Our homeschooling update:

Wow, it’s been over a month since my last update on this blog!

Just as it was so tough deciding on whether to homeschool or not, the proper start was even tougher and keeping the proper day-to-day lessons are the toughest. Well, not really, when you as the teacher can implement your rules really well, without your student arguing with you or insisting her own way. However, that isn’t the smoothest case at all.

Triz acknowledges me as her teacher that she even calls me Teacher Recel when we are in our bedroom-turned-classroom. I didn’t tell her to call me such but she said she wants to, since she looks up to me as her own teacher. I think the Dad taught her that. Or may be I did, because I always tell her to address her Sabbath School Teacher as Teacher Doreen.

So yeah, it’s been a month now of being homeschoolers! It was a struggle at first to place ourselves in a straight 2 hours of lessons. Learning the ways, I realized that I shouldn’t be too concern of the idea that a Kindergartner should spend 30 minutes on one course and another 30 minutes on a different course, and so on and so forth. No, it doesn’t work at all. May be because our teaching is very personal, like one-on-one, and I am one very serious (read: strict) teacher. I learned that spending at least 5 minutes on one topic is good enough, and then take a break, and then proceed to the same topic or another, whatever is most appropriate.

There is a guideline in the Teacher’s Manual on what to do for the entire year of the curriculum but please don’t blame me if I didn’t follow it at all. I used my own way of teaching my daughter, after all, homeschooling is like that– letting the homeschooled explore and learn on his/her own most of the times. I see to it that we aren’t behind with all the lessons though.

In the Phonics course, we are already done with all five vowels and we are now on the 6th consonant of the alphabets. Triz is doing more and more excellent in her reading skills and I don’t let her hurry with the workbook. She can read all easy words now; she even has several favorite books to read all by herself.

In Learning with Numbers, I can say that Triz is pretty fast. She is now on addition: summing up to 10 which she finds to be so easy because even before we started schooling, the Dad already taught her this part of Arithmetic.

So far, I can say that our homeschooler is doing an excellent job. I haven’t completely gotten the hang of it yet, because I still couldn’t manage my time wisely between our classes and my personal tasks online. I spend most of my time during the day on our homeschooling session and I am still learning to allot the right amount of time for homeschooling, for household chores, and for my online tasks.

I feel like I am so left behind but I am doing these for my very own daughter so it’s a credit that could not be paid on the daughter’s learning’s part.

Since school has begun, we’ve only been to the Children’s Museum once.

Which is just okay because Triz finds staying at the museum and playing there is just the same to playing here at home and inventing so many things that are worth our amazement. That to me is a blend of good and not-so-good, but the goodness outweighs the not-so-good reasons which I myself sets up.

Anyway, we are moving next week to a new place, so our homeschooling will be a little affected. I will be setting up another bedroom and transform it to a classroom and it’s gonna be “some works for me since it is there where the remaining months of our Kindergarten schooling will be spent.

For now, thanks for stopping by and reading this update of our homeschooling journey!

We made it! Yay!

I did promise that the next time I shall update, Triz will already be enrolled and the decision of where to enroll her would already be solved.

After all those tedious tasks of evaluating and eventually deciding on where she should be listed, the search has finally come to an end. Upon intent of enrollment, in this homeschool program that we chose, the student is asked to answer a short test in order for the school admin to evaluate what the knowledge of the student is and where she will belong grade-level wise. After Triz answered all 75 questions(CAT Test), 25-item each course in Language, Phonics, and Mathematics, her perfect score revealed that she is knowledgeable enough to be in Second Grade.

But, she’s only 5 years old so we definitely will not let her become an instant 2nd Grader.

Advanced Kindergarten then is where she fits. It is designed for students who can already read full sentences, count to one hundred, and complete single-digit addition and subtraction problems, but may not be ready for first grade. She can do all those and more, and she can be a first grader already, but we won’t let her, because age and height-wise (LOL), she is too young and cute! Ha ha ha.

Four days after the enrollment, the packaged materials for the teacher and the student arrived in our doorstep. Kudos CLASS Press for the quick shipment!

And NO, I did not expect to receive a large box. Opening it gave me a mixed feeling of fear, anxiety, and excitement. I couldn’t believe a Kindergarten has all these materials to go through!

This Teacher’s Guide made me feel relaxed a bit. But going through all the books and the print-outs which I need to read and understand, the pressure got in, again!

The stuff inside the box– complete materials for the the homeschoolers!

Guess what, there were 18 books all in all in that package! And remember, my student is only a Kindergarten! So now, the pressure is all mine. Triz, upon seeing all the books which she understood are all hers to read and learn, exclaimed, “Mang, I don’t need to read all of these in one day or one week, do I? These are a lot!”

Poor baby! Lol.

These are all for now. Our formal class/instruction is not starting yet as I am not done yet making the lesson plan and familiarizing the the contents of all the materials that I will be discussing with and to my student. When Fall starts for the professor husband, that’s when I start our homeschooling, too, so that it’s fair for the three of us.

(Next update will be dealing with the materials that we have, my part and the AK’s (Advanced Kindergarten) part.)