View From My House

View From My House
Sunset

Monday, February 21, 2011

So we're officially back to study!

Times they are a changin'

Well, this is new, the layout of blogger, and I must say I like it!!
Today was our official day back to study after a 3 month sabbatical.  The children took it easy today, by writing, but it's going to be hard work all around this year. 

I gave Dante and Kai a scenario to write about:  You are a leader of a lion pride.  You are tranquilised and wake up in a zoo.  How are you feeling what do you see.  Well, almost immediately, Dante turned on tears and didn't want to do any work at all.  It took him in the end 5 hours to do one paragraph, once he finally realised we were not joking and we expected him to get over it and begin working.  Kai, though not wanting to, did a good effort. 

Labyrinth put on hysterics about not being able to find the book we brought for her as an easy getting her into the groove.  I've written in my other blog about her learning disabilities?  Well, basically she has GLD (Global Learning Delay or an IQ of 72), auditory processing disorder, and this is why her learning has been so slow and frustrating.  She is now at school one day a week so she can access a speech pathologist and other specialists (if we can actually get her into one).  It's all been a little, ah... problematic, to say the least.

Raven and Monika, as always, love to do their work and did a fantastic effort.  Oozing pride.

I am also back at university, after sitting last semester out with major depression.  Somehow I snapped back out of it and I am back to some decent semblance of my former self.  The exciting part is I made up my own subject and I get to do it, only two other students were approved.  I am going to write a hypertext narrative about trains and death.  I am also doing German 101, as an easier subject, but I am keen to finally get qualified with it.  And finally Film: Style and Story for a really really easy subject, however it got upgraded somehow I found out today.  Whatever that means.  And I'll have my degree by the end of this year, and I'm weighing up what to do next.  I'll certainly have the numbers to get into honours, that might be fun OR really kick in my heels and be boring and have a post grad in education by the end of next year (you so can have a ed qualification in a year, I was shocked!)

Wouldn't that be a shocker for someone like me?  Die hard homeschooler selling out to work in an enemy camp!!  Well, I might for a while, but I would absolutely LOVE to work in alternative educational institions like Lambert, or Steiner, or even better found a FREE School!  That would be really fantastic, and I am so excited.  That would require money though, I imagine.  However, I stumbled onto a near perfect building method, so it could be fairly cheap to make the structure at very least.  Then grants and funding - but it usually comes with a price tag such as handing more control over to the funders.  So really, not so much a sell out, so!

We also did the mentos/coke experiment with the children.  That was interesting.  We will let them do it themselves at a later date.  Other changes to the homeschool: Raven is of age so he has to be officially working.  Monika is easily up to his standard, not saying he isn't bright, not at all.  He is.  She just shines, she recognises whole words now, and can say for example (we were watching a documentary of David Attenborough Life of Mammals) and she comes out with "This is what was happening in America pre-dinosaurs, wasn't it?"  This is typical for Monika.  It might not have been totally accurate, but it still shows through.

Oh, and my secret?  I've become a witch.  I have embraced my pagan heart, I've come home.