Part of our reason for coming here, was so that my children could go to school . I've home schooled since my eldest daughters were four and five respectively and they're now 21 and 22.
But there's still something lacking... something isn't filling the space that our home-ed lifestyle did... we lost something along the way, and the kids want it back!!
There's a gradual shift occurring in our house... it's taken a long time for them to find their feet and discover a way of getting the most out of school and staying true to their own selves and what makes them happy. School isn't conducive to a content child.. I believe this wholeheartedly. I am so anti-school that I sometimes can't believe we actually signed up for this. But we did. And we're making it work mashallah.
Very tentatively we're piecing together a way of doing things that includes some free range learning. Blogging is happening again for my 12yr old and the 14yr old who hates reading with almost every fiber of his being has started to write a story... with chapters!
This week I've realised that the 3yr old need some proper constructive play before his downright destructive tendencies get the better of us all, so I'm on a quest to find something constructive for him to do while the others are at that place we call School.
A radical change in lifestyle is never easy and it takes people varying lengths of time to find their rhythm and pace... all of my children are sad that they don't do home-ed full time anymore some have even gone as far to say that they want to go back to the UK and go back to full time home-ed... but unlike them I also remember the days when they railed with all their might against any kind of organised learning... and grew tired of being at home. Not that any of our learning was actually organised..... not really.
DD's 12 & 8 (sorry, nearly 9) have decided they want to tackle some handcrafts, and they always want to be involved in whatever cooking is going on. And just to demonstrate what kind of a house I live in... dd nearly 9 just interrupted me to ask "if there's still tea in the pot can I please have it?" When she came back into the sitting room carrying the teapot she was attempting to drink the tea straight from the spout!
Oh I do get it! I've been part home-educating, but this year I started off having them at home full-time. Sending them back to school for the second term was so much harder than we'd all expected it to be. For all of us. We'd gotten used to each other so much more and the way we all fit together. I wonder how things will be when we move over to Algeria.
ReplyDeleteschool in Algeria has been a huge learning curve for us... to come directly from being in an unschooled environment to THIS, has sometimes been really upsetting for all of us to be honest. Things have got better over the years but it's such a shame to see children experience school and yet have no love for learning....
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