I've read this post from Ann a few times and am challenged every read-through. So what are the things that I want to aim our arrows at.... ways to encourage them to discover their own passions and talents and encourage them to persevere, to sweat long and hard to practice all they can to develop excellence in these gifts? How can I encourage them to develop those gifts til they come into the freedom of being able to express all the beauty and winning and glory that those gifts were meant for in them?
Isaiah is an artist. We've seen his passion for drawing wax and wane and when he's not practicing much, his art defeintly shows it. Same for piano. We heard a little friend of his play for us recently. She's taken piano lessons for about 8 months longer than him and she plays amazingly well. She practices all the time... she loves to practice. It shows... and I want to find those loves for each of our kids and I want to encourage them towards a few loves that need to be on their lists no matter what.
- The Word: singing it, memorizing it, knowing the stories, holding fast...
- Listening: Hearing me when I talk to them, Reading aloud, various genres of literature, current events, biographies
- Prayer: oh the width and the depth and the beauty of this invitation, this seeking journey
- Music & Art Appreciation:
-and more that I'm too space headed to articulate now... we leave for the states in a day and half!
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Sunday, July 22, 2012
The Plan: Homeschool on the Road (yikes!)
We'll be arriving in the states in about five weeks. I'll be meeting our first grade curriculum a week or two after the time we probably should have started studying through it..... so much for the luxury of time to plan! It looks like our family will be staying in probably 20+ different homes this fall but we'll have a few long stretches (several weeks) in 2 of those locations so that's where our chances are best for getting into a bit of a routine for homeschooling...
But I'm super excited for our launch into this adventure in homeschooling. This month Isaiah graduated from Kindergarden, enjoying simple science lessons, speaking Chinese like a local and really excelling in math. He started piano lessons this spring with a stellar teacher that comes to our home once a week... and I finished going through the 100 Lessons to Teach Your Child to Read with him in March.
This fall we'll be working on the My Father's World 1st grade basic package... aiming to cover 5 subjects a day:
But I'm super excited for our launch into this adventure in homeschooling. This month Isaiah graduated from Kindergarden, enjoying simple science lessons, speaking Chinese like a local and really excelling in math. He started piano lessons this spring with a stellar teacher that comes to our home once a week... and I finished going through the 100 Lessons to Teach Your Child to Read with him in March.
This fall we'll be working on the My Father's World 1st grade basic package... aiming to cover 5 subjects a day:
- Bible
- World (geography and prayer- I'm really excited to be spending more time in prayer with our kids for the projects and the people we get to support and for governments and needs in our world)
- Math
- Literature: Reading living stories, Comprehension (Narration- Simply Charlotte Mason has great tips for narration and living stories)
- Alternate between Handwriting & Science
Of course, this will all be supplemented with lots of intentionality to develop more handicraft skills and with vitally important attention to character and personal development.
Isaiah will be starting with Math Mammoth at the second grade book after I finish just a few chapters on telling time and American money from the first grade book. Marian is looking ripe and ready for the first grade math book. How fun!
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
this spring
Summer is totally here now so it's about time I get this note posted to record our fun spring of learning! It just struck me that we have about one more month of preschool here before summer... and then we'll (finally) launch into the long-awaited, highly anticipated journey of homeschooling! I'm so excited for that! (Do you hear the ridiculously naive optimism there? :) )
So, this spring...
I am grateful beyond words for the sweet preschool our kids are at. Joyful Preschool is run by a local group of believers in Christ so the instruction is all in Chinese but the classmates that our kids play with there are from all over the map (Australia, South Africa, England, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore) so they also get some interaction in English with friends at playtime.
This will probably sound really silly to others, but we've had our kids in preschool here for mornings M-F for years now and usually I've thought that this was simply their time to learn Chinese. I know they're playing, doing cute crafts, singing songs... but I had very low expectations that they would really be learning much else, anything substantial. But I was wrong! Yipee!
Isaiah especially has learned so much this spring. Matt and I both spent time with the big two over Chinese New Year Break (Jan- Feb) going over double digit numbers.... 43 is forty three kind of thing. It was strange to us how difficult it seemed to be to them. They were doing better in Chinese than in English! But very soon into this semester, they both took off. There's no hesitation on numbers now for Isaiah and usually not for Marian (though she sometimes still gets 43 and 34 mixed up.... that sort of thing).
But Isaiah has really blasted into the math world with surprising speed recently. He often likes to ask "what's 4+10" or "whats 10-7?". In April (I think) he asked me "what's 7-9" and I thought he'd be blown away with that one...... I told him "negative 2" and he told me I was right. But I was sure he had no idea what the negative deal really was.... again, I was wrong. I don't know where he's learned it, but he really does get it. And I thought it was his teachers in his kindergarden level math class at school that must have taught him, but they thought it must be us at home.... He was introduced to negative concept at school but he's far past his class in it evidently.... we are just so excited to see him learning and loving math so well!
