Homeschooling

Like many other parents, I cringed when my husband suggested we home school our princess, Rachel. This idea is not really new. I kind of started Rachel on flash cards and learning videos etc when she was as young as 4 months. As a new mum, I worked hard, so hard that it made all the previous years of slogging at building my insurance client base, even the stressful senior executive cum manager of 2 departments job and eventually a financial consultant career looked like peanuts. Easy Peasy

Which job in the world requires one to feed around the clock, hourly, then two hourly then three hourly even in the middle of the night. I had contributed much diaper garbage to the environment without any shame as I refused to use linen diaper cloths...yuck! Motherhood paid nothing financially, with no leave or even sick leave yet it is the MOST rewarding life changing decision after accepting Christ and being married.

When Rachel finally went to a near by child care at 17 months, she was sick often and seriously enough to be warded not once but thrice. Besides, I felt rather disappointed that the child care was not teaching much and was not even feeding my kid well. We eventually pulled Rachel out of this inefficient and lousy child care environment after we discovered that the staff were asked to lie about the food menu, the lack of working thermometers, the short air conditioning hours and even non existent activities like story telling time for my below 2 year old.

I had spent much, close to $1000 monthly for the 6 hours or so for " my freedom" to exercise, to clean the house, to shop and to prepare the meals but seriously, we did not feel that it was money well-spent at all especially when our little one kept falling sick. As such, often times, the whole family succumbed to "childhood illnesses" mostly respiratory infections and gastronomical infections. In the end, I had more to do, waking often in the middle of the night to take both rachel's and sometimes yan's temperature when they did ran high fevers hovering near 40 deg celsius and when rachel had to be warded and be intravenously rehydrated.Sigh.......

Well, since I started "home-schooling" rachel, she is much happier, and she is hardly ill. Her appetite improved without the usual appetite stimulant Appelin and the Vitamin C syrup that her pediatrician recommended. She is a healthy 11kg active young toddler now though the poor mother had gained some 5kg not having enough time to hit the gym.

So when her daddy suggested we home school her instead of waiting for her enrolment at Nafa Arts kindergarten which kept deferring from Jan 08 to July 08 to now Jan 09., I was bewildered. I mean, I am so looking forward to the time when Rachel will be in pre school so that I can get a life so to speak. If WE are going to be her main educators, I would need to do so much more. Will I do a excellent job?? What if it turns out she plays the violin or piano whole day and knows nothing else?? I need to be convinced much.

So off I went to research on this matter both at Borders Parkway and the internet, I then understood that home schooling or home education is not new. Many famous people, leaders including my favourite musican Mozart was home-schooled. In fact, this is an exponentially growing phenomenon in US, Europe and Asia. Home-schooled kids turned out to be brighter and achieved more in life as the relationship at home strengthens. When one or both parents becomes the main educator/s, education becomes more wholistic. There is no "school time" or "no school time". The entire family is on the "learning mode" all the time. Values are taught, and the children can spend time focusing on their interests like art or music. Even my David Garrett was home schooled as a kid.

In his work, Yan deals with many primary school students, teaching them piano. He reiterated the frustrations he had with the local stressful education system that emphasizes passing exams and sometimes missing out learning altogether. This mentality had also surfaced with some of his students parents who are concerned only about clearing the graded exams and not learning, appreciating music and living the musical journey at a whole. The loud cry of our young generation is "No time". "stress" and "peer pressure".

After some basic research, I've made the following conclusion concerning home-schooling our child.

1) Physcial Well-being
With home schooling there is no need to wake at 530am to prepare breakfast for Rachel and get her ready for the school bus. She can wake later and learn when she is well recharged. She can take naps too. I was one very sleep deprived kid when i was young. We can all keep late nights as most musicians are night owls. Food wise, I believe she will eat well too.

2) More Wholistic Education
Rachel can learn money management, geography, music, arts in addition to languages, maths and science. Every day is a "school day" and every day is a "holiday" as well. There is no need to take MC when she is not well or even wait for school holidays to take family vacations. I intend to include exercising, running at the beach and ballet.

3)Better Family ties
By being rachel's main educators, we solve the problem of absent or "near absent" parents in a child's upbring. We cant emphasize more the role of the Father and mother in a child's life in imparting values, especially Godly values.

