A Home Educating family needs our help

A Givealittle page has been set up for one of our home educating families. Some of you know the Taylors, others might only just be meeting them via the information on the Givealittle page. Angela and her daughter Emma have touched so many lives in a very positive way during their CF journey. Hopefully you are able to give, even just a little bit at this time. Thank you!

https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/beautifulemma

At 5pm on the 22nd March, Emma and her family received the call that Emma was going to be urgently flown to Auckland for a lung transplant. A beautiful gift. At 6.30 Emma and her mum Angela were on the life flight from Nelson to Auckland. On the 23rd March at midnight, Emma was taken into surgery for a the life saving operation of a lung transplant.

Emma is only 18 years old and has a chronic health condition called Cystic Fibrosis. Cystic Fibrosis is a genetic disorder that affects mainly the lungs, pancreas ,liver, kidneys and intestine. Emma was diagnosed at the age of 8 days old. Cystic Fibrosis is a life threatening disease.

Emma has had to receive a lung transplant as her lungs were no longer able to support her body due to the vast complications that Cystic Fibrosis brings.

Sadly for Emma and her family, they have already had to endure the pain of the disease with loosing a much loved daughter and sister to Cystic Fibrosis. Their much loved Joey (Johanna Louise) sadly passed away at the age of only 9 years old. Joey was a vibrant, cheeky and determined young lady who touched many many lives but sadly lost the terrible battle to Cystic Fibrosis.

Emma has been blessed to receive this opportunity of a new set of lungs but is fighting for her life. Emma’s dad Warwick and brothers and sisters, Logan, Josh, Jett, Jordyn, Annah, Josiah and Israel were unable to be there for the initial transplant surgery but hope to be able to take turns to travel to Auckland to support Emma soon.

For Emma and her family the ongoing emotional, physical and financial costs of Cystic Fibrosis are huge, but through all of this, Emma and her family bravely continue to fight and be graceful, kind and extremely humble people.

But now more than ever Emma and her family need our support. If you are thinking ‘I wish I could help’ or ‘How can I help’, please contribute to this families future.

This is wonderful support for Emma and her family in this especially difficult time of need.

Funds will be used to assist Emma and her family with the ongoing costs involved with having a lung transplant and fighting Cystic Fibrosis. Funds to help get all the family to Auckland to be with Emma and mum Angela. Funds to help get a car to assist mum and dad get around while they are in Auckland, Funds to help with ongoing medical treatments, living costs and day to day costs if Dad is unable to work.

https://givealittle.co.nz/cause/beautifulemma

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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/

This link is motivational:https://hef.org.nz/2012/home-schooling-what-is-it-all-about/

Exemption Form online:https://hef.org.nz/2012/home-schooling-exemption-form-now-online/

Coming Events:https://hef.org.nz/2013/some-coming-events-for-home-education-during-2013-2/

Beneficiaries: http://hef.org.nz/2013/where-to-for-beneficiary-families-now-that-the-social-security-benefit-categories-and-work-focus-amendment-bill-has-passed-its-third-reading

The Rolston buccaneers. (From left) Ty, Monte, Sawyer, Jada and Danny prepare to do battle in the bush beyond.

There are lots of places to play around the property.

 The kids play in the bush and fish in the stream. The adults work from home creating toys that win awards. imaginations are fuelled, dreams fulfilled. It’s a good life.

When Dee met Jeremy 20 years ago it was clear they would one day alight in a place without traffic snarls or neon lights, where the noisy beat of a kereru’s wings would be the loudest sound around.

Dee was raised on a farm at Kinohaku, a speck-sized settlement on the shores of the Kawhia Harbour. She and her sisters and brother played imaginary games, built African pygmy huts in the bush, leapt feet-first from a high bridge into the harbour and helped their grandmother hand-milk her cows in return for milk and butter. “We had no television,” she says. “We made our own adventures.”

Jeremy and Dee.

Jeremy spent his childhood shifting homes as his father followed shearing gangs around the country. They moved 15 times before he reached his teens. He says he missed each home. But through the tapestry of ever-changing landscapes he cherishes one memory. When shearing was slow he and his dad would jump on a farm bike and go bush to hunt possums. They would kip overnight in makeshift shelters, boil the billy on an open fire and breathe the bush air. It was, he says, the best time ever.

This is a love story. But it’s more than a fairy tale about a beautiful blonde-haired young woman who married her best friend. It’s about a couple who share ideas about what childhood should be like. In this household of mum, dad and six kids aged from one to 12, real-time conversations are important; imagination is encouraged.

Music is a passion for Jeremy and the older children, and spontaneous singalongs take place when anyone picks up the guitar. 

Monte, aged eight, is currently working on a graphic novel about a dog named TLSH, aka The Last Super Hero, who sometimes gets in trouble. When he finishes he might join his siblings to re-enact a scene from Lord of the Rings, or mount a pretend pony to hurdle jumps in the paddock.

