Feb. 23, 2006 - introduction from Germany
I suppose I should introduce myself now, although in 11 days we're leaving Germany for six months! My name is Sheila and I'm from the United States (northern California), and came to Germany 14 1/2 years ago to be a nanny for a friend "for a year or two". I married my husband, Jörn, 11 years ago, and we have four children: Marie is 8 1/2, Jacob is 6 1/2, Lukas is 3 1/2, and Katie is 7 months. (Okay, they're not all EXACTLY "and-a-half", but all pretty close--five months, eight months, and eight months). We also have a son waiting in heaven, born two years ago.
We homeschooled until August last year and hope to homeschool again, but were too emotionally exhausted last summer to face another year of fighting the authorities, and they were removing custody of homeschooled children right and left last summer and putting parents in jail. I was willing to try jail, but my husband wasn't, and neither of us were willing to risk losing custody of the children. So...Marie and Jacob started school in August, and as of this writing, they have four more days of school: tomorrow, and next week Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. (Monday and Tuesday there's no school because of Karneval--an "everybody get drunk and go crazy before Lent starts and there's no more fun in life" party, that I could happily do without.) The Monday after that we head for the U.S., first for two weeks with my family in California, then to Montana for a Discipleship Training School with Youth With a Mission. Then another three weeks of visiting friends before coming back to Germany, where the children will hopefully NOT return to school, either because we know when and where we're going next and are able to get them excused from school attendance on the basis of being only temporarily in Germany, or because the laws will have changed by then, or at least homeschooling will be being tolerated in anticipation of the law changing. This is a realistic hope--check out my post about the U.N. visit at www.homeschoolblogger.com/sheilalange/ . (I know there is some way to just write "blog" and have that link, but I haven't learned that yet...If it's really fast and easy, maybe somebody could tell me, and I'll edit this post?)
Homeschooling style: we definitely fit into that catch-all word "eclectic." Unschoolers tend to think we're school-at-homers, whereas my school-at-homer friends find that hysterically funny and think we're definitely unschoolers. Overall, I like having a general idea of what I'd like to get done in the course of a week, while the children get to decide what they do when, for the most part. We've used Sonlight's Cores for Pre-K through 2, very much enjoying them all, and used Singapore and Miquon math, First Language Lessons, and German handwriting/LA books. Science, music, art, etc. have all been more-or-less completely at the unschooling end of the spectrum and worked beautifully that way. When we get to homeschool again full-time, we plan to continue that way.
Enough for one evening--I really ought to be doing something about sorting, etc., in preparation for leaving!
Comments
Feb. 25, 2006 - Good to hear from you!
Posted by Anonymous
:-)
Feb. 25, 2006 - Hello
Posted by BritishColumbia
Thanks for sharing what it is really like for you. Do you have a way to stay in contact once you go? It's nice to see you connecting here. I didn't know things were that crazy for HS'ers there.
Laurie
