March 2014 - The blog is back in business. Beginning of homeschooling journey.

It's been 3 years since I stopped blogging. Recently I felt that I ought to take it up again. The one big change at the moment is that we've started homeschooling since the beginning of this year. I hope we'll be able to document our journey again.

I kind of feel bad that I didn't blog anything about Hannah. But I enjoyed being with her so much that blogging just didn't enter my mind. I hope I can record more good memories about both Sean and Hannah from now on.

We've been a trial and error stage since Nov last year, trying out different ways of learning. A lot of the problems have got to do with discipline for all of us, Sean, Hannah and myself.

Sean came out from school disliking anything that has to do with learning. He's been in chinese school since nursery until Standard 1. He didn't enjoy school very much, especially with the bullying that went on for almost the whole of last year. I felt that being in school brought out the worst in him. So we decided to pull him out after his final exams.

Sean has improved his reading by leaps and bounds, but his writing has suffered. He hates BM and writing and it comes to a point where he starts to whine and sulk and throw tantrum. Then I would lose my temper and the situation gets worse.

So I am trying to curb my temper and readjust his lessons. I admit that some of the lessons I plan for him are way beyond his level. So I am changing the curriculum. This is what I love about home schooling. Everything is so flexible and I can tailor the lessons accordingly. It really helps that I didn't buy a curriculum off the shelf and am doing it myself. This way I can do whatever I like. Unschooling is the way to go! :D

We've been following Charlotte Mason's ideas this year, which consists of a lot of reading and discussion. We started the school year with Plymouth Maths, Famous Men of Greece, Mystery of History (history of the church and middle ages), Usborne Geography encyclopedia, Wild Weather, The Little Duke, Understood Betsy, Childcraft: About Animals & Places to Know, Burgess Animals, Parables of Nature,Scott Foresman English and Bahasa Malaysia.

Bahasa Malaysia is the subject that causes lots of flying tempers. Sean hates BM. So I've had to revised our lessons over and over again. Finally we've decided on starting him with really easy BM books in little snippets. BM is going to be really slow going.

Along the way, we've dropped Burgess Animals and Parables of Nature, and last week I've decided to drop Usborne Geography, Wild Weather, and the Childcraft books.

We joined WSC, a home schooling group, that meets once a month. They're starting this year on a lapbook about Desert Animals. Sean seems to enjoy it and looks forward to do more. So we'll be doing more lapbooks from now on.

Our new lessons will include:
Literature:
Time of Wonder lapbook that includes geography, science and english.
Paddle to the Sea
The Castle Diary: Journal of Tobias Burgess
Life Sciences:
Desert, Nocturnal and Polar Animal lapbooks with WSC, and maybe a few of our own choosing.
Chemistry: Matter


Oooppsss.... It's Hannah's turn now. Hannah has been such a blessing. She's pretty, cute and cheerful. She loves to sing and dance. She's still only 2 but she already knows what she wants! She only wants to wear pink pretty dresses. She thinks she's a princess and wants to marry a prince so she can live in a castle. She can play make believe by herself and loves to go to playgroup. I brought her to 3 playgroups last year, but since we're homeschooling this year, Hannah only goes to 1 playgroup on Mondays and Fridays at Children's Corner. She's very friendly and makes friends easily. What's there to gripe about? ;P

The only little complain I have would be the fact that she still breast-feeds and is very sticky to me, so I don't have any personal time at all. I can't even go to the toilet without her barging in and sitting inside while I do my business! So I am always trying to run away and get some personal space while she runs after me looking for me. ;P But it's all good and well. Whatever my complain may be, I really do enjoy being with both my children.