ADHSA is a volunteer group of homeschoolers from different nationalities, faiths, cultures and homeschooling backgrounds, with its primary focus being to address the needs of children from grade 1 through high school. Our purpose is to encourage, support and inform each other and the homeschooling community in the greater metro area of Abu Dhabi.
If you are homeschooling in the UAE, join the conversation on IN the SHADE, our yahoo chat group. This is a safe place to discuss all things “homeschooling”, everything from suggestions on how to start your homeschooling journey to where to find ammonia for a science experiment.
HomeSchooling families also gather at the Corniche Family Park every Monday late afternoon to visit and play. Bring your folding chair to join our circle “ in the shade" while our children play together.
In 2011, ADHSA executive redesigned the association's logo to better reflect who we are and what we stand for. The challenge was to make others aware from our logo that homeschoolers are not always "schooling" at HOME, and that we and our children are learning all time. Each design we came up with included the ubiquitous date palm to represent outdoor Abu Dhabi's desert oasis. Eventually we chose the image of a parent reading a book to several interested kids under the palm as most representative of how our children learn in many different settings. When we laid out our idea to graphic designer Sylvia Kernen, she honored us with her professional design sense by reinterpreting it: she turned the children into question marks and the parent into an exclamation mark, a symbolism that charms and delights us! After a few more tweeks, our logos was unveiled!
On the back of our T shirts, we also included a list of "Homeschoolers You May Have Heard Of:"
Blaise Pascal, France, mathematician
Wolfgang A.Mozart, Austria, composer
Louisa May Alcott, US, novelist
Thomas Alva Edison, US, inventor
Alexander Graham Bell, Scotland & US, inventor
Pierre Curie, France, physicist and Nobel Prize
Beatrix Potter, UK, children's author
Winston Churchill, UK, world leader
Robert Frost, US, poet & homeschooling father
Albert Einstein, Germany, physicist, Nobel Prize
Gabriela Mistral, Chile, poet & diplomat
Agatha Christie, UK, crime writer & playwright
Pearl S. Buck, US expat in China, Pulitzer Prize
Soichiro Honda, Japan, founder of Honda
Sandra Day O’Connor, US, Supreme Court Justice
Margaret Atwood, Canada, poet, novelist & activist
...and ME, world citizen with aspirations!
Currently, we stamp the ADHSA logo on:
Tshirts
Student and Teacher ID cards
ADHSA business cards,
ADHSA thank you cards
and, of course, our web site!
ADHSA Clubs
As part of our mandate, ADHSA has as one of its goals to foster the development of special interest groups and clubs.
Clubs are generally formed when several families express interest in a regularly scheduled group activity, and one or more of those families takes the initiative to set parameters for the group and create a schedule. For the most part, clubs meet once or twice a month at club members' homes, rotating the venue so that no single family need host very often. Families must be ADHSA members in order to participate in the clubs.
Registration is now open!