Homeschooling, for the most part, is still relatively new here in the Philippines. Or should I say, is a “newly accepted” education alternative. A year before we officially jumped in the waters of homeschooling, we were bombarded by well-meaning relatives and loved ones who tried their best to talk us out of it. Although it has come to a point of being annoying at times, I had to keep in mind that they are of a totally different paradigm and it is never easy to make that shift in mindset.

Although my husband and I have the tendency on not thinking alike sometimes, this is something that I appreciate to bits that we have ONE MIND ON. It works for us the best, so far. But we are not saying that we will definitely be here for the long haul. We will go as we are led.

As we have said in our previous posts on homeschooling, it is a good alternative. But it clearly is not for everyone. It is important to factor in the child’s personality and the availability of the parent who is slated to supervise the homeschooling. It will be extra challenging if the homeschooling parent has a job. The marriage might suffer in that case, unless they device a ultra good system that will make it otherwise.

Leaving the corporate world is definitely one of the best leap of faith decisions that we will always be thankful for. Yes, I did enjoy being a business coordinator back then, plotting out investment strategies, even looking into heaps of disability applications day in and day out. But there is nothing like what I am doing now, for which I am thoroughly grateful for.

For updates on our family’s homeschooling journey, head on to Christian Homeschooler.

Whoever said that a home educator’s life is easy cannot be more wrong. Homeschooling isn’t a walk in the park. But it still is the road we chose to take anyway for a host of good reasons. Aside from our desire to be our son’s primary influencer, we also would love to see him maximize his potential in a way that, in our opinion, traditional school cannot do – at least in the duration of his formative years.

Our 4 year old son graduating with honors on his first year of preschool (March 2010)

Admittedly, parents go the extra mile for their children to reach their full potential and we consider this choice of ours, “our extra mile.” Let’s face it, children are born into this life with the pressure to be not just achievers but well-rounded individuals as well. It is but normal for parents to want their children explore their potential to the fullest. What parent would not want his child to achieve the best that he or she can, right?

Our son’s Most Number of Excellent Marks and Best in Sound Recognition awards

Truth be told, the ground work laid at home has a lot to do with a child’s success. For some, it might mean that a child has to take brain boosting supplements like Nutroplex. My son’s health is amongst the top of our priorities. This is also the reason why he has been taking brown rice since he was 6 month old, for its nutritional benefits. As much as we would like to serve the ideal sustenance at home, the fact of the matter is, brain boosting ingredients like Iron, Calcium, B Complex, magnesium, et. al are some of the nutrients they need that are often deficient in a typical diet.

Progress Chart, Goal Setting Pad and Congratulations Slip

One of the ground works that I speak of is teaching a child to set goals. Yes, as young as my son is, at 5 years old and an incoming First Grader at that, he is taught to enter on a printed card his pace objective for the day. This is then placed in front of his office table. The topmost pad (Goal Setting Sheet) in the above image is where our son writes the number of paces he sets for himself to finish during the day. Goal setting prepares the child for independence, responsibility and success. Even as he is trained to make this a habit, he will be less likely to have a hard time with more complex subjects as he grows up. And later on as he pursues whatever career path God has purposed for him to tread. One of the things that we believe in – Do not do for a child what he can do for himself. More often than not, he surprises us how he is able to do far more than we expect of him. Which reminds me a lot of the First Law of John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership – Law of the Lid.

The cardboard behind the pads is where we place the stars that mark his progress. It hangs on the wall at the side of his office table. The congratulations slip is what he is rewarded with whenever he has completed a set of pace. We sometimes exchange a reward for a congratulations slip. But we also do not do this on a regular basis to make sure his motives for doing his school work is in check.

These are just a few of the things that we have been doing in our homestead. Most of which, we have started long before we started homeschooling. This brings us back to emphasize the child’s need to be nutritionally capable. Supplement if you must. You cannot expect a child who is lacking in nutrition to achieve and mount up with wings like eagles. Education should focus not mainly on making sure that a student gets employed when they graduate, but for a person to live life to the full.

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by Nutroplex.

On to Grade 1 we go! Our son actually had to take the Post Test exam twice. The requirement was for the student to have a perfect score. So despite how pleased the teacher was with Jed acing his reading test, he has to practice more on his writing skill. After a couple of weeks of practice, he finally got a perfect score on every subject and now we are officially on to Grade/Level 1!

We are pleased that the Living Heritage Academy has this kind of exam that assess students if they are fit for the next level. The thing with homeschooling is that as my son’s Teacher Mama, it will be easy to find myself biased with my own assessment of my son. I like that it is not my call and there is this “quality control” measurement for the students.

