Grounded Learning Co

Real learning doesn’t need to be complicated 🤍
These are the moments that matter — captured simply, all in one place.
This is exactly how I’ve been using the Grounded Learning Journal to take the pressure off recording.
If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed with documentation, this might really help ✨

✨ PRE-PRIMARY TERM 2 IS HERE ✨

If you’ve ever thought…
“I just need someone to make this make sense…”

This is for you 💛

My Pre-Primary Term 2 Curriculum Guide is designed to help you understand what to teach, without telling you exactly how to do it.

Because real learning doesn’t look the same in every home 🌿

This term focuses on:
🌏 connection
💛 relationships
📖 storytelling
🌿 the world around us
🎨 creativity through play

Inside, you’ll find:
✔ clear, parent-friendly learning outcomes
✔ optional assessment tools (no pressure)
✔ vocabulary support
✔ flexible structure you can actually follow
✔ everything aligned with the Australian Curriculum

No rigid schedules
No overwhelm
No “tick every box” feeling

Just support, clarity, and confidence 💛

👉 Perfect if you’re:

new to homeschooling

feeling unsure where to start

trying to meet moderator requirements

wanting learning to feel calm again

👉 Grab it here: https://www.grounded-learning-co.com.au/product/22492924/learning-in-action-grounded-learning-curriculum-guide-pre-primary-homeschool-term-2

🌿 Real Learning Counts: Following Interests, Finding Wonder

This week has been shaped by imagination, curiosity, and the magic that happens when we follow a child’s interests.

Pirates have taken over our home lately, with role play, pirate stories, and sweet memories from our trip to AQWA still fresh in my daughter’s mind. I decided to gently extend this interest by adding a small provocation to the sandpit… buried treasure. The moment it was discovered, the play deepened instantly. My daughter created an entire story around it, explaining that a pirate fairy must have left the treasure behind, because pirate fairies leave gifts for kind kids. Watching her imagination lead the learning was such a powerful reminder of how meaningful child-led play can be.

We connected this interest to our Term 1 focus on identity and place by exploring maps. Together, we looked at Google Maps and zoomed out from our home to Australia and then the wider world. We studied treasure maps, then took our drawing tablet outside to create our own. We mapped a path from our bedroom to the treasure, drew our favourite places around town, and even planned the way to Grandma’s house. My toddler proudly joined in too, digging for treasure and finding the perfect truck to store it all.

So much incidental science learning unfolded naturally this week. We explored how living things grow from babies to adults, and from tiny caterpillars to butterflies. After reading 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar', my daughter retold the story through clay characters, bringing the life cycle to life through her own hands. We talked about the needs of different creatures such as homes, food, water and sleep, and compared them to bees needing pollen and a hive. We cared for our pets by researching and creating different enrichment ideas, planted vegetables in the garden, watered the community garden, and began a tiny terrarium while learning what plants need to survive.

Water play led us into investigations of sinking and floating, which quickly turned into a pirate ship engineering challenge. We tested containers, foil, and play dough to see which designs would float. Magnet tiles became tools for exploring structures and light, as we built along the walls and shone torches through colourful shapes. Even our evenings turned into science discussions as we noticed constellations, watched the moon change shape, and wondered together where the sun goes at night.

Alongside all of this, my 3.5-year-old has shown a growing interest in reading. We gently introduced a simple decodable text and some playful early literacy games like clapping syllables, blending sounds, manipulating words, and learning a few high frequency words, always keeping the experience light and joyful.

Movement and skill-building continued too, with our much-loved Giggle and Grow sessions, the start of a homeschool sports program where we began learning tennis skills, lacing activities to strengthen fine motor muscles, and lots of practice riding different types of bikes.

When I look back at this week, I see stories, questions, muddy hands, creative risks, and growing confidence. It might look like pirates, play, and everyday moments, but underneath it all are deep layers of language, science, identity, movement, and connection.

Real learning often begins with a single spark of interest… and grows into something far bigger than we planned. 🌿

A small update to the planners 💛

I’ve changed the name to Grounded Learning Curriculum Guides.

I realised the word planner was making some families think these were weekly schedules or pre-planned lessons.

That’s not actually what they are.

These guides are designed to help you:
• understand WA curriculum outcomes
• recognise learning already happening in your home
• choose outcomes intentionally
• record evidence for your moderator

Without needing to follow a rigid weekly plan.

Many homeschool families don’t want a strict schedule, they just want reassurance that the learning happening in their home counts.

That’s exactly what these guides are designed to support.

Thank you to everyone who has shared feedback and helped shape these resources 💛

📚 Year 1 – Term 2 Homeschool Planner is here!

One of the biggest questions families ask when homeschooling is:

“How do I know I’m covering the curriculum?”

I created the Grounded Learning Co planners to make that easier.

Instead of overwhelming lesson plans, this planner shows you:

✔ what your child is learning
✔ how it connects to the Australian Curriculum
✔ and gives you simple ways to observe and record learning

Inside you'll find:

• Parent-friendly learning goals
• A suggested learning sequence across all subjects
• Optional assessment tools (perfect for moderation evidence)
• Reading, writing, science investigation and inquiry checklists
• Vocabulary cheat sheet to make curriculum language easier to understand

It’s designed to support the way many homeschool families already learn:

🌿 through play
📖 through stories
🌏 through real life experiences

You don’t need to follow it exactly, it’s there to guide you and give confidence that learning happening at home still meets curriculum outcomes.

