Start them young! This is the first thing that came to mind when our 6 year old homeschooler discovered a newfound hobby, go karting.  He was totally over the moon when he first drove! One of the perks that we really get to enjoy as homeschoolers is being able to take our lessons wherever we go. We have done that quite a bit last week when we went to spend quality time with good friends who we have not seen in years.

For practical reasons, go karting has a height requirement. Our 6 yo is a couple of inches over 4 feet.

One of the things in our agenda that we got to scratch off was go karting. Our family enjoys go karting so much that we wanted to share the experience with our loved ones. We headed to City Kart Racing in Makati at the 7th Level car park, Park Square 1. So those who were able, came and had a blast. It was our 6 year old homeschooler’s second time to go karting and he was no less than thrilled than he was the first time.

getting ready to race

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Yes, we have been on blogging hiatus for the holidays. The days are crazy busy but fun! From the moment we stepped back to Manila from Hongkong on the second week of this month, our schedules are practically packed to the last hour.

It was yet another fun Christmas Eve celebration at my folks’ place together with my sister’s in-laws. It has kind of become an unplanned tradition. Our son, being the youngest of the bunch received the most gifts from his family and Ninongs and Ninangs.Aside from his usual “hotwheels” gift request, we thought we’d surprise him with his very first console, A DSi XL. It was his reward for finishing Levels 1 and 2 in 2011. We thought of giving him more than the usual chocolate birthday gifts for him because he’s been extra good this year. We chose the Nintendo DSi XL instead of a PSP or any other console because of the many educational games that he can play in it. To date, his favorite is Mario Kart and Need for Speed Shift. But he switches from that to the Spelling and the Brain Age game. We just thought he was ready for it and with how he manages to stop playing when he needs to affirms just that.

These homeschoolers just got back from a much needed getaway. We just flew back from Hongkong to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary! Indeed, time flies when you’re having fun. And because one of our itineraries include a trip to the happiest place on earth – Disneyland, there was no way we can leave our little guy at home.  He celebrated with us as we roamed the different places in Hongkong.

As always, my husband was again able to surprise me with three different cards throughout the day which he strategically placed first thing in the morning (before I slept), midday and just before I sleep on December 8, 2011. As I was reading through the cards, our little guy would curiously look at each one and vowed that he’s going to make us a card as soon as he gets his hands on a piece of paper. I saw him have this look of awe on his face when he saw me happily reading through his father’s messages for me written on the cards. It makes me almost sure that he’s going to be a great husband himself when he grows up.

Our 6 year old son’s Happy Anniversary card for us

To: Mama and Papa

From: Jed

“Mama, did you know that I love you and Papa?”

“Thank you for inviting me to your 10th anniversary.”

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I was browsing through our digital albums when I chanced upon this photo of our homeschooler when he was two years old. While I’d say it is the computer age that got him to be tech savvy so early, it just amazes me till now how he can figure things out for himself techie stuff more than I can.

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The lovely thing about homeschooling is that we are able to have week days off at our whim. Not that we abuse it. We really just love the liberty that goes with this kind of system. Like the Trumpets Playshop Workshop that we got to attend last Wednesday. It was an event sponsored by Promil.

Enrolling our homeschooler to Trumpets has been a part of our plan. It was my husband’s idea. As opposed to having our son train in a Pop Music school, he really would rather that he is exposed to learning the “proper” way to sing. Our son really enjoyed the workshop. I will blog more about it later. I still have to download the photos and videos from the cameras we used.

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As I have mentioned in my previous post, our Boracay vacation was postponed when my homeschooler had a Dengue fever. It doesn’t really matter. I mean missing our family vacation, since our child’s welfare is always our primary concern. Anyway, we still have a lot of vacations to plan as long as we are always in a good health, right?

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My son prayed and invited Jesus in his heart as his personal Lord and Savior in January 20, 2010. He was 4 years old then. If you are not familiar what this means, you might want to check this out –> Four Spiritual Laws. And because we wanted to be sure he really understands what it means to be saved and to accept Jesus in his heart, we stayed put and waited.  Several times, during their regular talks my husband got convinced along the way, that our little guy indeed understands.  We knew that he is ready to be baptized.

Baptism is a willing pledge made by those who recognize their sin, understand the significance of the death of Christ and commit themselves to Him. Check marks on every count for this homeschooler. Read this article »

Before this, the last time this homeschooler had his flu shot was in 2009. He was practically ill free throughout that year. Yes, we skipped 2010, for some reason. We probably got really busy getting back on our feet after the Ondoy devastation.

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The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that kids under 2 years old not watch any TV and older children should not watch more than 1 to 2 hours a day of quality programming.

When I first read about this somewhere when my son was a newborn, I knew this made sense. Especially during the times that I did allow him to watch some Baby Einstein videos for long periods of time. Being the lone person in the house doing all the housework, taking care of the baby and doing my online tasks, the television is the easy instant nanny that I tried to make use of. The few times that I allowed my son to watch more than a couple of hours, he turned into this kind of wild child that won’t hear of it if I tell him watching tv is done. His zombified look was enough for me to learn my lesson and take APP’s word for it.

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We are blessed to have inherited a library of books way before my son was born. We gave a lot away. But we kept several collection for our library. A portion of which are Children’s and Science Library which our son started to love reading when he was 4 years old. Now that he has started to become a wide reader, he all the more loves things that pertains to Science. This week his focus was on plants and how they grow.

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