Homeschooling conference

On Friday night the 20 January, Greg and I, went to a homeschooling conference.

It was run by a woman named Martie Du Plessis who is an Educational Consultant and Remedial Therapist. Her business is called Dynamis and her web address is www.dynamislearning.co.za

I have been homeschooling now for eight years, so why did we go? Well, Caleb has always been a challenge to teach, ever since we began to learn to read and write. His spelling is not good and he does not enjoy writing because of it. With Martie being a remedial teacher, and the fact that she works with the different temperaments to see what the best way to teach each individual child is, made me curious. I also needed help as to how I can help Caleb to learn to spell.

I have said to Greg that I am wanting Caleb to self-school and work by the age of 14. He already looks after and feeds two horses for my friend Angeleen, so I know he is capable. I learnt a lot at the conference and it made Greg and I look at certain things in our family that we want to change.

So here is a brief overview of the evening:

In South Africa our biggest crisis is Aids, and our second biggest crisis is Education. 17 percent of our matrics get jobs and 25 percent of our educated people with degrees get jobs. That is according to the statistics!

We are the only country in the world who needs a matric certificate. This is a political move. It has been proven that all we need to be successful is a grade eight. Children from 2 till 16 need heart, our love, and discipline. From the age of 17, they need to be mentored. She then said children must be self working when they are 14!

We should be teaching them 1. Accountability 2. Responsibility 3. Ownership.

The aim of homeschooling is to teach our children to be job creators and not job seekers. This means they need good characters and values. They should know how to work with their money and not work for money. If you are confident that your child will be equipped for life, then they will be.

This was the most important thing that she said on Friday night: "We need to give our best to our spouse and children, we need to nurture our families the most!" We should teach our boys to provide for the home, and to teach your girls to be homemakers, a wife and a nurturer.

Children up to and including grade 9 should not need to work for more than about 2 hours a day and from grade 10 and up no more than 4 hours per day.

Maths and languages should be taught layer upon layer. Because of this you should not change your math or language programme.

We must teach a child how to learn.

1. Research  
2. Hands on, projects 
3. Real life situations, how does it work? Do it. 
4. Telling back 
5. Creative expression, what does it have to do with me? Teach our children how to work with their passion. Get them books on it, tell them stories related to it, etc.

This is a sequence that we will hopefully teach our children.

Co-dependent , dependent, independent, interdependent! We all get to a stage of being independent but are we all interdependent?

Are we building a relationship with our children? Are we teaching character development to our children? These two things are what is going to make our children successful or not.

I know this was written in a very higgledy-piggledy way. I am sorry, but I am not sure how to do it any other way right now.

I know I haven't written much on my blog for a while, I will try keep it up again. It all depends on my time!

Starting school

We have started school. It is going to be a busy year all round and I am tired already!

Sheth and I have been working everyday and his reading is doing so well. In Waldorf, the children learn to read in grade 2. And, so this is grade 2! We will be doing Nature Stories, and Saints this year. We will be expanding on our maths going into vertical adding, subtracting, times tables, etc.

Hannah will be doing Ancient Mythologies, botany, Greek Mythology going into Greek History, some South African history, and the first block of Geometry.

Caleb will be doing the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, Physics, Chemistry, the last block of Geometry, Health and the Body, Physiology, Astronomy and some South African history.

We all do Afrikaans, recorder, maths and English. I find it quite difficult to do it all so our recorder and Afrikaans tends to not go as fast as I would hope, but we still plod along with them.

Our extra curricular subjects are Cubs, Scouts, Pottery, Woodwork, Piano and Drama. As you can see we have a full schedule ahead of us.

I am teaching Caleb and Hannah to work alone. I have bought them diaries and write their work in it for each day. This seems to working well for now! Hannah basically works without my help at all. Caleb on the other hand will need alot more of me training him to work alone.

And so the year has begun.