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.

Year of the Monkey

The Year of the Monkey started last Monday.  The celebration usually lasts 15 days so we have two weeks to mark this significant Chinese festival.

As with last year, Tiger and I found an Chinese New Year-related activity to do in London.  This time, the National Gallery had a short workshop on decorating the Peking Opera mask, so we went along and did that.

Although the workshop emphasised creativity, which Tiger exercised plenty of, his mask doesn't look particularly Chinese in colour or design, so I asked him to read the Origins of Chinese Art and Craft as well as Lianpu in order to look into the significance of the design and colours of the various traditional Peking opera masks to understand that they are not chosen randomly.  We also found the following clip useful to give us a better understanding of this art form:

From the National Gallery, we walked to Chinatown to buy a few special items in preparation for the Chinese New Year as well as to eat a hearty meal.  It is interesting to see that we have chosen exactly the same food as last year.

Once we got home, we started decorating the house by putting up various decorative items around the house, much like what people would do to decorate their homes for Christmas.

Many of the Chinese decorations have symbolic meanings that usually mean well-wishes and the ushering in of good fortune and prosperity for the family.  Unlike a child who grows up in the East who will understand the symbolism behind the various Chinese decorations through sheer exposure to the culture in his environment, Tiger does not have such luxury so he has to find out about the symbolic meaning of the various decorations through reading books.

This year's New Year's Eve dinner was quite special in that I bought the 'Yu Sheng' (鱼生) from Chinatown.

This dish is like a raw salmon salad that is only eaten during the Chinese New Year period, and is a tradition of Chinese living in Southeast Asia.  It is a dish to be eaten with family and friends as a way to welcome prosperity for everyone in the new year:

*Disclosure: some links are affiliate links, which means I earn a commission if you click through and buy something.


This post is linked up to:

1. Finishing Strong #76
2. Collage Friday
3. Multicultural Kid Blogs
4. Hip Homeschool Hop 2/16/16 - 2/20/16
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The one that started with an amazing Valentine gift
6. Practical Mondays Link Up Week #2

Exploring Slavery

It started out innocently enough, with us learning about a Victorian explorer/missionary, David Livingstone, and his travels in Africa.

A few chapters into the main book that we were reading for this topic, we came across the concept of slavery, which quickly turned our attention onto the transatlantic slave trade that was undergoing huge changes in the Victorian times when slavery had been going on for centuries but people were just starting to make progess in abolishing the practice, openly at least.  As we saw last month when learning about chocolate, slavery still exists today in various forms.

We attended a workshop on the abolition of the slave trade at the National Gallery, where we were shown a few paintings that traced the process of abolition.

While the art gallery session gave us a good overview into the abolition process towards the end of the slave trade, we wanted to understand more of this sad history of human trafficking, so we attended a Slavery Study Day at the Museum of London Docklands.


This museum is a very relevant to the learning of the transatlantic slave trade, specifically of the sugar trade, because the building was the former warehouse for the sugar that came to London from West Africa, where the sugar canes were grown and where slaves were used on those plantations.  On the third floor of the museum is the London, Sugar & Slavery gallery where we saw some harrowing instruments of enslavement and cruelty.

The various sessions throughout the study day were very interesting and informative.  We started with an introductory session where we were given an overview of the slave trade, how it began, why West Africa in particular, people's attitudes at that time, and how it ended.

There was also an object handling session where we learnt about Africa pre-and-post slave trade through various objects that symbolise the produce of that continent (e.g. sugar cane, tobacco) and its varied culture (e.g. small bronze sculptures from Benin, gourd drums).  The main objective of the session is to dispel the misconceptions of early Europeans that dark-skinned people were sub-human or that they had an inferior/non-existing culture, which I think the children understands very well.

The most interesting session of that day, for me, was the poetry session where the workshop leader engaged the children in various language exercises to reflect upon what they had heard, seen, and felt in the previous sessions, in relation to the topic of the day, i.e. slavery.  The children then had to write a short poem about slavery.  There was a family of African descent in attendance that day, and those children wrote the poetic verses on the topic that day, far more insightful and sensitively written than anyone else in the room.  I wonder whether the topic being very close to their personal ancestral history has something to do with their ability to feel its relevance much deeper than the rest of us. 

Considering the gravity of this topic, I think the museum has handled the displays and the sessions with great care and sensitivity.  I was very interested in the reaction of the African family to this topic so I observed them for the whole day, in addition to paying attention to the sessions, of course.  It seemed to me that the mother was slightly uncomfortable with certain exhibits in the gallery and with some points that were discussed in the various sessions.  I imagine it must feel strange for someone of African descent to hear about the history of slavery from Europeans.  I personally would be very interested to hear the British side of the story about the Opium Wars but since this topic is not in the National Curriculum, I would not have the pleasure of seeing how it is taught to children in this country, if at all.

Fashionably Klimt

On the last day of 2013, Tiger and I visited the National Gallery to see The Portrait in Vienna 1900 exhibition.

Although it was not strictly a solo exhibition of Gustav Klimt's, I used that visit as a launch pad for us to learn more about Klimt and his work.

There isn't much information on Klimt for children, probably because the erotic nature of his most famous late period of work and his rather promiscuous personal life don't lend themselves to be deemed suitable material for young children to study.  However, I was inspired by the non-erotic portraits we saw at the exhibition to study about this man's unique artistic style and its influence on modern day fashion and design.

We used postcards and prints of Klimt's work for our inspiration, to understand his use of contrasting background and colours.

 

Then we proceeded to work.

Below is Tiger's work process for this project:

1. We looked through a few magazines for Tiger to choose a pose which he liked.  Once he decided which pose he liked, he cut out the head and limbs of the model from the page
2. The cut-outs were carefully glued onto a pre-selected piece of construction paper.
3. Tiger drew the outline of the clothing on paper.
4. Then he selected the patterned papers that he wanted to use.
5. We looked at Klimt's prints again and talked about the interweaving patterns on his paintings.  This discussion made Tiger understand that he should think about variations in how he cut the patterned papers.
6. The cut-out patterns were arranged onto the paper, within the outline that Tiger had drawn.  Once he was happy with how the patterned papers were arranged, he glued each piece on carefully, making further adjustments to the way each piece was cut accordingly.

Other than the proportion of the human body being really out of whack, I think the dress is really quite funky.  I would probably wear a dress with such a loud pattern if I were 20 years younger.


This post is linked up to:

1. Hip Homeschool Hop - 3/4/14
2. Virtual Refrigerator Blog Hop 
3. Entertaining and Educational - Quotes and Strewing
4. Collage Friday - We All Need Encouragement
5. Weekly Wrap-Up: The One Where I Got Up Early
6. The Homeschool Mother's Journal (3/8/14)