Airlie Beach in north Queensland, Australia

A glorious relaxing weekend in Airlie Beach, tropical paradise. People often ask what our favourite place is around Australia, the truth is we don't really have a favourite, while I think I'll always feel the most 'at home' up north, with red dirt, turquoise waters and crocodiles, we certainly do make the most of every location we go to and home is where we park it. Airlie Beach, much like Yeppoon, has exploded with infrastructure and population growth, however, there are still some gorgeous beaches that are fairly untouched, we really enjoyed hiking a kilometre to this one perfect little beach where we spent some time relaxing and finding bits of coral to create a natural alphabet chart.

Who says you have to learn in a school classroom? Well believe it or not, plenty of people we have met while travelling around Australia ask us how our kids learn anything while travelling. They often infer that the only way to learn is to go to a school and sit in a classroom for hours on end. While some structure is good, it's definitely not the only way to learn.

Even when it's not an official school day, I find there is always something new to learn or explore when you're travelling and are regularly in a different location. In this particular case, finding bits of coral washed up on the beach that looked like alphabet letters created the perfect English class, we did letter recognition, spelling and reading. Not too mention all the other boxes we could tick if that is what people were wanting to see when it comes to children's education. Physical education, maths (calculations on how long the walk is there and back and how many hours/minutes it would take us), reading the information signs, ahh the list goes on and on. Like some of my previous posts about learning while travelling this was another one of those days where learning just fell into place and without really trying we completed more education in one short walk then some schools would teach a child in a whole day or some even a week

We also get many people asking about social life and socialisation, do our children get enough? This is such a huge topic and discussion that comes up regularly. The short answer is yes, yes they get plenty of socialisation. Anyone who has been homeschooling for a time will no doubt already understand this topic. However, for those interested I'll try write a post on the social aspect of homeschooling at a later date.

For now sit back and enjoy the picturesque photographs of Airlie and some of it's beaches.