Eventful Week

This has been another eventful week for us. We spent Monday at home except for having to take Jesse to his technology tutor to catch up last week’s lesson. Misha’s had some time to relax & just love the pets and play around outside on the trampoline.

Misha’s latest painting came home from his tutor this week. Unfortunately his tutor is not able to continue his painting and drum lessons because he needs the time to focus on his other projects. We will therefore be looking for a second hand drum set and invest in the Gibson’s Learn & Master Drums Homeschool Curriculum for next year. Jesse’s already said he’d join in learning drums with Misha. Fortunately Misha’s started to show interest in continuing his painting again, but decided he doesn’t want to do it all on his own. Fortunately I was able to find another good artist to help him complete this project. Jesse’s best friend’s dad, Greg will be teaching him to mix his colours & just guide him with the painting from next week onwards. Who knows, maybe we can get our little Picasso back on track.

The one area of education that was neglected when we grew up, was that of personal finance & how to manage your money living on a budged. I recently discovered that Dave Ramsey.com offers homeschool curriculum in this area and I ordered the Financial Peace Jnr. Kids Monster Pack for Misha. The idea is to do get a group of 6 kids to do this together in order to make it more enjoyable for him. His curriculum arrived on Wednesday and by Friday Misha had already listened and enjoyed the 5 audiobooks.

For next year I’m looking at getting the Foundations in Personal Finance - Home School as well as the Bonus Chapter 13 - The Power of Giving for teens in order to teach Jesse the most important issues on personal finance in a similar small group setting.

Due to Ice Skating scheduled for Friday, I had to move the boys guitar lesson forward to Thursday. I headed out to fetch Gerhard & Keanan for the day. Clive had offered that they can come to our home and join our boys doing school on the computers. After their guitar lesson, I had Keanan try out the Switched on Schoolhouse Language Arts and Teaching Textbooks Maths. He also did two more levels of Times Attack. From the looks of it, he seems to enjoy learning this way. Gerhard also got to try his hand on Switched on Schoolhouse Science. He also did some of the English & Maths Jesse was doing on Clive’s iPad earlier this year. Jesse & Gerhard started on Session 7 of the guitar curriculum whilst the two younger boys had loads of fun playing Wii Fit.

Friday was another busy day, starting with ice skating. We left home at 8h3o to fetch Gerhard & Keanan. The boys were on the ice just after 9am and by 12h20 we dashed off to Valley Vineyard Church for the first session of this term’s Junior Engineering. Misha went home with a friend from there, but I took Jesse back to the ice rink for some more ice skating just after 2pm. By 3h30 they had enough ice skating so we headed back to drop Gerhard & Keanan at their home and Jesse for his sleepover at Scott’s.

I still find it strange when I leave home with 2 kids in the morning and after a full day away, to get home with none. I fetched Misha after doing grocery shopping and Jesse will be returning home sometime tomorrow.

   I spent much of last night reading “How Children Fail” by John Holt in order to help Misha’s best friend’s mom find some answers on why he is failing 4th Grade English although he’s doing fine in most of his other subjects. With so many kids going through school issues, I’ve decided to equip myself in order to help parents with struggling children find ways to help them cope with their environment & reach their full potential. Next on my list of reads are: “Teach Your Own", “Learning All The Time” and “How Children Learn” also by John Holt.