The sale, which I announced exactly 3 weeks ago, has had me working harder than I have ever worked in my life!    Thank you for your support of the sale.  We went from 33 shelves to just 6 in that time!  That’s 2000+ books to just 400!  It made me think that maybe we should do this every year just for the adrenaline rush! 

There are still 275 titles on the shelves and we are closing in 10 days, so you are still welcome to check out the remaining titles from our updated list at www.teachingourown.com.  Speaking of which …

TEACHING OUR OWN dot COM

In the next few days I will be migrating all the posts from this blog to our new blog site: www.teachingourown.com.  This is the last Domus Academy post.   

For those of you who are subscribed to this current blog, I would SO appreciate it if you will subscribe to the new one as well.  It would be so sad to lose our current readers because of the whole thing about the name change. 

For those who haven’t asked but who are still wondering why we had to change our blog name … Domus Academy (a design school in Milan who also has a presence here in Singapore) sent lawyers after me to ask that I stop using “The Domus Academy” and the website name www.thedomusacademy.com.  Since I am of the peace-loving variety *big grin*, I agreed.

Tee Chiou and I agonised over the name change for weeks!  And spent too much time on GoDaddy trying to find out what was still available and what not.  We tried different permutations of “teach”, “learn”, “grow”, “simple”, “family”, “raising”, “love/loving”, “kids/children”, “house/home”, “school” etc etc and so forth.

All the while, Timothy kept saying we should just call it hybrid name THE HOMUS ACADEMY.  LOL! 

To entice you to head over to the new blog, I have just posted there about a new book we just brought in, and which I am selling at a promotional discount with FREE POSTAGE till the end of the year.

Remember … www.teachingourown.com!  See you there! 

The Home Library is having a Clearance Sale!

The Home Library is having its first, and very probably LAST sale of this magnitude.  We have 2000 books of 1500 titles to clear off our shelves in preparation for our move to a new but much smaller apartment early next year.

We have timed this sale to coincide with stocking up for the new school year as well as buying for Christmas so that we can help you even as you help us. 

The sale will run till Saturday, 12th December 2009 then The Home Library will be CLOSED TILL END MARCH for Christmas and to plan and execute (sounds so professional huh?) our move to our new home in February/March next year.

If you would like to be among the first to see the booklist (which we will be posting on Wednesday), please go to www.teachingourown.com and where it says “SUBSCRIBE VIA EMAIL” on the right-hand navigation panel, click on the link, enter your email address and you’ll get an email with all the book titles when it gets posted!  Easy-peasy!    Most of our titles are ONE COPY ONLY so this is probably the way to go. 

If you would rather not subscribe, just remember to check back at www.teachingourown.com on Wednesday, 11 Nov 09, to view the booklist.

Discounts

All prices listed in the booklist will be BEFORE discount.  Unless otherwise specified, discounts are:

• 20% off paperback and board books
• 30% off hardcover books
• 20% off audio CDs
• 10% off Titus2 titles
• 20% off Critical Thinking titles
• 20% off EPS Books titles (Wordly Wise, Words Are Wonderful, Explode the Code) 
• 30% off Learning Language Arts Through Literature

Other details of how to buy can be found at www.teachingourown.com.  Which is by the way, our new blog address (for those who have been following our sorry saga about having to rename our current blog, www.thedomusacademy.com.

The complete list of books will be posted on Wednesday.  Remember to subscribe to the email notification at www.teachingourown.com!

Hope to “see” you at our sale! 

