1st Term Wrap-Up

I just figured I'd use my 2 hours waiting for Jesse at his MindLab lesson to create an way overdue update. First I must express I am impressed with this family waiting here with me with their little girl aged about 5. Seeing dad sit flat on the carpet playing with his daughter is a first ever for me. Why don’t we see more of this kind of involvement from parents in public?

It's been a wild roller coaster ride since we decided to relocate for want of creating a better future for the boys. 8 months later we've finally settled in having received our container the day before New Year & for the most part are now all sorted.

Our 4 bedroomed house is much smaller than what we were used to in SA & having taken in a SA friend's 22 year old son, Zane, that pretty much occupies all the rooms. Fortunately we only shipped about 40% of our stuff. There's just no way we would have been able to fit everything here. For lack of space, our classroom has been reduced to just 1 bookshelf in the garage.

For this term Misha attended a Maths Games & Stories as well as a Lego Stop Motion class at YMCA once a week. Jesse did some programming at MindLab although he didn't find it very challenging.

Jesse is also wrapping up his last few units with Alpha Omega Academy, due to be completed by the end of this month. We have signed him up with Te Kura to do his final year with the NZ curriculum so he won't need to do the irrelevant history & government subjects he would have needed to graduate. Instead he will focus on subjects that are more relevant to his future studies. As with AOA, here too he has teachers assigned for each subject but with the difference of being able to go see them in Auckland should the need for individual assistance arise.

Having passed his Learner's licence in August last year, Jesse's been doing most of the driving in & around town for all our activities. I must admit I enjoy having my own private chauffeur around.

As always, I prefer to hang around & wait for the kids rather than spending forever on the roads. One of the biggest adjustments here is getting used to the amount of time it takes to drive to places with the speed limit at 50km/h in town & mostly 80km/h with max of 100km/h in some places on the motorway. Driving still isn't my favourite pass time & will miss Jesse driving once he's got his restricted & is able to get around on his own.

In January we met Rebecca, a teacher from the USA who has since been helping me get Misha back into more structured learning.  In just 3 weeks he's mastered his multiplication tables, which just goes to show what kids are capable of when you meet them at their level & make learning relevant to their interests.

Her Kiwi husband, Ben, has been teaching the boys to play the  "Magic: The Gathering" card game. It is a critical thinking & strategy game which requires a huge amount of reading & comprehension with which we are now addressing Misha's Language Arts.  Thursdays have since become their game nights but they often play together at home. The boys seem to enjoy this & are playing it at home a lot too.

We are loving our new found freedoms & thoroughly enjoy living in a safer environment, with loads of opportunities for the boys future prospects.

We’re Relocating

I know I've been very quiet lately but my time has been occupied with planning & preparation for our move to New Zealand on 23rd July.

It has taken 2 years of prayerful consideration to get to our final decision to relocate in order to create new opportunities for Clive as well as a better future for our boys & family.

For now we're scaling down & packing up our home to fit into 1 container in preparation of the "big trek".

Since Clive still has to find a job, we'll enter on a 3 months visitors visa. Home will need to go into storage until a work visa has been issued.

In the interim school will be on hold until 20th August so the boys can settle in first before having to hit the books.

Getting Back into the Swing of Things

We’re almost at the end of week 3 of the New Year. With Jesse already well into his second week of schoolwork, Misha also started his schoolwork this week.

We have decided on starting him off slowly on getting used to the Switched on Schoolhouse system. He’ll be doing English Language Arts and Health Quest to get used to how the program works.

Next week he starts his group lessons with Brenda again. For most part he’ll remain pretty much unschooled for the time being. I still need to look at field trip venues for the year, but  between Co-op, Education Support Science lessons, hands-on Maths and his 2 SOS subjects, he should be fairly occupied. I still need to look into drum and horse riding lessons for him as well.

The whiteboards we got on special at Makro have been coming in very handy these days. I’ve managed to find him a set of 10 different coloured whiteboard markers so he can use the smaller board for drawing. Here he’s planning how we can add a pool to the back yard so we can survive the heat.

