Homeschool FAQs

I decided to compile a common list of questions we often receive from those curious about homeschooling. For a full listing of posts on Homeschooling, click on Homeschooling Intro.

1. Is homeschooling legal in Singapore?

Yes, it is BUT you’ll have to apply for exemption from the Ministry of Education (MOE). You will have to personally write in MOE to request an exemption form.

I strongly recommend that you join the Singapore Homeschool Yahoo group for more information about homeschooling in Singapore. Once you are a member, you can log on and read the Compulsory Education Information Sheet kindly put together by Angie of Teaching Our Own under Files.

2. Was I a teacher before?

Nope. I did do relief teaching while waiting to enter university But, no, I do not have any teaching experience or training.

3. Must I be a qualified teacher to homeschool?

No. But MOE does look at your educational qualifications before they allow you to homeschool. This would be my incentive to aim for a university degree for the children in case they would like to homeschool their children

4. Does your husband teach any subject?

Ah! I wish! He’s the Maths whiz and ideally he is the best person to teach that to the children. However, we tried that and it did not work out. His work schedule is not fixed. And he often has night services or teaching and/or counselling sessions during the nights. So it is just not possible.

But if there are certain Maths questions that I am unable to explain clearly to the children, we tap into his expertise

5. I am not good in English/Maths/Chinese so how can I teach my child?

Well, there are many curricula available that can help you teach the subjects you are weak in. Look for that is appropriate and use it. As Lee Binz of The Home Scholar wrote – always invest in the subject you are weakest in.

And if the subject is really over your head, then send your child for tuition As I have mentioned before, there is no shame in doing so. Almost all students in public schools attend tuition for at least one subject, sometimes all four! And they are taught by teachers trained by MOE.

6. Do I need to send my child for tuition?

See above.

I sent my oldest for Maths and Science tuition at P6 to prepare him for PSLE. Maths because that is my weaker subject (my weakest is Chinese ). Science because the child would be penalised for not answering questions using certain key words that are deemed important by the powers that be Since I have no idea what the key words are, it is best that he learns it from an ex-MOE trained teacher. As for Chinese tuition, all our children start the year they turn 5 years old.

You don’t have to of course. But if there is a need, why not?

7. How Do I Homeschool my 2/3/4 yr old?

In our home, we do not use any formal curriculum until they reach Primary One. Before that, we use a mish mash of materials from Popular such as Take Off to Primary 1 series of books. Before the start of every school year I spend a few hours at Popular browsing through their workbooks to see which ones are relevant and helpful. For more on how we homeschool pre-school, you can check out my posts on Teaching our Toddlers and Teaching our Preschoolers.

8. What do I do with my baby/toddler while I homeschool my older child?

In the beginning, our baby/toddler often will be everywhere or cry when he sees me occupied with school and not him After a while, as with all routines, he gets used to it and learns to occupy himself, playing independently (now you see the importance of Teaching Your Children to Play on their Own?) once school starts.

Some moms manage their babies/toddlers by enlisting the help of their older children. This is something I do on and off since my older children do have work of their own to complete as well.

9. How do I choose a curriculum?

There are many ways to homeschool and there are many curricula out in the market. You choose one that you feel appeals to your child and you. Just bear in mind that you will make mistakes along the way. Just remember that just having many people rave about a certain curricula is no guarantee that it will work for you or your child.

The Homeschool group has a Homeschool Library where very generous homeschoolers have donated their used curriculum so that others get a chance to see the books in person instead of just via the website. Join the group and ask to browse the books.

10. Why do you use the local curriculum?

I have written about this before in various posts. But I shall answer it here in detail.

Based on the Compulsory Education rule, a homeschool child MUST sit for the PSLE the year he turns 12 and MUST clear the benchmark MOE sets (which is higher than for public-schooled kids). If the child fails to meet the benchmark he has to re-sit the exams. And keep on re-sitting it till he passes or when he reaches 15 years old, whichever comes first. If he still does not pass at 15, he will have to go back to school and take the exams again.

Isn’t that a terrible thing to put a child through? And a terrible waste of time too.

So we have decided that we must be serious about getting our children to clear the benchmark at their first try. Sure grades are not the end-all and be-all of education but in this case, if they don’t clear the benchmark, a whole year is wasted If they can’t despite all the help given (exam nerves, being sick) then of course they will have to re-sit the exams or even go into the school system just to get PSLE out of the way. But we would prefer that they clear it the first time and clear it as well as they can.

In order to achieve that, we decided to just use the local curriculum from the start and get them used to the local system slowly but early on.

Now, we did not start out this way. I started out using Bob Jones University Press and then Student of the Word curriculum. But I found it hard to ensure that the children were on par with the local curriculum.

As I have no extra time to cover the gaps, I decided it was counter-productive to use a US curriculum and then scramble like crazy to ensure that the children also know the local curriculum so that they can pass PSLE.

That is how we ended up using the local curriculum as the backbone of our homeschooling journey for the primary school years. Of course we do not stick strictly to the local curriculum only. We do use other curriculum to add on to what we are learning.

11. What does a typical homeschool day look like?

See my post on A Typical Day.

12. Do you homeschool in a room or at the dining/kitchen table?

When we first started, we had no space for a study - we lived in a 2 bedroom apartment with 4 children So we homeschooled in a corner of the house. Then when we moved to our current space, we still had no homeschool room. We would do school at the dining table and wherever the children could find space.

No, it was neither organised nor productive. A lot of time was spent looking for their books and stationery So we did a re-organisation of the house and used one of the rooms strictly as a homeschool room. Now each child has a desk and a cupboard. All their books go into the cupboard and all their stationery go onto their desk. Those free spirited amongst us must surely squirming to read that we are replicating school at home But this is what works for us.

No more mess? I wish! But at least now the mess is contained at their desk and cupboard, not all over the house!

