Category Archives: Homeschooling

Sleeping Bag Night

We want our kids to have fun; we want our kids to have something to look forward to; and we want our kids to have precious and fun childhood memories. Thanks to all those homeschool communities which share a lot of great ideas to achieve these goals!

sleeping bagOne of those great ideas is sleeping bag night! Every last friday night of the month is our sleeping bag night. We would pull out our sleeping bags and the whole family would sleep in the living room (except the baby for now =P). In fact, my husband and I sleep in the living room every night! We just let them join us on that special night of the month. The kids sure love it! They usually get so excited that night playing & talking in the sleeping bags, we actually have a hard time making them fall asleep! But well, just once a month =) And it’s a good chance to teach them about limits too! Although it’s a special night, there’s still rules!

Homeschooling : A Way of Life

When non-homeschoolers think of homeschooling, most of the times they would think of academics concerns : “Am I qualified to teach my kids all those things that they are supposed to learn in school?” “What should I teach them? I don’t know a lot!” “I’m not a trained teacher, I should not ruin my children’s education.”

Well, as for us homeschoolers, we don’t think about that anymore. We know we don’t have an educator certificate, but that’s not our concern! We know we parents are the most qualified teachers to our own children in God’s eyes!

When we think of homeschooling, we think of building relationship with our children; we think of leading our children to God; we think of training up our children “in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6); we think of getting the chores done as a team; we think of having fun as a family; we think of building friendships with like-minded families; we think of building a family business so that everyone can get involved; we think of which curriculums are best suited our children and our budget; we think of finding exciting things to learn as a family; we think of understanding God’s purpose for our family and our children…………

When we think of homeschooling, we think of the life that we want to present to our children……homeschooling, indeed, is not just academic, but a way of life.

One On One

Lately, we have added some time blocks each day for one on one time between siblings. It works really well. It’s sweet to see how Tiffany(6) and Viviana(2) enjoys each other while playing blocks and puzzles without interruptions; and it’s fun to see Odelia reads to Sonia(3) while Sonia is concentrating on her puzzle. And me? I enjoy the peace during that half an hour cleaning the kitchen or playing with the baby. =)

Give me MORE time PLEEEEASE!!!

We are ok doing basic cleaning, meals, laundry, chores along with not so intense schoolwork, not so many crafts and science experiments. However, I am always thinking on how to getting more done….isn’t that a question from most of us? Even if I am satisfying with the situation now, what about when my 2 toddlers get older and need more serious schooling? And what about a new baby on the way soon?

Besides, lately I have read a book called “Nourishing Traditions” by Sally Fallon, which talks about basically every processed food is toxic and harmful to health…..I do have a desire to cook “real food” for my family. Since, as a mother, I’m responsible for their health! But then, which means more time needed to cook (even milk brought from stores cannot be drink directly)!! Also, I always have a wish that I can sew more modest dresses and skirts for my girls, and it’s still not happening yet.

I got discouraged sometimes, and trying to figure out how to get around things bit by bit besides daily duties. Thanks God that recently, a lady lend me the book “Managers of Their Homes” by Steven and Teri Maxwell. As I read the book, I know that God is helping and leading me how to manage all that I got to manage for my family. I’m really thankful and getting excited all over again! =D

Life

It’s been awhile that I didn’t write any post. Oh yea….life’s been busy. Our fifth little girl, Shoshana, is now 3 months old. Homeschooling is a way of life, or you can also say, is an art. How do I manage to homeschool our 6 and 5 years old girls, train the 3-year-old to obey, toilet trian the 2-year-old, and take care of the new born, besides all the chores in the house? I don’t know. Perhaps I don’t manage well at all. But then, life goes on, things have to be done, and everything has a purpose. Therefore, I have to learn everyday, reflect everyday, ask the Lord for wisdom and learn to smile through all the process.

The one thing that I always remind myself is to have JOY in my heart. Real joy from the Lord. It’s something that needs practice I believe. And practice makes perfect. Whenever something messy happens, remind myself of some Bible verses about joy and make it a habit. Oh…how I need that. Singing joyful hymns through the day is a good start too. And the girls love to sing with me, isn’t that great? I figured that if I lost the joy, I lost the bonding with my children, thus losing their hearts. And I definitely do not want that to happen. If I lost my children’s hearts, I can teach them nothing!

Curriculums!

The math curriculum just arrived! I really enjoy the freedom we have in homeschooling! Although we may need to spend a bit more money than going to public school, but we have the chance to choose our curriculums for each of the subjects every year! To start off, we have our own agenda for Bible teaching, then last year we choose the history, reading and science materials from Sonlight.com, “Teaching writing” from The Institute for Excellence in Writing. And just last wk, we decided to use Miquon Math curriculum for now, and I got to choose some math manipulatives too. For French, we are still searching, testing materials in the library and so on…. Although the process of choosing is time consuming, however, to us it just seems better than spending 8000 for one kid to go to a private school and u have no saying in any areas—no choice in who to teach, what style of learning in diff. subjects, curriculums, pace of learning, schedule….etc.. In the beginning, we decided not to “school at home”, and Sonlight curriculum really have a flexibility there to fit in our schedule…and with this literature rich program, we can actually reuse most of the materials kids after kids…they love reading the books so much and Tiffany is already asking when she grows up, can she keep all the sonlight books herself…well, we will have to see….=)

Overwhelming!!

To be honest, sometimes it just seems too overwhelming! There are just too many areas to consider in our children’s education! Once I think the reading progress is ok, then I figure the physical education seems to need more attention. And when I’m planning the math lessons, I know I still need to do lessons plan for music and Chinese language. And what about French, science, art & crafts? You know, I just have to learn to add things one at a time, and always remind myself what our priority is. In the last 6 years, we had 4 babies and had moved 4 times, so there you can imagine how much time I had for planning the homeschool. Thanks God my kind hubby always encourage me and remind me to relax and think about our main purpose of homeschooling, which is to let them know the God Almighty, to have strong family bonding and to build their character. We strongly believe wisdom from God is a lot more important than knowledge. Therefore, no matter what, I read them the Bible in the morning, sing hymns with them, do our chores together. And if there is no special craft to do, we make cookies, so that after all the work, we have something to enjoy. In our “spare time”, we read some little English and Chinese stories. After we are used to the pattern and seems to have room for other things, I add in history and science readings. And then some more math related activities. Lately, we started the physical strength and endurance training. So everyday, they need to accomplish a set of general excerises. Well, as you can see, we still need to squeeze in more music time, science experiments, and language arts time too…..well, it sounds scary….but believe me, we don’t do everything every day. Basically, for now, the must are just the Bible, hymns, chores, excercise and some stories reading =)

All are sick!

We are all sick since the furnance was not working properly the last few days and the house was only 14 degress at night. Anyway, homeschool is really flexible! We just choose what we are comfortable to do these few days and I am able to give them herbs from time to time since they are home anyway….and we don’t think we are falling behind, nothing needed to catch up =) There are 52 wks in a year and most curriculum last only 36 wks…..so, there is a lot of room to adjust. =)

The start of it!

It was truly a tough decision to make!!! No doubt! We started thinking about homeschooling when Tiffany was only 2 yrs old, and the more we thought about it, the more we thought it was the only option for us to have peace. It still is. And we are so grateful that we learned about homeschool just in time! It just add so many colours to our family!