Its been a year of ………. difference.
Its a year when I’ve been able to look back and say, “God is still so amazing!”
Its a year when I’ve been blessed to live out one of my childhood dreams, traveling, and with a great companion too! 
Its a year when I took the plunge to study again - well, not huge, just a TESOL certificate course
Its a year of sending another child off and walking two through their public exams
Its a year of facing the reality that my eldest child is 21 – totally adult now
Its a year when my better half turned half a century old
Its a year we realize we can now fit what’s left of the entire family into a Kancil
I think there’s probably a lot more that I haven’t digested yet, but then another difference just surfaced.
This is the year we offered to home school Andrea.
Its nothing new for some families but its something I never imagined I would be doing. I threw the idea away many years ago because I didn’t have the confidence to do it. The desire to spend more time with her, and having a hand in moulding good character gave us the courage to plunge in. Of course it helps that some local colleges are now “home school friendly”.
Well, technology has certainly given home schooling a boost. You’ll see why soon.
I’m sharing this in the hope that others considering home schooling their children will be helped.
As far as I know, there are 4 methods of home schooling.
1) Traditional home schooling where the parents teach the children entirely using books from either a home schooling (or a few different ones) centre or from a government syllabus.
2) Home schooling using CDs or hard drives sent by home schooling centres, or by downloading materials from the internet.
3) Online homeschooling where the student learns everything from the home schooling centre via the internet. This does not have to be in real time.
4) “Private school” home schooling where the students are sent to a place with other home schoolers and are taught by one or a few teachers.
We decided on option 3 as I do not feel I can handle form 4/grade 10 work. So Andrea is now home schooling under the Alpha Omega Online Academy. Basically, she is using the American Grade 10 High School syllabus, but doing her studies online, and on her own. My role is to guide and to teach if necessary. All assignments, tests and quizzes are uploaded and marked by the academy teachers. All academic records are kept by them too. There is a guided schedule given, but there’s nothing to stop a student from completing work ahead of schedule and then taking a few days break.
So, after some teething problems (basically we didn’t understand how things were to be done), we have kind of settled into a pattern of some sort.
The first thing I did was to transform Andy’s room into a classroom.
The stuff on the wall are the course outlines for the 7 subjects Andrea is taking.
Her subjects for Grade 10 are Biology, English II, French I, Geometry, World History, New Testament Survey and an interesting subject called Fitness Fundamentals.
I call it interesting because Andrea doesn’t particularly like exercising but this course demands that she exercises 3 times a week, consisting of 90 minutes of cardio, 30 mins of strength training and stretching. Its also interesting because its getting me back to the gym after 2 years’ leave of absence!
So, its really going to be good for both Andrea and I, as far as being fit is concerned!
So, how is Andrea finding this? I really think she’s enjoying the work much more than what she was doing in school. Is it too soon to tell? Maybe, but the choice was hers and so far, I don’t see her having any regrets. We don’t have any either
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