Sunday, February 12, 2012

Meet Our Students

Hi Everyone! Our year has been going for a while because we homeschool all year round. But it is fun to get involved with the blog hop, so come and meet our students.

I meant to get this up almost as soon as the hop opened, but I've been planning to get a photo all week and just haven't gotten around to it. So instead here's a picture from around September last year, when we had a technology lesson - we put together our new Guinea Pig House.


Vince - 11 years old, Grade 5/6

Favourite things to do - board games, online games, building things (Lego, boxes, Knex, Minecraft etc), Cubs, going to the park, cuddling the pets, swimming, audio books, modeling
Favourite authors - Terry Pratchett, JK Rowling, Kathryn Lasky, Dave Luckett, Garth Nix
Favourite games - Killer Bunnies, Life, Quiddler, Lokulus
Favourite computer games - Minecraft, Terraria, Soulcalibur, Skylanders, Lego series of games
Favourite subjects - Economics, science, art
Favourite shows - Stargate, Castle, Dirty Jobs

Vince loves to homeschool. Well, not really loves it but he's grateful not to be in mainstream school. He enjoys the responsibility of managing his day, setting priorities and making choices.

He's a very thoughtful person and really feels the highs and lows of people he is close to. He can be very sensitive and caring and loves to please and be praised. He struggles with making and keeping friends and has trouble interpreting the actions of others. Because of this, he finds 1-1 or 1-2 situations easier to manage. It's one of the reasons homeschooling works so well for him, the interactions are generally smaller and less frequent.

Vince enjoys most subjects, although he resents having to settle down to get work done. However, when we tried Natural Learning a while back he became anxious without some structure and plan in place to feel his way. I'm not sure what his future holds but he loves to make things functional things and has recently expressed an interest in architecture and building, so I think he may go into design or a trade.


Rhiannon - 8 years old, Grade 3

Favourite things to do - board games, computer games, fantasy play, Cubs, swimming, snuggling pets, reading, drawing and coloring, modeling
Favourite authors - Enid Blyton, Meg Cabot, Garth Nix
Favourite computer games - Dragonvale, Minecraft, Terraria, Skylanders, Soulcaliber, My Kingdom
Favourite topics - Big cats
Favourite subjects - Science, spelling
Favourite shows - nature documentaries, Mythbusters, Top Chef

Anni is a butterfly, a free thinker with an expansive world of her own that she incorporates with ours. She is always thinking of stories, narrating her own experiences and creating a beautiful reality for herself. When we first began homeschooling she had trouble shifting from her fantasy world but now she finds it more easy to be a part of what we are doing. She has begun to love and appreciate knowledge and enjoy the learning experience.

She loves to read and reads a variety of books. Her favorite thing of the moment is big cats, although she really loves all animals. We watch lots of wildlife documentaries and she reads as much non-fiction as fiction. Anni has also become a proficient internet researcher and finds information easily when she needs it.

She likes to learn and although she procrastinates about starting school each day she does a good job when she applies herself. She loves to work on science subjects, particularly anything practical and she is getting quite passionate about our new approach to spelling. For now, she wants to be a wildlife photographer and go to Africa. Whatever she decides she will achieve it. She's very determined.



I'm looking forward to this year. I can see them standing on the edge of some big leaps and I look forward to finding out where they will take them. Homeschooling is slowly freeing them and allowing them to imagine and achieve new horizons that would never have been possible if they were still trying to integrate in the school system.


Our Worldwide Classroom

3 comments:

Dove's Rest said...

Hi Rosemary, wonderful to get to know you guys in blogland. I look forward to seeing you again on this Blog Hop. Have a great week. Renelle

Caz said...

Excellent technology project... much better than the make a model out of a shoebox one the local school did lol. I think minecraft is totally a 10-11yr old boy thing lol.. Frodo loves it too!

Ingi said...

So glad to have found your blog! Sounds like our children have quite a few similarities! I find that a lot with homeschoolers - and yet the school system seemed to think they were "weird". Just goes to show...

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