I still am not sure if my being a grade school supervisor this time around will be of any difference from that when we were in our preschool program. We have yet to get hold of the manual and paces in the coming couple of weeks. I will know then and maybe I might just be able to squeeze some workout time for myself that I have long putting off for the longest time. Otherwise I might have no choice but to figure out for myself, “does p90x work?” I have some serious firming up some flabs to do.

Although we were pretty set on homeschooling our son around this time last year, we never thought we would enjoy it this much. Our 4 year old has been reading for at least a couple of months now. He started learning the letter sounds when he was 2 but now he is reading smoothly already.

In less than a month our son will graduate from SOT’s Preschool with Ace and Christi program and I cannot be more thrilled! Last Friday was his very first rehearsal for the graduation. He was able to practice with the other soon to graduate kids. Here is a clip from their rehearsal.

As for me, schedule has been busy, as usual.  But busy good, save for the fact that I have practically traded  a treadmill for a figure trimmer disc- but here I am still struggling at it. I have said that this year will put a stop to my sedentary lifestyle. I’m working at it, slowly but surely. The hubby has been busy as well. He is officially the director for this year’s upcoming Summer Camp, among other things.

Our son, Jed took his third unit test last Thursday and passed with flying colors– concluding our first quarter of this school year. He is now able to follow through the stories, instructions and all, his fine motor skills have improved significantly, too. We will officially start with the second quarter this coming Tuesday. Monday, being a non-working holiday.

“close your eyes” (this is what we always have him do to get him ready for the surprise)

It has been a while since we got him a real surprise.  This time he totally did not see it coming.  We got him a more durable RC.  All his previous ones are now broken and dysfunctional.  He so loves cars and there is nothing that will overwhelm him more than this. So we figured to get him something that he really wants, this time a more durable one.  It helped too that it was 50% off from the time we last saw it.

“no peeking!”

what glee!

presenting his new favorite toy!

getting started

Toy cars are hands down, Jed’s favorite. Next is playing in bounce houses. Just last Monday, he wanted to play in one in the mall we went to but there were just too many kids inside already.  Maybe next time when we chance upon one again.

We’re just so happy to see him breezing through his first year in school.  We love homeschooling and we see that he also does. I have so many things on queue to share and hope I will be able to do that soon.

My dear husband relieved me from my “teacher mama” role and played “teacher papa” for me today. What can I say, our son enjoyed it through and through. The hubby is definitely more animated than me, having all those skills he could readily pull off his sleeves. The same talent that he used when he played one of the puppeteers of RJ29 so many years ago.

My son and I are currently in the middle of our second week of homeschooling. We’re happy to report that we breezed through the first week and we actually enjoyed every minute of it. Okay, I have to admit that I have to do better at being a more animated storyteller/preschool teacher. But so far so good, we are reaping the benefits of the kind of curriculum School of Tomorrow has provided homeschooling families like ours.

One drawback of having your school in your home is the heat. Two days ago when temperature was probably more than 35 degrees Celsius, even when the stand fan was on high, steady and facing where we were, the humidity can still be very unfriendly. It would be nice to get our ceiling fans replaced or better yet get an air conditioner installed in the living room where we hold our classes. The only AC unit we have is in the master bedroom and so much so that I hold my office in the living room, as well as our homeschool classes, then it should make sense to install one in the future, if not soon. To think that summer is over, how much worse it would be when summer is here again, right? We’ll see, we’ll see..

The hubby took this picture above I think a couple of days back. Although our son has the tendency to be restless sometimes, it helps a lot to remind him about the visualized instructions for each lesson that we have.

Eye means “find” or “look”
Crayon means “color”
Finger means “trace,” “point,” or “place your finger on”
Marker means “draw”
Ear means “listen carefully”
Mouth means “say”
Stop sign means “do as Ace is doing” (the picture of Ace handing Miss Content a PACE will serve as the instruction to turn the PACE in to the supervisor for scoring)
Scissors means “cut”
Glue means “glue”
Question mark means “think”

I only had to explain the visualized instruction to him once on our first day and he got everything by heart. Of course, he already knows all these things and we are more or less just reviewing the lessons that he already knows. What he is definitely benefiting from Preschool with Ace and Christi program is the development of his fine motor skills. He knows his past and present tense way before we started homeschooling. He already even knows his numbers and can add simple numbers. What we are working on is his writing skills, which admittedly, I have taken for granted to focus on. But right now his lines are less crooked, circles are more of circles than otherwise.

The curriculum uses letter sounds and not letter names to teach toddlers, for which, I am really glad. This validates what we have done from the start. We are just beginning I know and it will be more fun as we go along. We are really grateful that the Lord has allowed for us to home school.

