Keep the joy in your child’s passions | Home Education Foundation

From another home educating mother in New Zealand:

We put our 15 yr old in the local school to do his NCEAs as he wanted to be a pilot and knew he needed qualifications.

Before he went his passions, other than flying, were history and writing his own mini novels. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge of several periods of history and had participated in medieval re-enactments at one point. His history teacher said my son knew more about history than the teacher did and his English teacher said he had a lot of writing talent and a great imagination.

After a term or so, these two subjects had been ruined for my son. He was totally bored and couldn’t work out why. School took all the joy out of those subjects. I don’t know how they manage it!

Luckily he didn’t completely lose his interest in writing at home and still does it. At school he excelled in the other subjects he needed for flying, and got good results in the end, but it still amazes me that the school managed to turn him off subjects he had been fascinated with for years so quickly.

My son, now 19, left school with NCEA Level 3 and UE having done Maths with Calculus, Maths with Stats, Physics Chemistry and Biology. He hated the last year and it was a struggle to keep up his motivation, even though he got on well with his teachers. Luckily his flying and other interests kept him going.

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From the Smiths:

https://hef.org.nz/2011/craig-smith-26-january-1951-to-30-september-2011/

Updated 2 February 2013: One year on (Craig Smith’s Health) page 7 click here

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Needing help for your home schooling journey:

https://hef.org.nz/2011/needing-help-for-your-home-schooling-journey-2/

And

Here are a couple of links to get you started home schooling:

Information on getting started: https://hef.org.nz/getting-started-2/

and

Information on getting an exemption: https://hef.org.nz/exemptions/