaching academics (even when academics is hard)

– Learn how you can maintain your family life when you have to homeschool

Letting go of the teacher hat and firmly holding onto being mum is key for sustainable homeschooling.

Parenting Tools that Make a Difference to Homeschool Life

Chelsea Lee Smith

Moments A Day

Respectful and effective parenting tools can be one of the most helpful resources throughout the journey of a homeschool parent. Developing a supportive environment for learning and a culture of positive attitudes can make the world of difference when family members spend a lot of time together. In this workshop, you will learn how to maintain perspective amidst challenging behaviours, consider why setting boundaries can be important for both children and adults, and discover one very simple yet often overlooked method of engaging your child in problem solving.

Approaches to Homeschooling That Don’t Look Like School

Are you fresh from mainstream school or looking for new ideas to stimulate your home education life? Perhaps you find it overwhelming with all the options and choices? Then this workshop is ideal for you. We will cover a range of education ideas and techniques to assist you to branch out and try new things. From tools and resources to styles and philosophies I will share how to educate, so that you will want to include more than just the traditional sit-down textbook approach.

Five Things You Can Do To Teach Your Child About Money

Neil Edmond

MoneyTime

As a homeschooler you do your best to teach your child maths, reading and science, but what about personal finance? Dealing with money is an important part of their everyday lives. It affects the choices they have and the decisions they make, yet many parents struggle to teach their kids how to grow and manage their money. Why? Because they weren’t taught themselves. Most of us had to learn lessons about money the hard way but it doesn’t have to be that way for your child. Neil Edmond, co-founder of MoneyTime, discusses 5 ways you can start teaching your kids about money today.

Educate your Kids Effortlessly While Travelling

Coco Cooper

Are you travelling already or looking forward to it? Does taking a trip with your kids in tow feels like a challenge and you don’t know where to start ? In this workshop I will present our family living full time on the road. I will help you to get started and will give you some tips on how to be organised in a small space. You will learn how to meet the Australian curriculum requirements and socialisation in everyday life with nature and hands on activities. I will also explain what we do to be involved in the community and not just being passing tourists.
Tamara Kelly

Learning Languages

Tamara Kelly

Homeschool HELP

As homeschoolers we often skip teaching languages because we are monolingual and have no opportunities to use them. This talk introduces ways to make language learning engaging and relevant. We look at different ways to connect with the living language and introduce a range of learning techniques to help its acquisition and retention. With the right support, your child can be saying, “Póg mo thóin” at you every time you ask her to do jobs.

How To Homeschool High School

 Michelle Morrow

My Homeschool

Teaching high school can be scary and we don’t want to muck it up. Let me show you a few ways you can teach high school even when you don’t feel confident with the subject matter. I’ll give you tips and short cuts to help you get ready for making the transition from primary to high school. Michelle has homeschooled 4 children and all have entered tertiary education at 16 without an ATAR. One is a doctor, one is an animator at Animal Logic, one works in communication and one is finishing off a degree whilst running her own business.

Inside Beverley’s classroom

 Beverley Paine

The Educating Parent

Come on a tour of The Educating Parent’s home and see how Beverley creates an environment that nurtures and feeds enthusiasm for natural and structured learning. An organised space makes accessing all those resources and planning activities easy. Packed with ideas that have stood the test of time…

Learning Together: Preparing our kids for the future

Our world is in the midst of some tumultuous changes. Nowhere is this more evident than in education. How do you prepare kids for a world that we cannot yet imagine?

“If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” – John Dewey

In this workshop, Life Coach and Educational Futurist Andrew Lord will share some global trends in the world of education and show you how you can bring out the best in your child using an innovative passion-based learning framework.

Creating balance in your homeschool - aka. How to stay sane

Aimée Engler

The homeschool life is an opportunity for freedom and adventure, but it can also be really hectic, exhausting, and just plain hard. Prioritising your family’s mental and emotional health (yes, including yours!) can make a huge difference in your day, and I’d like to share some ideas to create balance and help your family to thrive. This talk will discuss living with autism and anxiety, but is ultimately for anyone who is struggling and desires a more sustainable lifestyle.