If you're homeschooling Year 1, this may make planning a lot simpler.

You can find it here:
https://www.grounded-learning-co.com.au/product/22403055/learning-in-action-term-2-homeschool-planner-year-1

✨ Grounded Learning Co
Making learning accessible for everyone.

🌿 Real Learning Counts: This Week in Our Home

This week has been full of movement, creativity, curiosity, and child-led moments.

We spent time outdoors enjoying sprinkler water play, a beautiful mix of sensory exploration and full-body movement. Little feet explored new textures and balance as my toddler practised climbing steps and discovering the world through sensation and motion.

After a small sprinkle of rain, we followed a spark of curiosity and created rain art. The children drew pictures with washable markers and left them outside, watching closely as the water transformed their colours and patterns. There was wonder, experimentation, and so many conversations about change and cause and effect.

We found ourselves in the sandpit a lot again this week. We coloured salt with chalk and used it for a pre-writing tray, practising lines, shapes, and patterns through sensory play. Play dough was used for open-ended, imaginative play, quietly strengthening little hands.

One of my favourite moments this week was watching my 3.5-year-old take ownership of her learning. She grabbed a pen and paper and began mapping out her own day through marks and scribbles, planning outside play, reading, threading, and more. It was such a powerful reminder that agency and voice begin long before conventional writing.

We explored early maths concepts in playful ways. Counting dinosaur chain links, sequencing pop-stick numbers along a number line to 20, and playing “more or less” using Uno cards. Movement games helped build size language too, as the children responded to prompts like “hide behind something big,” exploring size and spatial understanding with their whole bodies.

Valentine’s Day brought a week of connection and creativity. The children woke to hearts hanging from the doorway filled with reasons why we love them, and they spent time printing and painting with pink tones using cars, motorbikes, LEGO, and even a potato masher. There was also love-heart printing, and gentle practice drawing people.

We slowed down with a story-time tea party. Some warm milk in a special tea set while I read aloud.

I felt grateful again for our weekly movement session at Giggle and Grow, where confidence, coordination, and joy come together so naturally.

So much of this week looked like play on the surface, but underneath were rich layers of language, maths, creativity, connection, and growing independence.

Real learning doesn’t always look like lessons.
Sometimes it looks like coloured salt, rainy artwork, chalky hands, and little voices planning their own adventures. 🌿

🌿 Year 7 Term 1 is now complete.

After many months of planning, refining and aligning with the updated curriculum, the Grounded Learning Year 7 Term 1 Planner is officially available.

This planner was created to support homeschool families stepping into secondary learning, helping make sense of what to teach without scripted lessons, rigid schedules or overwhelming curriculum language.

Instead, it offers:
✨ a clear scope and sequence
✨ parent-friendly learning language
✨ flexible planning support
✨ vocabulary and concept guidance
✨ optional assessment tools for key learning checkpoints
✨ all learning areas included

Learning is organised around meaningful progressions so skills can develop naturally over the term, while still aligning with curriculum expectations.

If you’ve been wondering how to approach Year 7 in a way that feels calm, clear and manageable, this planner was made for you 🌿

🔗 https://www.grounded-learning-co.com.au/product/22292145/learning-in-action-term-1-homeschool-planner-year-seven

Year 7 is the beginning of the secondary planner series. If there are other high school year levels you’d love to see created, feel free to comment or message. Community requests genuinely help guide what comes next.

This week was layered, creative, and full of deep engagement.

Learning showed up through:
• a library visit with our homeschool group, including coding activities
• expanding self-care play by adding makeup to the self-care table. Barbie received a very fancy makeover
• continued small-world role play with dinosaurs
• problem-solving while posting LEGO bricks through a paper towel tube and figuring out how long pieces could fit
• gardening together, weeding, watering, and planting seeds

And then there was this moment of learning that unfolded slowly:
• a 3.5-year-old falling completely in love with a baby T-Rex garden ornament
• caring for it as a pet, feeding it other dinosaurs because it’s a carnivore, making cosy beds, giving it water
• deciding it needed a collar, and planning how to make one
• exploring materials, designing, creating, reflecting on what worked and what didn’t
• recognising some materials weren’t suitable for a collar, but choosing to repurpose them into a collage instead

We also:
• used pattern knowledge to create a colourful watercolour background for a first-day self-portrait
• practised controlled sideways lines across the page
• followed curiosity into an unexpected experiment with paper, cotton wool, and water
• observed changes as materials became wet, soft, and breakable
• strengthened fine motor skills through squeezing, tearing, and manipulating materials

At one point, my instinct was to stop it.
It was messy.
Materials weren’t being used “correctly”.

Instead, I paused.

I reminded myself:
This wasn’t hurting anyone.
This was exploration.
This was learning.

So we leaned in.
Added more water.
Added a tray.
And let it unfold.

This is what real learning looks like.
And it all counts 💚