But I still teach Bible and Science at the dining table. I also grade their work at the dining table because it is the biggest table in the house! Lol! I can grade one child’s work while the other child works on his/her corrections.

13. What about meals?

I do wish we do not have to eat, then my day would have less interruptions! But eat we must so Menu Planning is of great help here. Once planned, my brain is freed up to do other planning

Meals are simple stir fries or soups. Now that I have a dd that is learning how to cook she has been a tremendous help. I just have to tell her the dish we are having and she will do the food prep and cook it for me. Cool, eh?

14. What about housework?

Housework is done during the daytime. When we were living in a 2 bedroom apartment I had a part timer come in once a week and I would only do picking up and washing up daily. I almost never vacuumed or mopped. Horrors, right?

But now that there are more bodies in the house and we live in a 4 bedroom apartment, vacuuming needs to be done daily. I used to do it immediately after lunch so that I could shower and then put the younger ones to nap after that in the nice cool airconditioned room. I would only mop once a week unless some major accident occured

When we found out that God had blessed us with #7, we invested in the Roomba (for vacuuming) and the Scooba (for mopping). Best investment ever! Now the Roomba does the 3 bedrooms and 1 study room in the morning (ds #1 is in-charge of that), gets charged and does another round in the living, dining rooms and the kitchen while we have our dinner. Our Scooba is used 2 times a week.

At every term break I will haul out our Delphin, now upgraded to a Rainbow to vacuum all our mattresses and change the sheets.

Ironing is done once a week, on Fridays. And any major bulk cooking is done on Saturdays. Oh and toilets are washed weekly. Ds #1 does the daily wiping to keep them smelling nice and he is in charge also of washing the common toilet. I am training the other ds to wash the toilet downstairs so that I only have to do the one in our room. Delegate, delegate, delegate, I say!

15. What about socialisation?

What about it? Our  children are taught the norms of society by dh and me. We do not depend on an institution to do it for us.

They do mix with other children of various ages in Church and in their ballet, swimming or badminton  classes. And of course with other homeschoolers.

Yes, I know I have 7 children so they always have someone to talk to or play with. But remember, we didn’t start out with 7 children

If you are wondering about isolation, then I suggest that you bring your children out of the house more. Join enrichment activities that they are interested in. Or organise play dates at your home.

16. What about extra curricula activities or CCA as it is now known as?

This is a bummer because it just costs more as a homeschooler than as a public-schooled child. Homeschoolers are not allowed access to the Edusave money that the government gives out to every school going child. This money will be so helpful for subsidising a bit of our CCA

So now we have to pay for everything ourselves and on top of that, source for activities for each child that sometimes sends us scurrying all over the island. Dh and I have decided that if possible, the children choose an activity that they can all participate in. Otherwise it has to be an activity that they really, really like and show potential for And no, they do not get to have 3 – 4 activities each.

Swimming for us is a non-negotiable. So everyone has to learn it and they are only allowed to stop after attaining the Gold award. At this point in time we have 2 in ballet, 4 in roller blading, 2 in badminton and 3 in the homeschool choir. 2 of them just completed their Gold Award so their last lesson was in December 2011. I would like to add in art but at the moment I don’t see how it can be done.

Who brings them? Depending on his schedule, dh is usually the one who plays chauffeur On days that he can’t I do the ferrying and it is usually madness

17. Do you follow the school terms and holidays?

No. We school all year round. 4 weeks on and 1 week off. Except for our Christmas break where we take 2 weeks off. I chose to do it this way because if we school longer than 4 weeks, school becomes torturous. And we only take 1 week off because any longer than that, many of them forget what they have been taught. Besides, having to regain the momentum of school is tough when the school break is too long. Learnt this in the early years of homeschooling.

18. Is it hard to homeschool?

Yes, yes and yes! There is no way around it. Homeschooling is hard. It requires commitment and a certain amount of passion that is different from sending one’s child to public schools. Plus we have been so well trained by the school system that going against it and its expectations is tough.

There are many people watching and judging us the way they would never do a public-school child. So develop a thick skin and deal with it

Many times we have to do our own research and source for what we need while those in the system can just sit back and let the system do the work for them. It can get quite disheartening at times.

I am not saying that those in public schools face no challenges or are having an easy life. Their issues and challenges are different from homeschoolers. And not following the norms of society is always more difficult than following them.

But the rewards are great!

19. Do you ever feel like sending them back to school?

Yes, yes and yes! In the beginning of our homeschooling journey, that thought occured very often. Nowadays, less so.

Why?

I have realised that the issues I face with them that tempts me to send them into the school system will not be resolved by sending them to school. In fact, the same issues may become worse. And as I have told a friend before – the child that you want to pack off to school is probably the child that needs you to homeschool him

Even then, once in a while I still harbour thoughts of putting them in school just so that they know what a good life they have at home, especially when they complain that they have a lot of work to do! Hmpf!

20 How long are we planning to homeschool?

This question will be answered the way we answer people when they ask us how many children we plan to have. Only the Lord knows. He called us to this path and He will call us out when the time comes. So for now, we will press on and homeschool the children as long as possible.

A Typical Day

Or how homeschooling a bunch of children looks like in our home

I have written before about HOW we homeschool back when we had only 5 children. As always, things change, and now we have 7 children, aged 13 down to 2.5 years old. How we homeschool and even the curriculum we use have changed. How we do chores has also changed. In fact, how we parent has also changed

But to prevent this post being a mile long, I will just address homeschooling mainly and some chores. I have been thinking of writing this for a l-o-n-g time, since last year actually but I never got the time to do it. But recently a few people have been asking me how our days are like. So I thought that I should get off my butt and write it down.

Some background : This is our 8th year homeschooling. I have mentioned in my previous posts that we use our local curriculum for the preparation for PSLE. And we use Student of the Word (SOW) for our Bible. (See the Homeschooling category for more on our homeschooling experience.)

