The first day of school

So the schooling issue has resulted in a story that gives everyone quite a laugh. There are 3 options for families travelling Australia. You can home school, where YOU set the curriculum as long as you meet the Key Learning Areas. You can enrol in Distance Education, where the children have a teacher who sets work which is sent back and forth. Or you can keep the children enrolled in their current school and have the school set work.

My preference was for Option 1 as I felt it allowed me to tie in with where we were going and what we were doing. Its seems to be what most people do. Ummm... Education Dept said "NO!!" The man on the phone actually HUNG UP on me when I asked about it. I was so confused as to why we couldn't do it. Apparently one must have a HOUSE in Victoria to home school. We don't qualify as we have a bus, not a house! Sheesh!! I've since discovered that I could have registered with the Queensland Ed Dept.

So then I tried Option 2. I asked the Primary School officer at Distance Ed if we could enrol and she said the children would have to do 4 hours of school PER DAY. I asked if we could do a restricted curriculum in light of the Museums and Art Galleries and the other learning they would be getting. Ummmm.... Education Dept says "NO!! They must do FOUR hours a day - normal schools do 6 hours afterall!" So apparently Queensland distance Ed have a restricted curriculum for travellers that we could have done too. If only I'd thought to ring Queensland!

So we were left with Option 3, which was the children's Principal's first choice and which I warmed to quite quickly. The children have an allocated teacher and class, but will be marked as absent all year. They will be concentrating on Literacy and Numeracy and spending about an hour a day on schoolwork.

I haven't yet collected all the resources, so we are making it up a bit as we go. I felt it was important for the kids to start school when their friends did though. So here it is. First day of school:

We had our Bruny Island boat tour booked for 11am, so they chose to do their one hour first thing in the morning. In their pyjamas! Angus worked on Handwriting and Lexie started a review of the Treetops activity we did. Then they both did some worksheets from a fab set of books I bought about a boy travelling Australia. Today was day 2, and we concentrated on Numeracy using iPad apps and journal writing. We had a big driving day, so the kids did their hour while we were cooking dinner! We are all LOVING this flexibility!!