Dave Pommier
I am a homeschooling dad with a wife and two boys. I'm not quite sure what I'm doing, so I feel compelled to write it all down. In my spare time, I work as a manager for the local health district, drink too much coffee, and am an overenthusiastic martial artist.
Top Posts & Pages
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Category Archives: Teaching and learning
Building your own curriculum under strict guidelines
A large part of the reasons behind why we chose to homeschool was that it allowed for individualised teaching. Even working within the guidelines, there is still a good deal more flexibility to work around the rules than it initially seems. … Continue reading
Return of the assessor
As part of the requirements for homeschooling where I live, we are visited by a government assessor every year or two. This is frequently the cause of a great deal of angst for people. I have heard frequent complaints from … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching and learning
Tagged assessment, bloke, confidence, homeschool, registration
6 Comments
The cost of homeschooling
The most recent figures I could find show that where I live, the state spends just over $14,000 p.a. educating a primary school child. This idea of ‘How much does education cost?’ comes up often enough in homeschooling forums. The numbers change … Continue reading
On the tools
We have been taking things pretty easy from a purely academic point of view lately. Even though our year runs to a general kind of plan, it is not rigidly fixed. We are actually ahead of schedule on the bits … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching and learning
Tagged bloke, confidence, flexibility, homeschool, learning in context, life experience, negotiation, play, safety, self determination
1 Comment
In and around Ubud.
It is a struggle to pick my boys up and carry them around anymore. They are both extremely large for their age and also very articulate. I often forget that at six and four years old, they are still only … Continue reading
Posted in Life experiences, Teaching and learning
Tagged bali, bloke, confidence, homeschool, learning in context, life experience, safety, self determination, socialisation, travel, ubud
3 Comments
The opening days of Bali
So we are over at Bali. Simply getting here was an adventure in itself. It was an eighteen hour day of driving, hanging out in airports, and a six hour flight. Despite a few dramas, the boys handled it a … Continue reading
Posted in Geography, Life experiences, Nature, Teaching and learning
Tagged bali, bloke, homeschool, learning in context, life experience, travel
6 Comments
A regular day
My boys consider ‘homeschooling’ sitting down with a textbook. I consider it a much broader application of skills. This means we sometimes arrive at the end of an exhausting day, only to have my boy say ‘Yeah, we didn’t do … Continue reading
A thousand hours
So the other day, we reached the end of our school year. It was something of an anticlimax, to be honest. I told my boy that we had finished everything and how proud I was of him for doing it … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching and learning
Tagged assessment, bloke, curriculum, homeschool, planning, reflection
8 Comments
The importance of being relevant
I quite like worksheets myself. They look so organised when planning a curriculum. You can see exactly what you have covered, and what you plan to practice next. There is a real sense of accomplishment when the book of worksheets is … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching and learning
Tagged bloke, collaboration, homeschool, learning in context, negotiation, philosophy
6 Comments
Dangerous toys
‘Take a look at this piece of wire. It’s a very heavy gauge, nearly as thick as your finger. It’s very strong. We can hardly bend it. But now look. If we put it into the bolt cutters and give … Continue reading
Posted in Teaching and learning
Tagged bloke, confidence, flexibility, homeschool, learning in context, life experience, negotiation, play, safety, self determination
6 Comments
