Homeschool Journey Re-visited

It has been a long while since we updated our kids homeschooling page.

But last Saturday, June 13, my wife and I had such a great time in an interview by Ms. Christine Plata of South Pinanays group with Ms. Laksmi Maluya of Go-Pala Homeschooling that we are taking a few Q&A excerpts from the interview.

Disclaimer: This is not a verbatim transcription of the interview because we added some more ideas and clarity to hopefully guide those parents who are contemplating about homeschooling their kids due to the uncertainty of the education system in the on-going pandemic.

So here goes.

How many children do you have and what are their names and ages?

We have 2 sons. Our eldest is Matt Ezekiel who is now 16 y/o and the little guy is Mark Ephraim  who just turned 9 y/o.

Have your children always been homeschooled or have they at some point attended a private or public school? How was the adjustment like?

Both our sons are homeschooled since pre-school. Matt upon reaching 7th grade transferred to the traditional school in Laguna and Aim, now on third grade, is still is ongoing home-schooling.

For Matt's case, his main adjustment was unfortunately quite difficult in terms of peer group pressure. At the time of his transfer, his Filipino language is not yet proficient and, being the new kid on the block experienced bullying. His moral compass was also challenged by other kids who opposed him in words or by actions. (For example, we have taught him that lying is not OK and yet his classmates says it is OK. Playing gadgets inside the classroom is not allowed and yet he sees most of his classmates doing it). In time, though, he slowly adapted to the campus norm and is fine now.

Why did you choose to home-school your kids?

Since year 2000, my husband's work was China-based so our whole family was also with him there.

When Matt reached 4 y/o (yr 2008), we started looking for a Chinese school to enrol to but we never felt comfortable all along. Being both Catholics, we know for a fact that a communist country like China will never teach children about God and morality. The other option which is for me and Matt to go back to Philippines and be separated from my husband is also off the table. So then we started to look at the concept of home-schooling. 

           

Meanwhile, Bro. Bo Sanchez of the Light of Jesus and founder of "The Feast" community, has started his own home-schooling provider called Catholic Filipino Academy in year 2005. And being readers of his write-ups and oversea followers of his Kerygma Family, we came into conclusion that this is it for our Matt. So we enrolled him there and, as they say, everything is part of our family history.

Now comes pre-school Aim in the year 2016. We were thinking of directly enrolling him in a traditional

school since we are residing already in Laguna. However, knowing the fact that Aim is G6PD deficient, his health can be easily compromised by his environment and surroundings. So after some discernment and consultations with other home-schoolers like Ms. Laksmi, we finally decided to choose to home-school him "independently".

You see, Matt was enrolled with a provider, which was in a nutshell, like transferring the whole classroom set-up into our homes - there are lessons plan to meet, scheduled quizzes and exams to take and projects to complete. We have good support system from parent-coaches but it was still stressful and ultimately not fun in the long run. We accepted the fact that that kind of track learning was not suitable for our family.    

So for Aim, we chose to let him work according to his own pace and focusing on his strengths and

interests like creative arts and science projects in order to squeeze other subject matters. It's less

stressful for us and more fun learning for Aim.

What are your top 3 benefits of homeschooling your children?

Above all things, we are grateful that our children are growing up learning and nurturing our spiritual and family values inside our home. Hopefully, they will be able to absorb these into their hearts and be "strong" once they are finally on their own.

Next, the time we spent with each other is just super. In the traditional set-up, many parents leave

for work even before their child wakes up and get back home late when everybody starts to retire for the night. That's about an hour left a day for good bonding, if parents are not dead-tired from the long clocks at work and horrendous traffic. For us homeschoolers, we get to bond 24/7 with our kids. We mix family trips with educational trips. We serve in our spiritual communities that nourishes our kids social skills with the right crowd. We get to see our children smile a lot, get to affirm them of our love when they are sad, encourage them when they feel down, and remind them if misbehaving. Mushy as it may sound, our kids grow up fast and any lost time is irreversible. The next thing we know, they are grown ups and are off to their own lives.

Third, our children are enjoying their childhood. If they want to ride a bike, they can. If they want to go for swimming, why not? If they want to meet other home-schooling friends, it is just a schedule away. The kids today at a very young age is already exposed to such burdensome school requirements that they forgot what it means to be a kid, to enjoy life, to have fun in learning.

How does a parent become qualified to homeschool his/her child/children? Can anyone do it?

Honestly speaking, not anyone can do it but anybody can make it work given the right attitude and right conditions.

Right attitudes of any would-be parent-teachers includes:

1. patient – calm perseverance to teach their children even if their un-teachable mood. 