4)Finances
We can have better control financially over educational spending. Imagine, no school bus fees, no school uniforms, PE attire, socks, shoes, class fund, tuition classes. We can bring her to the movies, learn ice-skating, bowling, cycling, whatever else during off peak hours. We can even send her to additional enrichment classes according to her interests.

5)Security
There is no need to worry that she had lousy teachers that "punish" her wrongly or called her "stupid". Personally I was whacked on the upper back by a big size home economics old and unmarried teacher when my friend's garlic was burnt in the pan. I got hit instead of my friend when i went help her out. If I had not been a christian I would aim the searing hot pan on her face for hitting me hard out of the blue when it was NOT my garlic that was burnt!!!

Additional security, no school bullies, gangs, or even shooting incidents if they were to surface here!!! Also less BGR distractions. Personally I had so many silly crushes over "Hunter", "JB" in primary school that if I had focused I might be TOP PSLE girl. I had 255 and I should be able to do so much better.

Another ? What about her social life?? you know learning to do things together with other kids her age?

Yes! Initially I was worried. But then, Rachel attends church nursery (eventually sunday school) every week. In our current Mega church of 18000, the logistics of registering and fetching our kid back from the nursery is so well organised and systematic. Here, our princess learns to build relationship with countless children her age. Many activites are done in groups so there is plentiful opportunities to build social skills. Besides her many same age cousins do gather often weekly at Grandma's place in Seng kang. Other than that, taking lessons like violin, probably mandarin also gives her many opportunities to make friends.

To conclude, temperament had much to do with whether the kid turns out to be a loner or leader. I am a social butterfly in class, not the class clown, NEVER..but more the LEADER that solves problems and provides DIRECTION. Yan on the other hand who had one more degree than moi, was by nature a loner who prefer to do his own thing over group activities. Already I can see that Rachel is more akin to daddy's introvert musician temperament than my 'need to go out, need to shop" temperament.

Guess what??? I am willing to take this gigantic step of faith, to trust God for His wisdom and guidance to co-educate Rachel well, even as I pursue my own violinistic journey.

What i want in 2008

Here are my prayers and wishes for the coming new year, 2008

1) Health.
I pray that everyone in my family and my friends to be in good health and be happy. Personally, I am wanting to return to my pre-pregnant figure which was previously between a size s and m. I must make time to exercise, to run and be back to 48kg again. I miss my previous gorgeous and sexy figure. It was good enough for me to secretly wish be a lingerie model. BUT i know my parents will double flip so I never mention it to anyone.

2) MUSIC
Music makes me feel alive. I started to learn the violin in Aug 2007 and this year Rachel will embark on her musical journey. I want to play so much better in terms of tone, bowing and expressions. I also wish to attend a few really GOOD violin concerts at the esplanade. I will also add to my current collection, more violin DVDs especially those of Anne Sophie Mutter and Yehudi Menuhin.

3) Beauty.
Now this is important to me. To believe I am beautiful. The fact is I never consider myself a beauty even when i was 48kg and had nice hair. To me, the very deep seated belief is that I am not beautiful enough!! No one can be perfect but I want to be near my own levels of attainable close to perfection standards. I want to be beautiful whatever it takes, without surgery OUCH, one caesarean is enough, pills or chemical injections. It takes GOD man!!

4) $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
With rising inflation and single family income, I really ask God for PROSPERITY. Now that I truly understand the value of money, I really pray God will BLESS our family so we can be in a position to GIVE and BLESS others. We need a new apartment as our lease ends Aug 2008 and I think a car and weekly home cleaning would be bonuses.

5) Travel
The furthest i travelled in 2007 is Seng kang. And since the cab fare hike, travelling within the island of Singapura became more a chore. I wasted my life the most in 2007 waiting for and then travelling on crowded buses and nursing Rachel on the journeys some more!!!!! Come 2008, I pray we will go for a short family get away, Bintan will do and NO I do not like Malaysia.

6) Rachel
This one is the most tricky. I want to stop breast feeding 2008. ENOUGH already!! Rachel is turning 3 in a couple of days and I need my breasts back so to speak. Now she owns them!!!! I also prayed hard that she will understand and be efficiently toilet trained soon. As of now, she is very apt at eating on her own and learning new things but she still prefers to do all her businesses with Huggies and Pampers and boy, in secret!!!!

7)Friends
I need some new friends. I would like to share my life with other muscially inclined parents of young children and those that had started or wish to home school their young children.