When having no choice but to depend on yourself, you sometimes function at a better level than when there's someone there to catch you when you fall. The past two weeks, I have managed to handle housework and errands on top of schoolwork better than ever before, alhamdulillah. Now question is, can I continue to do so....
I think too often when a woman gives up her career, ambitions and financial independence to stay home for the children she sometimes forget how capable she is of doing things herself and that she can even do it better.Ok, enough of my mamble-shmamble and apron burning...
I've been trying to get back to my alternative roots too...storytelling, baking, painting while trying to keep up with the Montessori curriculum. Yesterday, we successfully made our own playdoh. I have tried to make this before but they are always sticky or too hard. This is the recipe from 'More Mudpies to Magnets':
250 ml (1 cup) of flour
85 ml (1/3 cup) water
85 ml (1/3 cup) salt
15 ml (t tbsp) vegetable oil
On one of my funny attempts to get back to nature by going to parks we almost got chased by a wild dog. We live near a farming area which is considered very rural compared to the rest of Singapore. Its funny how different the other side of the highway is. Alhamdulillah, it ran off when I stood firm and shouted at it to stop. Allah was protecting my children and me really. Since then, I've picked up other skills on what to do should this,nauzubillah, happen again.
Anyway, we continued with baking cookies today and managed to catch up with some other homeschoolers. My kids even wanted to work on the dough again today and I relented because I think I'm falling into the local text-workbook downfall not that that is bad but it's one-dimensional which kids are not.
Meeting the other sisters was good. It got me thinking on how the direction our homeschooling will have to evolve into in not so many years to come and future challenges as we move to secondary level which is something I have not consciously thought of.
We also continued with 'Birds' this week; I used Comstock's 'Book of Nature Study' to learn about migratory birds with Ihsan and used the bird nomenclature for art where I used the different parts of the bird to draw one. I've got back to using Montessori curriculum with Ihsan on fractions and we did division of fractions with whole numbers.
I realise his understanding is shaky while doing problem sums with him and this might have been due to the fact that I have casually taught him the theory of doing operations on fractions and not continuing with the Montessori method on this.This is done by using skittles and fraction puzzles of halfs to tenths. I simply divide the fractions puzzles equally between the skittles so that the child can see what happens when a fraction is divided.
Additions and subtractions is fine but multiplication and division of fractions and fractions is strangely a challenge for me because I have learnt to do it by formula and am having problems visualising what really happens as how it is taught in Montessori's elementary method.
I think too often when a woman gives up her career, ambitions and financial independence to stay home for the children she sometimes forget how capable she is of doing things herself and that she can even do it better.Ok, enough of my mamble-shmamble and apron burning...
I've been trying to get back to my alternative roots too...storytelling, baking, painting while trying to keep up with the Montessori curriculum. Yesterday, we successfully made our own playdoh. I have tried to make this before but they are always sticky or too hard. This is the recipe from 'More Mudpies to Magnets':
250 ml (1 cup) of flour
85 ml (1/3 cup) water
85 ml (1/3 cup) salt
15 ml (t tbsp) vegetable oil
On one of my funny attempts to get back to nature by going to parks we almost got chased by a wild dog. We live near a farming area which is considered very rural compared to the rest of Singapore. Its funny how different the other side of the highway is. Alhamdulillah, it ran off when I stood firm and shouted at it to stop. Allah was protecting my children and me really. Since then, I've picked up other skills on what to do should this,nauzubillah, happen again.
Anyway, we continued with baking cookies today and managed to catch up with some other homeschoolers. My kids even wanted to work on the dough again today and I relented because I think I'm falling into the local text-workbook downfall not that that is bad but it's one-dimensional which kids are not.
Meeting the other sisters was good. It got me thinking on how the direction our homeschooling will have to evolve into in not so many years to come and future challenges as we move to secondary level which is something I have not consciously thought of.
We also continued with 'Birds' this week; I used Comstock's 'Book of Nature Study' to learn about migratory birds with Ihsan and used the bird nomenclature for art where I used the different parts of the bird to draw one. I've got back to using Montessori curriculum with Ihsan on fractions and we did division of fractions with whole numbers.
I realise his understanding is shaky while doing problem sums with him and this might have been due to the fact that I have casually taught him the theory of doing operations on fractions and not continuing with the Montessori method on this.This is done by using skittles and fraction puzzles of halfs to tenths. I simply divide the fractions puzzles equally between the skittles so that the child can see what happens when a fraction is divided.
Additions and subtractions is fine but multiplication and division of fractions and fractions is strangely a challenge for me because I have learnt to do it by formula and am having problems visualising what really happens as how it is taught in Montessori's elementary method.
Comments