Angie

The fun has begun!    I have started thinking about what we will do next year.  It’s going to be another very exciting year for us (which year isn’t?).  We will be:

• renovating and moving to our new home in January, February and part of March
• we are planning to go MAID-LESS after we move (more on this later!)
• as a result of this, we will have to dedicate more time to household work and cooking which are now handled by our helper

PRIORITIES

So here are our priorities for the year:

• Home-management – We need to learn how to manage the home on our own.  Would you believe I am pushing 40 but have never had to do housework?  Shame on me right?    I was only maid-less for a couple of months after we got married almost 10 years ago, then we hired part-time help to do the cleaning and ironing while we continued to go to my mom’s for meals.  Before Alethea was born in Sep 2000, we employed a full-time maid and that was that.  At one point for almost 2 years, when my grandfather was living with us, we had TWO helpers!  What a luxury right?
• The Great Outdoors – I have been convicted recently (again!) of the need for our children to spend more time outdoors.  This year was a tough year in that department because I had a difficult 3rd trimester, then baby arrived, so we haven’t spent much time outdoors.  We used to swim twice a week, cycle twice a week and evenings were spent at the playground downstairs.  Recently I read this quote from Charlotte Mason: “In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mother’s first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it spent for the most part out in the fresh air” (Vol. 1, p. 43).  I feel that Nathalie especially has been deprived of this because by the time she was 2 we already had a primary schooler and turned too academic. 
• Independence – this word is going to be a BIG one next year.  We are weaning ourselves off full-time live in help, Alethea will continue learning independently (she’s doing GREAT already), Timothy has to be trained to do likewise and Nathalie will start to be responsible for her own reading list now that she is READING! 

BOOKS

Thoughts on books for next year (some for mummy!):

Since our main focus next year is home-management and cooking, I figured it would be great to have that feature big in our “curriculum”!  Think Home Ec!    So I have bought the following:

• Training Our Daughters to be Keepers at Home (also fondly known as TODKAH).  This is a 7 year programme for mothers to do with their daughters to teach them home-making skills (cooking, sewing, gardening, etc) and to train them in Godly womanhood.  I have printed the whole lot out and Alethea is raring to go!  It is supposed to be for 11 to 18 year olds, but we decided that since we were terrible executors, starting a couple of years ealier wasn’t going to hurt.  Ha ha.
• Organizing from the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern – this is by far the best thing I have read about organising!  She starts by helping you understand why it is you fail with your attempts and then goes on to show you not just how to organise various functions or spaces in a way that suits YOU, but how to maintain it after.  It is a particularly good read now that we are planning our new home because we have a shot at getting it right the first time round.
• Cookbooks – TODKAH (that training daughters programme) uses the cookbook Lunches and Snacks and I have bought myself Dinner Survival by Sandi Richard.  This was recommended by a friend in Canada whom I turned to on the subject on maintaining sanity while having to cook for the family.    I was tempted to buy Once-A-Month-Cooking by Mimi Wilson and Mary Beth Lagerborg, but I don’t think I could ever do it. 

The foundation of our curriculum has always been a good reading list and next year will be no different.  As usual I will take my main cue from the Amblesideonline curriculum‘s reading list and add the usual suspects.  But some of the things that will change are:

• I will have fewer read-alouds (ie books for me to read to them) for the older children (Alethea and Timothy) for two reasons – their books are getting LONG and I now have more children and less time.  
• Instead I will be investing in more audio books instead.  I posted about this earlier, but being the lazy bum I am, I’m going to be buying them, not searching and downloading.  The searching/downloading/burning CDs will just take too much time.
• I learnt a lesson from the way this year went.  It is very difficult to spread one book out throughout the year, reading a chapter every week or two.  It makes for wonderful variety and prevents monotony, but it is so difficult to manage, especially if you are going to miss a few weeks, or in our case, months!  So I will be reading one book per subject at a time and ticking them off our list as soon as they are completed, then going on to the next.  As it is we have many unfinished books this year which we are trying hard to finish in the next two months.

More on this planning thing later, but it was good to get some thoughts down for a start.

Are you thinking about what you are going to be doing next year whether or not you homeschool?

