We are currently at Speargrass Farm, an off-grid sustainable farm 200km south of Darwin. Luke & Laura have a 6 acre property in the bush that they have spent the past 12 years converting into a living testament of natural living. I was very inspired by some of the reading material in the Speargrass library and am going to work on scenario Project Do Nothing over the coming weeks. Natural Living, Natural Farming, Natural Diet, Natural School……... The farm is isolated but there is a constant flow of visitors and the 3 children, Ginger, Wren, Chilli have an abundance of animals to keep them company; 45 goats, 50 chickens and ducks and an assortment of pet animals including Barney, the bull; Bethany the kangaroo; Jump & Dusty, the dogs, the guinea pigs, the tree frogs etc… Our own children absolutely adore it here and don't want to leave. The girls are “unschooled”. Learning is led by whatever interests them and from what I can see, is a huge success. They teach themselves and the parents are there to provide guidance. They are well-spoken, sociable and knowledgeable on an amazingly wide array of topics. Before we decided to take this year off, I spent quite a bit of time researching Homeschooling techniques. Basically, there are 2 main methods; on one spectrum, we have the Free-schoolers who adopt a democratic system and let the children decide what they learn, and on the other spectrum, we have Distance Education. There were outstanding results from Free-schoolers and I was tempted to give it a go, but being risk averse, we went with Distance Education and signed up the children with SIDE (School of Isolated Distance Education) and CNED. To be honest, Distance Learning is difficult and we are struggling with it. Benoit is considering several new career options : Bread-maker, Poultry Farmer, Goat Farmer, Bee-Carer, Hunter / butcher The Family Ariston went away and we played farmers for a couple of days…. Benoit is very attached to the goats now!
3 Comments
sally
9/5/2016 04:56:21 am
Loved this post, the children are being exposed to so much, fantastic!!
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Julie
9/9/2016 07:00:40 am
Quelle aventure vous vivez ! Excellent! Alors vous changez de technique pour l'éducation ded es enfants ou pas? 😉
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Jane
9/19/2016 04:12:22 pm
That is just brilliant. Your kids will be learning so much. And lots of new skills for the adults too. Go Benoit! Hi to Stephan from Ronan.
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