A few
months ago I wrote about my fears and reasons for starting to home educate my
girls. Now, six months down the line I
am so glad I am doing it: most of all because I now have the time to teach them
the things they want to know. What
better way to inspire a lifelong curiosity and thirst for learning than
that?
My eyes
have been opened to the opportunities for education that present themselves
every day. I am now alert and ready to
investigate the answers with them. Take
Wednesday for example. We were in town
and I had to get a permit from the Fire Station for the health centre. Before, I would have dreaded taking the girls
along to do this waiting-in-a-queue job.
The girls would have been wriggling and climbing up the walls of the
Fire Station. Not this time. This time we looked at the ambulance that was
parked in the entrance while we waited.
I took the chance to explain what the Firemen do and the kind of
emergencies they attend. Once I had the
permit I needed we had a peek through the railings at the back and spotted the
bunk beds and uniforms hanging up and talked about there being Firemen on duty
day and night. We found the phone number
we would have to dial if there were a fire and examined the fire extinguishers
on display in the shop. The girls were
fascinated.
Next my
five year old asked why there were so many posters of men and women around the
town. I spent the twenty minute walk to
ballet class explaining about the upcoming Mayor elections in Santo
Domingo. Not entirely sure they had
understood we then had a Barbie Mayor election the next day during
“homeschool”. They both made posters for
their candidates (design and writing), made speeches about what they were going
to do for Barbie town, (English and Spanish vocab), made voting papers, all the
Barbies voted and then we counted the votes up to see who had won (maths). My five year old then built a fabulous play park
with her Barbie who was voted as Mayor, and my three year old an orphanage (she
was deputy Mayor). We all loved it and
learned loads.
Today we
learnt while making chocolates in molds.
We read instructions, weighed out ingredients, counted down from thirty
with the microwave a few times and talked about melting and solidifying. It is brilliant. And best of all they have plenty of time left
over to simply play with the village children.
Time they did not have when attending school.
I wonder
what the next topic will be?