Chatting with my Homeschooled Teens

Ever wanted to know what it’s like to be a homeschooled kid? What did they struggle with? What did they enjoy? Lusi’s eldest 3 children are now all working and studying in their chosen fields and chat with her about their homeschooling years including recalling their favourite homeschool memories, about being homeschooled in a rural town and how one entered uni and has almost finished her degree. At the end of this casual chat-style workshop you’ll:

* have access to a journal template your teen can use to record some of his/her own reflections

* be encouraged to identify your child’s passions and areas of interest

* think about project-based learning and community involvement

* consider the value of being industrious, honing life skills and being in charge of their schedule and time management

Revolutionise Your Homeschool With Tiny Co-ops

Tiny Co-ops are a fun, dynamic way to integrate small group learning into your homeschool and to take some of the pressure off the parent educator. They add a richness and variety to your homeschool that children and adults love! If you are cracking under the pressure of keeping up with trying to cover all of the subject areas, then a tiny co-op may just be the way forward for you. By the end of this workshop, you will have the tools to feel confident in getting started with your own tiny co-op.

Arts Across the Curriculum

Michelle Pacey

This session looks at ways to value-add to wider curriculum area outcomes through visual arts practices, and discusses local community groups who can help. You’ll learn how to add the arts to every area of the curriculum and naturally include more fun, creativity, and hands-on learning.

Building Community - Organising excursions, camps, co-ops, and meet ups

I’m a home educating parent of three children, and an active organiser of activities in our local home ed community. Over the last five years I’ve been involved in organising excursions, camps, co-ops, and casual meet ups for home educating families. Many people are often overwhelmed at what is involved in building and sustaining community, but it’s never been easier than it is now, and I’ll show you how.

Tamara Kelly

Chicken-Scratch Planning Workshop

Tamara Kelly

Homeschool HELP!

Need to write a plan for registration? Don’t miss this interactive workshop!

Tamara will teach you how to generate ideas to assist with writing unit study-style homeschool plans for registration. She will do a very quick demo and then will assist participants to construct a couple of rough plans. As bonus, Tamara will later tidy up those plans and send them to you for personal reference.

Homeschool Planning and Organising with Kids.

I will share simple tips and tools all families can use to plan their day, week, month, year. Examples relevant to those with little ones, and also families with teens will be included in this workshop to plan learning, projects, trips and more. A bundle of free printables will be available to all attendees.

Opting out of school: Shining a light on the darkest fears.

They say ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ but something inside us says ‘but this is different… it’s about following the law’. If I do something wrong, will I get in trouble? Will community services investigate me? Will I lose my child? You might have thought that unschooling was illegal, or that you have to get a school’s permission to homeschool. You might think that if you choose to homeschool you’ll have to turn your home into a school, or that the department of education will send you all the work.

In this session I’ll cover deschooling in practical terms and give you a worksheet, as an irony, to debunk those fears and get you moving into confidence and clarity about what you can and can’t do. We will cover definitions, what happens if you’re in family court, have a child with disabilities, want to travel or are looking to keep working, studying or can’t commit to Monday-Friday 9am-3pm. You will get the ‘lay of the land’ and see into what home education is really all about regardless of your circumstances. This is the session for those who are on the fence or curious, as well as those whose own fears are holding themselves and their children back from truly getting the most out of this amazing opportunity to live in the world ‘as though schools don’t exist’.

Gameschooling: Learning while playing board games

Nat Mardon

Yes the kids are learning while playing board games!

Do you have kids that resist any ‘academic’ learning? Do you want to learn in a fun and hands on way? Do you want to improve family dynamics and do more ‘together’? Let me introduce you to game-schooling – and not just Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit!

In this workshop, you will learn how ‘table-top’ games can be a rich place of learning and reinforcing concepts across most learning areas (Maths, English, History and more), how to use games to enrich your unit studies, how to pull learning outcomes from games for reporting, and even how to ‘radically game-school’ (what, no curriculum?). I will show you some of the most popular board and card games and where to get them, and link you into a wonderful game-schooling community to continue your addiction….ahem, journey.

