It’s a Sick Day

We usually have weekends on Ama’s day off and have our school days when he’s at work. It’s a perfect way of having family time despite the BPO work schedule. So on Saturdays, Ozzy and I are supposed to be having a school day. But his cough is so bad it kept him up last night and he couldn't get out of bed this morning so I had to feed him. Poor kid. He‘s got snot coming out of him, coughs intermittently, and has decided to stay in bed. (Judging from the amount of legos dragged into the bed.)

I’ve noticed he’s been getting sick a lot lately. I think this might be because he’s been too clean and safe at home.  You develop stronger resistance in school from most viruses when you’re exposed to many other kids. So here we are, coughing again just like the end of August. I shouldn’t be too worried. Sigh.

Anyway, so here’s a chance to write some things down.

Our home school is coming along just fine. There’s a lot documentation that has to be done: portfolios as evidences of learning, records of attendance and activities, and assessments (Ozzy was scheduled for Math assessment today, but that’s not going to happen). When I was teaching, this is the part I hated. I liked making lesson plans, but not assessments and record keeping. I try to do them well because of the responsibility attached to it, but sincerely, I just want my students to have fun while working and grade them based on how much fun they had a.k.a. applying themselves (haha, there goes my teaching licence).

The good thing about home schooling is that there’s no mean, median, mode. You’re not comparing him to an average number of students. So the approach is really on a case to case basis. This means you can keep studying difficult areas longer and easy skills faster. This is actually very helpful to Ozzy and very fulfilling to me as teacher. I am so happy to see my son put more effort to things that are difficult to him allowing him to experience success when he does it right. His favourite line after a mistake is “Let’s do it again.”

Academic time has also been my concern. I have counted the number of days and plotted lolo and lola’s visits (my parents and husband’s) to make the academic days required. I will be including some field trips during the visits so that we can count some trips as academic time. We are in a foreign country after all and cultural/ science trips are up on my list of places to go. So we’re holding off trips until family members come. We do go out for park visits when the activity requires it. There’s not much nature all around though (not like what we have in Antipolo) so we just kinda pick things up from the planter boxes in the “backyard”.

Nonetheless, documents are due by the end of next week. I have written to my adviser and she has assured me that I was doing well. Haha. It’s not over till it’s over though. I have to get my documents in line. Another sigh.

What We've Been Doing Lately

I am so thankful I am home schooling at a time when a wealth of information is online. This is a grace. Thank God for that blessing! Also, I discovered that a lot of parents in my generation actually prefer to home school their child/ children. How cool is that! I am sooo not alone. I am one of thousands! It has also been very educational. I was telling my husband the other day, “I can’t believe home schooling can be so educational.”

Ozzy’s progress is nothing less than satisfying. It’s like breastfeeding, I suppose. (Sadly, I wasn’t able to breast feed him) With home schooling, you nourish your own child as his teacher regarding everything about life. I can not be happier. I found out that there is so much joy in being my son’s religion teacher. I am sharing what I know about God and how to love others and in return, he checks on his mother as reference for right and wrong. That alone is just precious.

Ozzy just tried wall climbing over the week end (unfortunately, bad me, I have no pictures). He had expressed he wanted to try it, so husband and I obliged. Ozzy, completely strapped, got so scared at the beginning that the moderator had to have the other kids go first. After a lot of encouragement, and seeing how the children had fun doing it, he eventually agreed to climb. He successfully did! We were so proud! After getting down, he made the sign of the cross, and said his Glory Be. His father and I were laughing. He knew exactly what to do after a scary situation.

Language Arts are so much fun too. I was so worried about this, to tell you the truth. I really wasn’t confident about teaching a child how to read. As I said I was grateful for the wealth of information on the Internet. There are many theories, programs, and styles. At some point, it could get very confusing. But this is what I got from my previous boss and my Language teacher: Listen, Speak, and Write. And I remember that when I plan my lessons. I’ve also been brushing up on my phonics skills as I’ve recently discovered that how you say it, helps them learn how to read it.

Listening/ Speaking/Writing. For Ozzy, it seems that Listening is the hardest because this requires a lot of attention. And because keeping the attention of a hyper active boy is as easy as trying to catch a fly, we had to overcome a lot of routines. It gets easier when he begins to anticipate what is about to happen and the action required after it. We had a difficult time at the beginning of Teach Your Child How to Read with 100 Easy lessons, but we kept on it because I knew that listening is a skill we need to develop. He has improved so far and now waits for my turn, and his turn, and listens to most of the instructions. It’s not yet a perfect dance, but we’re getting there.

Communicative Approach. We still use our BrainQuest cards, this time for Kindergarten. We started with Max the Monkey as soon as we were trying to develop his speech. With these cards, he learns to understand questions. This is a very important skill we’ve been working on. I’m still waiting for my mountain to move on this one.

Sight Words. Ozzy learns his sight words through flash cards and have shown a lot of progress with them. He’s very visual. I think he finds it easy to remember what the words look like.  I haven’t tried testing for comprehension though. I’ll let him take his time.

It may seem like he's doing tons, but these are all just short lessons done daily, along with Math. Science is just once a week. It’s been good so far. If you ask me, I’d say I’d do this again.