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.

New Year, New Challenges

I know I’ve been lagging behind on my blog updates lately. Although we’ve scaled down on our field trips last year, we’ve still had quite a few as well as some other activities & I’ve lacked the energy to stay up late for blog entries.

This year we’ll focus a bit more on fitness & schoolwork. Jesse has taken it on himself to become our personal trainer & sees to it that we do exercise daily on top of going to gym twice a week. He is scheduled to finish 10th grade at the end of Jan after starting it on the 1st of May last year. He will also be doing his SAT exams during the course of this year. Of course he’s also counting the days until he can go for his learner’s licence in June. I’ll be rather happy to have my own private chauveur once the nervousness of teaching him to drive has subsided.

Clive insisted that Misha gets back to doing formal curricula this year, so he’s been doing placement tests the last 2 weeks in order for me to ascertain which grade curriculum I need to get him. He chose to learn Afrikaans this year too, so there’s another challenge. This time we’ll focus on learning to speak & understand the language rather than working through workbooks that merely produce rote memorisation. At least he has had a nice long break from “schoolwork” & is now more motivated to start learning again. I’m hoping that the Switched on Schoolhouse material will work as well with him as it does for Jesse, but I know I’ll need to find alternative resources in some areas to cater for his learning style to help him retain the material.

Last week marked the first of Honey Badgers for this year. Misha still enjoys these monthly zoo outings & we’ll keep them up until he gets tired of them. He seems to have lost interest in the drum lessons but we need to find him some alternative Robotics classes since the JEFA team will now be focusing on the schools & no longer offer the weekly lessons for homeschoolers, much to his disappointment.

Home is rather quiet this week without my big terrorist who’s visiting my sister for the week in order to go to work with Deon. From the sounds of it he enjoyed his first day & could see himself doing that job one day. Let’s see what he says after a whole week missing home & the WiFi.

Drum Lessons

Well, I finally found a new tutor for Misha’s lessons. At R380 per term for half an hour a week, this is a very reasonable price. I haven’t seen him this excited in a long time. He had his first lesson this morning. This time we needed to get him his own drum sticks, so we stopped at Marshal Music on our way to get those. I was pleasantly surprised at how much he remembered since he hasn’t been able to play since September.

Coming back, the car dashboard seemed to make a good drum for him & whilst we waited outside Edward’s home for Valerie to fetch the boys for Junior Engineering, he used the car seats for some more practise. That kept him entertained for half an hour.

This of course means that we now really need to make a plan to get him a drum set sooner rather than later. Fortunately he has changed his mind about the practice drum set and agreed that we can get him a “all crash with no bash” set in the interim until he can play and then replace it with a proper drum set. I just hope that practice set that could have got in September is still available.

He spent the night with his best friend, Matthew and when he got home he asked me to build him a drum set so for now he’s practising on a make-shift set, complete with a pedal to serve as a bass-drum pedal, we’ve put together in the classroom. He’s been at it on an off all day today since we’ve build it. Thankfully it’s not as noisy as a real set, so we won’t be needing any ear plugs or soundproofing for the room as yet.

Misha enjoyed his lesson so much that he’s been asking when his next lesson is & was quite disappointed to have to wait until next Friday.

Countdown

WoW, another week has passed us by and now we’re officially down to 1 week before our family holiday for our 20th wedding anniversary on the 31st October. We are really looking forward to our break and are counting the days…

This has been another eventful week, starting off with a sick teenager having thrown up most of Sunday night & sleeping through most of Monday morning. He seemed to have picked up some stomach bug, but fortunately by Monday afternoon he was looking and feeling much better.

Hubby has offered to help some friends by letting them come to us for “school” using Jesse’s Switched on Schoolhouse Curriculum. On Monday & Wednesday we had the 2 boys over to join our boys for some learning fun. It was great to see them working along. It seems they’re loving this approach to learning and I’m happy that their enthusiasm is also motivating Misha to wanting to learn some more.

I received the 2012 & 2013 Adventure catalogue from JM Cremp’s in the mail this week and boy oh boy did this spark the boys’ interest.  It’s packed with some great gift ideas for boys. Misha’s been fetching it on a regular basis and has even been reading the descriptions of the items. I’m amazed at how his reading has improved since I’ve stopped all formal reading lessons last year.

