Reflections on the First Month

It has been a month already! Well, I've been pleasantly surprised by a few things.

• Matthew has a longer attention span than I expected, and is willing to spend at least 1 hour with Joyce and I in the learning room before asking to play somewhere else.
• Joyce enjoys narration! I had thought she'd be very reluctant to try since she's a perfectionist and hates to make mistakes. But after we made sure she understand that she doesn't have to re-tell the story word for word, she found it fun and often wants to do more than one story at a time.
• I actually find myself enjoying this... I hope I haven't jinxed it by admitting it :) I enjoy watching them learn; I enjoy being with them during their "Ah-ha!" or "Look! I did it!" moments; I enjoy talking and playing with them; I really enjoy sharing great picture books with them; the list goes on. If you had asked me even half a year ago whether I would enjoy homeschooling, I'd have said "No, but I'm doing it because I feel very strongly that God had called me to do this."

I thank God for the graces He has bestowed on our family during this journey. I remember that one of the biggest doubts I had about homeschooling was my lack of patience. Then, I read
passages from this wonderful book that helped me cast away this doubt:

"The particular circumstances in your life that are trying your patience might be precisely the means through which our Lord will teach you to be patient and to rely on Him more instead of on your own power." ... "So, does it take patience to home school? Well, yes, but you don't wait until you have it to begin homeschooling; you learn it along the way." ... "I can do all things in Him who strengthens me." - Philippians 4:13 (all from p.101 of the book)

I'm still not as patient as I'd like to be, but objectively speaking, I must admit that it has improved (at least DH agrees :)

There's one aspect which has taken me off guard completely, and it's the fact that I am now the most influential role model for my children. I must have read this a dozen times in different books, yet they were just words on a page to me until I notice how quickly my children pick up my words and actions. When they are impatient and loud, that's because I've been impatient and loud. When they are courteous and polite, that's because I've been courteous and polite. At first I felt really bad about this because I know I have a lot more bad days than good days. But then, I somehow convinced myself that this can be a good thing if I get my act together. So, I actually had a heart-to-heart with Joyce that went something like this:

"Joyce, Mommy knows that you are doing your best to be a good girl, to love God and others."

Joyce nods in agreement.

"Mommy is trying to do the same thing. I have noticed that at this point, the most important thing for us to work on is your obedience, and my impatience. So, Mommy is going to try extra hard to be more patient and polite and not yell at you two. At the same time, will you try extra hard to be more obedient?"

"Yes, I will," she said simply.

I wasn't sure if she would take this seriously at all, but I needed to say it out loud and make a committment to myself to be a better role model. But somehow, it must have touched her heart as well because very shortly after this talk, she became a lot more obedient and willing to help. And she would even be my little guardian angel and remind me, "Mommy, I think you are getting loud. Remember that you are trying to be more polite?" And she says it with such
authority too :) "Yes, Joyce. Thank you for reminding me."

I truly believe that God wants to cleanse me and mold me through this vocation. And I'm so glad that my children are together with me on this journey.

First Narration

Tonight, after we got DS to bed, we sat down with DD and started her very first narration session. We haven't done this before, so we were not sure whether it would go well or not. We started off by explaining to her that Mommy is going to read her a short story (we picked one from The Early Reader's Bible), and then she will tell the story to us in her own words.

Mommy read the story slowly with frequeny pauses, with a formal attitude that properly drew her attention into the work at hand. After the story was read, it was time for her to repeat the story back to us. Being a somewhat perfectionist like mommy, she was a little bit frustrated at first, wanting to start the story off exactly as she heard it. But we reassured her that we wanted to hear the story, in her own words. We wrote down her first narration word-for-word:

God Made The World
Long time ago, there was no world.
There was no sun. There was no moon.
There was no stars.
God said, "I am going to make a world."
So God made a world.
"Now I am going to make a sun," said God.
"Now I am going to make a moon, and
I am going to make some stars," said God.
God made the fish in the sea.
God created big animals and small animals.
Last of all, He made one man and one one girl.

She had so much fun hearing us read her story back to her, we narrated two more stories. Thanks be to God that this went off so well. Mommy now plans to do this with her everyday.

