This is a selection of archive posts from around 2005-2008, originally posted on my Multiply blog, and my Svengleska Hemskolan on UK Blogger. The original dates are lost due to the way that the data was saved.
Barbary Pirates
Our read-aloud for the younger children at the moment is “Doctor Dolittle” by Hugh Lofting. It’s absurdly politically incorrect, so I’m having to edit a lot as I go along, but lots of fun! The bizarre adventures seem to just appeal to young children’s sense of the ridiculous! On Friday we found our living room full of car-seats as Daddy was using the car as a van for the day… Mummy was horrified, but the children quickly took stock of the situation and saw that it made a great pirate ship/ bus/ islands in the pacific etc. Hours of fun!
Motor-Biker Becomes Spider-Man-Boy
We have a ton of birthdays occurring over the festive season! My Dad’s before Hanukkah, my nephew’s on 25th December, Motor-biker’s on 2nd, my best friend’s on the 5th January and then our uncle’s on the 13th.
It’s always a little difficult to manage to get what they want in time, because I always forget that the shops will be closed! But this year Motor-biker only wanted one thing: to be Spiderman!
This time, it was quite easy, and my does he look cute!
* Edit: we have scoured through our photo archives to find a pic of Motor-Biker as Spider-Man, but no joy. I can’t believe there never was any photo evidence, but it seems to be doing a very good job of hiding itself now.
Languages, Shmanguages!
We were invited to join one of our homeschool groups’ German classes last week, which really pleased me because I had planned to start looking at German this term.
My intention with languages has always been to give the children a ‘taste’ so that they can get a feel for a language and then maybe choose to take it up later. We’ve tried Swedish (sadly much less successfully than I had hoped), Spanish and German previously with no real interest shown. On the other hand, we’ve picked up Latin and Hebrew which have both proven to be very popular with all the children (and Dragon-tamer showed some initial interest in Greek, but we haven’t pursued it).
Dragon-tamer has asked at various times to try Japanese and Icelandic, but I have had to put him off for the time being. Icelandic I know from trying to teach myself, as well as a year in Old Norse during my Scandinavian studies degree course at UCL, and let me tell you that Icelandic is comparable to Latin in its complexity. We might give it a go one of these days, but there is a real scarcity of good materials available in the UK for learning Icelandic.
So anyway, now that we’ve signed up for German and said we’ll definitely be going again, I got phone call telling me that the Hebrew classes have started up again.
(((sigh)))
We have tried several different Hebrew classes, but none of them have been quite ideal – the German class was so wonderfully geared to children (and mixed age range children at that), whereas the Hebrew was aimed at adults and the children were getting nothing out of it, plus the fact that the last one we tried was held at someone’s house meant firstly that the room wasn’t big enough to sit in a way which would encourage learning, and secondly there was more time spent chatting than learning. Perhaps I sound miserable and unfriendly, but honestly I just don’t have time for it with homeschooling.
So as it stands, we’re going for German and we’ll have to make do with my amateur teach-as-you-learn method of Hebrew classes at home. I like it better that way really. That way we can concentrate on Dragon-tamer’s Bar Mitzvah* portion at the same time as teaching the little ones their alef-bet, and everyone’s happy (we hope).
* Edit: Dragon-Tamer decided not to pursue a Bar Mitzvah. (Although I do have some Jewish heritage, let’s just say it’s complicated, and although Dragon-Tamer still identifies as ‘Jewish-ish’, they are not religious).
Little Bears Home Education 