Jesse’s Alpha Omega Academy is still going strong. I’m impressed at how much his grades have improved. I’ve always known that he was capable of distinctions, although at school his highest scores ranged in the low 70% because for him school was boring. His attitude towards learning has also changed dramatically. I’ve even found him starting his schoolwork long before his scheduled 4pm starting time. At this stage he’s halfway through his 1st semester with an average total score of 92%, all because we were able to give him the type of curriculum he asked for. I’m so happy to have found a curriculum that works for him.

Last week he seemed quite impressed at his English teacher sending him a message just to tell him that he did well in his project. He seemed quite impressed since he thought the message in his mailbox meant he had done something wrong. That’s something that’s been sadly lacking during their time at school. He was so tired of hearing teachers tell him he could do better instead of being acknowledged for what he did achieve, that he made no effort do up his grades.

I must admit, I’m quite impressed with our current setup. It’s no-stress for me, since he has allocated teachers for each of his subjects. His work is 80% auto graded and the 20% that I would have needed to grade is graded by qualified teachers within 24 to 48 hours after submission. I think Jesse has the best of both worlds here. The freedom and flexibility of being able to study when & where he feels comfortable seem to be making all the difference.

 I m still waiting for Jesse’s friend’s dad to confirm when he’ll be able to help Misha complete his cheetah painting, but this week I found he’d started out something all by himself. Unfortunately he ran out of some colours and stopped. For the time being, I’ll just make sure he has canvases and his paints are stocked. I may just have found and inexpensive art school in Cresta that could help us with singing, drum and painting lessons next year.

Today I took the boys to Loraine’s home for their guitar lessons. They have already advanced to Session 8. At the rate they’re going through this homeschool curriculum, they might still manage to finish the first year of the curriculum. I’m happy to see that they’re still enjoying it.

Misha was fetched early to go bumper car riding at Northgate. After guitar I took Jesse through to Northriding for his Junior Engineering lesson. Whilst they were busy I went to visit a friend in the area for coffee. I found him still sitting on the floor with his creation when I returned at 2pm. Misha had already left JEFA with his friends by the time I got there. I got to spend a few quiet hours at home before having to fetch Misha from his friend at 5h30. Except for having Gerhard & Keanan over for “school”and guitar lessons, next week should be a fairly quiet one. Of course I’ll need to start preparations for our holiday.

SA Home Schooling Blog Carnival ~ October 2012 Changing Curriculum

Calling all Homeschool Bloggers: I'm scheduled to host the October 2012 SACHS Blog Carnival which is due to go live on 29th October. This month we focus on the topic of "Changing Curriculum". All children have different learning styles resulting in curricula purchased that may not work for all children in a family. Many of us have found fitting curricula through trial and error. With this post we'll looking how other families have dealt with non-fitting curricula & adapted or changed it to fit their situation. Please email a) the exact URL of the blog post you are contributing b) its title and c) a brief description of your blog post to trixishomeed@live.com by 26th October.

Countdown to Horse Camp

This has been a fairly quiet week for us. After last week’s rushing around every day it has been a welcome break to just stay at home, enjoy each other and have fun around the house. Of course mommy got a little injured during the pillow fight and wrestling match.

Pillow Fight & Wrestle Mania

Misha hijacked my Galaxy Note to play some learning games and Jesse used as my Galaxy Tablet to attend his online Alpha Omega Academy lessons.

Galaxy Note & Tablet Learning

On Thursday we fetched a friend to join Misha at his technology lesson in Weltevreden Park. Unfortunately these have been discontinued for the rest of the year, much to Misha’s disappointment.

Technology co-op

This morning Gerhard and Keanan joined the boys as they re-started their guitar lessons. Having friends to join them seems to have made a major difference to their motivation to continue. This time even Misha was quite eager to continue guitar lessons again. After one and half hours their aching fingers forced them to stop to take a break and have some fun instead.

Guitar Lessons

Elizabe & Jacques stopped by later for some fun and games with the boys whilst the moms met for a coffee break.

Game Time

On Sunday morning we’re heading off to Mooikrans Equus to drop the boys for their long awaited horse camp. This should provide a highly appreciated break for me and hopefully also some time to get to some of that backlog admin for which the time continues to elude me.