-- post by Lorraine's DH

Fun with Addition

Joyce has been having fun with addition using the golden beads and the colored bead stairs. We followed the album pages from MWEI and MTC for the golden bead addition exercises. For now, we're using two instead of three addends because we don't have space to put all the beads and number cards on our coffee table :) We've began with addends that will not involve exchanging. Here're two examples from her notebook (I forgot that she knows how to use a ruler... oh well, next time :) We have been "adding" using the colored bead bars as well. Many thanks to Lori at Montessori for Everyone who provided the ideas for the Bead Stairs. We've tried Making Ten which allows the child to become familiar with combinations that make up ten:

Let the child pick a bar from the left set:
Ask "How many more do we need to make ten?" And then count with the child. Let the child get the corresponding bar and place it to show that they add up to ten.
Then, we perform the reverse equations and let the child notice the symmetry. The Addition Snake Game is Joyce's favourite for the moment. We used the MTC and
NAMC albums as reference. Here are the required materials:
- ten bars
- one black and white bead stair
- five colored bead stairs
- red felt mat
- notched cardboard marker
- (optional) a pointed stick (like a long toothpick) for counting beads
Set up the black and white bead stair and the cardboard marker:
Let the child choose a bunch of colored bead bars and arrange in the shape of a "snake."
Count along the chain. When you reach ten, stop and place cardboard marker over the bar after the tenth bead. "Oh, we've counted to ten. So we can exchange it with a ten bar." Place ten bar above the counted beads. Count the remaining number of beads on that bar (e.g. 7 in this case). Get the corresponding black and white bar above the counted beads. Place the cardboard back to its original position and put the counted colored bead bars into the empty bin for the black and white bead bars. Join the ten bar and black and white bar into the snake.
Start counting at the first black bead. Repeat the process:
- count up to ten
- get ten bar
- count remaining beads on colored bead bar
- get corresponding black and white bar
- remove cardboard, put bead bars back
- join ten bar and black and white bar into snake
After all color bead bars have been counted, show the child that the sum of all the color bead bars equal the ten bar plus black and white bead bar (if any) (e.g. 34 in this case). The child may write the equation in her notebook (9+8+7+6+4=34).
There are more variations to this game, such as using the same colored bead bars to make up the snake, and this is a great way to introduce multiplication.

Some Highlights from Our First Week

Thanks be to God that our first week of homeschooling went quite well. I had anticipated that my kids would fight over materials, that Matthew would play with all the materials or hop back and forth between the learning room and play room, that Joyce would complain that she is not interested in any of the work, that they would last through the work period. Well, none of that happened! Each morning, they were able to "do work" for 1.5 hours, and on a couple of days, I had to cut them off. I know this won't always be the case, and it's most likely the novelty of "doing school at home" that's keeping them interested. I'll work hard to try to make things interesting and engaging for them. Here is a summary of what they've been doing this week:

Matthew is in a sensitive period with water. He likes to transfer water with whatever container or utensil he can grab, during or outside work period. I've found him standing in front of the kitchen sink and scooping water with a spoon, back and forth between bowls. He is enjoying building the pink tower again, which is nice. For a while I thought both of them had completely lost interest in it. He also loves animals. I'm so thankful for that because everyday he goes through most of the 5 animal puzzles and that is usually a good time for me to show Joyce something new :) (Usually I alternate between showing them a new presentation while the other one is doing something on his/her own. It is working out nicely and they're not fighting for my attention all the time.) Another favourite activity for him is the knobbed cylinders. He usually picks at least 2 per day. It is amazing to see a bouncy and chatty 2.5 year old boy sitting still, completely focused, placing little pieces of wood into holes in silence.

Joyce is already an expert in a lot of the practical life and sensorial materials, and she likes to show Matthew how things are done (she likes doing that a lot and claims that "I am a teacher also." :) She's enjoys working with the moveable alphabets, reading simple 3-letter words with CHC's Little Stories for Little Folks, and the bank game.
She has been having fun with this wooden puzzle where each shape is split in half in 3 different ways. Just a few months ago she was haivng problems with them and got frustrated easily, but this time around, I gently gave her a few tips and she was able to persevere and figure it out. It is heartwarming to see her beaming with confidence after completing it.

It has been a very good week indeed. Thank you Lord for guiding us. Thank you Mother Mary for watching over us.

