Welcome to our blog

New additions to the NCHENZ website will be announced here.

Any news of interest will be posted here. Please leave a comment or subscribe to our RSS feed.

Any questions or spelling or grammar errors please email Tarnya info@nchenz.org.nz

Duffy Entrpreneurs Club open to Home Educators at no charge

Duffy Entrepreneurs Club  allows students to learn from experts in industries such as finance, legal, accounting, IT and education.  This is open at no charge to home educators. NCHENZ is coordinating the registration. Contact tarnya to register. There is no charge and you do not need to be a member of NCHENZ.

Science Website by a NZ home educator

Nathalie Thomas, a home educating mum in Katikati (Bay of Plenty), with a science and teaching degree has  set up a website specifically aimed at home educators in New Zealand to provide information on science. She offers science courses and educational science hire kits. Please have a look at her website 

 Website address: http://www.science-for-home-educators.co.nz

 A website about science courses and educational science kits to hire, specifically for home educators in New Zealand!

We have added the website to our resources pages

NZ_businesses_and_educational_resources

THEN (Hamilton) has a new website

The Home Educators Network Incorporated ( Hamilton)  has a new email address and website. I have updated the link see  www.nchenz.org.nz/resources_and_links/organizations/regional_networking_groups.htm

Their email address: thenmail@gmail.com

and the new website: www.thehomeeducatorsnetwork.org.nz

Do have a read, it is a great site. Well done to all those who worked on it!

The Home Educators Network Incorporated has a new email address and website from the one shown on your website. It would be appreciated if you could amend your website accordingly.

email address: thenmail@gmail.com

website: www.thehomeeducatorsnetwork.org.nz

NEWS FROM FREE RANGE ROBOTICS

Well done to FREE RANGE ROBOTICS!

{I watched them on TV1 Breakfast programme and they were wonderful ambassadors for home education.- ed.}

Here is a letter from the captain

Thank you everyone, for your support of our team, Free Range Robotics, in our endeavours at the World Championships in Dallas. This competition had some huge excitement. A couple of highlights were our first two games; Each of these games is played by four teams: two blue teams versus two red teams. We are paired up randomly. In both of the first two games our partners were unable to play, so we played alone against two robots and we won both games. This immediately made our standing with everyone rocket up; it really showed the world what New Zealanders and homeschoolers are made of.

Of course our biggest achievement is the programming. We are the VEX World Champions in Programming. And the second trophy we brought home was the Robot Skills 3rd place. Both of these are achievements of the whole team; the programmers and drivers couldn’t have done it without a great team behind them.

At the competition they also announced the new VEX game. “Clean Sweep”. It looks to be a lot of fun with plenty of things to think about and design for. As well as a new game, we also have a new season of scrimmages being run in New Zealand. I still don’t know all the details but it is going to be good.

If anyone wants to start a robotics team I would be very happy to come to your group and talk to you and advise you about setting up a team for competing in the 2009/2010 competition.

If you want to know more about Free Range Robotics or the competition, cruise over to our website that has lots pictures of the trip and the competition. www.robotics.org.nz  Also there is a guest book for you to leave a comment.

To contact me you can email me at patrick@softptro.co.nz 

Patrick Walmsley
Team Captain
Free Range Robotics
www.robotics.org.nz

Homeschooling Statistics and Status of Visitors

Added a link to the MoE’s Home Education Statistics to our MoE page and also a page with information about the status visitors to New Zealand ; whether they would need to apply for an exemption or not.

Homeschool Robotics competition winners will head to US

On Saturday 21 March the home school robotics team, ‘Free Range Robotics’, competed in the New Zealand National Championships of the “Vex Robotics 2009 Competition” against high school teams from various parts of New Zealand.
The competition brief was to design and build a robot to play a game called Elevation, in which the robot collects three-inch cubes and puts them into a variety of ‘goals’.  The game is one of strategy as well as designing, driving, building and programming skills.    

Free Range Robotics came up from behind to come joint FIRST with Avondale College!!!

see here and here   and HERE . 

Well done !

