Our year, two: schooling

This year has been a bit disjointed with schooling. With packing up a house, moving etc, it hasn't been easy to keep a routine going. But, we have finished our year and that is all that matters.

This year Caleb has done:

• Grade 8 Waldorf
• Exploring Creation through General Science.
• He has done the first 4 modules of 'Exploring Creation through Physical Science'.
• Math-u-see Pre Algebra and has finished a third of Algebra 1.
• He has finished Llatl Green book.
• Train your brain, South African english.
• We are working on Afrikaans, using 'Pret met Afrikaans'.

He has done art and music with other teachers which is great for him and gives me a break:

• Music theory Grade 1, Trinity.(We are waiting for his marks)
• Piano practical, Intro Grade, Trinity: 78% Merit.
• Arts and craft at the Tygerberg Art Centre.
• Junior Rangers: level 3.
• Scouts: he completed Adventurer and is almost finished First Class. He was appointed as a Patrol leader and is working on his badges that go towards his 3 explorers and 3 cords!
• Bronze Presidential award, he will have completed this in January.
• Ballroom, hip-hop, african and contemporary dancing.
• Khan Academy: maths and computer programming.

Well, when I look at this list it does seem that he has done quite a lot.

Hannah:

• Grade 6 and7 Waldorf.
• Math-u-see Zeta.
• Llatl tan.
• Afrikaans, Pret met Afrikaans.
• Exploring creation through general science

With other teachers:

• Music theory, Trinity, grade 1, waiting on marks.
• Piano practical, Intro grade, Trinity: 87% distinction.
• Arts and crafts, Tygerberg Art Centre.
• Modern dance grade 1, waiting on marks.
• Scouts: Hannah has a talk with her Scouter and then she has completed her Adventurer award.
• Ballroom, hip-hop, african and contemporary dance.
• Khan Academy: maths and computer programming.

Also a full schedule.

Sheth:

• Llatl red book.
• Math-u-see Delta.
• Little Footprints.
• Waldorf.

• Guitar.
• Piano.

Well all in all a very busy year.

Rewards

Autumn is my favourite season of the year and it is in full swing. There is a gorgeous nip in the air, we have our down duvets on and the sun streams into my bedroom first thing in the morning. As I am sitting in bed this morning and looking out the window, I am thinking about the things my family have achieved, and there are many things.

Caleb and Hannah are working on their Adventurer advancement badge for Scouts. They are both planning on getting their Springbok Scout badge with doing the Land, Sea and Air Explorer badges!

Caleb has got his Swimmers, Lifesaver, Survivor, Watermanship, Sailing, Artist, Patrol Activity, Air Planner and First Aid Scoutcraft/Interest badges. He is spreading out the badges that he needs for his Explorer advancements that there will be no rush when he needs to do them.

This year he will be doing his Boatman, Cooks, Hike Leader, Pioneers and Air Traffic Controller badges. These badges are done on courses, which as a homeschooler, I love. They do the course and have an exam to write. If they fail they get to do a rewrite, and if they fail that they have to redo the course the next year.

For every course that Greg and I pay for for Caleb and Hannah, they have to work on badges that don't cost anything. So, Caleb is working on his Conservation and Camping badges.

Hannah has done her Swimmers and Lifesaving badge. This year she will be doing her Watermanship, Air Planner, Sailing, and First Aid badges. Hannah is working on her Artist badge and Patrol Activity badge.

Caleb is 14 this year and has been my most difficult child to school. He is dyslexic, so he doesn't learn as easily as other people. Caleb learnt to read with ease at 11.5, but only in his head. He still does not enjoy reading aloud, but will do so on the odd occasion.

Writing has been the other bane of his existence. He has a fantastic imagination but doesn't like writing as his spelling has always been atrocious. I have been working with him in a Waldorf manner and he is doing a computer programme called Excellence in Spelling. The spelling programme is good BUT does not help with basic spelling. So, the difficult words he is able to spell easier than the basic words. We are working on the basic words and this year it seems to be clicking into place. Caleb still mixes up b and d and sometimes w and m, but I am positive this will rectify in time as I had the same problem and it only rectified about mid high school.