You know the proverbial question, is your glass half full or is it half empty? Well yesterday something happened to make me realise that I am so “half-empty” when it comes to communicating with my children. Let me explain …

Once in a while the children ask to bathe in our bathroom.  When they do, I have very high standards about having them leave it in the same state they found it.  Shampoo bottles back in place, towels hung up neatly, no puddles of water on the floor, etc.  (I know.  Picky mummy!)

Well last week Tim bathed in our bathroom and after he was done, I found Daddy’s towel in a heap on the floor and the bathroom lights on.  Well of course I did what I always do on such occasions.  I YELLED for him to come back, stood arms akimbo at the bathroom door and barked out orders for him to get everything back in order.  (I’m cringing even as I type it because if any of you were looking on, I’m sure my tone wouldn’t be half as harsh.)  Well …

Last night, he asked to use our bathroom again and when I went to inspect it, I saw the lights had been left on.  So I did the usual … “TIMOTHY!!!”  Then from the corridor leading to our bedroom I hear him say matter of factly, “Every time I use the bathroom I make a mistake.”  He entered the room and I said, “You left the light on AGAIN!”  And he looked at me and replied innocently, “But this time I remembered to hang the towel up nicely right?”

OUCH!

These incidents really serve to remind me to be gracious with my words, patient in my training and to always be on the lookout for things done well and not to be on fault-finding missions all day.

Here I am at the start of a school session.  I have put Daniel down for his nap, we have read the Bible and prayed, the children have started their work and while I really should be there at the dining table with them, helping them to stay on task, pointing out errors in their handwriting during copywork, or mistakes in their reading, helping them to understand their math problems, etc, I really want to be somewhere else.

So it is appropriate that I am sitting at my laptop now and blogging about a frequent problem.  Being PRESENT.

We are such busy busy people.  Whether we work full-time outside the home or in it, we are mothers, daughters, wives, daughters-in-law, cousins friends, confidantes, Sunday School teachers, choir members, students, teachers … the list goes on.  And I don’t know about you, but sometimes I am overwhelmed by the myriad roles I play and the responsibilities that come with each.  And I struggle to stay PRESENT in each role when I am performing the functions of that role. 

And worse of all, my children see right through me.  While I’m sitting at school with them, I’m busy sending sms-es to people about their requests or running off to the computer to check if I remembered to send off my order, or sitting down to write cheques to pay my bills, or … and they know.  They know their mother is there in body by not fully PRESENT.

But the thing that really makes me feel guilty is when friends come over, I am fully present with THEM!    So why do we treat outsiders better than “insiders”?  And I know that when my mind is flitting from thing to thing, that I am really wasting more time than is necessary.

I know some people who don’t seem to have my problem of being SCATTERED.  I have a relative who lives such a compartmentalised life that he will not answer your personal sms-es at work and will not take work calls at home or on the weekends.  I met a trainer once who was so PRESENT that when you were speaking to him you really felt he didn’t have anything else in the world to do except to sit there and listen to you.    I want to give my children the gift of both my time AND my attention.  I don’t know the answer to this problem.  But I know I really need to try harder.

Ah … I hear Daniel waking up and need to go to him.  Maybe I’ll put him in my sarong then hover around the dining table while the children school and try really hard today to be PRESENT.

May you be PRESENT with your husband and your children today also!

Hi all.  We need a new name for our blog (long story).  We can no longer use the name The Domus Academy (another long story).  TC and I have spent the last few nights racking our brains to come up with a new name but have failed.  So I thought I would enlist your collective help.  Here are some things to consider …

It should be something about our family or our homeschool (which is now back to being nameless  ) and not about me.  So no “Angie” in the name.

We like the concepts of home, of family, of togetherness.  Contentment, life also great.

We don’t mind “school” or “academy”, but don’t like “institution”.

It shouldn’t be overly focused on the academics, so nothing like “excellence”.

I like starting it with “the”.  Like The Home Library.  But it’s not important.

Can you please please please help us brainstorm?  Either leave us a comment, or send me an email at angiefm@gmail.com.

Thanks so much!