Before each school year starts (we start in August and if you want to know why, please read, “Homeschool Planning“). I do up my master planner. After which I transfer 4 weeks’ of work into each child’s individual planner.

Please also note that this is the way we homeschool now. We did not start out this way. For what we used to use and how we use it, check out the older Homeschooling posts.

Every morning upon waking, everyone showers and brushes his/her teeth. Then each child will take out his individual planner and check through the list of work to be completed. If he/she wakes up before me (which is almost the case ) he/she will work on his/her work immediately. Work is interrupted when breakfast is served, eaten and cleared up by the breakfast helper.

If however, a child wakes up after me, then he just eats his breakfast before starting on his work. Sometimes a child may decide to just play instead of work before breakfast. That is fine with me

Once the breakfast table is cleared, we start our Bible lessons using SOW with children aged 6 and above, or 5 if they are matured enough to understand and follow along. While this is going on, the 4 and 2 yr old will play by themselves. Then the children are excused and they either start their day’s work or continue from where they left off before breakfast.

I will then take the 4 yr old one-on-one. The 2 year old often sits in and observes what we are doing, sometimes offering the answers before big sister does

If during this time any of the older ones have a question for me, they will just have to wait. Afterall I only spend 30 minutes with the little ones. Once nursery school is over, they go back to their play.

Then I start helping those who need help and/or go through work that I was not able to do so the day before.

Usually this takes me to 12 noon. This is when I will start lunch preparations or give instructions to my chef-in-training what to prepare/cook. Lunch is served at 12:30pm.

On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I will usually read aloud to all at the lunch table (including the 2 yr old) a book that no one has read before. (Yes, I hide these books from my avid readers so that they will be all ears instead of spacing out on me or talking to each other when I am reading.) On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I eat in peace with my newspapers or iPhone

After lunch the two lunch helpers clear up – one to clear the table and sweep the floor, the other to wash the dishes. There is usually a little break for me here before I send the 2 youngest ones to nap. I usually take a short 10 to 30 minute nap too Then while she continues napping I will clear some emails or start dinner preparation.

Next comes snack time While the children are having their afternoon snack, I start grading their work. I always make myself feel better by grading and clearing the work of the younger ones first

On Mondays to Thursdays I do Science with the middle children, using the Exploring Creation series by Apologia Science. Once that is done, I attack the work of the older ones which require more brain power from me. Ahh!! This is where I often am tempted to drink another cup of caffeine-filled drink!

I try to go through any mistakes made on the same day so that the work is still fresh in their minds and so that mistakes will quickly be corrected instead of being discovered only at the end of the week. But I don’t always make it, of course

I now have a secret weapon in attacking the huge pile of Maths workbooks to be graded! My 13 year old who is great in Maths!

I pay him to mark them all! Then I go through the corrections with each child. Sometimes (quite often lately I am afraid) my brains are so fried I even need him to explain the Maths to his siblings!) But I do not allow him to teach them unless I say so.

Why?

Well, first of all, patience is not his strongest point And since his mathematically-wired brains sees numbers differently from the rest of us, his explanations sometimes serve to confuse them further. So I will make him explain it to me and then I explain it to them.

My homeschool day is officially over by 5pm. Interspersed with lots of interruptions, sometimes even a grocery trip or two!  The children’s day is over the moment they hand in their work box to me. Unless they have lots of corrections to do or they need to re-do certain pieces of work.

Once all that is done, I am free to prepare/cook dinner. Depending on what we are eating, all I may have to do is cook, preparation is done by the 13 year old. Otherwise, I do everything by myself.

While we have our dinner, our Roomba is usually tasked to vacuum the Living Area and Kitchen. Once dinner is over, it is brought to the Dining Area to finish up. It is our best purchase ever!

If dh is home, he helps me with the dishes and showers the 2 young ones. Otherwise, I do that too. By 9pm, everyone is rounded up and we start our bedtime routine. We read a chapter from the Bible, have our prayers and the middle children are packed off to bed. The 2 older ones are allowed to stay up because well, they are older  The  2 younger ones are allowed to stay up because they still take their naps. By 10pm, this group are also packed off to bed and peace and silence reigns in the house finally!

I either clear work that I could not clear in the day – usually my 13 yr old’s work which requires me to read and absorb stuff that I haven’t paid any attention to for a l-o-n-g time!

This is also the time when I clear my emails, read FB or do whatever internet research I want/need to do. Bedtime for me is unfortunately more often than not at 2am though I try very hard to sleep by 1am.

Come the next day, the circus begins its show all over again

This, of course, is generally what happens here but there are always interruptions, unplanned outings, visits from friends, etc that will throw us off our usual routine but it is fine as long as these interruptions are not a daily occurence coz then I can’t keep up with the grading of the schoolwork

So there you go, a typical day in our house.

Homeschooling Help For The New Year

For encouragement you may wish to Get your free copy of the E-Book: The New School Year from the people of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine.

I used to subscribe to the One-year international print subscription. Then I switched to the The Old Schoolhouse(TM) Magazine Digital Edition for one year. But I actually prefer to have a hard copy to flip through, especially when I have to nurse a certain someone to sleep But then comes the problem of what to do with the magazines after I am done with them! Hmmm….

And as you are checking them out, do not forget to check the Dollar Days sales at the store. I finally caved in and purchased The Schoolhouse Planner. It’s going at US$10 instead of the usual US$39!

 

* I am an affiliate of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine.

PSLE Preparations

* Big disclaimer here : I am only sharing what we did. It is by no means the reason why ds did well for his PSLE. We can only give glory to God for his results. We are no experts having only graduated 1 out of 7 children from PSLE But since a few people have asked, I just thought it would be nice to just share. Those who have better ideas and methods, do comment so that everyone can gain from each other’s generosity.

