The homeschooling books that I ordered from Sonlight arrived in the mail yesterday!!! Almost 30 kg full of books!

Ooo there was so much excitement in the house! Sophie was happily checking out the books and so was I. She could recognise some stories from the books. They were the books that we already had back in Singapore but didn’t bring with us.

Ok more about what I bought: -

I decided to buy the P3/4 curriculum from Sonlight. First of all, because it is such a costly affair, I had to think long and hard about which curriculum to go with.

Several reason why we decided to go with Sonlight:-

One, it’s a Christian company and that’s the foundation of the books and curriculum they choose and plan. Two, they are very big on reading. They believe that children learn best through reading good books, not just textbooks. Hurray for that! Three, they include most subjects e.g language arts, history, science and they recommend third party Math curriculum. Pretty comprehensive. James was quite insistent on us trying to use a complete curriculum so that I don’t have to spent so much time planning and figuring out what to do in our first year of homeschooling. So nice. Four, great support and internet community. Very impt since we’re away. I had a real good experience with their customer support. And lastly, they give a 25% discount to missionaries and hurray to YWAM because all I needed to do was mention YWAM and immediately I got a discount, without even needing to give any proof! So it cost us about S$400 including shipping from the US. I think that’s pretty good considering the amount we needed to pay if we sent Sophie to nursery. Plus they are such great books that we can use in the future.

Next, I deliberated a long and hard over whether to get the P3/4 or the P4/5. The former is for 3-4 year olds and the latter for 4-5 year olds. I "browsed" the books through Amazon and decided on P3/4 instead. I was really tempted to go for P4/5 because being the kiasu Singaporean, I wanted to move one standard above where Sophie was at so that she can grow into it. And P4/5 also come with ABC learning books, readers, some interesting science books and 4 IQ building books plus a year-long curriculum all planned out. Super tempting! However the Read-Aloud books were, I feel, far too difficult for Sophie to sit through. Quite a few of them were Chapter books. I think at 3, that’s a bit too much.

SOOOOOOO, I decided, we’ll do well with the P3/4 read alouds. I prefer that Sophie doesn’t get put off reading and that she enjoys the books. There is a social studies one (Richard Scarry’s What Do People Do All Day), science related books (Our Animal Friends At Maple Hill Farm and A Flip Flap book on Body from Usborne), a couple of sorting and puzzle toys. P3/4 doesn’t come with a year-long weekly curriculum, only a 3 trimester reading list with suggested activities, a little like Before Five In A Row. But it’s great coz with our schedules, I can be a bit more flexible.

For learning to read, Math and Chinese, we’ll just supplement with some workbooks. Btw, Popular back home is great for these pre-school workbooks. We’ve got one for Math and a Chinese. Btw, these Chinese workbooks should come with Pinyin for the instructions. Got me there man! I am also planning to buy Reading Made Easy, comes highly recommended.

We’re all set for the year! Sophie’s been asking to read the books ALL THE TIME!

Anyways I think that whether we homeschool or not, the reading list from Sonlight for each grade is still a great reference for books to borrow from the library/buy for our kids. Btw, P3/4 also came with a story book published by Overseas Missionary Fellowship (OMF) on a missionary’s experience! How cool is that!

So if you are looking for good books to buy, do take a look at the Sonlight list first. Another good book list is from the next step up from Before Five in A Row called Five in A Row.

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Aiyo so cute! James found it on the base, a couple of houses down from our place.

Sophie was careful not to go too close in case it runs away so we looked from a bit further away. She learnt that from the book Play With Me where the little girl in the story tried to catch the wild animals but they all ran away but when she sat still, they all came to "play with her" and sat by her.

There are a few things that Sophie really likes: -

1. Fabric – any type of cloth. Big one, small one. She uses them for anything – picnic mat, house, blankets, hankies etc… My tea towels always go missing esp after the laundry is done.

2. Cushions – acts as beds for her dolls

P/s James has this special s/w on his iphone that makes vintage pictures. So cool ah… minus the ugly white border.

Summer time is BBQ time!

James went with Sam and Claire to the nearby river (abt 20 mins drive away) for fishing and they caught some rainbow trouts and 6 eels between all of them! Unagi galore!

James was the expert unagi cook and Sophie helped with cleaning out the eels. She’s a good help! Me? I was sleeping.

Sophie inspired me today.

She snatched a toy from a friend today. She asked for it several times but her friend didn’t respond so she just snatched it. Her friend got really upset and she got really upset and her friend left. Anyways, we had a good talk with her about it and said she needed to apologize. Well, over dinner, we reminded her again and I offered to go with her to apologize but she got off her chair and said, "it’s ok, I can do it by myself" and went over and gave a beautiful apology and they hugged.

I watched her from afar and was really proud of her. If only I can apologize with such grace and humility.

Our little one can count pretty confidently up to 5 things now. No messing with her – 4 pancakes means 4 pancakes.

Beyond 5 tho, sometimes she gets a little muddled up. Being rather stubborn at times, she’ll insist she counted 7 when it’s 8 so it gets frustrating trying to reason with her.

But these pretty velcro counting thingy (no clue what it’s called but it’s from a Montessori learning set that my godsis passed down to us) really helps her to learn and have fun sorting and counting.

It’s crazy to see our dining hall packed with people! They spill over into our classrooms too.

This week we’ve been hosting 120 young adults from the US who are on a trip around the world in 11mths, starting in NZ. 11 months in 11 countries to do missions! How cool is that?!?! It’s not a YWAM thing but since we’re between schools, we are open to host them. They’ve been sleeping in tents at our doorsteps.

