I feel like I should write something just to write something, but don't really have any ideas! Public school started in this state last  and I no longer allow the to go outside in the mornings...except that I've already taken them out myself to dental appointments (when the dentist asked, I just said "They're in a private school, which doesn't follow the German holidays"--totally true...), and I have a check-up with the midwife in an hour, and will also be taking them.

We did do a Schultüte (a big cardboard cone filled with goodies, given to children on their first day of school) with Lukas, as he of course knew about them and wanted one, and we did give it to him on the first day of school in this state. When Marie was first-grade age, we had three other homeschooling families living nearby and had a "not-back-to-school party", which was really fun, and the two first-graders got their Schultüten. Then when Jacob started, that was when the children DID go to public school for six months. But this felt artificial and silly--we don't follow a school calendar of any kind, and there are no homeschooling families anywhere around, so it was just us. Lukas was of course pleased with his Schultüte--I mean, candy (just a small package of Maoam!) and new crayons and one's own gluestick and a cool pencil sharpener and a pencil case filled with marking pens and colored pencils, plus a bag of Erdnuss-Flips (peanut butter-flavored things that look like Cheetos and taste like styrofoam) to fill it up--of course he was happy! And Lukas has been registered as a resident of California, all totally legal, if a little weird, and on October 1st I'll file the affadavit...

We finished Mystery of History Volume 2 last week, with written tests (I HATE that kind of thing, but my very weird children both requested that I photocopy the test at the end of the section this time and let them do it written, instead of just talking about it all!), and I was fascinated by how much they remember. The two little ones (okay, not SO little, but they supposedly weren't doing MOH, being 6 and 3) like to walk around the house chanting "Marco Polo traveled east, 1271." What they will DO with that information, I have no idea... And we're going to start Sonlight 3 (just the Core--I don't like their science or LA) today, which they are very excited about. Of course, since I supposedly try to make a point of NOT following a traditional calendar, I'm annoyed that we're "starting" at a "traditional" time, just by chance! LOL But I do comfort myself with the fact that nothing else we're doing is "starting" right now. Marie is somewhere in 6th grade German, Jacob somewhere in 4th grade German, Marie about 1/4 of the way through 7th grade math, Jacob--oops, okay, again, just by chance, he started 4th grade math last week, we're reading a book on geology together, I'm reading the Narnia books to Lukas, Legos and trains and dress-up clothes are always there, etc. So the vast majority of our lives (at home, anyway...) is NOT on a schedule. :-)

Of course, with school starting back up, our outside activities have started (or will soon start) back up, too, so Marie has violin lessons and orchestra rehearsal, Jacob has art class, Katie and I go to a playgroup once a week (starts this week), Marie and Jacob have youth group while Lukas and Katie and I have mother-child playgroup, Sunday school is happening again, and so on. Lukas may take swimming lessons starting in September--no swimming lessons in the summer in this country, because nobody is around!!

And our baby is due in 18 days, but it's been mostly a nice, cool summer, so I'm feeling very well, overall. However, we're having the usual nightmare with names--maybe worse than usual, even! We've used up all our favorite names that also fit the "requirements", not to mention several names that DON'T fit our requirements, and there just isn't much more out there. Anyone want to help? Here are the rules:

--May not start with J, K, L, or M (I hated having the same initials as two of my siblings...) 

--May not end in "a" or the "schwa" sound (I hate being called "Sheiler"...)

--Cannot have the short-a sound in English (my husband's English is excellent, except for that one little detail. I can't hear the difference between "Alan" and "Ellen" when he's speaking...)

--Ideally, should be very close to the same in English, German, and Spanish (have only managed that more-or-less with Lukas so far, and of course I always have to explain that it's with a K, not a C--even my mother still spells it wrong, and he's six years old...) Added bonus if it's the same in Greek, which we don't speak yet, but want to learn in Cyprus!

--No "th" or "r"--Germans can't pronounce the first and I can't pronounce the second in German!

--Preferably no obvious nicknames, although outside of English-speaking countries, people don't have the tendency to automatically shorten names, so it's not so much of a problem.

--It would be nice if we LIKE the name, and having used up 14 names so far (all the children have two names each, including the three we lost in pregnancy), they're getting scarce!

"In der Schule verrohen die Kinder"

We've been using Rosetta Stone for Spanish off and on for several years (unfortunately, more "off" than "on"...) and are very happy with it. So I'm happily entering a drawing for winning a third-edition version of a new language! To double my chances, I'm writing about it here and linking to DeeDee's blog, where I found out about (and am entering!) this contest. :-) Below is a blurb about the new Homeschool Version 3--I especially like that it comes with a headset and a microphone!

