Update on our homeschooling progress

The mere attempt to sum up everything we have experienced in these past nine months in Egypt makes me feel dizzy. Most of the trips we’ve made, the sights we’ve seen and the special experiences we’ve had have been recounted in one way or another through this blog. Our everyday life – school, work, sports, friendships, food – has also kept on, and we’ve managed to figure out a lot of things since we got here, the most important thing, along with Courtney's career at the university, being the homeschooling of our boys.

We've gone this year from being a struggling, insecure homeschooling family, to a confident and successful one. The first few months were hard. It was difficult to get the boys to sit down and work for an extended amount of time (it's still not easy! but manageable) and since we arrived here so late they weren't able to enroll in as many activities as we would have liked so I was nervous about them making new friends. Because everybody we knew sent their kids to school in one form or another, we enrolled them in a preschool a few mornings per week. They made some friends there, but as far as school work went, I realized after a couple of months that we had made less progress than planned. I on the other hand, had had time to settle in, make friends and get more comfortable about our move. In December the boys stopped going to Small World, and since then, they’ve flourished and more than made up for the first fumbling months.

English
When we started first grade last fall, August couldn't really read – he knew the alphabet and a few sounds - and he couldn't write much more than his name. Phonics Pathways has been a fantastic book. Now he reads flawlessly, faster by the day, and he’s confident in every sound and spelling. I didn’t push handwriting at first because his fine motor skills were not quite there yet, and it was obvious it was nothing but a big struggle for him. Then about a month and a half ago, I noticed his penmanship suddenly became lighter, easier, and since then, he has become a confident writer. He has worked his way through Spelling Workout A starting on B, and we’ve been able to start English for the thoughtful Child. He reads all the Ladybird books through Level four, and has quite a few other books we’ve managed to find as well. He proudly carries his first chapter book, a Dover Children’s Thrift Classics publication, ‘Aladdin and other favorite Arabian night stories’, around and reads whenever he gets a chance. In addition to August reading on his own and/or to William, I read to the boys for about an hour every day, and this reading has been concentrated around the Ancients: Aesop’s fables, Greek mythology, the Iliad and the Odyssey – the list goes on. William is only at the beginning of Phonics Pathways, but if we keep working through it, he should be able to read sometime around Christmas. It seems William has an easier time shaping letters and numbers. While August does a lot of his work, William often colors or draws pictures, and I think this is helping his fine motor skills.

Sports
Both boys have done baseball and swimming this semester, and August has flourished in his Taekwondo class. This past weekend he was awarded a second degree yellow belt. They’ve met friends through sports and other extracurricular activities, such as Sunday school, and socially they have grown quite confident. They’ll start soccer in the fall, and William will finally be able to start taekwondo as well.

Math
Math has finally come together as well, and we've already covered everything a 1st grader should know; addition, subtraction, sets and parts, money, carrying and borrowing, measuring units (we’re going with the metric system since I think it’s the most logical one to start with), shapes – the list goes on. We didn’t have a special math curriculum – we wanted to try Saxon Math but couldn’t afford the material - but managed to find affordable work books and material to cover everything. William has gone through number recognition, but is still not ready for first grade material.

History and Geography
History, which has been a subject both the boys have been involved in on the same level, has had a special focus this year. First of all because I noticed early on that the boys enjoy it; of course – which 4-5-6 year old boy would not enjoy hearing about first dinosaurs, then pharaohs, mummies, Spartans, gladiators, the Greek mythology and other great battles and events that took place in Ancient times? We started with the creation the world, and over the year we’ve worked our way through Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome as well as the other Ancient sites around the Middle East. A second reason for our focus was that it has been easy to compliment stories and text books with field trips. We’ve visited the pyramids, the Egyptian Museum, Luxor and Aswan, even Siwa where Alexander the Great went to see the Oracle, and the boys have taken it all in. We’ve been very privileged to be able to do this. The main books we've used are Susan Wise Bauer's The Story of the World and Usborne's internet-linked Encyclopedia of World History. They both compliment each other perfectly, and we will continue using the same series next year.

Science
This year we focused on Life Sciences, and we’ve basically worked our way through animals, the human body and finally plants. Both boys have participated in this subject as well, but William in particular has shown a very strong interest in plants, and for the science fair in April, he did a project on things that grow. For science, we've relied heavily on library books, and the internet has been a gold mine. Especially the short movies on National Gepgraphic's website are great. The climate here is different from what I’m used to, and I don’t know the names of plants and animals very well myself so it has been interesting for all of us. When we go back to Sweden this summer I plan on taking the boys through the forests where I grew up and teach them all the names of plants, trees and animals. I guess a homeschooler doesn’t really get the summer off like other children.

Music and Art
For Christmas, Courtney rented a piano for the year, and I’ve slowly started teaching the boys how to play. We also play the recorder together, but they can’t quite read the notes yet. As with his handwriting, only in the past couple of months has August been able to play the piano and the recorder without difficulty, and hopefully I’ll be able to teach the boys at least the basics in musicology. In a year or so we might start with piano lessons – we already know a few good teachers. We haven’t exactly had a theme for music this year, but have been listening to a lot of ‘popular’ classical music by Mozart, Bach and some Scandinavian composers, usually while working on art projects. Art has mainly circled around hieroglyphics this year, as well as Ancient wall paintings and architectural styles.

In general it has been a great year. We will keep working until the last day of June, following the Belgian system we're used to, and then the boys will have a well-deserved three months summer vacation.