My motto for our homeschooling journey is, “Slow and steady wins the race”. Work done consistently and regularly is better than huge chunks of work done sporadically.

Curriculum used

As mentioned previously, we follow MOE’s syllabus and textbooks very closely from they moment they start Primary One. Especially for Maths, Science and Chinese. Why? Doing it this way ensures that the children and I are familiar with the local syllabus and requirements.

I know many other homeschooling moms use American curriculum but in the final year have to make sure that their child is familiar with the local stuff as well as fill in the gaps that the curriculum did not cover. With 7 children to teach, I simply do not have the time to do this. I’d rather take the “boring” route

So besides Bibe and English, which we use Student of the Word (SOW), I used all of MOE‘s recommended textbooks for Maths, Science and Chinese. Once we finish going through the textbooks, I hit  Popular Bookstore  to suss out assessment books that I think are helpful.

Here are the titles we have used and like :

Science : Janet Sim’s books (Challenging Science and 3-in-1 series).

Maths : Problem Solving Processes by Fabian Ng, Maths Companion by Andrew Er, Challenging 3-in-1 Maths by  Dawn Tai and Fan-Maths by Li Fang Lan.

English : Challenging 4-in-1 English and Excel in Comprehension.

Then there are the assessment books we used and didn’t like But I used them all the same just to get them used to doing daily work. Remember – slow and steady wins the race

Then there’s reading. I would pick a book that I think is appropriate and make him read me a chapter or I read him a chapter 1 to 2 times per week. He then narrates it back to me (a la Charlotte Mason but not quite ). I had previously assumed that he would have understood the passage read since he was able to narrate it back to me. But it was not so in our experience. Or maybe I am doing it wrong? Anyhow, I still did it the “old fashioned way” and would ask him questions pertaining to the passage just to make sure that he understands.

Tuition*

Yes, we do use tuition as one of our tools in our homeschool and definitely for our PSLE preparations. We do not see why homeschoolers need to shy away from tuition. We do not have to do everything ourselves just because we are homeschoolers. More power to you if you can teach all subjects without external help. But in our case, we needed and wanted the extra help. Tuition is just a tool in our homeschool. Just like how TV can be a very useful tool when you have lots of little ones at home

All the children start Chinese tuition at age 5 and I have largely the Chinese tutor to thank for doing a good job with them. But we did it on our own for the other 3 subjects until the end of last year.

I had come to realise that I was not able to teach ds how to answer his Science Paper 2 questions. Often times it is not that he did not know the answer but that he wasn’t answering it the way he should. Well, I did not know the way he should be answering the questions either since I am not MOE trained nor do I have any Science teacher friends. The solution was tuition. He would go and be taught the way! It would be so silly to lose marks just because we are not answering questions the way the powers that be would like them to be answered, isn’t it?

As for Maths, although I actually took double maths in secondary school and got As in them, I am largely a terrible Maths student. Don’t ask me how I got my As! So there was no way I could help him in Maths by the time he hit Primary 5. Dh is the Maths expert but sadly his schedule does not permit him to teach ds. He doesn’t even have time to mark his work So again the solution is tuition.

And God provided.

A friend recommended the Science tuition teacher she was using for her sons. Thank you, Sam! And guess what? The tutor taught from the bomb shelter unit at the next block to ours! And the Science tutor worked with a Maths tutor! How cool is the providence of God? Ds could just go to and come back from Maths and Science tuition by himself! It wouldn’t interrupt my schedule with the younger ones at all!

Daily Schedule

And here’s our daily schedule for all school aged children : After breakfast, we do our Bible (SOW for the older ones). Then we proceed to complete the work assigned each day, covering all 4 subjects except Science which is only done Mondays to Thursdays. They all work independently, coming to me only if they do not understand what is required. Usually all work is completed before lunch and I will grade their work in the afternoon. I will then go through their mistakes and correct/teach what they do not understand. Then we would be done for the day. 

This schedule is adhered to rain or shine except for their birthdays and public holidays. We school 4 weeks and take 1 week off. All year round, except for Christmas (we take 2 weeks off) and Chinese New Year (we take 1 week off).

This way, we do not forget too much of what we have learnt and we do not have to rev up our engines too hard to get re-started after each break

Test Papers

By the time June rolled around, we had finished up all our text and assessment books. So it was time to pull out the Top Schools’ Exam Papers to practice. We did a test paper and review daily. (Edited : This is only for ds, not the rest of the children and only for the PSLE year.)

Oral and Listening Comprehension

We only practiced this formally with a book** I found in Popular (sorry, I can’t remember the title since I forgot to file it in my files ) after June since we have been doing read alouds regularly. Again, there is a format for doing this. One can’t just randomly start talking about the picture given And the book did teach it. I hope I would be able to find it when it is time for the next child to take PSLE!

That’s it. I don’t think I have anything more to share. If there is something you want to know which I did not touch on, do comment or email me and if I know the answer I will let you know.

* Edited : I realised I wasn’t clear about this – we only did Maths and Science tuition with ds this year as part of his PSLE preparations. Before that we were plodding on on our own, using the assessment books I listed.

** The book is called Just Oral Practice and Just Listening Comprehension. It is a 2-in-1 book. The book is divided into 2 with half concentrating on Oral and the other half on Listening Comprehension.

It’s Pure Hard Work

I have been asked, “So how do you manage?” more times than I care for. In the beginning I would try to share but more often than not, I would see a glazed look coming over their faces if I shared too many details or mentioned the word God or Jesus in the sentence

It recently dawned upon me that while many may be curious about how we live our lives and “manage” it without any outside help, most are really not interested in the details. They just want to know the magic spell I chant to get things done so that they too can get it all done Actually, I think everyone, including me, wants to know the magic spell to chant to get us from here to there in the fastest possible way and with the least possible exertion.

