Month: January 2012

Art Afternoons

Last Crafts Event:









Beach Crafts (mostly mine, a few Leilani’s examples of what could be made)























In Austria

Lara and Kia





Today at the Homeschool

I always have this giant inner conflict, between letting Leilani choose what she wants to learn, which I feel to be the right thing to do. Or, to push the regular school’s curriculum onto her, which my head tells me she will need in case she has to go back to regular school. Some of my friends think I’m too soft. Others give their kids even greater freedom.

So today it was Leilani’s turn to make the curriculum. She came to school with 3 books, she read me the entire Cat in the Hat, then the story of Helen Keller and then asked questions and initiated a discussion about the topic and about braille. The she wanted me to read King Matt the First (Koenig Haenschen) I really try to avoid discussions about the author Janusz Korczak now, as the last one lead to questions that touched onto the Holocaust, and I still have a lump in my throat when I think of that. Both of the books are a bit advanced, 7-9 for the Hellen Keller book, 9-12 for the other one, and while she sometimes likes the little kid’s fun of a Dr Seuss book or something similar, more often than not she asks for advanced and though-provoking stuff.

Afterwards we did sets and subsets, where she had to group and classify different plants and animals, and then she sat in the yard, drew pictures of what she saw there into a notebook and wrote down observations and explanations. Then we had lunch, coconut, split-pea and hibiscus soup with quinoa and Leilani loved it so much that she finished 2 huge bowls. After lunch she had recess and listened to German audiobooks.

Now her time is over and as tomorrow there is no school she does some of tomorrow’s work today and some on Wednesday and I made her do math. She does not look as happy as before.