National has dropped proposed changes to DPB work rules

KP alerted NCHENZ that the National Government has cancelled changes to the work rules for the Domestic Purposes Benefit. 

from the Herald linked above

“The Government’s plan to tighten the rules around the domestic purposes benefit has been put on hold because of the recession. Under a policy announced in August, women on the DPB would have to work or train for 15 hours a week after their youngest child turned 6 or risk losing the benefit.

The Government made no move after the election to introduce it and yesterday Social Development Minister Paula Bennett confirmed it was on the backburner because people were being made redundant and jobs were in short supply.”

WINZ has changed their website and I can no longer can find the page that explains the exemption for home educating parents on the DPB from work requirements. Can someone help me with this?

A New Zealand Study: Home education for the School Resistant Child

A blog post on the study including a link to the orginal research.

http://gaither.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/stroobant-on-homeschooling-school-resistant-children/

Friends of NCHENZ

What is this  “Friends of NCHENZ” category  ?

NCHENZ have 2 sorts of members :

1. Group membership – affiliated groups  $10 fee  or  $25 for incorporated group member

2. Individual members ($5 if the person also belongs to a member group otherwise $10)

 

We have an informal category called “Friends of NCHENZ”. “Friends of NCHENZ” groups are not joining NCHENZ. They are however acknowledging that they desire to work together in some way. They are willing to distribute information among their members.

For informal groups, for example email networks  that do not charge their members to belong, “Friends of NCHENZ” is an excellent place to start. The home educators within the network have an opportunity to learn what NCHENZ is doing, what we are about and also we appreciate if in turn there might be the odd thing that they can do to help us eg put us in touch with adult home educators who will write something for our “after home education” webpages, alert us to an excellent article etc

Groups that charge for membership are welcome to become friends of NCHENZ as well. I think this way the group can learn what we are doing.

 The NCHENZ committee is  hopeful as the “friendship” develops that all our friends in time might consider becoming a member group. The group would need to decide ( in whatever way your groups makes decisions) to affiliate with NCHENZ  ie enter into a formal relationship).  The money could be donated by a few motivated people (ie you only need a 2 individual members of NCHENZ to give $5 towards the group’s membership and they get their $5 discount and so both are no worse off)  or perhaps  gold coins could be collected at one of the support meetings.

 

For example ASHE a South Auckland yahoo group ( which has no membership fees) is going to join: the moderator set up a poll  to check that the membership was happy. The $10 was donated.

Why would a group or an individual want to join when they can receive the information for free?

 Firstly we believe that when people begin to see what we are doing and what the money is used for, that they will want to contribute and join. Affliated group membership is only $10 a year,  eg your group has made a contribution to the running cost of our website where the group’s details are given a web presence.

Secondly we believe that home educators can unite to encourage, promote, inform and advance the cause of home education in New Zealand at a national level. Joining is a commitment to unite, to stand together.

Thirdly, as a service to your group’s members, who get a 50% reduction in their subscription if they join as an individual member. Those that join as individual members join a  NCHENZ Yahoo group for individual members where current issues are discussed and voted on.

Fourthly to contribute as a volunteer, perhaps you have something that would encourage, inform, promote or advance home education at a national level, perhaps NCHENZ is the vehicle that will support you to do this.

Forum for all NZ home educators

Luke is an home educating Dad from Auckland who has set up a network for New Zealand home educators. He will be moderating it and has experience in creating online communities.  It is a place where all the different home ed groups can put something about themselves. Individual home educators can also join the forum and can interact, ask questions, share resources etc.

What’s the point?
There are so many groups and it hard to know how they fit together. We hope this would become a focal point where everyone is listed in one place. A hub. It is an organic website so the whole thing will change to fit the needs of those who join.

I’ll give an example: I created a group for NCHENZ ( National Council of Home Educators) you can join “the group” on the website. This doesn’t mean you belong to NCHENZ but you can read what NCHENZ is about, ask questions, and explore then if you are interested in actually joining NCHENZ you would go to the NCHENZ website www.nchenz.org.nz and join.

I hope that local groups will put their info up there too,  so anyone moving can check out what is happening in their new area. Also those thinking about home ed can see what is going on.

In the general forum all those common questions will be answered and the not so common too.

So please consider joining us at
http://homeeducation.ning.com/
Welcoming all New Zealand home educators.