This applies to homeschooling, home organisation and even our spiritual walk.

Homeschooling – the moment we hear of a family who has churned out a successful homeschooler, we want to go and read about them or better still, meet up with them. And ask them the same old questions – what curriculum did they use, did they engage a tutor? Who is the tutor, etc…

Home organisation - we devour books after books, or blogs after blogs in today’s world , about reducing clutter and try to absorb all the how-tos of keeping our house neat and tidy. Or we participate in forums and ask more questions.

Our spiritual walk - we read and ask and discuss to death about hearing from God or knowing God’s will or growing closer to God.

But there is no magic spell.

Successful homeschooling, home organisation and a close walk with God are the result of pure hard work coupled with lots and lots of prayer.

The homeschooling family has put in the requisite amount of hard work to get to where they are. The organised and lovely home is the result of mom putting in the required hard work to either do it herself (when her children are younger) or train her children to be helpers and not just consumers in the family. The person who hears from God and is walking in such closeness to Him has disciplined herself to regularly spend time with Him and to read His Word so that she is intune with Him.

Let’s be blunt here – no amount of talking and reading about something is going to get us there. And…no amount of praying is going to get our work done either! Yes, we should pray, we should do our research and even talk to those who have gone ahead of us. But in the end we still have to DO what we have prayed, read and learnt.

No amount of praying or reading alone is going to get us a neat and tidy house. We’ve got to actually declutter and clean – and regularly too! Our house doesn’t magically tidy tself up coz we prayed for a clean house. And we definitely will not grow closer to God just because we went to a conference to listen to an anointed speaker.

But I guess no one really wants to hear that. And that is probably why conferences on successful living are always well attended. People are always looking out and hoping that the next speaker will give them that magic spell that will allow them to get from where they are to where they want to be – all in an instant, without breaking into a sweat.

But the good news for those who are willing to work hard is this : coupled with prayer, the rewards will come – be it a spiritual or physical issue. For example, if we pray for God’s help to let go of things as we declutter, the clutter will be gone. Our home will be neater and more organised. As for hearing God and knowing His will? He promises in His Word, ”You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:13)

Yes, it is pure hard work but oh! the rewards are so worth it. Don’t give up. Don’t be paralysed with fear at the amount of work to be done. Pray for strength and wisdom on how to handle it and then just DO it!

May this bless you and encourage you.

Teaching Handwriting

Teaching our children to write legibly is important even though the world is increasingly dependent on the computer and mobile phones to communicate

So far, we have 5 children who are able to push pen to paper. But I have yet to try any formal handwriting curriculum or programmes. This is not meant as a boast but to simply share that it is possible to teach them to write legibly without any fancy programmes.

Teaching our children to write often starts with them learning how to print out their names. I usually start this after they turn 3, when they have more control over their small motor skills and when they show great interest in doodling.

I used to think that it didn’t matter how they formed their letters and that it could be corrected later on. But I have since changed my mind It is indeed better to learn the correct way to form the letters from the get go. It is like learning the correct strokes for Chinese characters.

Teaching them how to hold their pencils/pens correctly is also important but alas! I have failed! They start out holding it in the correct way and then somewhere along the line when I was not paying attention, they sort of develop their own incorrect grip. The one child who holds her pencil/pen correctly is the one who used to hold her pencil like a calligraphy brush! She actually needed a pencil grip to correct her grip. She is now the only one holding her pencil correctly. I suppose I have to keep an eagle eye to make sure she doesn’t change her grip! But I digress!

Since I don’t follow any formal curriculum, I make up our own rules as we go along. Just to let you know in case you are wondering what scientific studiens I have done in developing our family’s handwriting philosophy

When they first start writing, I don’t insist that their letters be formed perfectly – as in – all the letters must be in the correct size and be on the line. I just let them write. Then once they are confident in forming their letters without any help, I would gently point out to them how each letter should sit on a 3-lined writing paper.

I either buy the 3-lined notebooks from Popular or I draw my own on a plain jotter book. I will then “dot out” the letters for the child to trace over. I know some moms use yellow pencil to write out the letters or words for the child to trace over it in black. But I find yellow very tiring for my eyes And since already 4 out of 7 chilren wear spectacles, I prefer to reduce any possible eye strain.

And that’s it. They learn how to write out their letters – capital and small letters. Oh and I just make them write about 5 times per letter.

What about cursive letters? I teach them when they are about 6 or 7, depending on their interest and their ability to write their mauscript letters well. I can’t for the life of me remember when I was taught cursive writing in school and horror of horrors, I found out that they no longer teach cursive writing in our schools! What a pity I say.

To teach cursive writing, I get a little lazier or more hardworking – depending on which way you want to look at it I guess. I go to Handwriting For Kids which provides free handwiting (cursive and manuscript) worksheets that you can print out. They have loads of other worksheets as well. There’re also worksheets from Donna Young, THE go to site for worksheets/planners of any kind!

I also use Writing Wizard which allows you to type in whatever you want your child to copy or write. I use this to type out our memory verse for the week and ask the child to copy it out for practice. Once they get the hang of linking the letters, I  stop using the worsheets.

Then it’s just practice all the way.

Hope this helps those of you who do not wish to spend a lot of money to teach your child how to write beautifully. But er…while I use the same method to teach all my children, some just write better than others!

Teaching Our Children to Read

As our 5th child is slowly but surely taking off reading independently, I thought it would be nice to share with you how I have taught the children to read.

I have always started them off by teaching them the names of the letters of the alphabet. If you follow the phonics experts, they say never to do that Instead the sounds of the alphabet should be taught first. But I only teach them the sounds the letters make after they have mastered the names. Just as I would teach them the sounds animals make. There is no confusion.

Blending is more of a challenge though. Some children catch it effortlessly but others need a lot more practice. But I don’t push it. No pressure. It is better to have a child who wants to read and is eager to pick it up than a reluctant child.