You know, I have never seen a more haphazard blog than my own!     And because different people ask me to write about different things, I find I have to write in rotational fashion so keep everyone happy.  HAH!    So for family and friends overseas and those here whom we don’t get to meet often, here’s another blog post about Daniel (who turned 5 months old 2 days ago and now weighs 7.4 kg!)

One day at Habourfront, we strolled by a “Baby Can Swim” shop which had these deep bathtubs (they looked a little like top-loading washing machines, ha ha ha) where little babies were floating about using these neck floats.  They looked kinda silly if you ask me.    Of course we were amused and just for fun, walked in to ask how much it all cost.  Would you believe 20+ bucks for a swim session and 50 bucks for the neck float?  *faint*

Then last week, we were at Downtown East (our hangout!) and lo and behold, there was a stall selling these neck floats!  I still thought they looked silly, but talked to the owner for a bit about his experience using this for his son.  Still unconvinced, I went for dinner with the kids, but on the way out, decided that it wouldn’t hurt to spend 23 dollars on that neck float.  (Yes, only 23 dollars not 50 like the other place!)

And guess what.  Daniel loves it!  He floats about and kicks in the swimming pool for an hour each time without complaining!  Nathalie loves it too and we are going to order another one for her.  Timothy begs to use it.  Hey!  Even I can float with it!  *BIG GRIN*  It helps children swim right, with their arms and legs free of other typical flotation devices like the tube floats or arm-bands.

So here is Daniel’s complete swim gear …

I-Play Swim Diaper

Babywarma by Konfidence (these guys can’t spell anything right, but they sure have a great product!) which we bought from Mothercare. 
With this we have been able to let him swim for a full hour in our condo pool without turning blue from cold!

Baby Mambo float

It helps to have doting siblings to help you put on the float too!

This was a reply I wrote in response to a question on the Singapore Homeschool Group’s YahooGroup on how to find good books at the library.

When we started homeschooling, Alethea was 4 years 3 months old, in her K1 year and I knew that homeschoolers were known for camping out at their local libraries, but I didn’t know what to borrow.  So …

The first thing I did was go to get myself a good book list.  I used a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to keep track and had columns for title, author, call number and library branch.  I looked up www.amblesideonline.org and copied the Year 0 booklist.  They are LOVELY!  Then I added to the list the Five In A Row books from http://fiveinarow.com/FIAR/FIARBL.html, the books from Sonlight’s Pre K and K levels from www.sonlight.com, and from Veritas Press’ Kindergarten level from www.veritaspress.com.

I then went to the National Library website at http://catalogue.nlb.gov.sg/ and searched for the titles.  I entered the call number and the branch where the books were available into my spreadsheet.  I only went to a few libraries near where we were staying then – Ang Mo Kio, Sengkang, Woodlands, Sembawang.

Then every week before I headed for the library, I would filter the list (I know … this get complicated, ha ha) to show which books we had not borrowed and which were available in the library I was going to, print off 40 records with their titles, authors and call numbers, then make a quick dash to the library to look for the books.  I always went with double the number of titles than we were allowed to borrow because there would be some on loan or worse still, not on loan but nowhere to be found on the shelves. 

I know it sounds like a lot of work, but I did what I could on my computer at home so that my time at the library was spent more efficiently.  I had 3 kids at the time, and Nathalie was a baby, so I couldn’t spend too much time hanging about in libraries!  I ended up favouring Sembawang over the others, because even though it is a smaller library, they are SO NEAT it’s like walking into a bookshop.  Different titles by the same author are together, as are multiple copies of the same title.  Amazing!  (That was 4 years ago.  Not sure if it’s still like that.)  I ended up writing numerous compliment letters to the library and the staff knew me quite well and would help search for books for me. 

Later on I went on to add Caldecott winners, and books from www.livingbookscurriculum.com, www.winterpromise.com, www.queenhomeschool.com, etc.  My spreadsheet got more complex as I added a column for subject and had columns to indicate whether the book had been read, whether we wanted to buy it, whether we now owned it, etc. 