‘In case you've not heard, Rosetta Stone has just launched the first 14 languages of its new Homeschool foreign language curriculum in the UK.  The new curriculum is available in three levels for each of the 14 languages released.  This is not just the same Rosetta Stone program redone, it's an all new curriculum.  Rosetta Stone Homeschool Version 3 includes a headset with microphone, and students must participate in lifelike conversations and actually produce language to advance through the program.  Of course Rosetta Stone still incorporates listening, reading and writing as well in addition to speaking.  Many homeschoolers requested grammar and vocabulary exercises, and with Rosetta Stone Homeschool Version 3, they're included!  For parents, the new Parent Administrative Tools are integrated into the program and allow parents to easily enroll students in any of 12 predetermined lesson plans, monitor student progress, and view and print reports.  Rosetta Stone has been the #1 foreign language curriculum among homeschoolers, and it doesn't look like that's going to change any time soon.’ 

Here are two links to articles on the HSLDA website about the situation in Germany. It was encouraging to have Mike Donnelly from HSLDA as the keynote speaker at the homeschool conference in May for Kaiserslautern Military Community Homeschoolers. Although his stated focus was that it is important for those from the U.S. to understand what has been and is happening in Germany because of how it could affect the rights of U.S. homeschoolers (military or otherwise), they were still excellent talks about the situation here for those of us who are NOT military. And although U.S. military homeschoolers are not in any danger here at this point, Mike really does want to help those of us who are. I really can't share much about our own situation here at the moment. We're not technically breaking any laws at the moment, but the situation is precarious, at best.

http://www.hslda.org/hs/international/Germany/200806710.asp

http://www.hslda.org/docs/news/washingtontimes/200806170.asp

So much for my attempt to update regularly: another six weeks have gone by since I last wrote.

Just for the record, I think Marie has practiced the violin about three times since then, and not been able to play with anyone else, because the person she'd just started working with left earlier than expected...

I'm now nearly 20 weeks pregnant and feel the baby moving often, and my husband has even felt the baby twice, which was very exciting! At the last check-up, we got asked who has big feet, and my husband said "I do" at the same time that I said "He does." We have a big-footed baby! :-)

We only have eight more days here  in South Africa (less, if one wants to count hours...), and are sad about leaving. The January DTS left on outreach and we're really missing them (they all got here at the same time we did), but the children have quickly been making friends with the new DTS, too, which started a week ago. Also, one of the guys from the previous DTS wasn't able to go with the other teams on outreach, because he's a refugee here (from Democratic Republic of Congo) and couldn't get a passport, so is doing local outreach. He surprised us with a visit a couple of days ago when he had a day off, and when Katie saw him from across the room, she froze, then FLEW into his arms, yelling his name, and just kept hugging him, again and again, saying his name and then laying her head on his shoulder. It was pretty cool. There's a team from Mauritius here at the moment, that the children hung out with a lot this morning, and another team from Réunion. One man on that team speaks English and one woman speaks German, but the rest only speak French and/or other languages that we don't speak, so communicating has been challenging, but all the children do now know how to say "bonjour"--and pronounce it better than I do, of course!

In answer to a question, we're headed back to Germany next week, where I've lived for over 16 years and where my husband has lived for his whole life. :-) We still have an apartment/flat there (well, most of it still belongs to the bank...), but will likely be selling it in the next six months. We're in the process of applying to go on staff with YWAM Cyprus in Larnaca, with the idea that we would go pretty much as soon as the baby (due September 5th) has a passport. My husband will go back to work at the bank when Katie turns three (July 24th) and his parental leave runs out, then will take another three years of parental leave for the new baby. (His boss is not going to be thrilled to hear about this! LOL) He's been working part-time (20 hours a week) at the bank for the last six years, as we didn't manage to raise enough support for him to go full-time with the mission work in Germany at that time, but we're hopeful that in the next three months we'll be able to raise more.

What else to write about? After taking something like eight months to finish the first quarter of third grade math, Jacob finished the second quarter in three and a half weeks. He's like this with everything: walking, talking, potty-training, reading...and now long division. iI takes him awhile to get something, but when he finally gets it, he TOTALLY has it! So Jacob is now math-free until we get home. (I have the next book at home!) And Marie finished sixth grade math several weeks ago, but at the moment she's doing a free one-month trial at www.aleks.com. There's no way we would end up subscribing, as it's pretty expensive (and completely on the internet, not very practical with one computer and a husband working from home), but it seems like a great program and it's a good thing for the moment, but I still don't know yet what she'll be doing next. Anybody in Ireland (or the U.S., for that matter) headed for Germany any time soon, so that I can order Singapore Math (NEM) without horrendous shipping costs?

I really can't think of anything else. When we truly leave Germany, I should probably start a new blog, with a more appropriate name, but I'm not any more likely to keep any other updated than this one, so it probably doesn't matter much...