I slipped up a bit on my year planning this week. Forgot to check the starting dates for Honey Badger club & ice skating so we missed the  January sessions.  Fortunately I had arranged for Misha to play with Damian and Suzanne for the day so he was none the wiser that he was meant to have been at the zoo. I asked Jesse to check what's on some re-writable DVD we got side-tracked with memory lane 2003... Priceless memories...

Misha spent much of the week in his favourite camping chairs with the pets as well as doing his SOS subjects. These have been met with much less resistance this year. It seems laying off the curriculum for the last year and a bit is now paying off. He’s showing more interest as well as willingness to do schoolwork.

I have also noticed a vast improvement in his speech and vocabulary. His reading and spelling have also shown great improvement even though we haven’t been doing much of that lately.

This year we decided the boys would each have one day a week to make supper for the family. Misha be learning how to make easier meals like toasted chees sandwiches and Jesse started off learning to cook his favourite “Spaghetti Bolognaise”. Even boys need to know how to cook. I don’t want them to end up leaving home one day not knowing how to take care of themselves where meals are concerned.

Today Misha had Damian and Suzanne over to play again. He had insisted mommy must have a birthday cake for tomorrow so I baked it this afternoon and the kids decorated.

Since we missed last Friday’s homeschooler’s ice skating, we’ll be spending some time at the ice rink tomorrow before they have their first Junior Engineering session in the afternoon. This term Misha will be doing Mechanical Systems 2 and Jesse’s going to do Mechanical Engineering.

We will be closing off our week with supper at the Spur with some family and friends.

Back to School

With the boys having had 8 weeks of school holiday since the end of August, we started our new school year very early on the 2nd of January this year. Jesse still has a few assignments to finish for his first semester with Alpha Omega Academy that closes by the end of January.

Of course the joys of home educating allowed him to spend his first day of school at the ice rink and then going home and start his work in the afternoon. I had to fetch Misha from Matt in Fourways and he wasn’t particularly interested in ice skating so we headed off to the toy shop so he could spend his Christmas moneys from Granny & Opa.

Getting home in the afternoon still left Jesse with more than enough time to do his schoolwork at his leisure. I must admit I prefer it this way. No more nagging to get schoolwork done and I also don’t have to worry about having to mark his work every day. The teachers at AOA take care nitty of all the gritties that can be so time consuming, leaving us with time for stress-free fun & fellowship.

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.

Overwhelmed

Right now, I just want to go sit somewhere in a corner to cry my heart out.

Feelings of guilt, inadequacy, failure, stress & frustration have me a little overwhelmed today as we're having to finish exams & mark for evaluations to be handed in to Le-Amen on Tuesday. I wanted to can all of it months ago, but daddy insisted we finish the year with this "boring school at home" material we purchased for this year so he can get a report for 8th grade.

I still cannot help but wonder how I managed to miss my then school-loving, never-wanna-leave here 3rd grader change to totally hating school & anything resembling it in 7th grade. When did it all go so terribly wrong? Did he master the art of "suffering in silence" or was I just too caught up with the stress & frustrations of Misha's obvious school issues that I couldn't see his underlying issues?

I feel such a failure for not realising the extent of the damage school's done to him sooner. Of course I lost my temper today at his blatant refusal to complete the "bookwork" for our deadline next week & that's just adding fuel to the "guilt" fire. How am I going to teach the likes of English, Maths, Science, Social Studies, Accounting etc. to a child that HATES books to this extent.

I've already laid off much off the bookwork & requested him to do just the bare minimum. I've added pc, internet & iPad activities as well as loads of Discovery Channel & Natgeo Wild.

What more can I do to fix the damage caused by the system???

School

big time!!!

I’m at whit's end. For now I’m just praying to get through the next few days and hope that the school holiday and our plan to allow time for de-schooling next year will help us all feel differently about education by August next year, when we plan to do Alpha Omega Academy with the Switched on Schoolhouse curriculum or what ever other hands-on curriculum I manage to find by then.