2. creative - a natural knack for different learning methods that matches his/her child's interest

3. resourceful - with endless stream of information, fun ideas and networks of support

Right conditions includes:

1. a designated learning area away from distractions like gadgets and TV

2. a flexible schedule and line-up of activities to avoid lull moments

3. at least 1 parent is full-time teacher

But above everything else, the parents unconditional and affirmative love for their child is the most important ingredient to have a successful home-schooling adventure.

What advice would you give first time parents who will be homeschooling this coming school year?

1.    Be convicted to succeed and be committed to the upcoming joyous learning experience with your kids.

2.    Turn your home into a fun learning school where both you and your kids are going to discover their potentials and learn their life-skills while bonding with you.

3.    Every child is unique so there is no one-solution-fits-all to begin homeschooling. Discover your child’s learning habits and work your way from there.

We wish all new first-time homeschoolers the best of luck and the best times you can have with your children.

Leader-what?

Aim, like his kuya Matt, is very much into Lego building. One playtime, he went for the space theme creations complete with the ISS (International Space Station), space explorers, satellites and lots of spacecrafts. Curious at his latest set-up, I started asking him serious space-stuff questions.

Dad   :   Aim, what is this space-craft?

Aim   :  That’s the rocketship that will bring supplies to the ISS.

Dad   :   Wow! And how about those ones?

Aim   :   Those are the spaceships that will fight the incoming enemies.

Dad   :   OK. How about that very big ship in the middle?

Aim   :   That’s easy! It is the mothership (obviously enjoying our Q&A since he can answer them all with ease)

Dad   :   That’s cool. So what about that ship in front of the other ships, what is it called?

Aim   :    (beaming with smile) That’s the leadership!

I love this kid :)

Summer Sportfest

That was fun!

Our KICC teacher Sir Joni invited us to join the Intra-Parish Sportsfest that was held in De Lasalle Greenhills. Other choirs and youth members joined too.

Me and other choir members met at the Edsa Shrine Church and instead of taking the car we walked so we can exercise already.

Before we played some sports, we have a mass with Father Aldrin. After the mass, our host named Ate Twinsy, explained how this sportfest came to be and what we will expect that day. After she explained everything, we have our national anthem and then we went out to watch the runners pass around the torch. After they run around then they lighted a bowl of coal or wood. It was like in the Olympics J. Then sportsfest officially began.

First, we played the novelty-game “Patintero”. This was how we played it. The yellow team was the “blocking” team who needs to block horizontally and vertically any opposing team member from crossing to and from their base. The blue team, that was us, is the “running” team. If one of our team member gets caught, then we lose our turn. The blue team becomes the blocker and the yellow will be the runner. Unfortunately, we lost that game.

Our next game was Dodge ball and this was how we played it. The “throwing” team will have 5 members on each opposite sides and the “dodging” team was composed of 10 members in the middle. Our blue team was the throwing team and we threw the ball against the members of the green team until all of them were out. Each time a member of the dodging team catches the ball, the team can add one more player. The team with the most number of members in the middle after a given time won. Again, it was not us.

Our next game was chess and this time all teams are allowed. This was also an elimination game contest.

There were other games like basketball and volleyball but these were mostly for the young adults.

So far our EDSA team lost a lot of games but even though, we still have a lot of fun. We even get to eat lunch in the big school canteen.

After the sportfest ended, one by one, the people left with smiles on their faces.

Midweek Camp-In

What a blast!

The Seven Pillars school hosted a 2-day camp-in last March 16-17 about survival in the forest, desert and other difficult places.

On day one, I arrived in our school and unpacked my stuffs. After that, I went to the gym for the students grouping. They used the planet names of the solar system to name each group and the name of our group was Team Venus.

Our first activity was to pitch a tent. After they taught us, they made a challenge how fast we can pitch our tent. We finished in last place.

After that we had a break for a few minutes and then we went down to learn how to go to a location without a compass using only a watch. This is how you do it, first find the sun and then use your watch to point it your time is 10 to 12 find the middle which was 11 so that’s south. That’s your quide-direction to find north, east and west.

And then they taught us how to capture, kill ,clean, cut and cook the piglet. It was kinda sad killing an animal.

We prepared our breakfast using fire, coal and some papers, same thing in breakfast lunch and dinner,

Afterwards, we played “Capture the Flag”. We needed to be stealthy if we want to win this game. Our “enemy” were the girls and we captured a lot of flags so the boys won.

It was night time but before we slept some of my classmates and even our teachers told stories. We slept and woke up at 6 am for day 2.

For breakfast and lunch my group-mates and I cooked some food outside the school after we made fire.

 On day 2, we jogged and have a little break when we went back. And then they taught us how to use arnis to defend against an enemy.

Lastly, it was treasure hunting. Well, it took two or more hours to find all the clues and to figure out the riddle before finding the item. It was pretty exhausting.

 Finally, we all went back to our homes.