I've been politely scolded by a few people for not writing much, so will try to make up for it today. :-) One attempt at an excuse is that the original reason for this blog, obviously reflected in the title, is to discuss homeschooling in Germany, in particular highlighting the difficulties for us and for others. Quite a few people have contacted me because of finding my blog having googled "homeschooling Germany", so people finding my blog that way obviously usually aren't interested in what we're doing in South Africa, etc.... There's also the fact that I don't get to the internet very often, partly because it's sometimes not working at all, partly because it's turned off at night, and mostly because when my husband isn't in class, he usually needs the computer. (And when he IS in class, I'm completely responsible for the children, and watching a 2 1/2-year-old while concentrating on writing a semi-coherent, grammatically-correct blog entry isn't very easy.) But since several of my friends do check my blog regularly in the hopes that I've written something (very faithful, optomistic people, considering my track record...), I decided to try an actual more-or-less complete update. And one that won't be of interest to people only looking for information on homeschooling in Germany, although you're more than welcome to write to me! :-)

First of all, of great excitement in our family is that Katie (two years and seven months old) is potty-trained!! This is the first time in ten years, five months, and 7 days (we declared it official on February 29th LOL) that we are a diaper-free family!! Each of the others potty-trained after the next child was born--in the case of Lukas, it was only four days after Katie was born, but still...we had never had a break before, and we intend to enjoy it.

Of even more excitement, if everything goes well, is that this diaper-break will only be six months long. It's difficult to be as excited as we want to be, considering my history (three miscarriages in the last four years), but I'm in the 14th week now with this pregnancy and everything seems fine so far. (Everything did the other times, too...) I've had two ultrasound scans, both perfect, and will have another next week.

Our time here in South Africa is already over half up, we only have another 7 1/2 weeks here. :-( The last couple of weeks my husband has been extremely busy, but we've been keeping pretty busy ourselves. We participate in base intercession Monday mornings, base worship Friday mornings, and class worship on Tuesday mornings, go to "baby group" Wednesday mornings, and to a Bible study for homeschool mothers every other Thursday. In between that are lots of trips to the library and visits with friends, and the children go swimming nearly every single day in the swimming pool here at the base. (The building used to be a hotel--ideal for a YWAM base, with all the rooms, bathrooms in each room, etc.!) It's embarrassing to say that we've only been to the beach once as a family, and the three "men" went last Saturday while we three "ladies" went to a baby shower. :-) As far as sightseeing is concerned, we've been to Boulders Beach, where penguins live, twice, and we went to the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town a couple of weeks ago. We've also been to the mall once--something a lot of people seem to find exciting, but except for the bookstore, I HATE shopping of all kinds, was glad to get home, and will happily never go again. LOL Oh, and several weeks ago the children and I also hiked about three-quarters of the way up the mountain right behind us, and we go to the grocery store regularly for milk and cheese and other little treats.

In between all this, the children do do a certain amount of "formal" schoolwork. Marie is nearly finished with Primary Mathematics (Singapore Math) 6B, Jacob is almost a quarter of the way through 3A and mostly through Miquon yellow. Marie has less than 10 pages left in her German workbook (I can't remember what it's called, but it's a standard book from Bavaria, for any Germans interested...) and Jacob is finally making progress in Zebibuch 3, now that my husband is doing it with him every day! We're enjoying Exploring Creation with Botany and expect to finish it before we leave South Africa--it's pretty cool seeing such different plants here. And learning that a strawberry is not a berry and a banana is is fun. LOL We're also working through "Little Footprints", a literature-based unit study created by South Africans for South Africans, advertised as being for those who are tired of reading about the Fourth of July and snow at Christmas! LOL We've enjoyed most of the books so far, and have discovered a wonderful South African author/illustrator, Niki Daly. However, although Marie and Jacob do cooperate with the books, it's much more at the level of Lukas, and we're really just doing it for the exposure to South African literature. I think people have said it's something like Sonlight, I would say it's much more like Before FIAR, at least "Little Footprints", which is aimed at up to age 8, I think.

All four children have been doing a lot more Spanish with Rosetta Stone in the last week, having re-gained enthusiasm with the arrival of a DTS team from the U.K. that has two native Spanish-speakers (from Ecuador and Venezuela, respectively). It's pretty fun watching Katie in the morning when we're sitting in the dining room eating breakfast--we're nearly always the first ones here--greeting everyone who walks in by name, and in the case of Germans (there are two others in my husband's class, but there's also a German DTS team on outreach here at the moment) and Spanish-speakers, with "Guten morgen" or "Buenos dias" to the appropriate people.

On their own, I can't begin to list what Marie's reading...she did go through a brief Nancy Drew phase (reading up to 6 of those books in an afternoon), but now having discovered Trixie Beldon, likes that better, saying that Nancy Drew gets a bit too scary and is a little too grown-up sometimes. She's also picked up a lot of much better quality books, I try to read at least some of them to have some idea of what she's reading, but I don't have the time to cover all of them, and at least a few I probably would have vetoed if I'd known about them in time... (One we both enjoyed very much, but had a few scenes I could have done without my 10-year-old daughter reading, was "The Forestwife", a re-write of Robin Hood mainly from Marian's point of view.) Jacob has been reading a lot of Asterix and Obelix (Marie reads those too) and finished "The Voyage of the Dawntreader" this morning, having read "The Horse and His Boy" last week. I don't assign any kind of reading at all, that being about as necessary as telling them to breathe...