Our Learning Room

This is our learning room in the basement. This space in the basement used to be our family room and now half of it is devoted to school.Starting at the left hand side is our bookshelf of picture books. Next to that is the metal insets and sandpaper letters. Around the corner is another shelf for language material, followed by a practical life shelf, and then the math shelf. And there is Matthew folding a tea towel :)
A closer look at the three shelves: a half-empty language shelf (more language materials to be made :) with the movable alphabets and a chalk board for writing. The practical life section contains materials for washing leaves of a plant, dry and wet pouring, spooning, medicine dropper, nuts and bolts and clothpins. The math section contains the golden bead materials, sandpaper numerals, spindle boxes, numeral and counters, large and small number cards, ten and teen boards, and the color bead stairs.Going around the corner, are two low shelves for the geography/sensorial materials. And as you can see behind the shelves and the sofa, there are toys in the other side of the room (our "downsized" family room). So far, it has been a blessing that the children have not set foot in this "play area" during "work period." For geography, there are the globes of land/water and continents. We have two maps for now - World and Canada. The free standing sensorial material are the red rods and the pink tower. On top of the shelves are the geometry cabinet, geometric solids and metal fractions. The sensorial shelf contains the knobbed and knobless cylinder, sound boxes, color tablets, brown stairs, binomial and trinomial cubes, and constructive triangles. Turning around 90 degrees (on the opposite wall to the previous language/practical life/math shelves) is our shelves for "things that didn't fit in the other shelves." There are some toys e.g. leappads and doodle pros on the two left columns of that big 5x5 bookcase. Then the rest of lower shelves are plant and animal puzzles and dressing frames. The tall bookcase on the right is waiting for more materials, probably math related such as addtion and subtraction strip boards.
Finally, our library. It used to be books for the parents, but children's books have invaded almost half the shelves (and we are happy with that :) The lower corner shelf holds the tabernacle from Our Father's House. The lower shelves of the CD tower hold the items from their miniature mass kit. I'm hoping to add more CGS materials and store them in those empty shelves behind the glass doors.It took a long time to get this planned and organized, and I'm sure there will be more tweaking and moving things around along the way. I'm so grateful to everyone at the 4real forum! I don't think I would have achieved this without their sound advices, generous support and prayers. Any comments or suggestions would be much appreciated!

Our First Day (and my first blog post :)

Thanks be to God! Our first day of homeschooling went pretty smoothly. We made it to church on time at 8 a.m., which was incredible considering the kids woke up at 7:30. We came home, had breakfast, and started our designated 1.5 hr work period at 9:40 (only 10 minutes late... which is pretty good for the first day, I think :) Matthew went straight for the practical life activities, which was nice because I wanted to show Joyce the alphabet sound cards from LSLF (made by DH last night... Thanks so much, dear!) as the "new" work. As I had expected, she knew all the names and sounds of the alphabets, some better than others, so hopefully with more practice, she will be able to move onto the next stage. Meanwhile, Matthew had mixed the little wooden beads from the dry pouring jug into the bowls for spooning... Now why didn't I see that coming? So, we spent a good 15 minutes sorting these tiny wooden beads back into the correct containers. I think he learned his lessons (on how to sort beads quickly and never to mix materials together again :).

Joyce practised writing her numbers from 1 to 29 and stopped because she said she forgot what's next. I praised her for her efforts (as opposed to the results, because there were some mistakes but I didn't correct her) and she beamed with joy. She moved onto "writing" with the movable alphabets and some farm animals. She likes to take turn with me and pick an animal with our eyes closed and then writing the name out. I love it when she writes d-o-g and always does this - "If we switch the first and last letter, we get g-o-d!" At which point she usually says "Now I want to write jesus!" followed by "juh... juh... Now I want to write joyce!" Matthew, who was in the process of building the pink tower, stopped everything in his tracks to play with the animals. I said the forbidden "no" word once but then decided that it was OK as long as he wasn't disturbing Joyce's work. Well, at least he was learning the names of the animals in English.

Time actually went by really quickly, and that was the end of our work period. Afterwards, we went to the science center for fun and came home for quiet time (Joyce) and nap (Matthew). A little art work from "A Catholic How-To-Draw" for Joyce in the afternoon - tracing the Sacred and Immaculate hearts (made by DH who scanned the pictures, put them side by side, and laminated the finished product yesterday... Thanks again, dear.) I was so proud of her because I could tell she did it with love. She requested that it be put on her wall so she won't be scared at night (that's a whole other issue and post if I get around to it.) Matthew woke up just about that time and we then got ready to go over to my mom's for dinner. I love Tuesdays... dinner at mom's is a highlight of my week. Mom, if you're reading, thanks so much. You have no idea how much it means to me to be at your place once a week. It's not the food (which help enormously and tastes great every time), it's the warm and fuzzy feeling of coming home. And DH brought a cake for dessert to celebrate this special day! Tomorrow should be fun - I look forward to reading Demi's Mother Teresa to them.

Thank you Lord for this wonderful day. Thank you for making it a smooth ride today. You know how weak I am and how I would be doubting myself very quickly if things had gone the other way. Grant me more patience and self discipline on this journey, so that together with DH, we can bring Joyce and Matthew up to be who you created them to be.