Well done, Misha, you’re a Star!!!

 

For the past 2 years, whenever homeschooling was mentioned as an option for our boys I protested: “There’s just no way I’d be able to do that”, “I’m not teacher material”, “I’d strangle them within a week.” etc. etc. Those were my excuses… but in the end it was more a lack of confidence in myself than anything else…

 

Well, it’s been 2 months since we’ve started homeschooling Misha & he’s still very much alive & amazingly enough I’m more relaxed than I could have ever imagined I would be.  I have since learned that he’s a strong kinesthetic as well as Visual Spacial Learner and dug up all the info I could as to how to teach him in his learning style.

When we started homeschooling in August, Misha was completely anti-school. I started him on SmartTutor for Reading & Maths because his books from Le-Amen had not yet arrived. He was very reluctant at first, but within a week or so he started looking forward to learning. Although he still isn’t very keen on schoolwork, at least now he’s willing to do it again.

 

We’ve continued the remedial lessons with Tannie Hettie, once a week for an hour. During this time she addressed the foundation & gross motor issues. She let him do brain gym & physical activities that would promote the necessary brain development. Within a few weeks he became a very happy, relaxed 8-year old & we were actually able to see an improvement in his reading skills. Initially he hated that & refused to even read aloud to himself because this was his biggest problem area. So we worked on his rhythm & midline crossing. Lots of trampoline & skipping rope. Finally he mastered the skipping & his reading improved. Then he realized he could read & the reluctance started fading. During the holiday he went to Tannie Hettie in the morning especially to read to her class of 20 little ones ranging between 3 & 6 years old. That was an awesome sight to see. Now every week he reads to the little ones for a few minutes and like a real teacher asks them questions. His confidence is growing & with that his reading is improving steadily… He still has quite a way to go, but at this rate I’m sure he’ll get there much faster than what I could have ever anticipated.

 

 

Another problem area is writing, he struggles to write fast & neatly. All due to his shoulder muscles not having been exercised properly. We’ve hung a rope ladder under the carport for him to climb. This he does regularly & is slowly showing some improvement when he does his handwriting practice.

 

Of course, I knew we would have to get the books out again at some stage, but this was met with great reluctance, so I decided to leave all the other workbooks & just focus on letting him complete his portfolio for monitoring by Le Amen and just let him continue with SmartTutor & reading.

 

Now Misha's portfolio's back from Le-Amen & it seems they are happy with his schoolwork thus far. Here’s the feedback: "I wish you well for the next term. Keep on working well and you will succeed. Well done Misha, you're a star".

This term we hit the ground running and he’s making good progress. We still have the odd days when he’s reluctant to work, but this week he’s actually started to show some enthusiasm at getting the work done.

We’ve also invested in the WiiFit Plus & he starts every day with some physical training via the WiiFit and some exercise games to get the brain started. It’s absolutely amazing what a difference the little bit of exercise at the beginning of the day makes to his learning abilities.

I’m also noticing a willingness to help around the house. This morning, by the time I got home from dropping Jesse at school he’d already taken his washing from the line, folded it & packed it away. He’d also unpacked the dishwasher & packet the stuff away & still wanted to more stuff around the house. It took some convincing on my part to get him back to his books instead. But by the time his first break came along he was off vacuuming in the lounge & wiping down surfaces… amazing…

We try to stick to 8h00 to 13h00 school day with lots of breaks in between. Sometimes he’ll opt for a longer break & choose to do the work later in the day. Then if at times we don’t manage that we’re lenient & reschedule what we weren’t able to achieve. I don’t stress about work that’s not done & he doesn’t stress with too much workload, but somehow we’re still managing to stay well on track to have his workbooks completed by the time they need to be ready for monitoring at the end of November.

Letting Go & Moving Forward

We have a very active, yet highly intelligent 7 year old, who has been struggling through school for the past 2 years. It has recently come to our attention that his gross & fine motor skills foundation has not been addressed properly at a Gr. R level. He is also a visual & active learner & this learning style is not catered for in most of our schools today.

“A mother’s first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet and growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it for the most part spent out in the fresh air.” ~ Charlotte Mason

…that's where the "system" failed our little one quite miserably...

The school focused too early & too much on academics & neglected the motor skills as well as visual perception. Midline crossing & skipping, being very important skills for fluent reading are just 2 of many areas that have not been addressed properly. Although he can memorise paragraphs, like a parrot, he struggles to read. He Aces his spelling tests but cannot spell when writing sentences. These are just a few of the issues we’ve been working on together with his pre-school teacher to get him through Gr. 2. Up to now he’s been able to cope with his intelligence, but the struggling has impacted his self-esteem very negatively & caused him to dislike school with a passion.

Although the school tried to address the problem with remedial (at additional cost to us as parents) & extra lessons, these showed very little success, but instead placed extra workload & repetition rather than addressing the foundation of the problem... hence we've took him back to his preschool teacher twice a week since August last year so she could do physical activities & brain gym with him in order to get the brain development going. This has shown huge improvement, but his backlog is so big that he still gets very fidgety in class when he doesn’t understand the tasks at hand.

‎"Every student can learn. Just not on the same day or in the same way." ~ George Evans

We know now that Misha’s just a normal active little boy who’s trying to cope with a situation that's way beyond his control. It breaks my heart to see such a highly intelligent child struggling at school & being so frustrated...

We've recently registered him with Le-Amen Education Centre in Ruimsig & have pulled him out of school on Friday. What I like about Le-Amen is that they are registered with the Gauteng education department and they supply the curriculum at very reasonable prices. The kids’ work books have to be handed in 3 times a year to be monitored by qualified teachers & at the end of the school year they issue school reports to the children. Both parent & kids are monitored & at matric level they write the same IEB exams as the private schools.

We’ll be using this week to let him destress & deschool Misha. In the interim he’ll be using www.time4learning.com online curriculum to put the fun back into learning. Then we'll continue his schooling, but will also have to go back as far as Gr. R in order to address his foundation. I just hope we caught it on time to repair the damage & that we will be able to help him reach his full potential in life.

‎"Mothers write on the hearts of their children what the hand of time can't erase." (Unknown)

When I look at the amount of kids in our schools that end up in remedial & extra lessons, I cannot help but wonder how many of them are highly intelligent kids, like Misha, whose foundations have been proved lacking & due to that will be struggling through school for the rest of their lives… I just cannot understand how it is possible in today’s day & age, with all the knowledge available to our teachers regarding the importance of physical activities being the foundation to develop brain functions in our little ones that they still let them sit cooped up in classrooms with academics all day at such a young age. Our little ones should be playing more & learning less… the academics will follow as soon as the body is sorted…

I must confess, I’ve spent months stressing about Misha’s situation & was fuming, when the teacher’s plan to resolve this issue was aimed at Misha’s preschool teacher & myself addressing the foundation in order to get him through Gr. 2. As far as I was concerned, we pay expensive school fees & he shouldn’t have been in this situation in the first place. Today, however, I can honestly say the burden’s lifted & I have peace in my heart that we’ve made the right decision for our boys.

"When we forgive someone, it doesn't make them right or justify what they have done. It releases them into God's hands so He can deal with them. Forgiveness is actually the best revenge because it not only sets us free from the person we forgive, but it sets us free to move into all God has for us." ~ Stormie O'Martian

The school & their staff have been forgiven… I’m letting go & we’re moving forward… I pray for wisdom to make the right decisions in order to continuously guide our sons into reaching their full potential…

 

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