Caleb is working hard on school work. He is doing projects for Junior Rangers without me asking him to do it. And works on Scout badges on his own. I think it helps that there is a carrot for Junior Rangers which is a 5 day camp in the Tsitsikama Game Reserve in September that he desperately wants to go on. The carrot for Scouts are the badges. He loves his uniform.

So, if any of you homeschoolers out there have the same problem with your boys in particular, don't stress as it all works out in the end. Remember, boys should be playing till at least 12 before we teach them to read. I know this is difficult to do as society pressures and dictates as does family. They do not understand.

Sheth is nine and reads very basically at this stage. He is not ready to read at the level that society dictates, and Greg and I are very happy with this as we know the end result.

Hannah on the other hand was reading fluently at seven. She is a girl! That's what girls do. So as you can see we allow our kids to lead us to a large degree with home schooling.

Sheth is doing guitar lessons this year and Caleb and Hannah are in their second year of piano. Caleb and Hannah will be doing their first theory and practical exams this year. Hannah wants to be a music teacher when she is an adult so that she can be home with her children one day. She is doing piano and, as Sheth does guitar, I teach Hannah the guitar, and as I get spare cash then I give her guitar lessons with the teacher. When our finances ease up a bit we will send her to guitar lessons but at this point we can not afford it.

In the middle of the year they will be going to Tygerberg Art Centre.

So all and all the blessings and the relationship that we build with our children as we home school are so worth it.

Keep going, it is worth it!

Geocache

We have just joined geocaching.com. We are ashleycoopers and are really excited about this.

It is a real live treasure hunt that is world wide. You need to have a gps, preferably on your smart phone, and internet access to go to the web and learn more about it, and then to find out where to find the cache.

I googled geocache and right at the top of the list is the website, so I clicked on that.

We joined and then started to play. We found our first cache in our little village. We also grabbed a travel bug, and will send it on its way soon.

This is great fun for families who enjoy Scouts, treasure hunts, orienteering and travelling. In general for anyone who enjoys having fun!

If any of you are "geocatchers" (the children keep pronouncing it geo-catch or -catching) please leave a comment or ask me to be a friend on geocaching.com.

Scouts, Cubs and Kontiki

This has been such a busy term for us with Scouts and Cubs. Hannah and Sheth have both been invested. Sheth is now eight. He was not ready to join Cubs at seven but is definitely ready this year - so much so that he is quiet mischievous there.

Since the first week of term the Scouts have been practicing for the Kontiki competition. They were making soap carvings, masks, rockets that actually shoot up into the air, a space mobile etc. It was great fun!

Well the competition finally arrived on the week end of the 16 March. We dropped Hannah and Caleb at Sandvlei a bit late as Caleb was helping our Durbanville Cubs.

There is such a nice group of parents in Scouts that we all ended up talking for hours.

We went home Friday night as I had a market Saturday morning. After the market we went back to Kontiki.

Last year we came seventh, and this year we came fourth! Well done 1st Durbanville! It was a long, fun, exhausting weekend.

Scouts

Caleb is doing his second water sport badge for Scouts. Before you can do any of these courses you have to do your swimming badge.

The first one was his Watermanship badge. It is a course that does boat rowing/pulling, water safety, water rules, knots, casting of a heaving line, being taught how to manage a dinghy, rescuing a conscious man in the water and C.P.R. He had to do 3 hours of rowing, pulling but ended up doing about 10 hours over two weekends. He came home at the end of the course exhausted but happy! He also wrote his fist exam, and passed with 74 percent.

The course he is doing now is a sailing course. It is the beginner course and I have been told that it is way better than the Watermanship badge course that he did previously. He can not wait to do the more advanced course when he is fourteen, and he is only half way through this course!

The children's great grandfather, Brian Lello, designed the first fibreglass boat in South Africa. He designed the Loch Fyne dinghy and the Lello yacht, to name a couple. Clearly Caleb is taking after his Great Grandfather Brian. The children's Uncle Jan has sailed around the world and done The Cape to Rio yacht race a few times with his dad Brian.

Caleb loves scouts and is working to become a Springbok Scout.