Marie has also been having fun playing the violin with various people who play the piano--one was a Korean DTS student (here on outreach from Hawaii) who was a piano/music major in university, the one she's working with right now can't even read music, which doesn't stop him from playing piano about a million times better than I do (and I had seven years of lessons...) and being able to help Marie so much more than I can and accompany her after she's played something once.

In general, hanging out with everyone is wonderful for all of us. There's a DTS running here at the moment, with 21 students (about half of them South African) and 6 staff members, as well as of course the SOIP with 8 students and 7 staff members, lots of other staff people who are in and out (especially the cook, who is from Brazil), mission builders and visitors who stay from a few days to a few weeks, new speakers each week for the DTS and SOIP, and DTS outreach teams which stay for varying amounts of time. When we arrived at the beginning of January there were three teams here: from from Argentina, one from Hawaii (all Koreans, except for one Canadian Korean!), and one from Florida. After they left, another Florida team arrived, after they left the two teams that are here now (from the U.K. and from Germany) arrived. So there is ALWAYS someone around to play with the children--rough-housing, swimming, teaching Jacob to do hand-stands, playing endless games of Uno with Lukas (no one person could possibly play as many games as HE wants to play, but he always has fresh victims!), chasing, teasing, whatever. There aren't any other children here right now, but that hasn't been a problem. :-) (The 11-year-old daughter of the assistant base leader does come here to swim and hang-out sometimes, and we spent yesterday afternoon with two of my husband's classmates and their two little girls, but they live off-base, so we don't see them much.)

Next week (Saturday morning) the SOIP will be leaving on outreach. Because of my pregnancy, we made the decision that the children and I will stay here. (In all honesty, not  so much "because of the pregnancy", since I feel great and this would be the best time to travel, but because of the "if something goes wrong" part...being a two-day jeep drive over dirt roads from the nearest medical facility wouldn't be the brightest of ideas. And, because of the pregnancy, I wouldn't be too excited about either malaria OR malaria-preventing medication...) The outreach is only three weeks, but this will be the longest amount of time my husband and I have ever had apart, and I'm not looking forward to it. Still, being here at the base I'll have SO much more support than I possibly would have at home, and I know we'll manage! Just before they get back, the DTS leaves on outreach--that's going to be a difficult goodbye, I know, as they don't get back until after we've returened to Germany. My husband's team is going to Zambia, the other team is going to Tanzania and Malawi, and the two DTS teams are going to Sierra Leone and Turkey, respectively.

So, any questions, I'll try to answer. Also, to those who know me and know my regular e-mail address, please write, and I'll try to write back! I'm actually not TOO far behind, I think I only have about 12 unanswered e-mails, and only one of those is from January, the rest from February. That's pretty good, for me. :-)

Proceedings were opened against us in the middle of September last year, to which we had one week to respond. We did respond within that week, and heard...nothing. Once we arrived in South Africa at the beginning of January, we sent a fax to the school authorities (Schulamt) in our city in Germany, saying that we're now in South Africa, and would they please let us know where we stand with them legally. Today (February 11th--it took awhile!!) we received a letter, that they have dropped all charges against us! Yay!! Of course, on the one hand, I would definitely say that they didn't really have any other choice, but on the other hand, if you get a speeding ticket, you don't get it dropped just because you move, either, so...it's just a great relief to know that they've dropped charges!

I regularly receive updates about families still fighting in Germany, unfortunately, nothing any more positive than a court date being pushed back by a few weeks and so on, no positive rulings of any kind, at least not that I've heard of. The "positive" stories are all about the families who have managed to escape--who no longer live in Germany. There's a not-very-funny joke going around (actually has been for some years): What do you call a German homeschooler? Answer: a foreigner. The point being that German homeschoolers are leaving Germany and are now foreigners wherever they are. As far as most of the authorities are concerned, homeschoolers leaving the country is simply a matter of "good riddance." None of them have any interest in hearing that these families have been "forced" to leave--they emphasize that they had every right to stay--as long as they put their children in school. Over and over again there are mentions of "reconciliation talks" that have accomplished nothing, because the parents aren't willing to compromise. The thing is, many ARE willing to COMPROMISE: to submit to testing, evaluations, even to using a certain curriculum...but the authorities are not willing to compromise in any way, shape, or form: as far as they're concerned, "compromise" means that parents give in completely.

Anyway, we're out of the fight for the time being, but as I always say, watch this space...

Too funny--the way to get comments is to post an empty message! (For my blog, anyway, four comments is a lot, and that's what I got for the last "message"!)