Awesome Holiday

We started our school vacation on Dec. 16 at the start of Simbang Gabi.

On Dec 17 we went to the Lego competition to try my luck to win another Speed Lego competition but I lost to another kid. Better luck next time for me but it’s a good thing that others have chance to win.

On the next day, I went to the Awesome Kids Christmas party. We ate there and have some activities and even met new friends. I joined the AK choir that sang during the mass for the Feast. After that I got to meet Bro. Bo Sanchez’s friend and Feast builder Brother Arun. We have photo together.

After we went to the church, we went to the Jollibee to join the youth party. In this party we sang to the Lord and prayed. It’s like the youth party is a place to worship God, but of course we also have activities such as shooting the marble in the small cup and another is bringing the small chocolate candy in the cup using straw and the prizes are a couple of sweets. These activities reminded me of the show called “Minute to Win” cause these are activities are challenging also.

After the youth party we bring our mother to the WFMA party while my father, brother and I watched the latest Star Wars movie – Rogue One, that was just released on Dec 15. The movie was kinda cool and sad but I don’t wanna spoil the movie so you’ll have to see for yourself. It’s a surprise.

I recently joined the Bosconian Voice Chorale (BVC) and we had a mini concert at the Vista Mall where we sang many Christmas and other love songs. we sang for one hour and its kinda cool too cause at the end we have free food The BVC is a group of teenagers that sing in the Don Bosco church every Sunday mass.

On December 24, we went to Malolos to visit my grandfather’s house to hold and join the Christmas party arranged by our Maia Outreach Programs. There were so many young and less-fortunate children. There were fun games such as “drinking soda” race, “passing around this item” and tongue twister words. There were also two performances. First was a song number “See You Again” by myself with my father and my cousins. Second was a magic show. And then we have a raffle where the grand prize was a rice cooker. Of course the little kids ate and I helped by passing the food to them. After the party, we went back to my grandfather’s house to celebrate our own Christmas party.

At the rest of the Christmas season, we visited our relatives and have a party too. My father’s relatives live in Malolos and my mother’s relatives lives in Paranaque. All my cousins were there too so we played games, performed songs, received gifts and of course ate a lot.

This was our busy happy holidays.

Thank you Lord, it was awesome!

Parol-Making

As part of our Christmas project with Teacher Reinier, he asked us to make the traditional Filipino Christmas lantern to design our school. Our theme is Filipino design product with recycled materials.

We needed bamboo sticks to form a star but since we cannot find these in the market area, my father bought a complete parol to take off the original plastic cover. Then, we use and cut the foil wrappers of snack foods as its new cover by using rugby glue (it was so sticky and it won’t get off unless it is dry). We chose different colors to make it more attractive.

Finally, we decorated two plastic bottles with the cut-out foil wrappers around it and hang these below the two bottom tips of the stars as extra design.

I liked it we even finish it before deadline!

We also made additional four smaller stars but I did not submit it to my teacher anymore. These were simpler using barbecue sticks and we just stick glitters or small confetti to decorate. My little brother Aim loved doing these small starts.

Now they are all hanging in front of our house and above our dining table.

Merry Christmas to all! 

Speed Building

On November 26, me and my family went to the Alabang Town Center to join the Lego weekend contest called Lego Star Wars speed building.

In this competition you need to build as many Lego mini-figures within 1 minute. Each mini-figure must be correctly build like the head, arms and legs are all facing forward. If one part is incorrect or inverted, that’s not counted. If there is a tie between one or among players, a tie-breaker face-off will be done. Whoever has the most mini-figures that built wins P1,000 worth of Lego toy.

In my age category, there were 4 contestants so I have a few opponents though they all looked determined to win also. I made 10 Lego mini-figures but 2 pcs were not counted due to wrong parts position. The other kids  some got 4, 7 and 8 as well so a tie-breaker was called by the judges.

For the face-off round, I got a heart-racing 11 correct mini-figures (out of 12)  while the other kid still got 8, so I won the competition.

My prize was a Lego Chima set, a Star Wars poster and the Lego book catalogue. The other contestants also got a poster of Lego Star Wars as consolation prize.

I thank God for giving me this wonderful gift

Let God’s Love Prevail

After our second quarter exams, we celebrated the United Nation Day. We, the grade 7 students, made a interpretative presentation about the ongoing Syrian civil war. In our performance the UN is protecting the poor, defenseless Syrian people from the evil terrorist group called ISIS. They wanted to kill all the people of Syria and the UN is protecting them. After the first wave of the battle, they sent bombs to destroy the UN army and all the Syrian people.

These terrorists don’t have mercy, love and kindness to the people. They have anger, terror, violence which causes famine, which becomes worse by other people’s disunity and apathy. And now the defeated country has fallen into the hands of the evil ISIS.

War will not solve any problem.

