About Us.

Hi, I'm Michelle. This is a picture of my family and this is my website Homeschooling Downunder.

I first learnt about homeschooling in 1996 when my first child was only a babe in arms. I had never heard of anyone homeschooling in Australia. My initial reaction was- too wierd for me! My friend, with a smile, gave me a Raymond Moore book called Homeschool Burnout and after reading it both my husband and I became homeschooling converts.

From that initial decision to homeschool I began reading all that I could about homeschooling, still having never actually met a real life homeschooling family. In 2000 we bought some homeschooling resources (which were actually school resources marketed to homeschooling families) from an educational supplier. We came home with all their recommendations and in 2001 we faithfully started my then five year old boy's lessons.

This is my twelfth year homeschooling and we are still fully convinced of the benefits. My homeschool looks very different to how I initially set it up. All of my kids have been homeschooled through their primary years. My two oldest are now in highschool at Christian schools. They both transitioned well. My other two are still home educated.

When I began we had no internet (how did we survive!). It was just recommendations and booklists. There were no resources that were specifically for Australia.

I now have a very ecletic style of homeschooling borrowing many ideas from Charlotte Mason and Ruth Beechick. I have easily been able to add content from Australia into my homeschooling using living books, copywork, dictation and nature study.

Our book publishing business Downunder Literature began in 2006 over coffee. Margaret (that wonderful woman who first introduced me to homeschooling) and I were discussing the great lack of homeschooling material written for homeschooling in Australia. Many of the living books, with Australian content, that we wanted to use and recommend to friends, were out of print. We decided somebody needed to do something about it, and we began writing The Downunder Copywork Series, our first resource for homeschoolers in Australia and New Zealand. We then organised a republication of The Wonderland of Nature and wrote the The Wonderland of Nature Journal and Nature Journaling with Kids.What started as an afternoon tea hobby quickly expanded into a small homeschool publishing business, which I (Michelle) now run with the assistance of Ken my husband and our four children.

Homeschooling Downunder is the combination of our homeschooling publishing business Downunder Literature and this website. Our desire is to provide homeschooling families with quality homeschooling resources. While many of our products have a "downunder flavour", some have universal appeal.

To ensure you get the products we made the decision to provide many of our products as ebooks. These also have the advantage of being reusable. So for multiple children you can save a considerable amount of money. We know that you might want to pass these great homeschool resources on to your friends for free to save them money. We ask that you do not. Refer them to us instead. We have tried to make our homeschool resources very reasonable in price. It took us a lot of time to put these homeschooling resources online and we ask that you respect our copyright and use them only within your family. If you are a school teacher we ask that you purchase your products with a school licence, which allows you unlimited usage within your school.

We want to serve homeschooling families with our teaching tips, free downloads and products for sale.

We are a Christian family and our products support a Christian homeschooling education, but our resources are basically secular in nature. You will find reference to God in our literature in context with our Christian heritage as a nation and you will also find some references to the theory of evolution in The Wonderland of Nature and Nature Talks to New Zealanders. You as the teacher can choose how these ideas are presented to your student.

To find out more about our homeschooling journey visit my blog.