Yes, I’m a bit obsessive.  HAH! 

Happy Reading!

I get asked this question a lot so have decided to quit stalling, bite the bullet and just write it up! 

Alethea

Alethea was what I think they call a “natural reader”.  She was taught the basic phonic sounds in preschool using the Letterland programme, and my mom, TC and I read to her a lot.  She loved books from a very early age and could sit through a good-sized stack at bedtime.  Then she seemed to figure it out herself and started reading at about 4 years and a bit.

When she was 4 years and about 4 to 5 months, we had just started homeschooling and I was really clueless about what she was capable of doing.  Her school was then teaching the “at” word family.  You know – cat, hat, bat, etc.  And I had assumed that she was at that same level.  One morning, I was about to read the Bible to her but was a little slow to start, when she looked at the title and read “The Tabernacle”.  I was floored!  I had no idea she could read! 

Timothy

Timothy was taught the phonic sounds using Letterland also, because it was the only thing I was familiar with, having seen Alethea’s teachers create activities around the Letterland characters and having followed all those parents’ guides the school sent back with her. 

I bought the Letterland First Reading Flashcards from Kinokuniya together with some other Letterland books (which really weren’t that helpful).  It was a very easy programme to use and Tim picked up the basic 26 sounds and 5 long vowels effortlessly by the time he was 2 and a bit.  Then he hit a brick wall with the whole reading thing, not being able to go on to blending.  So we just left it.  Who needs to read at that age anyway, right?   

Then about a year later, I received a review copy of Reading Made Easy and decided to try it with him.  It really WAS easy!    By the time he was 4 he was decoding pretty rapidly, and before he was 5 he read the first chapter of Charlotte’s Web!

Nathalie

Nathalie had a later start.  We believe that a child should only learn to read when they show keen interest in wanting to do so.  Any earlier and it really is on OUR agenda, not theirs.  Which is why we are so crazy about books and reading aloud.  We believe our children must love, love, love to be read to and love books in general before they will have any motivation to want to learn to read on their own. 

Well … back to Nathalie.  She didn’t show any signs of wanting to learn to read till she was almost 4.  So we didn’t push it.  At that time, I had started bringing in Explode the Code to sell because it was a very much sought after programme among the homeschoolers, but I had never used it.  So I decided Nathalie would be my guinea pig.  *grin*  We used the Explode the Code Wall Chart and that was fun, then moved on to the Primer books.  She LOVED it.  Had always wanted to sit at the table and “do school” just like the older ones and this was her “work”.  She also had very good pen control, so writing was easy and fun for her.  (Tim’s pen control was very weak so we didn’t do any writing till he was past 5.)

Then Alethea and Tim started to use the Letterland characters to help her out from time to time which confused her totally because she had never “met” them, so I fished out the Letterland First Reading Cards again and taught her with those also.  She didn’t seem to be confused with the two different mnemonic systems for learning the sounds, so that worked out fine.

But I found that Explode the Code moved too slowly for my liking.  I wanted her to just focus on the reading and not get caught up with all the writing, colouring, drawing lines, circling etc.  So while I let her continue with Explode the Code for something to do during school, I took out our trusty and now rather dog-eared copy of Reading Made Easy and started her on that.  The first few lessons were a breeze because we were covering old ground, so we sped through them to figure out her real level. 

Then Valerie Bendt came out with the companion student activity books to the Reading Made Easy programme.  And it was perfect!  It gave Nathalie something workbook-ish to do which was totally in line with Reading Made Easy! 

Today we completed lesson 51 and it is all going well.  She is able to read fairly well, her sight word recognition is very good (there is daily repetition of sight words in the Reading Made Easy lessons) and she is decoding simple words fluently.  There are a total of 106 lessons in the book, and I remember that at this stage Timothy really took off with his reading and we skipped quickly through the rest of the book.  I don’t think Nathalie is at that stage yet, but I have no doubt that she will be reading fairly well by her 5th birthday in December.   

