Forget Your Agenda
I think the most difficult thing about teaching is to put the child first. As much as we talk about being child-centred in certain pedagogies, in the classroom, we have other agendas we face as a teacher; whether its covering the syllabus, ensuring the child covers processes and so forth,we skip putting the child first and end up struggling to do what we are supposed to do anyway because the child gets turned off learning.
This is made more difficult when you are personally involved in your child's education as a homeschooler; you are not just the teacher, you are the mother and you have certain 'expectations' and you can get really personal about what you want to achieve.I am so guilty of that, I don't realise myself doing it sometimes and when I do, I have to personally remove myself so that I won't push my agenda like today when I insisted on finishing my reading presentation to Sofiyya when she wanted to do her Ballet Movements cards. I should have instead done the cards with her first and slide in the presentation that I wanted to do instead of both parties ending up unhappy for not getting what they want.
For circle today, I attempted to do storytelling in Malay as part of the introduction to 'Muslim Countries:Indonesia' that I'm starting today. Umayr threw a fit, he wanted me to speak in English, Ihsan just lied down on the floor with a blank look on his face. I really have to work with the Malay thing or they'll have difficulty later in PSLE plus I don't want them to lose this part of their heritage.
I did 'Hansel& Gretel' with Sofiyya and Umayr for our alphabet drawing. Sofiyya got the hut part but the rest of the drawing was lost. Umayr's was a good interpretation of my not the best drawing for an adult but hey, you have good and bad days.We did 'H' to represent the pebbles Hansel dropped the first time they got sent to the woods and 'G' for the crumbs which got eaten up on the second endeavour.
While this was happening, Ihsan was finishing up reading the rest of the tafsir of the surahs for memorisation that we have not gone through. I wonder, if I somehow cook up a story for the telephone book, would he read that?
I finally managed to do the hundred chain with Umayr using the story of Hansel dropping his pebbles as we counted to 100 and since he seems to know how to count to 100, I tried counting backwards as Hansel and Gretel were finding their way back home, retracing the places they passed when they got sent to the forest as we counted.
The children also got to learn how to use the laminator, which was not planned actually. Ihsan looked interested as I was laminating some materials and the rest of them got into it soon after, when I was showing Ihsan how to do it.
This is made more difficult when you are personally involved in your child's education as a homeschooler; you are not just the teacher, you are the mother and you have certain 'expectations' and you can get really personal about what you want to achieve.I am so guilty of that, I don't realise myself doing it sometimes and when I do, I have to personally remove myself so that I won't push my agenda like today when I insisted on finishing my reading presentation to Sofiyya when she wanted to do her Ballet Movements cards. I should have instead done the cards with her first and slide in the presentation that I wanted to do instead of both parties ending up unhappy for not getting what they want.
For circle today, I attempted to do storytelling in Malay as part of the introduction to 'Muslim Countries:Indonesia' that I'm starting today. Umayr threw a fit, he wanted me to speak in English, Ihsan just lied down on the floor with a blank look on his face. I really have to work with the Malay thing or they'll have difficulty later in PSLE plus I don't want them to lose this part of their heritage.
I did 'Hansel& Gretel' with Sofiyya and Umayr for our alphabet drawing. Sofiyya got the hut part but the rest of the drawing was lost. Umayr's was a good interpretation of my not the best drawing for an adult but hey, you have good and bad days.We did 'H' to represent the pebbles Hansel dropped the first time they got sent to the woods and 'G' for the crumbs which got eaten up on the second endeavour.
While this was happening, Ihsan was finishing up reading the rest of the tafsir of the surahs for memorisation that we have not gone through. I wonder, if I somehow cook up a story for the telephone book, would he read that?
I finally managed to do the hundred chain with Umayr using the story of Hansel dropping his pebbles as we counted to 100 and since he seems to know how to count to 100, I tried counting backwards as Hansel and Gretel were finding their way back home, retracing the places they passed when they got sent to the forest as we counted.
The children also got to learn how to use the laminator, which was not planned actually. Ihsan looked interested as I was laminating some materials and the rest of them got into it soon after, when I was showing Ihsan how to do it.
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