I feel I need to type down what I am doing
with my children these days in order to know whether we are on the right track
in homeschooling or not.
Also, I kind of wanted to make a our homeschool diary anyway.
Ideally and originally, I plan to start
teaching them after breakfast and I aimed at 9 o’clock. But a month has passed
and this 9 o’clock thing has never happened once. I felt frustrated at times
that we could not keep the time. But at other times I thought that it is a home
environment and I should not be too strict about keeping the time. Anyhow. I
think it is time to have some adjustment to our timetable.
Basically, while we are waiting for
Sonlight books to come, what we have been doing is we put three “school
subjects” in the morning. We called them “school subjects” because they were
the ones taught at Hilton
School
My older two are familiar with the layout and
style of the textbooks so for them it has been easy enough to follow through.
For the youngest one who is 4.5 yo, I bought an “Activity
Book” for Pre-K at Cosco when I was in Canada
So now an ordinary day looks like this: Kids get up around 8-ish. While waiting for breakfast to be done, they'd pick up some things to do, whether reading, Lego building, writing, or playing the guitar.
After a relaxed breakfast, they slowly ease themselves into studying the 3 "School Subjects". Few days in a week I'd sit and teach them Math, English, and Social Studies. In addition, I'd sit and read-aloud a book with them. These usually take about 1-2 hours. If Daddy is home, he would teach them Science and kids LOVE it! Fat-mei (the youngest one) usually sits in and listens in. Almost everyday she would do a few pages of her "Activity book" and she really enjoys that too. Other times she would take out her "Rough note" (a note book) and practice writing the alphabets, numbers, or doodling.
Then after lunch, the older two would finish off their school subjects study if they haven't done so, or they would start their handwriting of the day. Each day they are assigned to do two handwriting in two languages from English cursive writing, Hindi, Tamil, and Chinese. I don't know about the first three languages, but I do see that their recognition of the Chinese characters and phonics have significantly improved.
After all these are done, they have to read 2 books by themselves - 1 book in English and 1 book in Chinese. They sometimes choose to read along with an audio CD. But that option is only available with a particular set of storybooks in Chinese.
Finally, this is what they really look forward to each day - Electives time (I don't like to call it "free time") when they can choose to play the guitar/piano, or other activities including outdoor exercises. They love to ride bicycles. So they are given 30-40 minutes of riding bicycles outside. After that they would usually water their own plants, and play some other games.
This is what an ordinary day looks like (when there's no meetings in the morning) for us. I'm not sure how much they are learning but I am certain they ARE learning some things here and there throughout the day. So my blog title "here a little, there a little" is not only for my spiritual experience and truth deposits, but also for my children's learn lifestyle.
Having said all these, I'm still not quite sure whether I am doing the right thing or not. My struggle is with the dynamics among the three children. They are still learning to love and care for each other. I'm not sure about other families out there in the world, but I'm not sure why it seems difficult for my children to get along with each other. Perhaps more seeking before the Lord is needed.
Officially started home schooling my children at the end of July, 2015.