Yes, we arrived here safely and happily and at the time planned. (Can't really count being about an hour late, when the whole journey was about 24 hours!) We like it VERY much here, except for Jacob getting a bit too much sun on Friday and now having a huge blister on one shoulder, and the fact that the internet connection is sporadic at best. I actually wrote a rather long post under the last title, but when nearly finished, all the computers suddenly shut off, and it was gone...I was surprised when I logged on just now to find that the title had survived, though! LOL

We went to the beach last Saturday (a little silly--we'd walked down the day before, but not to swim, and it was totally empty, and on Saturday it was of course very crowded) and went to a national park on Friday and swam in a lake that was very brown with minerals. Other than that, the most exciting thing for the children and me is that we got library cards last week--all four children got their own, as each child may only take out 6 books--and we foresee many trips to the library while we're here. (It's a five-minute walk if Katie (2 1/2) walks, faster if she's in the sling/carry cloth.) Lots of people have said that the library is "so small", and I suppose it is, but compared to the half-shelf of books in English at our library at home, it seems huge and we're quite satisfied that we won't run out before we leave in April! (But we might have read most of the books by then, so it won't be SO hard leaving, either.)

My husband's first week of lectures went well, mostly orientation and "cleaning-your-slate" stuff, the first speaker will be this coming week. I'm registered to take part, but they're still working on finding childcare for us, or for the two little ones, anyway. Someone had agreed yesterday to do it, then called this morning to say she woke up with the flu...

In the meantime, we're all enjoying the community living--no shopping, cooking, cleaning up! Heaven! :-) And the food is WAY too good, and peanut butter and GOOD bread are available at all times for when they do serve something someone doesn't like. The children love having all these people around, always someone to play with, and Katie knows the names of a lot more people than I do. (And a lot more people know her name than know mine--we walk down the hall and people I don't remember having ever seen are calling out "Hi, Katie!" and in the last couple of days, several people came to me and kind of embarrassedly asked my name, saying they knew Katie, but realized they didn't know my name. It's been fun. :-) )

Jacob (8) has made friends with the handyman and spent last week helping him fix windows, and Jacob can't wait until he comes back, but he's only here three days a week. Officially school-work-wise, the children have been doing German and math and we're reading a book about South Africa together, and I've ordered a couple of children's books set in South Africa that should arrive next week, but most of their/our time is spent interacting with each other and other people. Several days ago I was chatting with a group of people, including one girl (from the U.S.) who was homeschooled through 10th grade, a few South Africans, and several Dutch people (none of whom had any idea that homeschooling was legal in the Netherlands), and the big S-word came up: What About Socialization? The girl who had been homeschooled and I first started to laugh, at that moment Lukas (5) runs through the room being chased by an 18-year-old, Jacob is helping the handyman, and Katie is chatting with someone else (an adult) nearby about airplanes. (Marie (10), was admittedly probably reading somewhere...) I finally just said, "Well, as you can see, my children are very shy and wary of interacting with strange people in new situations..." No more comments were made on the subject. LOL

I'd probably better wrap this up before something happens to it. I haven't been able to access my e-mail today (internet connection may be sporadic, but connecting to AOL is even less reliable...), so for those who know me and would normally write to me privately, I'm not ignoring you, just can't get into my e-mail very often! Oh, and the time difference to Germany is one hour (we're ahead), and we're ten hours ahead of the west coast of the U.S.

Nothing really about homeschooling in this entry, at least not formal, but plenty has been happening!

We went to Norway last weekend (Saturday to Monday) to meet with a couple from YWAM Cyprus--they're Norwegian, and are on a sabbatical for a year, but will be returning to Cyprus next summer. Our time together went really well and my husband is extremely interested in working with them. We won't make a final decision until after South Africa, though, I think.

The trees and everything were covered with frost, which looked like snow, but technically wasn't. We even went sledding in the stuff! I'd never seen anything like it. Then we came home, and guess what: on Wednesday, in my 17th winter in Germany, we got the same thing here! (And it's still like that.) It looks absolutely gorgeous. :-) (Maybe I should try to figure out how to put photos in here.)

In the meantime, we didn't sell our apartment yet and it's now not officially on the market. The upstairs neighbors will be taking care of it again, as they did when we were gone for six months last year and as they do every time we're gone. They're great neighbors. :-) But if anyone wants to buy it while we're gone, we'd probably sell, if they're willing to pay extra for a moving company to pack up everything and move it to a storage facility...

One not-so-great thing on the weekend, though, was that we got the news that my uncle, who was very special to me, died late Saturday night. He was amazing and loved by more people than anyone else I know. The guestbook for his on-line obituary has one entry (so far), that, as far as I can tell, is by someone who didn't even know him by name. That seems pretty cool to me.

Things are looking good for South Africa. After many delays for our visas (they kept requesting more documents, etc.), when I telephoned on Tuesday to ask to whom I should return my passport (I'd had to ask them the week before to send my passport back to me so we could fly to Oslo, as it's my only valid ID in Europe--my children flew on their American passports and my husband on his German ID, as all five of their German passports are at the South African embassy in Berlin), I was told that the visas are all ready, they're just waiting for my passport. So we should hopefully have them very soon. (I'll be sure once we DO have them. One thing we were told we needed was study permits for our school-aged children, as "all children in South Africa for longer than 3 months are required to attend school"!! I wrote back quoting the appropriate part of the South African law, and never heard anything else. I also wrote to the South African equivalent of the HSLDA, and the president himself wrote back to me and assured me that there was no such law, and that even for registering as homeschoolers, there's nothing anywhere referring to three months--that was apparently simply invented by the SA embassy in Berlin!)