Western leopard toad

Last week-end Caleb and I went on a Junior Rangers Camp at the Silvermine reserve. The leaders had felt that the Junior Rangers had worked hard all year and deserved a nice week-end out. Hannah and Sheth joined us in the day but went to sleep at granny's house at night with Greg, their dad.

We arrived at the camp late on Friday evening in the pouring rain. It was dark and cold. Supper was being served so Caleb ate straight away. It was a brown soup - vegetarian. The meals for the week-end were terrible! It was white rolls with all the meals. For lunch each day it was a white roll with margarine. Yuk! ...and palony! Double yuk! There was no lettuce or tomato to go with the rolls, or any other vegetables for that matter. It can not get worse than that. Breakfast was Cornflakes or Nutrifix. Caleb enjoys Cornflakes as we never have it at home. What I have learnt is that I will have to provide food for Caleb on the next camp.

This is a River Click Frog
found on one of the hikes

The rest of the camp was great! We did two fairly long walks, and one serious hike! We did an evening walk which Greg joined us on. We walked to the Clovelly Golf Club. This is where we were hoping to see the migrating Western Leopard Toad. Well we did! We found the males in the ponds and found two females walking across the greens of the golf course. We also sat and listened to their calls. It was fantastic. I think Caleb and Sheth enjoyed it more than anyone else. This comes from the fact that kids between 14 and 17 are more interested in the opposite sex of the human race than in the mating of the Western Leopard Toad.

Facts about the Western Leopard Toad:

• Their name is Western Leopard Toad or August Toad
• They move in the rain
• They move up to 5 km
• They are nocturnal so move at night
• They move on a waxing moon
• The male has a darker throat than the female
• The female's throat is almost a lemon colour
• The male is smaller than the female
• If the female toad has a predominantly triangular shape, then she still has eggs in her
• She has 1000 to 2000 eggs in her
• The male toad jumps on the female's back and gets into the Amplexus position. He has nuptual pads on his hand that help him hold on to her
• If a female gets into the water without a male on her back she will be marked and drowned
• The female lays strings of eggs which are black. The male then puts sperm over the eggs to fertilise them
• Their eggs take about 2 weeks to turn into tadpoles
• It takes about 3 to 4 months to grow into a toadlets
• Baby toads are called toadlets
• The toads burrow into the ground, to sleep during the day. They share their burrows with other toads
• Toads walk and hop
• Frogs can only hop
• Every Western Leopard Toad has its own special pattern on its back
• The Clovelly Golf Club has Koi fish in their ponds. These Koi fish are eating the Toads eggs, tadpoles and toadlets
• The Western Leopard Toad is an endangered species

For more information on the Western Leopard Tod go to www.toadnuts.co.za or www.leopardtoad.co.za

Drama class

Today the children did their first drama class ever. Boy did they enjoy it!

I booked the class for them last week and did not make a big thing out of it. So this morning I said to them to get ready for drama. Well, the questions started coming. What is it? What do we do? Will we do Romeo and Juliet? I just told them to wait and see.

We were met at our car by this petite, slim, vivacious woman. She is loud and happy and moves all the time. The children were pulled into her class with ease. They joined in with no shyness at all, it was fantastic.

They all want to go back next week, but alas! They will have to wait a couple of weeks as we are going away.

Kon-Tiki

Green Eggs and Ham for
Caleb. No, he didn't get
sick from eating this.

Last week-end was Kon-Tiki. It is a Scout and Girl Guide competition. It started on Friday and ended on Sunday late.

So, to make it a busier week-end we had woodwork at 9.00 Friday morning till 1.00. A half hour after we got to woodwork Caleb went white and ended up having to sleep for a couple of hours, as he felt ill. We then drove to Sandvlei with a pit stop for lunch.

As I parked the car at 2.45 and turned around to tell Caleb to get out and go to his team, he started to vomit! Thank goodness it was out of the car. I had to make a plan soon!

Well, granny's house is five minutes away, so that is where we went. Back to bed for Caleb! He slept untill about 5 and woke up, insisting on having a bath with Epson salts in. As I walked him back to granny's bedroom, she arrived home from work and he started to vomit, into a bucket this time. What a home coming for her.

