However, even though we are not reading A Christmas Carol this year, we find ourselves not being able to get away from it totally. As a result of Tiger being ill with fever most of last week, we found ourselves having a lot of time on our hands that we could spend on video watching. To my surprise, Tiger watched the 1999 movie version without his usual complaint that most movie versions are poor substitutes for the original storybooks. There have been numerous movie adaptations of the story, but the 1999 version is the one that stayed most true to the original, and it helps that Patrick Stewart (who played Scrooge) is a most excellent actor.
After we watched the movie, we thought we might as well review our knowledge about the origins of the story:
What I find interesting about reading/reviewing the same story each year is that not only does the story become part of our family's tradition at Christmas time, but my own understanding of the story grows with each reading. This sense of getting to know a story at a deeper level with each passing year comes with no surprise. What is perhaps surprising is how easily recognisable many universal human values, such as compassion and redemption, are in this very traditional, English story. Then again, isn't that what every good classic story is supposed to do?
Another reason for us not being able to completely ignore A Christmas Carol this year is that it is currently being discussed in the BerkerleyX Book Club, which is another free MOOC offered by edX. Tiger and I looked at the first week's coursework, which we felt has helped us consider a few points that we had not discussed in our previous readings.
I'm not going to over-plan this year, as I have done in previous years. In fact, I am going to under-plan in the hope to avoid the frenzy of Christmas preparation. The basket pictured below contains most of what I hope to cover in the three weeks before Christmas:
With luck, we shall have some space and time this month to focus on
enjoying one another's company as a family (as opposed to busily running
around to achieve 'goals' or 'targets').
English, History:
1. For the month of December, we will be reading through Dickens' Christmas, which contains the story, A Christmas Carol, in addition to all the other Victorian traditions surrounding the Christmas festivity.
Although we have read A Christmas Carol last year, this year we shall read it again and use the related back issue from The Boomerang to support our reading, in addition to learning more about Victorian Christmas in general as part of our history study of the Victorian era.
2. We are most likely going to have Christmas-themed teatime in December, so we will be looking at a few Christmas poems while enjoying some homemade seasonal food such as:
Maths:
I expect to use the following book over a few Decembers so we will be working through one or two maths problems together each day.
The Arts
1. Although we tend to celebrate Christmas in a secular manner, I feel that Tiger ought to be familiar with a few of the well-known carols, so we will learn to sing three of them this December:
I shall be very pleased if we manage to do everything on this list by the end of the third week in December, leaving the week of December 22nd to enjoy the Winter Solstice and to do some last-minute shopping before we get together with the rest of the family for the big day!
With the exam out of the way, Tiger and I started to look for recipes to make foodie gifts for people. We haven't set out to do it this way, but this year our Christmas theme seems to be "simple", especially if we were to compare it with our efforts last year.
It is so easy to make that we made two batches of them to give to everyone.
Next, Tiger made cards to accompany the foodie gifts. Again, this year's cards are very straightforward to make.
The material list:
foam Christmas tree template
green and red ink pads
alphabet stamps
strong craft cards
Christmas-theme craft papers
sequins
glue and scissors
To make the card:
Choose a Christmas-theme craft paper and trace the tree template.
Cut of the tree shape.
Paste it on the front of the card. Decorate the card with sequins.
Stamp the words "Merry Christmas" inside the card using the alphabet stamps. Tiger alternated the red and green inks for his words.
Once we've made our gifts, it was time to socialise with friends again.
I spent a day at a drawing workshop with my artist friends. Tiger tagged along and did a few drawings as well, but mostly he was enjoying himself by being a social butterfly during break times.
Tiger knew about half the people there, but by the end of the class he has made friends with everyone in the workshop, engaging each person or a small group in turn with various topics. I sat in a corner of the studio and talked with my own friends but all the while keeping half an eye on Tiger as he exercised his socialising prowess around the room. Some of the topics that I managed to overhear him talk to the adults about were:
the two world wars
making paper aeroplanes
military blunders
drawing, art, collage, Matisse
homeschooling, what he is learning at home
At the end of the workshop, a few people whom we met for the first time there came up to me to tell me how delighted they were to meet Tiger and how impressed they have been by his overall demeanour. I thanked them for their kind words, and was pleased that Tiger has contributed to some positive P.R. towards the overall impression people have of home-educated children. A few people there had never met a homeschooled child before. Now that they have met and talked with one in real life, I hope they will be able to rely on this experience and apply their critical thinking ability (assuming it is still intact) to avoid being duped into believing the ridiculous myths about homeschooling children.
There is certainly no shortage of opportunities to socialise this week!
We topped our reading ofA Christmas Carol by spending a day at a homeschool creative writing/book club. The book club is led by a homeschooling mum-of-six who used to be an English teacher. The format of the club is such that the children spend the morning discussing the book as a group, noting several points of interests, such as the author's writing style, or use of descriptive techniques. This is followed by a short creative writing exercise where the children will work in groups of two to five to get their drafts in before lunch.
Lunch there is a highly sociable, community event. Each mum brings a dish to share at lunch so food is always plentiful and delicious. This week being our last meeting before Christmas, lunch is especially scrumptious and in abundance, which is a truly wonderful way to enjoy the festivity. The children usually wolf down their lunch and run outside to play for an hour or so while the adults stay indoors to tidy up and chat.