 Thank you to all those who wrote postcards, anyone else wanting to may still do so! :-)

Here is some more specific information for those who are nearby for the protest in front of the German School in Pretoria, South Africa. I look forward to hearing about it afterwards, and will report here. :-)

"With this message I would like to request home schooling parents to
support this protest.

South African home schoolers have the freedom to provide home
education, thanks to home schoolers all over the world that campaigned
against the South African government. Due to this pressure, South
African legislation was changed to allow home education. If we now
help home schoolers in other countries, then they will help us again
in the future, should this be necessary.

You can support this protest in one or more of the following ways:

1) Please read the media release carefully and think of slogans
that we can put on our banners during the protest. The slogans can be
in English of German. You can publish your slogan on this mailing list.

2) Distribute the media release on other mailing lists that you
are subscribed to that might be interested in it.

3) Help us the phone home schoolers to encourage them to take
part in the protest. The Pestalozzi Trust has made it telephone
facilities available to the association. Please phone Leendert van
Oostrum at (082) 8262 675 and make an appointment to come to the
offices of the Pestalozzi Trust and help them to make phone calls or
get a list of numbers to phone from your home.

4) Attend the protest on Friday 30 November. The protest will be
a stationary poster demonstration at the German School in Simon
Vermooten Drive. The protest will be between 10h00 and 16h00, and you
can come anytime during these hours. However, the most people should
be their between 13h00 and 15h00, because this is the time during
which parents pick up their children at the school.

Regards

- Bouwe van der Eems

(Chairman : Association for HomeSchooling)"

Anyone reading this anywhere near Pretoria, South Africa, is very welcome to join the (peaceful) demonstration outside the German School this Friday, November 30th, 2007! I think it's exciting that South Africans have recognized that international protest helped them secure the right to homeschool (which, as in all countries, no matter how "secure" it feels, it's a precarious right!) and are willing to stand up for homeschooling in Germany. Following is the text in both English and Afrikaans, and I'll post some more details in a separate entry. Also, please spread this around! Thank you!

Afrikaanse weergawe onderaan

Protest against the persecution of homeschoolers in Germany

Media Statement by the Association for Homeschooling

23rd November 2007

The Association for Homeschooling, in co-operation with the Pestalozzi
Trust legal defence fund for home education, has applied to the
Tshwane Metro Police for permission to hold a protest meeting outside
the Deutsche Schule (German School) in Pretoria on 30th November 2007.

The purpose of the meeting is to inform the German community of
Pretoria of our protest against the persecution of homeschoolers in
Germany under the pretext that they are establishing or continuing
so-called "parallel societies".

The German government has informed the Association and others who have
expressed their concern, that it is persuaded of the educational
merits of home education. However, it holds that children in Germany
(including children of German families), need to be compelled by force
into German schools in order to be duly integrated into the kind of
German society approved by the German state.

This includes the children of South African and other families
residing in Germany.

Last year, home learner Melissa Busekros was forcefully removed from
her family. In order to counter the "family influence", she was first
interned in a state psychiatric facility where she was diagnosed with
"school phobia" and subsequently placed in foster care. On the night
of her sixteenth birthday, when she obtained the right to choose her
own residence, she fled from foster care and returned to her family home.

More recently, the Neubronner family who homeschool their children in
the "free" city of Bremen, were allowed to do so last year, only to be
fined 4500 Euro (more than R45 000) this year for homeschooling. When
the authorities did not find sufficient possessions in their home to
be sold in execution of the fine, this week the bank accounts of the
family's small publishing business were frozen.

This has destroyed the means of economic survival of the family,
reducing them to beggarhood. This not only endangers their ability to
retain the family home, but has created "justification" for
authorities to remove the children from the family.

The family was compelled to obtain a protective court order to prevent
the removal of the children from their care – an action that the
German authorities have taken in the case of other homeschooling families.

The Association for Homeschooling condemns these actions, which the
German government justifies in its quest to prevent "parallel
societies" and asserts that the German government is guilty of gross
human rights abuses.

The Association also points out that the German state funds and
supports the Deutsche Schule in Pretoria and similar German schools
elsewhere in Africa, and even provides German homeschooling families
in Africa with learning programmes. Clearly, the government of Germany
is sustaining German "parallel societies" in Africa while oppressing
homeschoolers in Germany under the pretext that homeschoolers (so they
claim) are doing in Germany what Germany itself is in fact doing in
African countries!

Homeschoolers in Pretoria hope to enlist the support of the German
"parallel" community in our city for our protest against these dual
standards being applied by the German government in such a cruel and
inhumane manner.

For further information contact Bouwe van der Eems 082 907 9696 or
Leendert van Oostrum 082 8262 675.

