So what is www.bigaussieroadtrip.com all about? Well... hopefully, by the time we are done, it will be a comprehensive journal about a family of 5 who have travelled around Australia to see the sights and also do some volunteer work around the country! In Mid 2010 we started thinking about what it would take to fulfil a life-long dream... We wanted to bundle up our 3 kids, pack-up the house, jump in the car and hit the road - probably for about 12 months. It sounds so simple ... At the start of January 2013, after almost 15 months on the road; we finally completed Our Big Aussie Road Trip. We hope that you enjoyed following our adventures, trials and tribulations as much as we enjoyed having them!

Schooling

Throughout our planning, we have been thinking alot about how we educate the kids when we are on our trip...  The options that we have considered really boil down to:
     1) Home Schooling
     2) Distance Education

[Our "number 3" (do nothing!) whilst attractive, is definitely not an option :)  ]

Therefore, After much research, we have decided that we will enroll the kids (2 of them at least) in the Sydney Distance Education Primary School.

To us, this was the option that made the most sense for us, our kids and our trip.

So we have enrolled Josh and Natalie into the Sydney Distance Education Primary School (SDEPS) and Josh has been accepted (we won't find out if Natalie has been accepted until closer to next year when she starts kindergarten - fingers crossed it all comes through!!)

We have been to Surry hills to meet Josh's Teacher, and she is a lovely young lady which is great.

We are so lucky that SDEPS  was an option to us (as we live in Sydney) because for our situation it is just perfect.  I was surprised to learn that Josh's Teacher only has 14 kids to look after (which is great for us)  I was expecting that they would have more kids than normal becuase each child has a dedicated 'teachers assistant'.  Anyway, I'm certainly not complaning.

Here's how SDEPS works:  The teacher does all the 'real work' (knows the syllabus, lesson plans, organises the material, etc) and we just tell here where we would like the work posted, and she sends it to us to pickup.  We then teach the work to the kids and post it back - so easy (I say that now, having not started the actual work yet!!).  We are allowed to be enrolled in SDEPS for 12 months and so this is good timing for us, although we will probably ask for a 1-term exgtensino for Josh to bring him to the end of 2012 school year, but we'll see how that goes when we get closer to the time.

Update on Schooling - Posted 2/3/2012

We are now over 4 months into our trip around Australia and we've completed Term 4 of Year 1 (for Josh) last year and we're now half way through Term 1 for both Josh (year 2) and Natalie (Kindy) via Distance education through SDEPS.

We thought that we'd post an update about how we are finding Schooling with Distance Education so far...

Schooling is definitely the most difficult thing to get right on the trip.  It's a balance between getting all the work done (or at least all the work that we believe is not otherwise covered by what the kids are learning on our trip) and not letting the schooling become too dominating on our routine.  We have been really happy with SDEPS because they have understood that we are travelling, and have not been overbearing with the amount of contact we have with them.

We have always got the work done (except the odd 'non-essential' unit that we believe are not worth completing because the kids would learn much more out and about in Australia than doing some of the units), and both Josh and Natalie have progressed satisfactorily in their school.

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