No boundaries -education

Right at the start, Yan and I had decided that our princess, Rachel shall enjoy an extraordinary education. Having been through the stressful education system that emphasized much on passing the grades and excelling at them, we know better than to put our kid through the same. Between the two of us, Yan obtained a Masters in Architecture and I managed an Accountancy degree when both our passion lies in everything classical music, art and literature.

Yes, there were initial apprehensions about home-schooling Rachel but soon I began to see the wonders of it all. Closer family bonds aside, we are enjoying the process of educating our kid according to her strengths and weaknesses, her interests and her temperament. Rachel is liken to a huge lump of clay that the sculptor-mentor parents are shaping and forever fine-tuning into a work of art -a masterpiece!!!

Already she has gone beyond her years in English related subjects. She's good in Math and has a very keen interest in fine arts. I enjoy coaching her art the most!!! I plan to coach her the techniques in charcoal /pencil sketching next. Perhaps I should sketch my current favourite actor Hans Matheson. He's so beautiful. Sigh..........................

So far, Rachel had expressed her desire to be a rock star on several occasions. I think it was related to the fact that our family is crazy about American Idol and she enjoys watching the performances and jumping up and down the sofa, mimicing Kris allen and Adam Lambert with her toy guitar. She understands that to be a rock star, one needs to work on singing, often piano playing and guitar as well. Each time I happened to be on you tube, Rachel would special request to sing No Boundaries both Kris and Adam's version, to be fair, with the printed lyrics. "Don't forget the lyrics", she would even joked as she had much fun in the sing along. Her repertoire had increased fast to include all Disney songs and the likes of Taylor swift and ya..even Sarah Brightman with her siren like range.

At 4.5, her singing is very in tune and slightly pitchy due to diction. Although I am a singer myself, having taught myself first to sing in cantonese, it was the worship vocal ministry and also some private singing lessons that further strengthened and corrected the techniques. Now I love to sing but often I felt emotionally drained singing. Maybe I gave it my all, each time. Especially during those days when as a worship vocalist, I had to sing sometimes through 4-5 services on both saturdays and sundays. I now prefer much to sing for pleasure, for leisure and for private worship. Having rested my voice much, I am surprised that it seemed to be richer and stronger, even though my diaphragm had weaken much after childbirth.

So, that's our homeschooling for you. It includes learning French as a family and recently i started rachel on mandarin. She still spends most of her time, playing toys and watching dvds (in several languages) and helping out with simple chores like tidying her own things, buying her own snacks at the 7 eleven convenience store in the estate. As she progresses in age, we will make it slightly more structured. In the mean time, we are all happy to manage on a weekly basis -both the academics, the foreign languages, the art and the music.