Protes teen die vervolging van tuissonderwys in Duitsland

Mediaverklaring deur die Vereniging vir Tuisonderwys

23 November 2007

Die Vereniging vir Tuisonderwys, in samewerking met die Pestalozzi
Trust regsfonds vir tuisonderwys, het by die Tshwane Metropolisie
aansoek gedoen om op 30 November `n protesvergadering buite die
Deutsche Schule (Duitse Skool) in Pretoria te hou.

Die doel van die vergadering is om die Duitse gemeenskap van Pretoria
in te lig oor ons protes teen die wrede vervolging van tuisskolers in
Duitsland onder die voorwendsel dat hulle sogenaamde "paralelle
gemeenskappe" vestig of onderhou.

Die Duitse regering het die Vereniging en ander besorgdes ingelig dat
hy oortuig is van die pedagogiese meriete van tuisonderwys. Sy
standpunt is egter dat kinders in Duitsland (insluitende kinders van
Duitse gesinne) met geweld in Duitse skole ingedwing moet word sodat
hulle behoorlik geïntegreer kan word by die soort Duitse samelewing
wat deur die Duitse staat goedgekeur word.

Dit sluit die kinders in van Suid-Afrikaanse gesinne wat in Duitsland
woon.

Verlede jaar is tuisleerder Melissa Busekros met geweld van haar gesin
verwyder. Ten einde die "gesinsinvloed" teen te werk, is sy eers in `n
staatsbeheerde psigiatriese inrigting aangehou, waar sy met
"skoolfobia" gediagnoseer is, voordat sy in pleegsorg geplaas is.
Gedurende die nag van haar sestiende verjaardag, waarmee sy die reg
verkry het om haar eie woonplek te kies, het sy uit die pleegsorg
gevlug en na haar gesinswoning teruggekeer.

Onlangs is die Neubronnergesin van die "vry"-stad Bremen verlede jaar
wel toegelaat om hul kinders tuisonderwys te gee, net om vanjaar met
4500 Euro (meer as R45 000) beboet te word weens hul tuisonderwys. Toe
die owerheid nie genoeg besittings in hul huis kon kry om ter delging
van die boeteskuld te verkoop nie, is die bankrekeninge van die gesin
se klein uitgewersbesigheid hierdie week gevries.

Dit het die gesin se bron van ekonomiese oorlewing vernietig en hulle
tot die bedelstaf gedwing. Hierdeur word nie net die gesin se vermoë
om hul woning te behou in gevaar gestel nie, maar dit het
"regverdiging" geskep om die kinders uit die gesin te verwyder.

Die gesin Neubronner was verplig om `n beskermende hofbevel te verkry
om te verhoed dat die kinders uit hul sorg verwyder word – `n stap wat
Duitse owerhede in die geval van ander tuisskoolgesinne geneem het.

Die Vereniging vir Tuisonderwys verdoem hierdie optrede, wat die
Duitse owerheid voorhou as `n poging om "parallelle samelewings" te
voorkom, en verklaar dat die Duitse regering hom skuldig maak aan
growwe menseregteskendings.

Die Vereniging wys ook daarop dat die Duitse staat die Deutsche Schule
in Pretoria en soortgelyke skole elders in Afrika befonds en
ondersteun, en selfs Duitse gesinne in Afrika voorsien van
leerprogramme vir tuisonderwys. Dit is duidelik dat die Duitse
regering Duitse "parallelle samelewings" in Afrika onderhou terwyl dit
tuisonderwys in Duitsland onderdruk onder die voorwendsel dat
tuisskolers in Duitsland (so beweer hy) bloot doen wat Duitsland self
daadwerlik in Afrika-lande doen!

Tuisskolers in Pretoria hoop om die steun te verkry van die
"parallelle" Duitse gemeenskap in ons stad vir ons protes teen hierdie
dubbele standaarde wat die Duitse regering so wreed en onmenslik toepas.

Vir meer inligting kontak Bouwe van der Eems 082 907 9696 of Leendert
van Oostrum 082 8262 675.

The family that was on television last week has now had their bank accounts frozen, including their business accounts, which means that they have no income and no way to have one. For those who read German, here's an article about them, with links to lots of other articles, including some in English. (I didn't have time to check all of them, the WorldNetDaily link was to an article that's 10 days or so old.)

No time for much more at the moment. Another family lost custody of their children, although they've moved to Austria, another family that left the country is being hounded in the country where they now are.

However, in Rumania, where homeschooling has up until now been merely "tolerated", there appears to be a change towards actually making it officially legal. And in Slovakia, the only other country in Europe where homeschooling is not legal, a new law will be going into effect allowing it.