And once they get blending they are usually off and running They start reading anything and everything. Cereal boxes, newspaper headlines, shop signs, lyrics of worship songs in church, etc…

Sounds easy enough right? It usually is if you catch their teachable moments. As I have written in my post on Potty Training, some things are worth waiting for instead of pushing it through.

Our experience

By virtue of being the first born and having lots more mommy time plus an inclination and interest to learn, our first born learnt to read at 21 months with no formal curriculum.

By the time he went to pre-school (before I learnt of homeschooling) he was reading independently. Our second born was reading simple words when she entered the same pre-school. Again with no curriculum. Both of them seemed to be natural readers. Their school used the Zoophonics programme.

By the time it was our third child’s turn to learn to read, we had pulled the children out of school and were on our homeschool adventure. This time round, I thought I should have a formal curriculum. So I did my research and settled upon using Christ Centered Curriculum (CCC). I used it exclusively for both our third and fourth child.

It is, however, a very intensive programme and I found that I could not keep up with it. I ended up using mostly the flashcards and phonics charts only. But I made sure we went through the drills daily. Once they mastered the sounds and could blend, I stopped the programme. We went straight to simple readers. And that was it

With our 5th child, I went through the drills with her as well when she was 3. Once she was quite familiar with them, I introduced Explode the Code books (available locally from The Home Library) to her and she loves it. In just 4 months, she could blend! And now she is the one sitting next to me at the breakfast table reading off newspaper headlines

I had also purchased Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons but it just didn’t work for me. I didn’t even try it on the kids. I just found all the instructions very confusing. I much prefer the straightforward methods of ETC and CCC.

Teaching our children to read has been one major highlight in our homeschool adventure. It is extremely gratifying to be the one seeing the light go on in their heads as they figure out that they can read. A whole new world is opened up for them and I get to be part of that experience. How cool is that?

Once they can read, they use BOB books and the Oxford Reading Tree readers to practice and then slowly progress to more difficult books. We were blessed with these books and have found them very suitable for our emerging readers. Just watch out for toddlers who keep wanting to colour the black and white BOB books!

One last note : As they learn to read, it is equally important for them to comprehend what they are reading. Otherwise, it is a meangingless exercise.

How We Use SOW

I guess this post should have been posted long ago. There have been so many people writing and asking me about SOW or Student of The Word and how we use it in our homeschooling. I have hesitated in writing since I don’t want to duplicate what is already written on the SOW website.

An overview of the curriculum can be found under Attributes of SOW. Do read that.

I did write about it briefly in Doing Devotionals with the Children and Homeschool Planning. But I guess a more detailed post is required

It is, in a nutshell, a 6 year course of study which you repeat, making it a complete 12-year programme (excluding Maths), taking you through the Bible twice.

Why would one want to repeat a 6-year course all over again, you may ask? Simple. What you take away when you are 7 years old is different when you are 13. Be it for Bible, History or Science. Also the research one does with mom when one is 7 is different when one does it independently when one is 13.

SOW tries to tie in the other subjects (History, Science, Creative Writing, etc) with the Bible reading for each week. Sometimes it coincides perfectly Eg. Genesis with Creation for Science. Sometimes it doesn’t but it really doesn’t matter.

In our 1st two years, I used it as it is. Following their scope and sequence and the books they recommend, except for Phonics since we had been using successfully the phonics programme from Christ-Centered Curriculum. But our family grew! And it became very hard on me to pre-prepare the lessons required.

One thing you must take note about the SOW curriculum is that it doesn’t have any answer key or a Teacher’s Manual. With the Bible portion this is helpful as it then non-denominational. However, with the other subjects, it can get quite challenging especially if you are not strong in that subject. It means you have to do a lot more work to find the answers.

Also while it starts out with reading one chapter a week, the momentum picks up quite rapidly in the later years where, for example, you have to cover the Book of Proverbs in one week!

So what I did was to adapt it to our family and our needs. This is what I did :

• do just the Bible portion (Outline, Topic, Character, Commentary).
• slow down the pace by reading no more than 4 – 5 chapters a week. This means I came up with my own Bible schedule instead.
• use just the Creative Writing and Literature portion only (we even dropped this when preparing for Baby #7′s arrival).

Bible

I love, love, love the Bible portion of SOW. Even if I didn’t use the rest of the curriculum, I would still pay for this portion. It is the best bible curriculum we have used thus far.

Why? For one, it goes through the entire Bible in detail. This is how it is laid out. Each week, one reads a scheduled portion of the Bible (Eg Genesis Ch 1 – 4). Then you would be required to do the following to study the bible in detail :

a) OUTLINE (Mondays)

Each week’s reading asks that you give an OUTLINE of the reading in 4 main points. You summarise the chapters read into just 4 main points. Now you understand why you will miss out much if you rush through the assigned chapters.

b) TOPIC (Tuesdays)

A TOPIC of the week based on the week’s reading is given. You are to provide the definition of the topic chosen (eg. jealousy, temptation, etc) and write 4 main points about it. You are to also provide a Scripture Verse that refers to the topic.

c) CHARACTER (Wednesdays)

One CHARACTER from the week’s reading is chosen and you are to decide if this character is godly or not and to explain the basis of your decision. You would also have to list out the facts pertaining to the character. A Scripture Verse that relates to the character is chosen.

d) SETTING (Thursdays)

There is also a SETTING worksheet that you can do but which I skip since I am not great with Geography and am not focusing on that for the moment. It outlines the location that the week’s reading is set in.

e) COMMENTARY (Fridays)

This gives an overview of the entire week’s lesson. You summarise what you have learnt about God, Man, satan and the main lesson gleaned from the study. Students are required to give a Scripture Verse that summarises the lesson learnt.

