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!

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Feb. 22, 2006 - Outback Adventures...good book.

Want a great book to learn about Australia- it's history and culture? Then, you've got to check out Outback Adventures by Jim Cromarty.

The outback in Australia is one of the wildest places there is, yet humans and animals survive in this hostile environment. Kangaroos, wallaby's, emus, all live and thrive alongside ranchers and merino sheep, swagmen and dingoes. In the shadow of the great Uluru or Ayres rock tourists and wild animals bake in the hot sun.

People dig for gold and other treasures but the greatest treasure we can find anywhere is the word of God and the truth it tells us about God our Creator and our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

ISBN : 1 85792 9748
Christian Focus

There are other great titles in this series...we've used a few of them and the children have enjoyed them. The series is aimed at 8-12 year olds.
African Adventures by Dick Anderson
Amazon Adventures by Horace Banner
Rain Forest Adventures by Horace Banner
Rocky Mountain Adventures by Betty Swinford
More titles at Christian Focus

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Feb. 14, 2006 - Aussies excited about Australian H-S Conference

The countdown begins! Only 1 month  and 2 days until the Big Picture Conference is held on the 17th-18th March.

Why are we so excited? Well, not only do we have the chance to get together and make new friends and fellowship with old ones, but all the homeschool suppliers will be there. Local Aussies will be running various workshops and giving talks and I'm sure that much coffee will be drunk and heaps of chocolate eaten but, the most exciting factor of all would have to be the guest speakers:

Sally Clarkson and Jay Wile.

Aaackkk, is that excellent or what???

It's exciting. I can't wait. I know I'm going to be like a kid in a candy store. Vendors will include, Open Vision , Character First, Total Learning, Always Learning Books,  Homeschool Favourites , and Adnil Press.

For more information, visit the Big Picture Conference website.

Regards,
Susan <><

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Feb. 11, 2006 - G'day...from the Land Down Under!

G'day,
It's great to be here! I'm going to enjoy this a lot. I love learning at home with my children; I love my beautiful country and I like to ramb...er , write!

By way of short introduction: I'm 30 year old Susan and have been married to John for 16 1/2 years. Together we have four children aged, 8, 10, 13 and 14yo. John has a 22yo son also.

John is in the army and so we move around a fair bit, which we think is a fantastic way to see this beautiful, varied country of ours. We started learning at home 'officially' in 1998 after Abigail had attended Kindergarten and Year One at a small, private Christian school. We started homeschooling using a traditional "school-at-home" approach to our learning. We had a school workbook for each and every subject and we started 'school' every day at the same time. Our schedule was very 'schooly'. The children did very well that year, academically speaking, but I was getting a little bored. I was wondering how I could keep this up for the next 10 or more years. I really thought that there had to be more to this homeschooling than I was experiencing.

Toward the end of that first year, we connected to the Internet. I started hunting for ideas to teach more than one child at a time. This led me to KONOS. I purchased KONOS and I really loved the idea of it but thought it was a little too *hands-on* for me. So, then I tried my hand at devising my own unit studies. This was great, I learnt heaps but was also quite tired at the end of it all. Soon, I stumbled across some websites about Charlotte Mason and started to implement some changes that have not only changed  our homeschool experience but aspects of our life as well.

Although I have learnt a lot from Charlotte Mason, I don't adhere to the methods strictly. I used to try, but ended up being confused and our home was not a harmonious one as I struggled to mold our family into shapes that were not us. Thankfully, God showed me a way out of this. I have also learnt a lot from other popular homeschool methods like 'natural learning' and unit studies and even 'school at home'. Yes, for a person as undisciplined and easily distracted as I am there is something I can glean from a traditional school-at-home approach. I guess I could describe our family as "eclectic, thematic, literature loving, natural learners who are trying to cultivate good study habits  while  pursuing our interests in a Spirit-led way".

There are some subjects where we will employ the use of textbooks and others where we simply read good, living books. We use textbooks for maths and science and sometimes, English, whereas we enjoy living books for history, geography, nature study and fine arts.

Anyway, that's enough about me...I have my own blog where I ramble on incessantly.


Speaking of Australia, ( stay on topic, Susan!) how about a few details:

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Feb. 11, 2006 - Hello from Russia!

Here's my introduction:
I'm Phyllis. My husband (Will) and I live in Russia. It seems kind of funny for me to be writing about homeschooling, because so far we only have two little children: Jaan, age 2, and Raia, who is almost 8 months old. However, I was homeschooled for all of my school experience, so I already consider myself a homeschooler. And I believe that since children begin learning at birth, we can say that we're homeschooling.

Right now I'm just researching Charlotte Mason's philosophies of education, trying to make sure that my children get lots of time to explore, enjoying as much outside playtime as possible, and doing a few preschool activities whenever we have time.

As far as what homeschooling is like in Russia. . . um, it pretty much doesn't exist. I've actually had people say, "But that's just for retarded children!" when I mention that I was homeschooled. There is a rare option of studying at home, for children who are too sick to go out, or for children who have other severe difficulties, but even that is not homeschooling under the supervision of a parent. Teachers come and work with the child. I would love to see a homeschooling movement start here! Maybe I'll write more on that later.

I'm already taking a lot of flak for "homeschooling." Preschool here, which is really just day care, starts at 18 months. Every little thing that Jaan does wrong, or doesn't do, it blamed on the fact that I'm keeping him at home. I kind of cringe to think what people will say when he turns six and I don't send him off to school. It's a good thing my family started homeschooling in America before that was popular there, so I have some experience with the questions and criticism.

This is already getting long, so I'll just close with a few more random things. My Lord and my family are my greatest joys in life. I love to read. I absolutely love Russia and all things Russian. I have a blog where I write about our family and ministry in general. I'm really excited to learn more about homeschooling around the world!

Poka for now. . .

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Feb. 8, 2006 - Welcome International Homeschoolers and Friends!

We are so glad that you stopped by to visit.  You all can thank Phyllis for getting this started! She wondered if we had a site especially for international homeschoolers on the Company Porch.

We realized that we didn't, but Kris got right to work creating this blog for you all. What we’d like is to have a team of bloggers from around the world to post and respond to comments here. It would be a great place for international homeschoolers to be able to find each other. Just think if a new homeschooler is moving to a country, they will be able to see if they can find a homeschooler already there!

So if you’d like to be on the Around the World blog team (Phyllis?), just leave us a comment with your email addy to let us know. Also if you’d like for Kris to list your blog with your country in the sidebar, post that here as well.

Can’t wait to hear from you all. Looks like a great way to learn some geography and to learn about homeschooling all around the world!

Blessings,
Nancy
www.HomeschoolBlogger.com/HSBCompanyBlog

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