All our staff on the base are on roster to cook to all their meals so it’s been pretty busy around the base. Fun!

2 things inspired me today.

1. Pris’ amazing collection of photos of her cooking over the past few years of being in Germany! Woah! Go Pris!

2. We saw a rabbit! A wild rabbit, just hoppin across the field from us. So cute.

I’m gonna start a daily series on anything that I see or experienced through the day that inspired me.

At the last leadership training I attended, we learnt about hope, having hope and Christianity is about sharing hope. A leader needs to communicate hope. The opposite of hope is being in despair and hopelessness. The world is full of stories of hopelessness and sometimes the more we share about our problems, the less hope we seem to have. One group leadership tip I learnt was, instead of going in a round to ask everyone how their week went where people tend to sympathise with each other and become more and more discouraged, we should instead let one person share at a time and immediately after that, lift their issues up in prayer and pray prayers of hope and expectation that our great God is here and in charge.

For me, sometimes opening my eyes to see things that inspire me gives me hope. I pray that the Lord will open my eyes to remind me of the hope that I have in Him.

Today I saw a girl on the base wearing a t-shirt that says "Women’s Soccer Championship". That inspired me and reminded me that we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. Anything. All things. How cool is that. 

This is my season on focusing on the hope that I’ve been called to and I’m looking towards a season of new things and breakthroughs.

So if you feel inspired, join me in blogging about the little things that inspire you each day.

We’re gonna start homeschooling Sophie maybe 10 – 30 mins a day. She’s after all only 3 years and almost 4 months old. But most kids her age back home in Singapore are already in nursery, which is 2nd year in school.

I tried to do it with the Before Five In A Row (BFIAR) curriculum last year but with packed schedules and all the travelling just made it really difficult. But what I did was set a few objectives at the beginning of last year year e.g. know a couple of bible verses and songs, her ABCs + phonics, 123s/counting, speak a little bit of Mandarin plus finish reading all the BFIAR story books and I’m glad to say we’ve achieved all that in somewhat haphazard ways. We really enjoyed reading all the BFIAR books. I totally recommend that as a reading list for 2-3 year olds. They are excellent books! I bought them from The Home Library before we left and brought them all to NZ. They have been our staples the past year. We’re still reading some of them and going deeper.

This year, I’m committing to do at least 20 mins a day and so far so good! She’s able to sit and trace her letters, tell stories, do craft, attempt to read/sound words (she’s getting the hang of her phonics so she’s starting to sound simple words. Thanks to TV shows like Letter Factory and Super Why), and draw. It’s quite a commitment to plan and to school her but I’m going to try with the grace of God. She will still go to creche/daycare when we are staffing the school. That means 9am -12.45pm and then 2pm-3.30pm for most days. She used to only go in the mornings but now that she has dropped her nap, she’ll need to go in the afternoons too. However, daycare is not a school so they are not committed to teach them language/math in a structured way. They do a lot of craft, play and song, which is great but I need to do my part to start teaching her basic language and math.

Why are we homeschooling?

1. I think we forsee ourselves being in and out of different countries for a bit the next few years. My current aim is to school Sophie in her pre school years and prepare Sophie to return to Primary 1 in Singapore in 3 years. In the event that we are going to continue being out of the country, we might continue to either homeschool her or put her into a local school wherever we are. Homeschooling gives us that flexibility.

2. I like to be in control of what Sophie is learning and reading at this point of her life. I like to see her learn and grow. It pleases me a lot to see her being able to understand more and more because I’ve spent that time with her. It pleases me a lot to see her making stuff out of scraps and calling them something. It pleases me to be able to observe the process of her thoughts and be there at that moment.

Sophie is a quick learner and teaching her at home gives me the freedom to move as fast or slow as I desire. As a mother, I can watch and monitor her progress. If she is tired, she can just sleep and if she’s on a roll, we just flow with it.

Also, I’m learning so much while teaching her. For example, I’m learning my Mandarin all over again! I realise that my written Chinese is atrocious!

3. Being in community solves the ‘what about social interaction’ issues that most people raise about homeschooling. We are constantly in community and Sophie is exposed to people of all ages and has to learn to communicate with them all so at this point, we have no worries about learning to be sociable. Also when we are in school, she is also at school where she’s doing stuff with all her friends of the same age.

4. There are many many reasons but one of the most important reasons is that I believe that the Lord has put this on my heart from the time I was doing my DTS. God has opened my heart to see that there is value taking the time to teach and instruct my own kids, not just in ABCs and 123s but about what is on God’s heart and His word. During that time, I met many missionaries (mostly YWAMers) who homeschooled their kids while taking them around the world. Most of these kids discovered their purpose in life and mission early and was discipled in that area of gifting e.g dance, science, design, etc. But what really impressed me was how well behaved they were and their maturity at a young age. I gave a little girl some chocolates and was wondering why she didn’t eat them. She told me, "It’s not good to have them before lunch. I’ll have them after lunch." I think she was only 5 or 6! She didn’t even have to ask her mum! That showed so much self-control for a little one.

I’ve been wrestling with this for the longest time last year and finally made a decision to start this year. I know that there’ll be a lot of trial and error along the way and I’m doing it with fear and trembling. I’m not sure if I can be disciplined enough especially when school starts and all the travelling starts again. But as I put in my order for the Sonlight P3/4 curriculum that I’m getting for this year, I felt the Lord saying "just try". So that’s what I’m gonna do. No harm trying right? I’m a good starter but not a very good finisher so this will be a great challenge! Gonna trust God and keep on going. Pls pray that the Lord will inspire me and give me strength!