And that’s it for the Bible portion. It teaches you how to study the Bible and to think it through. If you do this diligently, week-after-week, you will definitely learn a lot about the Bible and God. For the parts that you are unsure about or are totally lost, you are then encouraged you to seek out commentaries that shed light on it. Better still if your child can do the research for himself.

Isn’t great? You, the teacher learn alongside your child and the result is that both are gleaning from God’s Word, which we know never returns to Him

“void, But it shall accomplish what He pleases” Is 55:11

Prayer Letters

This has been a much raved about part of SOW. It teaches one how to pray according to :

• P – petition
• R – repentance
• A – ask
• Y – yield
• S – supplication

However, I found that our children began to pray in a rote-like manner So I have stopped that and have just asked that they pray just before their bedtime. But others have had better success with it. So it all depends on your child/ren.

SOW also mentions doing both morning and evening devotions. If it makes you feel any better, we don’t. But I do a short devotional with the children after lunch before we end the day’s school. When SOW focuses on the Old Testament, we do our devotionals based on the books of the New Testament. Then we swop over.

Creative Writing

The topics SOW gives are very thought provoking. Examples include Compare the OT & NT Temple of God, to write a Biography of A Christian Martyr, to Explain How we should pray, etc…

Again, there are no answer keys to this portion as with the rest of SOW. There are questions for you to lead your child as he writes but no right or wrong answer. How detailed you want the child to write and research is up to you.

Literature

Although SOW gives a recommended reading list, you are free to use whatever books/poems you have on hand. This way, you don’t have to spend a bomb acquiring too many books. Under Literature, the child is taught how to do a Book Review, analyse a poem and/or biography.

Housekeeping details

You have to order Year 1 of SOW regardless of the age of your child. You should start with it because it lays the foundation for you and the child. Year 1 does not mean Grade 1

The Year 1 package (Teacher and Resource Editions) comes with a CD and a pre-printed set of worksheets. This allows you the option of printing out as many copies as you wish off your computer or to photocopy as many copies as you wish, whichever is more cost efficient for your family.

In order to keep things organised for me, I created a SOW Booklet for each child. This way, papers are no longer flying around or getting lost. Previously each child would hand me his/her piece of worksheet to grade and then it would invariably get lost instead of getting filed! Grrr….

Teaching the Younger Ones

Although the curriculum states that it can be used from Kindergarten level (6 years old), I strongly suggest that you wait till your child is older. Unless you are very sure of his maturity, reading and comprehension ability.

Otherwise, you’ll be doing a lot of summarising and many things will go over his head. That can be rather off-putting for mom (heavy burden on mom to keep simplifying and summarising) and child (too heavy going).

From Kindergarten to Grade 6, the child is allowed to draw rather than write in his worksheets. In the beginning that’s how we start off. As the child gets used to the format of the lessons, I start making them copy out what I write on the whiteboard.

After 6 months of doing this consistently, my 6 and 7 year olds are catching on and are even eager to share with me what they have learnt during the Commentary session. And once when I was not able to teach, my oldest child (10.5) was able to actually lead them in a lesson all by himself! I was most definitely pleasantly surprised.

Few words of caution

Do not expect to know how to use SOW immediately. It is unlike most curriculum out in the market. Do hang around the SOW Boards as well as the SOW Yahoo Group for a better feel of the curriculum.

And once you received your package, do not give up because it seems too confusing. Keep on reading and keep on asking questions. And do the 1st few lessons yourself. Once you do that, things will start falling into place.

If your child has been using another curriculum before, expect some resistance in the beginning. He will have to get used to a lot more thinking for his answers than he was used to!

As I have mentioned before under Homeschool Planning, I would not recommend using this solely to prepare your child for our Singapore school system unless he is not required to sit for the PSLE exams. You would need to supplement with local textbooks and assessment books to keep up-to-date with the local exam requirements.

I think that is about it. If you have any questions, feel free to post it here and I’ll try my best to answer the. Otherwise, you can check out the SOW Board or the SOW Yahoo Group. They have been really helpful for me.

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My personal musings can be found at Building An Ark in Singapore.

Getting Ready for Baby’s Arrival

Here we go again. As I pass the 36th week of this pregnancy, I am eagerly hoping that the baby won’t be late again! But I am also trying real hard not to hold my breath over it since the last 3 babies came 5 days, 3 days and 6 days past their EDD.

In order to distract myself, I have started to slowly prepare myself and the children for the baby’s arrival. Slowly because I am operating on a very low energy mode here

Starting this week, I will be doing the stuff I wrote about HERE and HERE.

But there are other things I need to do this time round as well.

Homeschooling

This year, we are homeschooling 3 out of the 6 children in the primary level (P1, P3 & P5). So I need to be very diligent in making sure everyone (me included!) finish what I have planned for our homeschoolin the next 3 weeks so that I won’t have a backlog of stuff staring at me after I birth.

We won’t be doing any formal school in March and April. But I am planning to do more read-alouds(History & Science specifically) with them. That is, if I am not dozing off in the middle of the day! I am not being ambitious here. If I can do just one hour of reading a day (probably split up into many instalments!) I would be happy.

Why am I doing this? I have learnt from past experience that too much free and play time gets everyone into trouble!

Home Management

I just started a final round of de-cluttering (very little left- whew!) of the entire house, room-by-room, 2 weeks ago. This serves 2 purposes – it removes all the eyesores (piles of papers on my table, stacks of toys all over the house, etc) and it will help the children when they do their chores.

Meanwhile, baby clothes, linens, cloth diapers, nursing clothes, mama pads, nursing pads all need to be pulled out of their storage vacuum bags to be washed and packed into their designated spots.

Confinement

I have also finalised my menu plan and my grocery list. It is just a simple 2 week menu plan that will be rotated from now until I feel bored or have more energy to think. For the immediate post partum period where we’ll be too busy to think about grocery shopping, I have already frozen food for Week 1 and will be freezing Week 2′s meal this week.