Trixi’s HomeEd 2nd Anniversary

It’s hard to believe today, two years ago we took up home educating our then very frustrated, insecure 7 year old struggling to get through second grade. Although I feared we might not survive and I may kill him within weeks from bringing him home, we’re all still alive and well.

He’s really come a long way since then. Today we have a much more confident, soon to be 10 year old. He has redone his whole Grade R foundation year with Tannie Hettie last year. Since then, he’s made huge improvements in reading & writing. Although he is still very reluctant to do schoolwork, his attitude towards learning has improved tremendously. What was meant to be an interim solution to help a struggling second grader proved to make such an impact on our family relationships that school is no longer an option for us now.

If I knew then when we started, what I know now, I would have taken a totally different approach to home education. For starters I would have skipped Le-Amen, ditched all the schoolwork and allowed the de-schooling process first in order to restore their love for learning. That would have saved us a whole year of frustrations. This year’s unschooling approach went much smoother and the progress is still astonishing. Misha’s reading has improved vastly and he is slowly starting to show interest in the odd workbook here and there. He’s loving the Honey Badger Club and enjoys the online and pc based activities we’ve added. I’m happy to have stumbled across an article on learning styles that helped me trace the reason for his struggles and also assisted me in making wiser choices for learning material to address the way he learns.

Jesse will be home 2 years in January. He’s just finished his second week of school after restarting with Alpha Omega Academy  accredited online high school.

Gone are the days of nagging him to do his schoolwork. He’s free to study wherever he’s comfortable and whatever time of the day suits him best which is mostly from 4pm. Sometimes, however he’ll even work in the morning. When we had the freezing weather last week, he did it in bed. Now that’s the life…

I’m sure if I had this luxury at school, I would have aced all my subjects & not hated it as much. I probably would have remembered more of what I learned too.

The online lessons presented by the Academy teachers usually start from around 3pm our time  & these he does logging in via Webbex. There he gets to chat to the teacher and class mates. Thus far he seems to be enjoying his lessons and we have even caught him working ahead of schedule especially when he has plans for the weekend.

At this stage I’m hopeful that this trend will continue and that we’ve finally found a curriculum that will enable him to reach his full potential without the stress and frustration that they have had to endure at school.

My next challenge is to find a similarly successful curriculum for Misha by the time he gets to high school.

If they don’t learn the way you teach, then teach the way they learn.

~ Jacquie McTaggart

Winter Wonderland in South Africa

I’ve been dreaming of a white Christmas for many years now.

White Christmas Germany 1978 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

The last time I saw snow was during our visit to Germany for Christmas in 1978.

Yesterday we woke up to news about snow all over South Africa… We’ve seen awesome snow scene photos from various people but alas our garden was pale as usual. Much to our disappointment.

Since I needed to take the boys for the Homeschool Photo Shoot, I figured I’d take them around so they could finally see some snow. We did see lots of snow falling as we drove around the area, but by the time it hit the ground it melted away, leaving the impression of rain rather than snow.

Fortunately after being home for an hour or so, we did finally have some snowfall of our own.

Winter Wonderland in SA VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Although it wasn’t much compared to what I was used to as a child, the slight snowfall in our garden was met with huge excitement.

Misha Catching Snowflakes…

Misha ran around the garden trying to catch the flakes only to find them melted as soon as they hit his hand. There was just enough snow on our trampoline for the boys to scoop up for a short snowball fight.

Snowball Fight…

Of course this snowy weather & cold took it’s toll on electricity consumption. I figure everyone in Johannesburg had their heaters running which resulted in power failure just after 4pm. We were thankful to have a gas heater & blankets to stay warm. For the rest of the day the power would come on occasionally for a few seconds just to fail again. We finally gave up & went to bed. Needless to say this morning we woke up to no power.

By 10h30 the boys & I set off to a friend who offered us a hot shower & some tea. According to Gloria the power came back on around 12h00. By the time we got home around 5pm the power fortunately was still on & has remained steady since.

My friend, Doreen’s family farm in Barkley East

My Dad’s home in Vanderbijlpark

My Sister’s home in Vanderbijlpark

My Mom’s view in Vanderbijlpark

Judging by these photos from my family & friends, it’s obvious that we’re staying in the wrong place for serious snow scenes… Next time they have snow, I might just take the boys to visit their Grandparents to enjoy some decent snow…

The moral of this story is that it’s not who you know but where you live…