Beverley Paine's Australian Home School Curriculum: Tips for Learning How to Read - Seasonal Stories, Holiday Themes and Unit-Studies

Seasonal Stories, Holiday Themes and Unit-Studies

© Beverley Paine, 2004

One of the easiest ways to homeschool is to build your learning program around unit-studies. Books play a huge role in a unit-study approach. A visit to the library with a theme or topic in mind can harvest dozens of books of all types; reference books, picture books, story books, movies, documentaries, myths and legends, true accounts, biographies, how-to and practical books, and books on tape. Interest-based learning is exceptionally efficient. Let a child run with their interest as far as she wants to, but don't take over; remember, it's her interest!

Using a mind-map it is a relatively easy process to design a unit-study that encompasses every area of learning, based on the material you've collected from the library alone. That's just the start! Add ideas and activities from the Internet and other homeschooling friends and a few excursions and you will be kept busy for at least a couple of weeks.

Reading skills are used way beyond reading from books in any educational program. It is worth remembering that your child will be reading lists, labels, instructions, directions and more as she moves about her daily homeschooling life. Writing is a great way to further develop reading skills - as is talking about reading, writing, listening and speaking, and what you are doing as you do it. All too often we forget that conversing is the earliest form of communication, and the most effective, judging by how much a child learns in her first five years!

After 20 years of being a contact and support person Beverley no longer takes phone call or email inquiries. Please join one of her yahoo groups if you want to know more about homeschooling or have a question.

Pioneering members of the home education movement in Australia, Beverley and Robin Paine are passionate advocates of true educational choice for families. They began homeschooling their children in 1986 and three years later started the South Australian Home Based Learners network.
Beverley wrote Getting Started with Homeschooling in 1995-97 and since then continues to write books and booklets on home education. She balances spending time helping home educators with working in her garden and renovating her home, as well as continuing to build her collection of writing on a variety of homeschooling subjects. Beverley maintains an extensive collection of websites as well as several Yahoo groups supporting families teaching their children at home. In 2007 Beverley joined the HEA and became a committee member in 2008: she also edits and produce the HEA Newsletter, HEA magazine, Stepping Stones for Home Educators, annual Resource Directory and other HEA publications. If you'd like to keep in touch with what Beverley is up to her in her life, sign up for the Homeschool Australia Newsletter or visit her Facebook page.