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.

Grade two maths

Sheth and I have been having a lot of fun doing maths, the last couple of weeks.

We have been recapping our four processes. We have heard stories about the processes. The monkey and the crocodile was for subtraction.

We heard about King Turnip Counter, which opened the door for us to count to 100 twice and then count backward from 100.  

We also drew big circles on our outside cement. We then numbered  them up to 40. Sheth walked on the numbers while counting. He walked backwards as he counted backwards. He then jumped as we recapped our 2, 5 and 10 times tables.  

Then to the book work! Sheth drew lily leaves in water, he numbered them and then coloured certain numbers for his skip counting. He has the sweetest turtle which fits on the leaves, so we make up games and play.

We then moved on to the 3 and 6 times tables.

I am teaching Waldorf maths and we use the odd word sheet from Math-U-See.

Sheth enjoys maths where Caleb never did. This is because Caleb did Math-U-See only: book work, book work, book work! No time to play and learn through play. If only I had found Waldorf home schooling sooner.

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.

Caleb's operation

It is the end of 2011. We are on holiday and we have gone away. We are at our land where we are building our rock house.

We are not building this time as we have come here because Caleb needed an operation. We could not have the operation done where we live as the Professor who did it practices in George and Knysna.

Scritch, scritch!

Caleb had the growth plates scraped away from the right tibia, fibula, and femur. His leg to hip is 6.5 cm longer on the right hand side compared to the left side.

He was booked in at the hospital on the 23 December at 6.30 in the morning and released the same day at about midday. This operation will slow down the growth on the right hand side so that the legs should even out more.

Caleb is not allowed to run, jump, or move around much for six weeks.

Watching movies on the
cousin's laptop - how boring!

It has been one week and we are having a huge problem already trying to keep him from moving around all over. He is using crutches and has definately mastered them! Three days ago he overdid it and was in extreme pain the whole night. The professor got quite upset with me as he does not like it when children are in pain. He would like us to take him swimming after about 2 weeks. This should help get rid of his energy and help heal his leg.