Friday, May 17, 2013

November 7, 2007--No news is good news...

Every time I google anything including the words "Germany" and "homeschooling", my blog comes up. I feel a bit guilty that I don't write more often! But there really isn't much to write right now, which is good news. :-) In less than two months, we're headed for South Africa, where we'll be for nearly four months, and after that...no concrete plans, yet! However, in the middle of December we'll be flying to Oslo, Norway, for two days, to meet with the leaders of a YWAM base who are looking for staff, especially intercessors, which is one of my husband's biggest interests and strengths. :-)

I enjoy reading about others' homeschooling days and lives, but am almost afraid to post anything interesting here in case people get interested and keep coming, and then get frustrated because I rarely post anything new! The most interesting (to me) thing at the moment is that my eight-year-old is now VERY into reading, reading well above grade-level (about sixth grade level, maybe? and he's a young third-grader, by public school dates), whereas six months ago he was reading rather below grade-level (about middle-first grade by the end of second grade by age.) That's one of the reasons we love homeschoooling--if he were in public school, he would possibly have had to repeat second grade because of his reading level, although he was doing third grade math before first grade--and would probably have been struggling with even second-grade math, too, because of not reading as he "should". Being home, he never got labled "behind" in reading, nor "advanced" in math--because he wasn't: he was right where he should be at all times. :-) (I do like it that I don't have to read his math to him anymore, and he likes that, too!)

In the meantime, all of my children seem to be doing the typical "boy-girl" thing with regards to language, and I wouldn't be entirely surprised if my two-year-old daughter is reading before my five-year-old son. No, she's not "almost reading", but she recognized lots of letters and loves to point them out--far more letters than her older brother knows! My oldest daughter was reading shortly before she was four, my eight-year-old son at age eight--but he's reading now, and it's so cool. (Just had to say it again! :-) )

My two-year-old's main activity at the moment is scissor-use: she's VERY good at it, has cut her hair three times now, the third time being today. :-( All of the scissors have long since been collected and the children aren't allowed to use them without permission, but they don't always get put away again. (And the second hair-cutting incident was because my HUSBAND left the scissors out...) My oldest was cutting out paper dolls when I sent the two-year-old to tell her siblings it was time for lunch. Once the three older ones were sitting at the table, I realized the youngest was missing, sent the 8-year-old to find her...and she'd picked up the scissors from the paper dolls and had cut off a chunk of her hair. At least it was her bangs this time, will be fixed sooner...

Enough rambling, I'm just putting off doing a bunch of other stuff I should be doing. There have been several interesting articles in German lately, one in a totally mainstream newspaper which was quite positive about homeschooling, quite negative about Germany's stubborness. However, two families we know are in legal trouble--one is just at the beginning of the process, no actual fine yet, although the threat of one, and the other is in a pretty serious situation, in danger of having their bank accounts frozen, etc. So as I started this, for us, no news is good news...

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