Engaging Reluctant Writers

Trying to get a reluctant writer to put pen to paper can sometimes feel like pulling teeth but it doesn’t have to be this way! Lusi is entering her 13th year homeschooling her neurodivergent family including multiple reluctant writers. Her templates and techniques have helped Australian homeschoolers (including her own kiddos) to build confidence, record with purpose and write for enjoyment. In this workshop we’ll talk about:

* the value of creating a literacy rich environment and the interconnectedness of writing in everyday activities

* the ‘layered cake’ approach for building rapport and getting your child to share his/her ideas with you

* strategies for offering your child ‘scaffolded’ help

* authenticity and connection and encouraging your child to find their writing voice

Tips for Planning Engaging History Lessons for Primary Kids

Chelsea Lee Smith

Moments A Day

If you (or your children) are struggling to enjoy history lessons, or you need some ideas to get started with teaching history, this workshop will help get your inspiration flowing. You will take away 10+ ways to engage your children in learning about history, with little to no prep involved except choosing the book you want to read. This workshop is presented with primary school children in mind, and will share resource and activity ideas that can be used alongside any homeschool style or program.

Reporting in Qld Made Easy.

The Queensland Report requirements are often very daunting to new families and can still be stressful to old timers too. This workshop will assist you with how to create Samples and the many ways we can do that, as well as how to clearly and succinctly answer the Home Education Units Reporting template questions. Take the stress out of what you need to do at your end of year and learn some key steps to help you with your Report writing.

Pathways to University

 Amanda Bartle

The inner doubt, the critical family members, the old teachers, friends and those well-meaning strangers can all be silenced. Yes, you can home school and still have your children attend university! Explore the potential pathway options available for homeschooling teens to enter tertiary education. I’ll show you

– how any degree is accessible without that ‘year 12 school certificate’. Yes, even the impossible ones like veterinary!

– pathway options outside the school system

– how to meet the prerequisite requirements

– tips on early entry, pre-university skills, accessing free subjects, saving time and money completing a degree and more.

I will give you enough information that you will feel empowered to homeschool your children all the way into university.

How to thrive as a New Age Un/Homeschooling Mama

 Heidi Hosking

Heidi Hosking

Many of us are starting to see our role as more than just ‘schooling our children at home’. We have hit a New Age with this concept, which includes mastering heart connection with our children, being a harmonious team with our partner (or ex-partner), and finding balance, nourishment and fulfilment within OURSELVES!

In this ‘Playshop’, we will go through:

– Why it’s important we get triggered by our children & partners

– The significance of these ‘negative feelings’

– How to find more patience, confidence & heart connection

– Why we must keep focus on our own health, creativity, personal fulfilment

– How to fit this all in with ease & grace

– How it’s actually all linked with ours AND our family’s highest paths

Freedom vs Structure: Finding the right balance for your family

Sara Macdonald

Happiness is Here

When you think about unschooling, one of the first things that comes to mind is freedom! Free to do what you want, when you want. But does that mean any structure at all is bad? Can parents not have a say in what their days look like? And how do you manage multiple children’s freedom when it impacts others? These are the questions that many parents struggle with. In this session we’ll chat about the answers to all of these concerns. We’ll learn about the importance of both freedom and structure in unschooling, get clear about our role as unschooling parents, and hear some tips for figuring out what works best for our own individual families. By the end, you’ll feel more confident in ditching the ‘rules’, finding the balance between freedom and structure in your home, and stepping into your role as an unschooling parent.

Australian Living Books and Story Time

Anthony Coafield

 Living Book Press

If 2020 taught us anything it’s that the best laid plans can quickly go astray. By using Australian living books we can easily fulfill our homeschool reporting objectives by snuggling up and reading, even when we can barely make it out of bed! In this seminar I’ll share how I use living books in my homeschool, some resources on where you can easily find these books, as well as other resources to help you align books to the curriculum or to find books focusing on particular outcomes. If your brain is getting tired from all you’re learning in other sessions I’ll also read aloud from a handful of books so for once you can sit back and enjoy story time!

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