Dee says she can count on one hand the number of times she has ever heard one of her children complain they are bored. “If they did,” she says. “I would suggest giving them a job to do.”

The good life for the Rolstons began officially eight years ago, when they bought a house on the road to Te Pahu near Raglan. But the seeds for their lifestyle were planted much earlier. They met through a church youth group when Dee was 18 and Jeremy 22. Jeremy says he first saw Dee at a concert and cymbals crashed.

There’s no shortage of pint-sized tools when work has to be done, nor is there any lack of imagination when it comes to games, dressed-up or not.

They later became best mates. On their first date he took her for a walk in the bush and gallantly piggy-backed her across a river. Dee says she married Jeremy “because if some other girl married him, I would lose my best friend”.

Jeremy was a furniture-maker – a skill he had learned, with a black rubber-handled claw hammer, at the knee of his father. He was a skilled tradesman and topped New Zealand in his trade certificates in cabinet-making. Dee had a BA from Waikato University and a post-graduate diploma in English as a second language. Four years after their marriage they travelled to South Korea where Dee taught English and Jeremy – who had originally signed on as a caretaker – found himself instead teaching kindergarten. “It was great,” he says. “The best time. I could be myself.”

When the couple returned to Hamilton the furniture-making business had hit tough times as cheap imports flooded the country. Jeremy took up a position running a church youth group. But with the approaching birth of their third child, the couple realized they had outgrown their home.

“I think because I had moved so often, I also wanted a place where we could put down roots and the kids could have some space,” Jeremy says.
Paradise was found in the form of a large two-storied wooden home with a labyrinth of rooms, flanked by bush, a creek, an orchard and massive climbing trees. Soon after they moved in Monte was born in the front bedroom.

Part of the plan was always for Dee to home-school the children. “We didn’t want them to spend half their lives on a school bus or in a classroom.”

Read the rest of the article here: http://thisnzlife.co.nz/award-winning-childrens-toy-business-run-country-waikato-home/

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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/

This link is motivational: http://hef.org.nz/2012/home-schooling-what-is-it-all-about/

Exemption Form online: https://hef.org.nz/2012/home-schooling-exemption-form-now-online/

Coming Events: https://hef.org.nz/2013/some-coming-events-for-home-education-during-2013-2/

Beneficiaries: http://hef.org.nz/2013/where-to-for-beneficiary-families-now-that-the-social-security-benefit-categories-and-work-focus-amendment-bill-has-passed-its-third-reading

From Stuff.co.nz:

“I home educated for five years. Best five years ever.

“The freedom to choose our own curriculum, and the ability to really drill down into subjects and access top experts within our own time frame inside and outside a 9am-3pm restriction appealed.

‘Anti-social’ was always raised as an objection to home-schooling, yet I noted the most anti-social behaviour I have ever witnessed in society happened in schools, and in prisons, where near 100 per cent of inmates attended state schools at some time.

“My five children were exposed to all age ranges of society rather than confined to ‘same aged peers’ only for six hours a day throughout formative years.

READ MORE:
* Home schooling: weird or wonderful?
* School’s out, this time forever
* ‘The children decide what to learn’

“My son was sent to live in France for a year, my daughter opted to learn New Zealand sign language as a core subject. We invited and incorporated members of the local deaf community into our lives and it worked well.

“My 10 year old son wanted to learn C++ programming and html.  He was very proficient in coding at a young age.

“He also took up bagpipes young, and learning to read music just became part of our day.

“Eventually home-schooling for us came to an end. My adult children are all gainfully employed, in healthy relationships, leading fullfilling and productive lives. One son just graduated Otago University as a software engineer.

“The youngest to be home-schooled, and who did not step into a state school classoom until she was 10 years old has her sights set on becoming a geneticist.

“She had an idyllic childhood for the first ten years of her life, roaming farmland with her animals and immersed in books when she was not online and studying with friends over Skype.

“The school environment with mass warehousing of children, where school is primarily occupied with behaviour management, is not the best place for all children. Many thrive outside of institutionalised styles of learning.

“Home education gave us huge flexibility.  Resources and knowledge in the community are limitless.

“I had left school in the early 1980s with no high school qualifications, yet I knew if I exposed them to opportunities and supported them in their quest for education, they would succeed.

“I did not need a teaching degree to give my children wings. ”

Read more here: http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff-nation/assignments/why-did-you-choose-to-home-school/14576513/I-wanted-children-who-loved-to-learn

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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/

This link is motivational: http://hef.org.nz/2012/home-schooling-what-is-it-all-about/

Exemption Form online: https://hef.org.nz/2012/home-schooling-exemption-form-now-online/

Coming Events: https://hef.org.nz/2013/some-coming-events-for-home-education-during-2013-2/

Beneficiaries: http://hef.org.nz/2013/where-to-for-beneficiary-families-now-that-the-social-security-benefit-categories-and-work-focus-amendment-bill-has-passed-its-third-reading