May the Force be with Us

One of the key positives for Tiger in attending school is to have found a best friend in his class, a French boy, L, who shares his passion for all things Star Wars.  Tiger spent a whole day hanging out with L at his home (talking non-stop about Star Wars, according to L's mum) and also went to the cinema to watch the latest franchise movie:

Since I have not totally forgotten my previous role as a homeschooling mother, I then followed up with Tiger's interest by taking him to the Star Wars exhibition.

Given his current obsession with Star Wars, Tiger really enjoyed the exhibition.  I am not a sci-fi fan in any way but I have found the slightly philosophical theme (about making choices) of the exhibition to be interesting.  We had the opportunity to 'mould' a character by the end of the exhibition, and the below are our Star Wars characters:

Back home, Tiger whipped out the dot-to-dot book that I got him for Christmas and started playing with it.  Doing the dot-to-dot is nothing especially intellectual, but Tiger enjoys it, as so I, and doing what we enjoy is a good enough reason to carry on with the activity.

Besides, this is how we have always supported and will continue to support Tiger's interests, aligned with his increasing fleet of Star Wars models.

If you happen to be as ignorant about the various space vehicles as I am, here is a video that I have found to be useful to bring me up to speed with what the Millenium Falcon is:

Of course, one needs to know about Walkers:

Where does this obsession begin?  I trace it back to two Christmases ago.   Since then, Tiger has caught the bug, despite my best efforts to distract him from it.  When I saw that I could not save him from it, I let him immerse himself by reading all the related books we could get our hands on.

 

Having said that, I must confess that I struggle to see the importance of knowing the entire chronological history of Star Wars...

2016 Recap in Photos

Looking back at 2016, I realise that our life has changed dramatically.

While looking through these photos, I could not help seeing that homeschooling was indeed a lifestyle choice.  There are many aspects of homeschooling life that I miss, such as the ability to control our time and to engage in many uniquely interesting activities.  Nonetheless, we are where we are at this moment in life, and I am grateful for the opportunities that we have been given to enable a smooth transition from homeschooling to 'normal' schooling.

Everything from September to December zoomed past in a blur for me, so it is important that I keep the memories of what life was like for us, so that I may look back and recognise that I actually miss a lot of what was so good about our homeschooling life (I certainly don't miss the difficult bits!).

January
Highlights:

• Time: in nature, with family, with friends
• Sports: table tennis, climbing, archery
• Classes: Chemistry lab, model aircraft, zoology, English, History
• Studying fossils

 

February
Highlights:

• Time: eating out, drawing, cooking
• Sports: Climbing 
• Classes: model aircraft design, mask theatre, robotics, chemistry lab
• Studying prehistory and human evolution
• Field trips: Brooklands Museum, Colchester Zoo, National Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts

March
Highlights:

• Time: in nature, with family
• Classes: model aircraft, zoology, chemistry lab, programming
• Studying rocks and minerals
• Special event: jazz singing concert, short story writing submission

April
Highlights:

• Classes: model aircraft, zoology, chemistry lab, programming
• Studying rocks and minerals
• Field trips: House of Parliament, BBC Broadcasting House, London Aquarium
• Special event: singing concert, short story writing submission

May
Highlights:

• Time: in nature, with friends, with family
• Sports: table tennis
• Classes: physics lab, forest school, model aircraft design
• Studying art
• Field trips: Hertford Castle, Chartwell
• Special event: Universtiy Challenge in Chemistry (First Prize)!

June
Highlights:

• Time: in nature, with family, reading
• Classes: physics lab, programming
• Studying art, ancient history, geography
• Field trips: quarry, geological excavation site
• Special event: jazz singing concert

July
Highlights:

• Time: in nature, with family, with friends
• Classes: physics lab, astronomy, model aircraft design
• Studying art, insects, circuits
• Special event: jazz singing concert, model aircraft competition (First Prize), percussion concert

August
Highlights:

• Time: in nature, with family, drawing
• Classes: physics lab, programming
• Field trips: Cheddar Gorge
• Special event: 'geek' gathering

September
Highlights:

• Started attending school.
• Resumed mountain biking.
• Attended another 'geek' gathering.

October
Highlights:

• No photos!
• I was completely overwhelmed by work, and was practically just trying to survive it so did not even think to take any photos.

November
Highlights:

• Time: eating out, reading
• Field trips: Science Museum, British Museum

December
Highlights:

• Time: with family, climbing
• There's an obvious theme in this year's Christmas presents....

There is a definite lack of photos now that we spend most of our week day times apart.  I am still not used to not being the main participant of Tiger's learning journey.  It is a bitter-sweet feeling for me to see Tiger diving into his new phase of life so readily and successfully, and I am certainly glad that he is so adaptable to changes.  While I always knew that my homeschooling journey would eventually end, I was a little surprised to have it come so quickly and so suddenly.

Everything happens for a reason.  I am just so grateful that we are all in a good place right now, having the experiences that we are meant to be having for this season of our lives.

Wishing everyone a very happy 2017.