In the afternoon, the children present their work to the group. Previous presentations include an adaptation of a novel into a play, a short paragraph written in the style of an author, and descriptive writing. On this occasion, the children were tasked with writing their own Christmas carol based on the structure and storyline of Dicken's story. I have been constantly impressed by the children's creativity and by the quality of their work, individual ones as well as group projects. Above all, I am grateful for the opportunity to be in the company of these parents who are contributing so much to creating the most suitable educational environment for their children.
I am going against the grain this year: I am NOT planning any specific activities this December. It has been liberating and eye-opening for me to see how and how much unscheduled learning happens when we just 'go with the flow'.
2. Mothers Who Embody Courage and Determination
Tiger has been attending a weekly hands-on science class since September. The class is held in a small church hall so the mums always sit at the back of the class quietly until the lesson is over, unless they are helping their children with a particular tricky part of the experiments. As such, there is very little chance each week for the mums to get to know one another beyond recognising one another's faces.
The sessions for this year have ended so one of the mums has kindly invited everyone to her house for a social gathering. It was at this gathering that I felt I have gotten to know these ladies much better, and I am very glad for that.
For example, I had no idea that one mother has managed to guide her son from being diagnosed as fully autistic (i.e. no speech, no eye contact, mentally delayed) at age two to being mildly socially awkward at age 14. This boy is currently preparing for GCSEs in biology, physics and chemistry. After listening to her amazing experience, I felt a profound sense of respect for this woman. Behind her meek, quiet appearance is a spirit of steel and courage.
It was only in the relaxed environment of the gathering that I got to know that the majority of the mothers here are single parents bringing up children on their own with little financial help from their ex-partners. Most of them are also having to cope with children who have special needs, e.g. diabetic, Aspergers, dyslexic. I don't know the ins and outs of how these mothers find themselves in their situation of becoming a lone parent, but I listened with respect and admiration to every story of the battles they have had to fight to get the support their children need -- financially, educationally, and medically.
Since Tiger has never been to school, I thought he would not share this childhood experience with the 95% of children his age who go to school. Although it is not a big deal to us whether he takes part in a Nativity play, I sometimes wonder whether he might have liked, when he becomes an adult, to be able to say something like, "Yes, I have fond memories of being the donkey lying in the manger in my Year One Nativity play." Well, you never know, do you?
Thanks to a new set of homeschooling friends that we've made this year, we were invited to take part in a Nativity play -- well, it's Tiger who has the part of a shepherd/narrator. My job is to take him to the premise, be part of a supportive audience, and socialise with everyone.
We had a group of 15 children, aged two to 12. The children memorised their lines beautifully from a script written by one of the very talented mums. The play was interspersed with Christmas carols played by a few children in their various instruments (trumpet, flute, recorder, oboe).
Waiting for their turns during the full-dress rehearsal.
Despite only meeting a few hours before the actual performance, the children were ready for the actual performance after three rehersals. The children's level of concentration and dedication to this project, their ability to work together, and the older children's ability and willingness to look out for the younger ones during the 25-minute production really shone through. What a fantastic group of children! I feel very privileged to have witnessed all the goodness in these children with my own eyes.
4. A Victorian Christmas
We are about half way through reading and listening to A Christmas Carol.
There are usually many Victorian Christmas activities available in various parts of the country around this time, and since the era ties in with the book that we are reading, we went to one to experience the jovial atmosphere of a Victorian Christmas.
There were diplays of Victorian toys, Victorian games, street musicians, street performers, and Victorian crafts. We found the hand-turned busker organ to be absolutely fascinating:
The event being of a Victorian theme in December, there was also a two-person street performance of A Christmas Carol:
As it was a two-person production team, they had to adapt much of the story and summarise it into a 20-minute play. Tiger enjoyed watching the performance in spite of its obvious adaptations. It's interesting for me to see him respond differently to adaptions made at a live performance than those made for films. I'd be curious to see his response to a film version of the story, when we watch it at some point.
5. A Bedtime Lecture
Tiger
is a very animated child and his bedtime routine has always taken
forever because he always has a lot to say when he is in bed. After
I've read him stories and kissed him goodnight, he always has something
he's excited about to tell me. It may well be his delaying tactic, but I
feel obliged to stay for an extra 15 minutes because he does often have
genuinely interesting things to tell me just before bed.
This week's bedtime topic of interest is computer networks.
Mum: (kissed him on the forehead and about to switch the lights off) Goodnight, darling. Tiger:Mum, do you want to know about computer networks? Mum: (hesitatingly) Umm... I don't know. Do I? Tiger: Yeah, they're very interesting. I'll show you a few diagrammes quickly and you'll understand them in no time. Mum: Well, ok.
That was his cue to sit up in bed in his dressing gown and start explaining to me how different networks work.
In
the 30-minute session, Tiger educated me about the different switches,
routers, how LANs (local area networks) and WANs (wide area
networks) can be designed and how they work, as well as how they can be combined in various ways to make
efficient cross-border networks. The mini lecture was delivered with
numerous hand drawn diagrammes to illustrate his examples:
I
vaguely remember studying two IT-related modules at university, so
Tiger's diagrammes and explanations made some sense to me. What I
enjoyed most in the session was his enthusiasm to share what he has
learnt so far.
Much to my own surprise, despite my non-plan it has been a very busy week filled with rich experiences to nourish our hearts and minds. I wonder what is in store for us next week.