I officially got back to my 12 hour schedule in doing online tasks since early last week. It has been a while since my schedule dove down to 8 hours a day. So that only means two things: business is picking up and my health might be on the line again. Balance is the key. I have since learned this when I was too keen on taking up a lot of tasks than my body could actually handle. It was when my resistance went down to its all time low last year. Now I know better. Risking my health only means risking my family’s as well. In fact, I turned in earlier than usual last night — before midnight struck.

Free time is not something I usually get my hands on whenever I fancy. Especially now that I will soon get down to a rigid schedule when I start homeschooling our little guy when June comes. It would possibly mean that I would have practically zero time to do other things like watching my favorite tv series. It would be sweet if we have something like Time Warner Digital. I will be able to record favorite tv programs (which are not plenty) and watch them when I’m free. Simply because I cannot have the program’s time slot (even that of my favorite ones) enslave me and get me off my schedule. Their Time Warner Digital Cable bundle offer will be the most convenient. One bill for all three services: high speed internet, Time Warner Digital Phone and cable services.

Honestly, I literally hear the clock ticking on me. I would like to think that I am given as much task as I could handle now, because I would have no choice but to slow down when I start Jed with homeschool. As much as I am very thrilled for our son to start with school, I cannot help but wonder how I could keep off my laptop and attempt to juggle home school and work. Quality will be the one word that will keep me. Besides, I will have all the time from after lunch onwards to juggle my online tasks and house chores. That will be the time when superwoman will try to be better at what she has been doing all along.

I. Opening Activities (8:00 – 8:25)

II. Review of Previously Learned Letters ( 8:25 – 8:40)

III.  Animal Story/Review (8:40 – 9:00)

IV. Physical Development (9:00 – 9:15)

V. English/ Review/Master the Letter/ Word Building Review (9:15 – 9:35)

VI. Math  (9:35 – 9:45)

VII. Fruit Break (9:45 -10:00)

VIII. Character Building / Bible Story and Song (10:00 – 10:20)

IX. Scripture Memory (10:20 – 10:30)

X. Break (10:30 – 11:00)

XI. Science (11:00 – 11:15)

XII. Social Studies (11:15 – 11:30)

XIII. Quiet Time (11:30 – 11:45)

XIV. Final Activities (11:45 – 12:00)

While the hubby is so ready to go off to Tagaytay this coming Thursday, I cannot help but feel the need of just staying in the Metro and enjoy the easy traffic and non crowded malls. But then again, the humidity and rising temperature scream out for us to go enjoy the cool weather of Tagaytay. Baguio would have been a neat choice, except that it is a little too far. It is just nice that there is this closer alternative to Baguio. It is easier to be spontaneous and go there when time permits.

Whatever it is we decide to do on Thursday, we had to make sure all bank transactions are done. Wednesday is going to be the last banking day for this week.  Social security payments are done, the same with utility bills. Congestion is going to be inevitable, as expected.

As much as I do not want to burst the hubby’s bubble of having a quick getaway to Tagaytay, I hope to gently remind him of the pending things we need to do in the house. We still have not decided on which corner to use for our homeschooling base and how to go about its present state. I hope to be able to get all this settled before having our Bora getaway this coming June. I know it is still two months away, but I have always been prudent especially with things like these. It is hard for me to just sit down and do nothing. Cramming is not really my kind of thing. 

We’ll see, we’ll see. I will lovingly say my thoughts out loud tonight and if the hubby still wants to pursue Tagaytay, then it will be it.  Truth to tell, I so understand his need to relax and enjoy the holidays.  He has been so busy and really tired these past weeks because of the youth camp preparations.  And I also can make use of a better weather in Tagaytay.

Our family is looking forward to our vacation to Boracay this coming June. The little guy has started packing up his little beach shovel and other tools to make his sand castles. It is a blessing that we were able to avail of a hard to resist airfare. Hubs and I had a grand time during our honeymoon and by June, our little cutie pie Jed will be four years old, ready to relish the beauty of the beach of the island of Boracay.

We are currently choosing from two of the most recommended accommodation in Boracay. One is in Station 1 and the other in Station 2. I like the one is Station 2 better, because of its accessibility to just about everywhere. But the one in Station1 is the one that is wifi zone (3rd and 4th floors). I am actually leaving it up to the hubby.

The little guy’s tuition for the coming school year is already settled. When the majority of the expenses of the year is done, we will start saving up for a decent car. A second hand car, if things will not get better. Recession really took its toll on our online income. If we were still making as much as we did last year, we could already afford to buy a brand new one, without doubt. But I figured used cars aren’t all that bad, we really just have to hook ourselves up with a reputable seller like the people in England can via CarShop.co.uk. This is the site to look into if for quality used cars.

Meanwhile, I am now shifting in between unearthing white elephants to give away and to gather for the garage sale. I need all the space that we can get for our homeschooling corner/base here at home.