A Productive Day

Yesterday was a productive day. I no longer consider going through OHVA curriculum as what the kids enjoy, as they ardently hate it. So when a homeschool day is productive, it usually means we get to do something else other than OHVA lessons.

Both N and H are entering the Reading Rainbow Young Writers & Illustrators contest. Note that not everything about OHVA is bad; I do benefit a lot from doing those lesson plans, and especially from the phone conferences with the teachers. It's just that when you have multiple children at different levels, following a set curriculum where you don't have any control can be frustrating. N and H's teacher sent me a PDF file on how to improve students' writing, based on the Reading Rainbow contest, and I used that yesterday to revise N's story with her. She managed to cut down on her word count, as the maximum is 350 where she has over 1000 words. I will still need to work with her and help her cut out more words to abide by the rules of the contest.

As for H, I managed to train him how to use Moodle (Columbus Dawah School). Except for the Part 1 notes, he uploaded all the other part of the notes for Love Notes, mashaallah. I dubbed him 'The Moodle Guy'. Seeing how technical this boy is, managing moodle does seem to be something he would be interested in, whereas for N, when I asked her what part she would like to play in the Seats of Scholars team, she expressed no interest whatsoever, so I left her alone.

As for S, I inducted her into the Seats of Scholars team, as the kids now have an email account. Her task will be to remind the team of any tasks that need to be done by a deadline inshaallah. Hopefully this will train her how to use a planner, and will be a start in getting her involved in dawah projects inshaallah.

So all in all, I would say that yesterday was a very productive day. Homeschooling is not necessarily about mastering academics, but more about living life, mastering new skills, and learning to get along as a family, at least that's how I have started to see it after all these years of clocking in school hours and marking off lessons. Alhamdulillah!