Ah … I love teaching our children to read.  It is so wonderful to see how it opens the world to them.  Alethea and Timothy are highly motivated readers (most of the time, though sometimes a little prodding is needed to get them to take their books off the shelf to read), and Nathalie is chipping in a lot now when I read to her. 

What I Would Personally Do

I often get emails asking for advice on what to buy.  Here is what I would do if i had to do it all over again (which I will have to do in a few years’ time with Daniel!  What fun!  )

I would start with Letterland if the child expresses interest in learning to read at a very young age.  Like 2-ish or 3-ish years old.  I would use the First Reading Flashcards to teach the 26 basic phonic sounds and the 5 long vowels. 

Once they have mastered that, I would move to Reading Made Easy.  In the first few lessons, this Valerie Bendt programme has the child blend and recognise some sight words, so they can start reading short sentences already.  It is a great boost for the child to realise that they are already “reading”! 

If the child has good pen control, I would add the Reading Made Easy student workbooks to supplement and reinforce the learning.  If they are more kinesthetic, I would follow Valerie’s instructions to make cards to play with during the lessons.  I haven’t yet done that.  Too lazy.  Ha ha.

Readers – the great thing about the Reading Made Easy programme is that you won’t have to buy supplementary readers.  The readers are built into the programme.  By the time your child completes the programme, they should be able to read the “I Can Read” type books at a level 3 or 4, which is at independent reading level.

The other thing I do is to separate reading instruction from reading for pleasure.  When we start on formal reading instruction, our kids know that they need to be attentive and do their reading lessons well for the 10 or 15 mins a day.  But all other reading during the day we do for pleasure and there is no pressure on them to read during those times.  I can imagine how annoying it must be for a child who is trying to enjoy a story, for the reading to be paused every now and then for them to try and figure out a word or two.  It breaks the momentum and the spoils the joy of reading for sheer pleasure.

Other Recommendations

There are of course other reading programmes out there like Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, Phonics Pathways, Explode the Code, etc.  And many many many others.  So do your research and you will find one that will work for you and your kids!

Happy Reading!

There is something old-fashion and romantic about leading a simple life.  Barbara G, the person who helped me get started on the whole cloth-diapering thing, sent me this blog address recently: http://down—to—earth.blogspot.com and I have spent HOURS on it already! 

How does harvesting your own homegrown tomatoes for a pasta dish for dinner, or waking to feed the chickens in your backyard sound?  Okay … in Singapore?  Like get real right? 

But … Baking bread, knitting dishcloths, sewing clothes, cutting back and learning to live on a single income, making your own Christmas gifts, eating simply and healthily … all make me feel so warm and fuzzy. 

I have been thinking about this a lot recently.  How to live life simply.  Those of you who know us know that we aren’t very complicated people in the first place.    We are very much home-bodies.  We spend our weekends at home enjoying the children, hang out at the pool, walk to Downtown East for bubble tea.  During the week we get the occasional visitor for tea.  (We put this down under “socialisation” in our homeschool curriculum )

We eat out once a week (usually at a Japanese restaurant), watch the occasional movie (okay, we’ve been doing it WAY MORE since Cathay decided to open a movie theatre 500 metres from our home.  Hey we were here first!), we shop at an NTUC with a very limited range of products (ie, not NTUC Finest), we are not habitual shoppers (though I do go crazy with online shopping every now and then), our children only go out for two classes a week (badminton and gym) and have only one at home (Chinese), we don’t have expensive hobbies (notice I’m deliberately ignoring the book-buying one).

But I would like to live even simpler. 

Any tips?  What decisions have you or your family made to simplify your life?  Leave me your comments!  I would love to learn from what others are doing.

Oh … and I do like to sew.  I just can’t seem to find time to do it these days.  I made the girls’ dresses for Chinese New Year last year.