Getting Started with Homeschooling
Practical Considerations for Parents of School-Aged Children
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
Traditional Subject Outline
Using traditional school subjects as a guide is often the easiest place for new home schooling parents to start when planning a learning program. Most adults are used to thinking of education in these terms.
Choose a topic or theme, and underneath traditional school subject headings, list all the possible
activities still related to the theme or topic you can think of. This is the same process as
brainstorming, only you have already chosen the categories as a guide. In addition to thinking of
the obvious headings such as Mathematics, Science and English, remember health, personal
development, physical education, music, visual arts, performance arts, other languages,
technology studies, media studies, geography, history, study of other cultures, etc.
| AEROPLANES | June 1996 |
| Language | Research and reading magazines and books for information about specific topics to do with aeroplanes; recording and presenting information as a project; creative writing; writing letters. |
| Indonesian | Learning phrases useful for air travel. |
| Mathematics | Working out air speeds-
comparisons to other transport
vehicles; calculating
quantities of materials needed for
models; comparison of
sizes of aeroplanes; reasons for
shapes; working out how
long to get to different
destinations and times of
arrival. |
| Science | Aerodynamic experiments. Simple
paper plane and
helicopter experiments.
Making hot air balloons. |
| Technology | Designing and drawing plans for balsa
wood and paper models. Following
instructions to build commercial model.
Looking at how propellers and wings
work and designing and building working models. Radio
controlled aeroplanes. |
| Society | Different uses of aeroplanes - transport, military, medical, space shuttle, sport... |
| Geography | Air travel routes; which countries build planes and why. |
| History | The development of aeroplanes and other air vehicles. |
| Health & Safety | How do they keep people safe in the air, emergencies, accident prevention and investigations, occupations. |
| Art and Crafts | Painting and drawing planes, illustrating project, finishing models. |
| Drama | Playing aeroplanes, both role playing game and using miniature toys (matchbox planes, Lego, models). |
| Physical | Model aeroplane flying. |
| Music | Using the synthesizer on the computer to simulate aeroplane noises (and crashes!), researching songs about planes, maybe learning to play a tune, or sing. |
You can also list your objectives, resources and evaluation indicators on your plan if you want
to.
See the additional examples on pages 69 and 70. One of these plans highlights the learning in
skills and understandings for each curriculum area, rather than just a list of activities or content
related objectives. This plan still focuses on a particular theme or topic, but picks out the key
learnings, not in terms of knowledge gained, but overall growth. The outline can be developed
for any topic.
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Excerpt from Getting Started with Homeschooling, Practical Considerations
© Beverley Paine, 1997
