Welcome to The Educating Parent Beverley Paine's archive of articles about homeschooling and unschooling written over a period of 30 plus years

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Children Learning Naturally

© Beverley Paine

Permaculture is more than a design tool for agriculture and gardening - it is a design tool for life based on the following ethics:

care of the earth, care of people, return surplus

Home education practice grows out of the values that families hold dear. The above permaculture ethics are at the heart of our family values and form the basis of all of our learning activities. Everything we do in life must satisfy these three permaculture ethics.

We use permaculture as are our guide in designing educational activities and opportunities for our family. The key guiding principles for permaculture action are:

reduce, reuse, recycle, return, repair

In effect this means carefully accounting for the energy entering and leaving our learning systems - making sure we utilise all resources appropriately and efficiently according to the above principles. This includes all social and material resources, interpersonal and intrapersonal resources and our entire physical environment. It means treading lightly and thoughtfully on the planet.

We also are aware that whatever is used must be paid for - we are accountable for our actions to every living thing and to the future. The development of personal and community responsibility is a natural outcome of a permaculture focus.

Permaculture encourages the development of low maintenance systems using beneficial guilds that are supportive, cooperative structures built on diversity - or more simply phrased - multiple elements fulfilling multiple functions on many levels. This is easy to achieve using a learning naturally approach to home education.

learning naturally

We take advantage of the naturally occurring interactions in every day life, capitalising on, recognising and celebrating the learning packed into every moment of life. There is seldom any need to 'contrive' learning experiences - a full and busy life is full of immediately useful and relevent learning experiences. Permaculture offers a rich and complete learning curriculum for people of all ages.

We celebrate conflict as the 'edge' - where elements and systems meet, giving rise to unparalleled opportunity for growth, cooperation, creativity and order. Rather than seeing conflict as a problem we see it as a challenge to grow and learn beyond a fixed 'mind-set'.

We recognise that the problem is the solution - that everything works both ways - and that a positive, constructive attitude is the key to building successful learning activity. By turning a problem around and thinking about it creatively we often evolve innovative solutions that take us in more people and Earth friendly directions!

Using a permaculture design paradigm requires us to always make the least change for the greatest possible effect, ensuring energy and resource utilisation efficiency. This works toward eliminating 'waste' - with attention given to getting the maximum use of any resource, be it time, energy, materials or social resources. This trimming down of excess is especially applicable to educational programs!

We think carefully about our needs and our wants, our inputs and intended and possible unintended outcomes before taking action.

The aim in permaculture is always to increase yields, accounting for all energy inputs and outcomes. We realise life and learning are cyclic in nature and that increases in cycling increases the total possible yields.

Making connections is a key feature of our learning regime. In permaculture stability is derived from mutually beneficial connections between a number of diverse elements and functions within a system.

In our home learning program we connect learning into a continuous whole, rejecting the more common practice of segmenting the curriculum into subjects and lessons.

The role of a successful permaculture design is to create a self-managed, sustainable system. The aim of education is to create individuals who can operate and function as citizens in society, independently and cooperatively.

Permaculture offers a clear blueprint for excellence in education, in every area of human endeavour.

Imagination, fun, creativity and the impermanence of structures.

Becoming self sufficient and highly skilled.

Understanding the appropriate technologies we use at home.

Learning building skills from a young age.

Retelling old stories and wisdom with music, puppets and friends.

"Junkasaurus" - a recycled garbage community art project.

Learning about trade and money through LETS and market stalls.

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Beverley Paine with her children, and their home educated children, relaxing at home.

Together with the support of my family, my aim is to help parents educate their children in stress-free, nurturing environments. In addition to building and maintaing this website, I continue to create and manage local and national home educating networks, help to organise conferences and camps, as well as write for, edit and produce newsletters, resource directories and magazines. I am an active supporter of national, state, regional and local home education groups.

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over many, many years. You probably don't know exactly how valuable you are to the Australian Home Education community. I've been reading your stuff for maybe 8 years or more now. And I'm very grateful."
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CLICK HERE if you want to learn
how to write your own education plans
to suit your unique children's individual learning needs?

Or you are looking for quality curriculum and teaching tips...

Welcome to the World of Home Education
and Learning without School!

We began educating our children in 1985, when our eldest was five. In truth, we had helped them learn what they need to learn since they were born. I am a passionate advocate of allowing children to learn unhindered by unnecessary stress and competition, meeting developmental needs in ways that suit their individual learning styles and preferences. Ours was a homeschooling, unschooling and natural learning family! There are hundreds of articles on this site to help you build confidence as a home educating family. We hope that your home educating adventure is as satisfying as ours was! Beverley Paine

3 ESSENTIAL STEP BY STEP GUIDES

Getting Started with
Home Educating Series of

PARENT WORKBOOKS

#1 Create Your
Own Curriculum

#2 DIY Lesson Plans
& Unit Studies

#3 Recording and Evaluation Made Simple

$10.00 each (includes postage)

let experienced home educators Beverley, Tamara and April walk you through HOW to create a learning plan that builds on solid foundations that works for YOUR family AND ticks all the boxes for home educaton registration with part 1 of this getting started with home educating serioes of parent workbooks, Create Your Own Curriculum!
Let experienced home educators Beverley, Tamara and April walk you through HOW to create a learning plan that builds on solid foundations that works for YOUR family AND ticks all the boxes for home educaton registration!

To see the full range of Beverley Paine's books on homeschooling, unschooling and natural learning visit Always Learning Books

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The information on this website is of a general nature only and is not intended as personal or professional advice. This site merges and incorporates 'Homeschool Australia' and 'Unschool Australia'.

The Educating Parent acknowledges the Traditional Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Owners, the Custodians of Australia, and pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people viewing this website.

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Home education is a legal alternative
to school education in Australia.
State and Territory governments are responsible
for regulating home education and have different
requirements, however home educating families
are able to develop curriculum and learning programs
to suit the individual needs of their children.

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