homeschooling

I started this year intent on homeschooling the kids. Never mind that it was born out of necessity instead of an epiphanic revelation about the merits of homeschooling. Along the way, I got inducted into the elite homeschooling club and wore it like a badge of honor. Ok, not exactly but the important thing was that I was determined to last the year without relying on an institution.

The first 2 months, I diligently googled homeschooling, printed out worksheets, drew alphabets by hand (surely I deserve some kind of award for this) and spent half of my designated Grey’s Anatomy time preparing lessons. Which they completely ignored, by the way. They were more interested in crumpling my lesson plans into tiny balls and trying to see how many they could fit in my shirt (23, if you must know).

Until I got smart and reinvested my time more wisely back on the far more entertaining lives of McDreamy and McSteamy. Lesson time became a game of let’s-see-what-mommy-can-find-in-the-art-box.

So you guys probably know that on top of watching the kids, I also work from home on several projects because I’m compulsively masochistic. In recent months, work started getting crazy and before I knew it, I was operating on 4-hour sleeps a night.

You know those supermoms who do everything? Turns out, I’m so not one of them.

These days, even my impromptu lesson plans have completely gone to pieces and lesson time has become a game of let’s-see-what’s-on-tv. True story.

After long discussions with the husband, I’ve finally decided to call it quits on the homeschooling thing. I’m doing the school-schooling thing instead so I can do the home-chilling out thing. Now I can really focus on the extra-curricular activities like how to burp an entire song and the proper way to hold a PS3 controller, which to be honest, I’m so much better at.

I asked them what they learnt today and they said counting, so I gave them a little test. Kirsten went “2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 10!” and Tru was all “No, mei mei, it’s wrong, I teach you.” He counted right up to 17 and didn’t know when to stop but I’m giving them points for effort at least.

UPDATED: Results for the Pinnacle Wall Arts giveaway are out! Congrats to our 2 winners!

I’ve been trying to incorporate proper lessons into my homeschooling plans to supplement their playground/monkey face lessons, which although fun, don’t seem like the sort of thing that will get them into Harvard. By proper lessons, I mean the stuff that they’re required to learn in school like spelling and numbers and shapes. Pretty much stuff that they have absolutely no interest in.

Whenever it comes to these lessons, my kids have the attention span of a fish and 2 minutes into the lesson, they either ignore me or simply get up and walk off unceremoniously to go play with trains instead. So I’m constantly on the lookout for ways to make learning fun. Or as I like to call it, sneaking in a lesson so they think they’re playing but I’m actually teaching them something valuable.

I came across this brilliant idea from Jus and decided to try it on the kids. It’s a home-made sorting game where they can sort these cards according to shapes or colors. In one game, they learn shapes, colors and words. Bam, 3-lessons-in-1.

It’s very easy to make, even for someone as artistically challenged as I am. I printed out these shapes in different colors and cut them up into little cards for them to sort.

I actually wanted to laminate it but my laminating machine decided to eat up all my laminating pockets last night so I had to improvise by taping up the sides with magic tape. Tedious but it worked.

I was really surprised by how much the kids loved it. Well, Kirsten only wanted to sort the stars and she would scour the pile then go “TADA I GOT STAR!” I tried getting her to sort according to colors but she was all “no mommy, it’s wrong” and went for the stars instead. But at least she understood the concept of sorting, which was already a success.

Truett, as usual, was very focused on doing it right. He would peer at the stack of cards on the bed before carefully selecting each one as I shouted for random colors and shapes. He also stole my trademark finger-to-lip move whenever I’m pondering something intently like “hmm, let me see…”

Seriously, any game that makes him think this hard has got to be good.

Truett has been eyeing a wooden train set for several months now. He first saw one at The Better Toy Store, a Thomas train table set that cost a whopping $600. Usually, we try to indulge them since they don’t ask for toys very often but for that price, the train set better be made out of gold and not wood. I checked it many times and I was pretty certain it was all wood (not even wood-plated gold) so we told him there was no way we’d fork out $600 for several pieces of wood.