Stop the hatred and let God’s love prevail. 

Why are we homeschooling?

Homeschooling, presently, has gained quite a solid base following after many years of being frowned upon and misconstrued as a sort of deficient learning method. We clearly remember before how well-meaning friends and family members around us either giving us their blank stare of disbelief or an upfront unsolicited advice to bring our son to a traditional school whenever we told them that he is being home-schooled. 

Looking back, our home-school journey started with painful a family tragedy. Back in 2008, while we were living overseas, we lost our 22 month-old daughter. We were devastated. But with God’s healing and loving support of people around us, we slowly picked-up our broken hearts and discerned how to move forward with our eldest son Zek who was barely 4 years old at that time. Wanting to spend more time with him, intent in sharing our own and shared family values and for lack of any Catholic educational institution in our host country, we searched for options, found a few choices and ultimately decided to home-school our son.

We him enrolled into one of the pioneer-provider of home schooling in the Philippines, the Catholic Filipino Academy (www.catholicfilipinoacademy.com) from Pre-school up until Grade 6.

We had a great time learning lessons together, making it fun and creative. Despite living in a foreign land, Zek learned a lot about our Filipino culture specially our religious belief while taking advantage in learning other things around him. We use lots of Legos, game boards and materials that can be interactive to help us to have more fun in learning. Admittedly, making every lesson interesting to Zek was really a great challenge for us every time. He’s unending questions wore off our energy and our patience so we needed a lot of time out just to gain back our strength to finish our daily tasks. Praying together everyday is what makes us at peace together and helped us persevere.

Zek is more of a visual learner with an entertainment type of personality. We needed to prepare a lot of drawings, posters or visual aids for each topic and we did a lot of art works together that all our walls around the house are filled with hanging papers. We looked for his activities related to his lessons for the mastery of his skills. We visited museums, watched theater plays and frequented theme parks. We also enrolled him to a music class for he loves to sing. We also encouraged him to write about every event that he attended to or any outdoor activities he did into his blog site from www.zeksantos.ph to www.readyzekaim.blogspot.com for this is one of our way to keep track of his amazing journey in learning besides making his portfolio with his progress reports to be submitted quarterly.

After more than 7 years of homeschooling, we still ask the same question to ourselves every now and then especially during tough times teaching our eldest son. For now, he has started his Grade 7 in a traditional school because we feel he needed to learn and experience a real-world educational environment and to learn to deal with different kinds of people and situations too. We also decided to build our own house away from the city to improve our lingering health concerns like endless asthma attacks, sinusitis, rhinitis and the host of other pollution-related allergies.

Now that our youngest son Aim has turned 5 years old and is a preschooler, we are leaning towards independent home-schooling based on his learning pattern and do his lessons according to his interest. Aim is showing skills as an auditory learner with organizer type of personality and he loves to read books. With God’s guidance, we will hopefully journey with him as well throughout his young learning life.

We are always thankful and grateful to God for all the amazing years of home schooling journey of our family.  After all, enjoying while working together with our kids is always a mutually learning experience we look forward to.

May God bless us all.

Martial Law Years

On September 21, 1972, Ferdinal Marcos declared Martial law.

Ferdinand Marcos has a suspended the writ of habeas corpus meaning that he jailed anybody who did something that he did not like.The time when Ferdinand Marcos was president, many people in Philippines were jailed, tortured and even killed under his command.

The people in Philippines were protesting because they did not like the president Ferdinand Marcos so he jailed the people that were protesting.

He makes election every 4 years but he still won because of the martial law and he was greedy power power

In 1979, Ninoy Aquino has heart sickness so he went to USA for his operation.But the people in Philippines were asking Ninoy Aquino to go home and help fight Ferdinand Marcos. Ferdinand Marcos has cancelled Ninoy’s passport so he will not go home and he told stories like he will die if Ninoy returns.

On August 21,1983. Ninoy Aquino returned to Philippines and he was shot by an unknown sniper and he died.

There was an election in 1986 and Ninoy’s wife Cory Aquino became the president and all the Filipino people joined her and fought Ferdinand Marcos.

One of Ferdinand Marcos’s general in police, Fidel Ramos and army friend, Juan Ponce Enrile were no longer loyal to him and they joined Cory Aquino. Ferdinand Marcos ordered to kill all rebel soldiers in EDSA but Cory Aquino called on all the Filipino people to defend their camp and Ferdinand Marcos’s army refuses to shoot innocent lives.

Slowly all Ferdinand Marcos’s army and police joined Cory Aquino and Ferdinand Marcos has no choice but to call help from America and brought him to Hawaii.

Ferdinal Marcos was president for 21 years.

photos downloaded from Google site

reference video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SG2Mx7Y5vzc

This article is part of Zek's National Heroes Day homework for his Pilipino subject.