Life learning – Page 3 – a hippie with a minivan

So what is new…

Well… first… I have signed up for NanBloPoMo so I have the challenge of writing a blog post per day for the whole month… So expect a lot of posts in the next 30 days…

what I realized though is that I haven’t given an update in a while…

The boys are on a video game kick at the moment… Lego Batman, Lego Starwars and Lego Indiana Jones are big hits along with Spore… Colin is more into the Lego games while Xavier is having SO much fun creating creatures and spaceships in spore and having his creatures live and evolve.. and I have to admit that I am enjoying that game also…

Colin has also been having fun on Starfall… not long ago he did not catch how to use a mouse nor did he have much interest in the computer… not like Xavier who was great with the mouse at 2… but when he caught on, he caught on quickly and frequently asks to play the “letter game”… and well he is good at it also… I have a feeling that he will be reading sooner than later…and the funny thing I find is that as much as Xavier wants to hide that he knows more than we think… he corrects Colin and reads things for him when he thinks we are not listening…

As I have said before though… he doesn’t like to show off what he knows if he doesn’t think that he can do it according to his own standards… So I have a feeling that he will not admit that he can read, or sit down with a book until he is certain that he can… yes… I am admitting that Xavier rarely, or almost never looks at books… but as I have been learning myself… books are not the only places where words exist and they have plenty of time to fall in love with books…

Another thing is that Xavier and Colin are fighting a lot less… they play together a lot more often, and make up scenarios, plan things and talk about things… they are not just brothers but they are also friends…

And Khéna… well he is growing and changing and becoming such a little man… I am realizing everyday that we no longer have a “baby” in the house… he follows his brothers everywhere, wants to have everything like them…but he also plays by himself a lot and has been doing a lot of pretend play… he loves to take care of his “bibi” (baby) and walks her around the house in a stroller and brings her to me to nurse… it is so cute! he is starting to talk a lot more and using more words to communicate everyday… he is such a little sponge…

I need to get out more…

With the price of Gas in the last year being so high I have not been going out as much…

Montreal is the place to be for homeschooling in Quebec. But Montreal is about 90 km away… about an hour driving or more depending on the location… Which means that as the price of gas went up I went out less and I am feeling more and more like we are missing out on stuff… There are groups that get together on a regular basis, that do things and go places together… that just hang out and talk at least once a week etc..there are also English home schoolers/kids there… which is something I think that the kids need…

Of course, the price of gas is not the only reason I don’t get out much… I am a homebody… I like to be at home… and sometimes going out with the three kids was a lot of work and it was not something that I looked forward to all of the time… but as the kids get older that is changing. Xavier is getting to be less intense and the other two follow more…. It is actually getting fun to go out again…

So I have decided that we are going to change this… I need to change it… so I am going to be joining the Montreal Homelearners group every week…. They meet on Thursdays at 11am-3pm which means that we don’t have to leave the house too early to get there and we don’t have to come back in the dark and we can pick up Simon who works about 10 min away from there and see him a bit earlier also…

Calling all homeschoolers!

Here is a really cool website to register on…

Homeschool Media Network

You can use an alias if you are under the radar or just don’t want to use you name and you can list yourself as a homeschooler in you region and maybe find other homeschoolers… the site is also a way to see how many homeschoolers there actually are…

it is free and it takes just a few minutes…

Qualified?

When I tell people that I am homeschooling one of the first questions is asking me if I am a “qualified teacher”… do I have my degree in education?.. am I qualified to teach my children as much as a child in the public system?…

First… this is a bit insulting…

I mean.. I do think that even though I don’t have a degree in education, I am smart enough to keep up with my children who are of pre-school/grade one age… and as they grow I think that I am smart enough to keep up with them…

Second… does having a degree in education automatically make you a qualified teacher?

but the Ironic point?

A few days ago in the news.. this was mentioned…

Unqualified teachers flood Quebec classrooms
Mon, 2008-10-06 05:38.
Catherine Sherriffs

The number of unqualified teachers in this province is on the rise.Last year, more than 2,300 teachers in Quebec classrooms did not hold a university teaching degree.
That’s an increase of more than 1000 per cent over five years.
School Board officials aren’t denying it, saying a massive shortage of teachers in this province is forcing schools to hire anybody they can get their hands on.

http://www.cjad.com/node/802900

I wonder if people even realize?

I think I am going to mention this fact the next time someone asks…