As you can see, the theme
is Dr. Seuss this year.

When Greg arrived we went to the house we were staying at for the week-end. Caleb slept till morning. We all woke early, getting ready to take the girls to their creative writing course. Caleb was going to do the course but he had been chosen to be raft crew, and was not able to do it.

Sharna's friend, Michael

After we dropped Caleb off at scouts, Tracy and I took the girls to their writing course; then shopping; then back to the vlei. By this stage I was exhausted and it was't even 10.00 yet.

Ready for the
opening parade.

Tracy and I were talking and then started to stress because we couldn't find Hannah and Sharna. Jessica couldn't find them and neither could Greg! I ran to find Caleb and he laughed and said they were on the course. Well! It was all too much for me at this stage!

And they're off!
Good thing it's not a race.
They move rather slowly.

We fetched the girls, dropped them off and encouraged them with building the rafts. They got on the rafts at 2.00. Caleb was so happy!

We went to the house we were staying at and all fell asleep. I woke Sheth and Sharna at 7.15. We had dinner and then we got the nineteen footer ready to row over to the scouts. As we were leaving I got a call to come and fetch Caleb as the doctor had taken him off the raft. We rowed to the scouts to fetch him.

In position for their
night on the raft.

It was a beautiful evening and the moon was 13 percent larger than normal as it was the closest it had been to earth in nineteen years. It was the Autumn equinox, making it the highest tide. This was very bad for Japan!

We left Sharna with Hannah and went back home with Caleb. Back to sleep for him and Sheth. Greg fetched Sharna at 11. What a long day!

Sunday morning and we were back at the vlei. Hannah was excited to see us! She had enjoyed her camp. Hannah was ready to go home at 11.30 and we only left after prize giving, which was at 4.30.

I think this was the
winning team.

The winning team were Girl Guide Rangers. And the second team was a complete homeschool bunch of Girl Guide Rangers.

Extracurriculars

Extracurricular activities are a very interesting topic if you homeschool. Some say it is vital for socialization, others say that the less running around you do with the children, the better. I think both are very valid points!

I feel that when the children are young you should have a strong home rhythm, with as little going out as possible. Nature walks, celebrating our festivals and visiting family is what we enjoy as a family. We limit visiting family to once a month as it is a long drive and the children get exhausted. But we love our family visiting us. Family is a big part of our lives as they are special. We wish we saw Oma and my aunts and uncles more.

Now that the children are getting older we allow certain extracurriculars. Once a month they do woodwork.

This is a new thing this year and they are really enjoying it.

Caleb with his drawings
for the art badge

Hannah is a girl guide and Caleb a scout. Sheth is not interested in cubs at this stage.

They do pottery with a master potter. They love it so much that they are saving their money to buy their own wheels.

Swimming class 2011

They do swimming in summer. This has just stopped, thank goodness as it was all getting a bit much.

The other thing they do is horse riding. Caleb and Hannah have been doing lessons for about three years now. Sheth does random lessons when he feels like it. They won't be riding for the next year or so with their teacher, my good friend, as she is pregnant. They will be riding with friends though.

This may seem like a lot of extracurriculars, but the only reason they do so much is that:

a. Pottery is one block away from us.
b. Horse riding is one block away from us in the opposite direction.
c. Swimming is a ten minute drive away, but all three children do their lesson together and it is a once a week lesson. We only do this for twelve weeks of the year.

The guides preparing
for Kontiki

d. Girl guides and Scouts are thirty kilometers away. This is once a week on different days. I go with Hannah and Greg goes with Caleb. They love it so much that I would never want to give this up!
e. Caleb has been selected out of almost 90 children to be a Table Mountain National Park: Junior Ranger. We are so proud of him! He does this one Saturday a month. He gets picked up by bus and dropped off
again. This is very exciting as he had never gone on a bus before.

If you noticed the older two do the extracurriculars that are longish drives. Sheth stays home and doesn't go with.

I enjoy my free time when the children go to pottery. It gives me time to clean, read, watch a programme or do school preparation - whatever is the most important to me on that day.