So this spring, as I realized that our big two especially are learning so much, and their days are full of class and book time already I've simplified our homeschool goals for this season to just this:
**Bible verse review, hymns at home
**8:30- 12:20 morning preschool: lots of excellent math, Hanzi (Chinese characters), crafts, songs &
exercises, nature observation, China culture...
**Reading lesson with both,
**Piano lesson (weekly) and piano practice daily for Isaiah (God has provided a wonderful teacher who comes to our home and opens each lesson with prayer:) )
That's it! It's been fun and it's been super exciting to see them both becoming readers. We've stuck with the "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" book by Engelmann and have thoroughly appreciated it. I think I already wrote about how I forgot about this resource that had been recommended and then I got it, and thought we couldn't use it since our kids were so far past where that book starts. I wish so much I would have started those lessons with Isaiah a year earlier! It is what it is though... He finished all 100 just before he turned 6.
It worked great to breeze through the beginning and make the most of the latter lessons. I was feeling so stuck at the slow sound-it-out spot we were at... but Isaiah is well past it now.... and Marian is well on her way. Thank you Lord!
What a joy to learn together, to serve my kids in learning to explore and marvel at our world and it's Maker! Oh God be glorified in our learning together!
So, this spring...
I am grateful beyond words for the sweet preschool our kids are at. Joyful Preschool is run by a local group of believers in Christ so the instruction is all in Chinese but the classmates that our kids play with there are from all over the map (Australia, South Africa, England, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore) so they also get some interaction in English with friends at playtime.
This will probably sound really silly to others, but we've had our kids in preschool here for mornings M-F for years now and usually I've thought that this was simply their time to learn Chinese. I know they're playing, doing cute crafts, singing songs... but I had very low expectations that they would really be learning much else, anything substantial. But I was wrong! Yipee!
Isaiah especially has learned so much this spring. Matt and I both spent time with the big two over Chinese New Year Break (Jan- Feb) going over double digit numbers.... 43 is forty three kind of thing. It was strange to us how difficult it seemed to be to them. They were doing better in Chinese than in English! But very soon into this semester, they both took off. There's no hesitation on numbers now for Isaiah and usually not for Marian (though she sometimes still gets 43 and 34 mixed up.... that sort of thing).
But Isaiah has really blasted into the math world with surprising speed recently. He often likes to ask "what's 4+10" or "whats 10-7?". In April (I think) he asked me "what's 7-9" and I thought he'd be blown away with that one...... I told him "negative 2" and he told me I was right. But I was sure he had no idea what the negative deal really was.... again, I was wrong. I don't know where he's learned it, but he really does get it. And I thought it was his teachers in his kindergarden level math class at school that must have taught him, but they thought it must be us at home.... He was introduced to negative concept at school but he's far past his class in it evidently.... we are just so excited to see him learning and loving math so well!
So this spring, as I realized that our big two especially are learning so much, and their days are full of class and book time already I've simplified our homeschool goals for this season to just this:
**Bible verse review, hymns at home
**8:30- 12:20 morning preschool: lots of excellent math, Hanzi (Chinese characters), crafts, songs &
exercises, nature observation, China culture...
**Reading lesson with both,
**Piano lesson (weekly) and piano practice daily for Isaiah (God has provided a wonderful teacher who comes to our home and opens each lesson with prayer:) )
That's it! It's been fun and it's been super exciting to see them both becoming readers. We've stuck with the "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" book by Engelmann and have thoroughly appreciated it. I think I already wrote about how I forgot about this resource that had been recommended and then I got it, and thought we couldn't use it since our kids were so far past where that book starts. I wish so much I would have started those lessons with Isaiah a year earlier! It is what it is though... He finished all 100 just before he turned 6.
It worked great to breeze through the beginning and make the most of the latter lessons. I was feeling so stuck at the slow sound-it-out spot we were at... but Isaiah is well past it now.... and Marian is well on her way. Thank you Lord!
What a joy to learn together, to serve my kids in learning to explore and marvel at our world and it's Maker! Oh God be glorified in our learning together!
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
regarding Hitler
Like fuel to throw on the fire burning in me to educate our children well, here's one thing John Piper said about Eric Metaxas' biography of Bonhoeffer:
Tell these stories to your children. Tell them with passion. Tell them with tears. Send your children into the world with their eyes sharpened with the bright light of history. Send them ready to name the academic Nietzsches for what they are. Send them with an unflinching Nie wieder! (Never again!) in their hearts. (quoted from this post by Piper, "Tell Your Children What Hitler Did.")
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