He didn’t kick up a fuss, but instead kissed the train and waved a longing goodbye before saying, “next time daddy buy train set for me.” That was smooth, and secretly, it made us want to get him the set even more.

So when we made our trip to Florida, we were on a mission to return with a wooden train set for the kids for a lot less than $600. After scouring every toy store in the Orlando vicinity, we decided on 2 different train sets (1 from Imaginarium and 1 from Circo) for about $40 USD. Since the tracks were compatible, I figured I’d mix them up to create a giant set for them.

Joining up the sets was a lot harder than it seemed. I didn’t have any instructions to follow so I had to freestyle most of the time. Also, Tru had a lot of demands like the track had to run under the bridge and I had to use up every piece of track and it had to be rectangular not weirdly shaped. After many hours trying to come up with a design, I finally settled on version 5.3.

The good thing is that it was a huge hit with the kids. It’s by far their favoritest toy and they’ve clocked more hours fiddling with this than any other toy they own. But the frustrating thing is that the playing inevitably degenerates into a Godzilla-destroying-city reenactment. Both kids will stomp on the pieces till they all come crashing down, then they will be all “OH NO TRAIN BROKEN…” and harass me till I rebuild it for them.

I’m thinking of mounting all the pieces on a table for them so I don’t have to keep rebuilding it again and again but I’m a little reluctant to glue all the pieces down permanently in case they want to change the design or add on more tracks in the future.

Any ideas on how I can do this?

I’ve never been particularly gifted in the cooking/baking department and it was not for a lack of trying. My dad was an excellent cook and my mom bakes some really delish cakes but I’ve come to consider myself to be more of the food taster sort. Although that’s mostly due to my discerning palate and not my lack of ability in the kitchen.

That’s not stopping me from introducing my kids to the fine art of culinary magic though. I hear skills like these can skip a generation so there’s a pretty good chance one of my kids will grow up to be the next Gordon Ramsey, minus the bad temper. Ok, I may have been watching too much Junior Masterchef but I can’t help it, kids that cook are SO CUTE.

So yesterday, I aproned them, cleared out my kitchen, dragged out my pots and basically gave them permission to make as big a mess as they could. Seriously, that’s what I said, “go ahead kids, make a mess” and they were all like ” YAYY MAKE A MESS!!”

They started  out stirring plastic fruits with a ladle, but then got bored very quickly and started bugging me for “real rice” to cook. The real rice was in fact a bag of barley grains (expired? does uncooked barley even expire?) I’ve kept in my fridge for the last 3 years but they obviously couldn’t tell the difference. Well, baby girl tried to eat a handful but made a face and spat it out.

They’ve probably still got a long way to go before knowing how to whip up a Boeuf Bourguignon, but they did learn several lessons from this little experience which I consider to be extremely valuable.

1. Real chefs wear aprons. Extra points for cute, bright yellow ones.

2. Raw barley tastes disgusting. Cooked barley is just a little less so.

3. It’s ok if you eventually can’t cook, you can always pay someone to do it.

4. Things usually get messy when you cook, that’s ok.

5. As with everything else, the important thing is to have fun.

Usually when I bathe the kids, I try to sneak in a biology lesson. That’s the most convenient time because it’s all out there when they shower so I’ll quiz them on the names of each body part. Since there’s 2 of them, I can use the real models at my disposal instead of flash cards. They get to point to each other’s eyes, chin, knees and toes on top of identifying their own. That’s a reason to have more than one kid right there.

During the course of these lessons, I’ve learnt a few things myself.

1. Their favorite body part is the elbow because it reminds them of their furry red friend from Sesame Street.

2. The chinny chin chin is their next favorite, just like the Three Little Pigs.

3. Penis is way easier to say than vagina. Vagina gets confused with pyjamas, china, virginia and a whole lot of other made up words.

4. Everyone wants to have a penis. And by everyone, I mean baby girl. At least once a day, she shouts “I got penis” and I have to say “no, you don’t, what you have is a vagina” and she’ll go “I got penis” even louder. This goes on for quite a while.

5. Their eyes are used to see, the nose to smell and the mouth to eat. The armpits? For tickling.