School Starts Tomorrow

Tomorrow is a big day, the boys will start school back at the American School of Barcelona: Nathan in grade 8, Rylan in grade 4 and Cole in grade 1.  Ciara and I will start homeschooling.  We have been busy over the last few months, getting everything ready. I decided to go with www.linkonlearning.com to help me cover all of the essentials of the grade 6 curriculum.  It's a virtual school program, not unlike many others out there.  There were so many to choose from, but I chose linkonlearning because they offered some Canadian content.  Since we will likely be returning to Ontario after 2 more years here in Spain,  I thought that it might be good for Ciara to get a little bit of Canadian history and geography.

To supplement the online curriculum we have organized two session of educational therapy per week with the same therapist that we worked with in Canada.  She and Ciara will do their sessions via Skype.  We will see how this works.  I hope that the connection will be strong enough so that they can see and hear each other clearly.

As well, Ciara will get two Spanish lessons a week with a private tutor.  The Spanish teacher is a friend of the family and knows Ciara well.  They will focus on conversation, more than grammar.  We would like Ciara to feel more comfortable speaking with the children and adults she meets here.

The next step is to find extra-curricular activities for Ciara and her brothers.  Ciara is not too keen on doing any extra-curricular activities as she kind of worries about what other kids will think about her.  1) she is quite introverted and 2) she is being homeschooled.  It's very rare to be homeschooled in Spain.  Most Spanish people would probably think that it was strange.

We are going to check out a few activities this week.  We'll see what we decide on.