Every time I google anything including the words "Germany" and "homeschooling", my blog comes up. I feel a bit guilty that I don't write more often! But there really isn't much to write right now, which is good news. :-) In less than two months, we're headed for South Africa, where we'll be for nearly four months, and after that...no concrete plans, yet! However, in the middle of December we'll be flying to Oslo, Norway, for two days, to meet with the leaders of a YWAM base who are looking for staff, especially intercessors, which is one of my husband's biggest interests and strengths. :-)

I enjoy reading about others' homeschooling days and lives, but am almost afraid to post anything interesting here in case people get interested and keep coming, and then get frustrated because I rarely post anything new! The most interesting (to me) thing at the moment is that my eight-year-old is now VERY into reading, reading well above grade-level (about sixth grade level, maybe? and he's a young third-grader, by public school dates), whereas six months ago he was reading rather below grade-level (about middle-first grade by the end of second grade by age.) That's one of the reasons we love homeschoooling--if he were in public school, he would possibly have had to repeat second grade because of his reading level, although he was doing third grade math before first grade--and would probably have been struggling with even second-grade math, too, because of not reading as he "should". Being home, he never got labled "behind" in reading, nor "advanced" in math--because he wasn't: he was right where he should be at all times. :-) (I do like it that I don't have to read his math to him anymore, and he likes that, too!)

In the meantime, all of my children seem to be doing the typical "boy-girl" thing with regards to language, and I wouldn't be entirely surprised if my two-year-old daughter is reading before my five-year-old son. No, she's not "almost reading", but she recognized lots of letters and loves to point them out--far more letters than her older brother knows! My oldest daughter was reading shortly before she was four, my eight-year-old son at age eight--but he's reading now, and it's so cool. (Just had to say it again! :-) )

My two-year-old's main activity at the moment is scissor-use: she's VERY good at it, has cut her hair three times now, the third time being today. :-( All of the scissors have long since been collected and the children aren't allowed to use them without permission, but they don't always get put away again. (And the second hair-cutting incident was because my HUSBAND left the scissors out...) My oldest was cutting out paper dolls when I sent the two-year-old to tell her siblings it was time for lunch. Once the three older ones were sitting at the table, I realized the youngest was missing, sent the 8-year-old to find her...and she'd picked up the scissors from the paper dolls and had cut off a chunk of her hair. At least it was her bangs this time, will be fixed sooner...

Enough rambling, I'm just putting off doing a bunch of other stuff I should be doing. There have been several interesting articles in German lately, one in a totally mainstream newspaper which was quite positive about homeschooling, quite negative about Germany's stubborness. However, two families we know are in legal trouble--one is just at the beginning of the process, no actual fine yet, although the threat of one, and the other is in a pretty serious situation, in danger of having their bank accounts frozen, etc. So as I started this, for us, no news is good news...

We got another letter from the Schulamt (Local Education Authorities) last week, but not one to worry about! This was about registering our third child for school, as he will be six before the 31st of August next year, so should start school next August. There were two possible dates for registering him, and we can't go on either, so yesterday my husband called and talked to our dear old acquaintance, Frau P. (Check the archives from, oh, September 2004 to about April 2005 to decide how to take that "dear"...) Either she didn't recognize our name (which is a VERY common last name in Germany, along the lines of "Smith" or "Brown") or was just in a good mood, but anyway, when my husband told her that we're leaving for South Africa in January and don't know when or if we'll be living in Germany again, but don't expect Lukas to be attending school in this city next year, she said that we should just send her a letter telling her that. She will then notify the school and the health office, and that's that!

In the meantime, we took photos today of the floor plans of our apartment (we don't have a scanner) and when the weather is nicer and the lawn has been mown, we're going to take photos of the outside. Once that's done, we're putting the apartment up for sale. We've also written a letter to the other families in this building (eight of them, all nine of us the original buyers six years ago when this building was built) telling them that we're moving, and asking if any of their friends or acquaintances have ever said, "If an apartment in your building is ever free, let us know..." Also, although the market isn't supposedly a seller's market at the moment, two families we know with similar apartments in similar areas of this city sold their apartments recently, fairly quickly and for the price they wanted, so we're hopeful that we won't lose too much.

Earlier this week we received notice that legal proceedings have been started against us, and a fine of €1000 was threatened. (Not actually levied, just threatened, at this point.) Some people think that this is in connection with the news article last week, but we don't think so. Whether it is or isn't doesn't really matter--the letter was full of inaccuracies and false accusations, they didn't even bother to get the things right that they COULD have had against us!!

And if anyone is interested in a three-bedroom, 100 square meter (about 1000 square feet)  flat (apartment) on the ground floor, with its own garden (yard), I think the chances of it being up for sale very soon are rising dramatically.

So, as usual, we have little to know idea what is happening next, so all I can say is, watch this space...

We had an e-mail today from Susanne Issig, the author of the article I posted on the weekend--she said that she didn't like the title of the article at all, which her colleagues had given it in her absence! I was pleased by that, since I was a bit surprised (and not particularly happy) with the angle that implied that we're "pushing" the children, which we're NOT. 

For the interested, the timed math worksheet is "CalcuLadder Drills", which we got a year ago because Marie was frustrated with still not having the times tables down. I never intended to time them, but Marie LOVES it. Jacob doesn't, and doesn't do many of them. And for the record, I didn't say "Very good," I said "Cool!" :-)