Mama's Musings

In recent years, the landscape of education has been evolving rapidly, with more families opting for non-traditional approaches to learning. Homeschooling has gained popularity for its flexibility and personalised learning experience. In Australia, a growing number of homeschooling families are finding community and support through learning co-ops, creating collaborative environments that enrich the educational journey for both home educators and students.

What is a Learning Co-op?
A learning co-op, short for cooperative, is a collaborative effort among homeschooling families to share resources, knowledge, and expertise. These co-ops provide a supportive community for parents/carers and students alike, fostering a sense of belonging and shared responsibility for education.

Structure of Learning Co-ops:
Learning co-ops vary in structure, but they generally involve a group of families coming together to pool their time, resources, and talents. These co-ops can be formal or...

I'm excited about 2024.  More excited than I've been about a New Year for awhile.  I've posted some planning posts on facebook, and I'm meeting with a friend for some regular journaling sessions.  I'm scheduling some time out, and I've majorly decluttered parts of my home over the holidays.

I hope you're feeling great about 2024 too!  Head to calendly.com/spiralbel if you want to book a spot to get sorted for 2024. We can chat about organising, planning, resources, time management, avoiding burnout, plans, record keeping, long-term goals, learning activities, ideas, juggling (roles, not balls), or whatever challenges you're facing or wondering about.  Sessions start from $110 for an hour consult with prep notes and follow-up email.  Not a bad investment for a potentially fabulous new year!

We've been playing with plastic money for a couple of years now, and I wondered how Zeah would respond to the type of money questions she'd experience in a typical school classroom.

I printed quite a few pages from this booklet from Twinkl, and she was really keen to give them a go! She blitzed the ones she did, and put some others on her desk to tackle another day.

I love seeing the leaps in knowledge from learning naturally and through play, and homeschooled kids often love to 'test' that knowledge and know that they can do 'schoolwork' with ease.

We're getting a bit tired of vinegar and bicarb variations lately! With a KiwiCo kit we did a lot of new experiments with citric acid and a couple of other kitchen ingredients recently.  Then I looked on Twinkl last week and found this experiment we had never tried before.

We used milk and vinegar to make 'plastic'. It's actually curds, like cheese! But we chatted about casein and molecule chains and squished our meagre curds (we expected more from 1 cup milk - maybe it was our milk?) into a modelling substance that Zeah coloured yellow and added glitter to (now it looks like rubbery, sparkly cheese!) She cut an angel and made a bead and they're drying on the kitchen bench. I feel like we might attract bugs?

The whole process was interesting and took a bit more skill and patience than our usual mix-and-watch experiments, so I'll be looking for more to do with kitchen ingredients in the coming weeks.
Check out the instructions for this one here.

Getting ready for 2024?  If you'd like to grab my free printable planner (over 50 pages), please do so before the end of December.

If you want to book a 1:1 session to help you get organised, please head to my calendly and make an appointment for January.

If you'd like to work through the planner, and similar organisational tools, with me over 7 days - enrol in my Organised Homeschool mini-course.  It's still only AUD$7 and can be used over and over again.

Confidence is a feeling of wellbeing and calm, and belief in yourself as an educator.

Homeschool Confidently is about building confidence - sharing good news stories, fun and useful resources and ideas, and little bits of encouragement across various platforms.  In my 1:1 sessions and groups I break down the overwhelming task of homeschooling into manageable activities.  I'm here to boost your confidence.  There are many other homeschool coaches and mentors like me - and I recommend you find someone further along the journey to encourage you.

What are some other ways you can gain confidence as a homeschooler?

READ books about homeschooling.  Anything by John Holt (classic), Julie Bogart, John Grey, or Laura Grace Weldon is a good start.  There are audiobooks, ebooks, library books, international books, Australian books - there are SO many books to encourage you as an educator!

TALK to other homeschooling parents - in person, online - it doesn't matter, just...

Click on the image to go to the Resources page, or find it in the menu of this site.

Thank you, Katie! It was a pleasure to meet your family and chat about homeschooling teenagers last month. See you again soon! If you're interested in a 1:1 session head to my online calendar to book, or email me.

I regularly write for the Twinkl Home Ed Magazine because it's a fantastic resource made by the home ed community for our community!  The October theme is Life Skills and the Twinkl team included an article I wrote about Child-Led Learning.  I think the research and resourcefulness of child-led learning make it a very important life skill!  The magazine is available here.