I am not freezing cooked food as I think most cooked Chinese food don’t freeze well. Instead I have just frozen the portion required for each meal and packed them into freezer boxes with their marinades. I will then pull the relevant boxes out to thaw and cook on the actual day itself. And since I do not follow any traditional confinement food taboos, this makes life easier on me

Pregnancy

As I approach the tail end of the pregnancy, these are the things I have done to prepare for labour and delivery.

Drinking my Pregnancy Tea

SinceI hit the 3rd trimester, I have been diligently drinking my Red Raspberry and Nettle tea.

Taking my vitamin supplements

I have also increased my intake of Vitamin C and started taking garlic and acidophilus to boost my immune system and to prevent an onset of Group B Strep especially since I am not going to be tested.

Taking it slow

Yes, despite all the things I need and want to get done before baby’s grand entrance, I am forcing myself to take it slow. Kinda contradictory huh?

What I have done is to spread out all the stuff that need to be done slowly over the course of the next 3 to 4 weeks. The important things that must be accomplished before the baby arrives have been scheduled for the next 2 weeks. The rest can be left undone if the baby should decide to come earlier.

Birth Plan

I have also submitted my birth plan* to my doctor so that we are in agreement about how I want the labour and delivery to go.

 

I generally have an extra burst of energy towards the end of each pregnancy (like now ) that allows me to finish up tying all the loose ends but surprisingly, this time round, my energy level is really low and I have to literally force myself to get these basic things done

I hope this post gives other moms-to-be some ideas on how they would like to prepare themselves for the labour and delivery. And if you feel like scrubbing the walls or ironing everything in sight, good for you!

* I’ll be posting my Birth Plan in the next few days. Keep a lookout for it!

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For my personal musings, visit Building An Ark in Singapore

Homeschool Planning

Just in case you didn’t know, we school all year round and we usually start our school in August and finish in July. I decided to follow this format in view of the fact that we are often blessed with a pregnancy and baby every one-and-a-half years So if we follow the normal Singapore system, I’d be very stressed to finish all that is required.

Once the school year has ended in July, I’d take 2 to 3 weeks off to plan for the next school year. This plan is obviously not set in stone. I would review it in December and tweak the necessary kinks.

So here we are in December and since I was on the roll from the last post about planners I thought I should share how I plan our homeschool.

A word about curriculum used and subjects covered in our homeschool :

From aged 6 onwards all children will use Student of the Word for our Bible study and English. Then, once they reach primary school level (aged 7 and above), we follow the Ministry of Education’s syllabus for Maths, Science and Chinese.

Why?

Simple answer – in order to homescchool and be exempted from the Compulsory Education Law, we need to send our children to sit for the PSLE exams when they reach 12 years old.

I personally feel that in order to prepare them adequately, I need them to know the local syllabus well before venturing out to learn the “extras”. Besides, in this season of my life, I do not have the luxury of time to let them learn another syllabus and then cramp the local requirements on the child in the last 2 years before PSLE.

Full Year Planning

I do a full year of planning for the kindergarten and primary school levels only. And I have found that the best place to get all the required MOE textbooks and assessment books is from Popular Bookstore. I must say that the main branch at Bras Basah has the best and most comprehensive books. The rest tend to carry dribs and drabs of certain publishers books only. Makes for very frustrated shopping since I can’t finish it in one session.

And in order to save even more time (and temptation!) I’d usually have my own booklist in hand first and then go shopping. After many years of trial and error and from talking to more experienced mothers, I usually zoom in on a few quality publishers.

After I have all the books in hand, I would then divide up the lessons into the number of weeks we are schooling for that particular year. We school for 4 weeks and take 1 week off throughout the year. We also take 2 weeks off for Christmas and Chinese New Year. Public Holidays and birthdays are also no-school days.

An easy example is this - if there are 100 lessons in Science to be covered in 50 weeks, then I need to cover 2 Science lessons per week. But if there are 200 lessons of Maths to be covered in 50 weeks, then I need to cover 4 lessons of Maths per week.

I do this for each subject for each child. I key all these into Donna Young’s typeable calendar. Looks much neater than when I used to write it out!

This full year planner is only for my eyes. The children have no idea what they are going to cover at this point in time.

Weekly Lesson Planner

Once the full year planning for each child is completed, I will transfer it week-by-week into each child’s personal planner file. I would transfer 4 weeks’ worth of lesson plans each time. Then I would transfer another 4 weeks’ worth during our one week break.

I used to do up 6 months’ worth of lesson plan each time. Not only would it stress me, it also didn’t allow me to make any modifications if the child should skip school due to illness or some other unforseen occurence. This way afforded me much more flexibility.

I also combine all the children’s weekly lessons into my own DIY Planner. This way, I know what they are supposed to do without me taking out my master planner file OR ask them what they are supposed to do. Also it keeps me accountable. I will make notations on my DIY Planner to indicate if I have graded their work and/or if they have done their required corrections. Being accountable is very important to me coz I tend to slack off as the days go by

Each child then has his/her own planner pages to tick off when they have completed their assignments. This teaches them to take responsibility for their own work and lifts some burden off me. However, I need to be very diligent in checking that they really did do what they ticked off!

Half-yearly Review

Come December I would re-look over the full year planner and see if we are on target and check to see what needs to be tweaked or thrashed. Some assessment books look good but may not agree with the child’s capabilities. Then it means I’ve got to spend more time at Popular Bookstore or surf the net for more appropriate books.

And that’s how we plan our homeschool for the kindergarten and primary level children. For the nursery level (3 & 4 yr olds), I am even more relaxed I don’t do full year planning at all. I just gather a few books that I like while browsing around at the bookshops or online and then we do a few pages a day.

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For my personal musings, visit Building An Ark in Singapore.