Week 5, Friday

This morning after the boys got off to school, Ciara and I got right into gardening.  We took our pansy seeds that we had soaked in water for 3 days and planted them in egg cartons and a few in an empty planter box off our back terrace.  I honestly haven't planted anything in years.  I am glad that Ciara has shown interest in gardening as this may help me to take care of what few plants we have here.  One of the nice things about living in Barcelona is the fact that we can garden almost all year.  I'm sure that we planted over two hundred pansy seeds, so let's hope we get at least a few flowers.

After we finished our gardening, Ciara wanted to learn more about Marie Curie.  I remember that she read a book about Marie Curie at my parent's place when we visited them in Vancouver this past summer.  Ciara and I watched a short video about her life, you can see it here: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xx3tw5_marie-curie-biography_lifestyle.  I have to admit that I was wiping back tears at the end of the video.  I am glad that Ciara is interested in studying about such a great woman.  I am hoping that it will inspire her to achieve great things in her life.  Ciara took notes and then later made her own short movie about Marie Curie using Flipnote Studio on her DS. 

I received an e-mail from the school director this morning confirming that Ciara will be attending 5th grade and will be starting on Monday Oct. 20th.  So that means we have at least one more full week of homeschooling, yeah!

This afternoon for our cooking class, Ciara finally perfected the rainbow cake.  I hope that now we can move on to other recipes. 

For social studies this afternoon, Ciara wanted to take a break from Ancient Greece, so I let her choose what topic to study.  She chose the Black Plague and the history of chocolate.  Two very different topics, but both interesting in their own way.

Growing pansies

Maybe we'll get hundreds of pansies

Ciara watering the plants

Check out the awesome rainbow cake!

Cole enjoying some cake

Week 5, Thursday

All the boys were healthy enough today to go to school, so it was a relatively calm day.  Ciara and I started a new unit in math on transforming fractions into decimals and vice versa.  I was worried that this unit would be challenging for her, but she grasped the concepts really quickly and we sailed through our lesson without any problems :)

Arantxa came over for Ciara's Spanish lesson and I was able to go to my Spanish class.  This school year I am continuing to learn Spanish with a group of mother's from the American School.  We do the class in the club room in La Mallola where we live, so it's really convenient for me.  I really enjoy this class because it is a small group and we get to discuss literature, culture as well as grammar.  It gives me a nice break from homeschooling as well.

I am realizing that another great benefit of homeschooling is how much I am learning.  Last year I was focussed on learning Spanish and how to live in Spain.  This year, I am learning so much more because of Ciara.  It's kind of like I get to be back in school.  It's a lot of work, but I will really miss this when Ciara goes back to school next week.

This week has been so busy with homeschooling, getting Ciara enrolled in school, so many errands, taking care of sick children, preparing for Cole's birthday party and chauffeuring kids back and forth from their after school activities.  Thank goodness for Nathan, who is a huge help to me and has done his fair share of child-minding this week.  I can't wait for Bob to get back tomorrow.

Week 5, Wednesday

Today was a pretty hectic day again.  It started when Nathan forgot his lunch, so I ran to the school to bring it to him.  Got back home and decided to let Ciara determine what class we would do first.  I often have to change the schedule because of different things that come up during the day, so this time I thought it might work better to let Ciara make some decisions about our daily schedule.

She decided she would like to do Library first, which was great because it gave me time to hang up the laundry and eat breakfast.  Next we moved on to math.  While we were practicing our mental math, the phone rang, and it was the school.  Rylan was sick and needed to come home.  So I ran off to the school again to pick up Rylan who was complaining of a stomach ache.  He had been complaining that his stomach hurt this morning before school, but I told him that it would pass.

Now with Rylan home, this made things a little more complicated.  I had a meeting with the school Director at 2pm and I couldn't leave Ciara home with Rylan being sick, so I had to call Arantxa to come and watch them.   Fortunately Arantxa was able to come over and two minutes before I left for my meeting, Rylan threw-up on the floor.  So I quickly cleaned up the vomit, ran to the school and arrived only a few minutes late for my meeting with the Director.

The consultants want the documents 2 weeks ago and so I basically told the Director that we were prepared to enrol Ciara immediately and then we could sort out her schedule later.  I told him that I preferred Ciara stay in 5th grade.  I just could not see her going to middle-school.  I don't think that she is ready for it emotionally and I think that she would struggle a lot academically too.  The Director agreed that it would probably be best due to the fact that 6th grade is full with 23 or 24 students per class and 5th grade has 17 to 18 students per class.  Ciara also has a late birthday and in many parts of the US, she would have started a year later anyways.   He also agreed that it should be no problem if she left early a couple of days a week, so that is something.

After my meeting I ran back home.  Rylan was still feeling bad, but I was happy that Ciara had done her writing work like I had asked her before I left.

At 4pm I ran back to the school to meet up with Fareeda.  She came over so that we could make some piñatas.  Cole and her son Alexander are having their birthday party together on Saturday.   With the piñatas made and put out to dry, I went back to the school.  This time I had to pick up Cole who was at soccer practice.   So in all, I was at the school 5 times today!  It's a wonder anything gets done at all during the day!

Week 5, Tuesday

The whole residency renewal issue is such a bummer.   We are pretty sure that BASF will not allow us to stay in Spain if one of our children is undocumented, although quite a few people have suggested to me that it wouldn't be that big a deal.  In any case, as our time is running out and Bob is being pressured to come up with the school documents, we have to get Ciara registered as soon as possible.   Tomorrow afternoon I get to meet with the school director again to arrange for Ciara to be admitted into the school.

In the meantime, homeschooling must go on!  Today we did a little bit of geometry and learned how to calculate the volume of a prism.  As part of our math class we have started using BrainPop, which is a great website for kids (and adults) of all ages.  We especially like the math games.  

Ciara worked on her story that she is writing about an orphan girl named Katy who is adopted by monsters.  The past few weeks, we have been working on the plot, characters and setting.  Today she wrote the first page, and it was pretty entertaining.  Speaking about stories, I forgot to mention that Ciara and I just finished "Wonder" by R.J. Palacio.  We read together every night after I put the younger boys to bed.  We laughed, we cried and we were uplifted by this story of a boy who was born very different. We thoroughly enjoyed this book and highly recommend it for anyone grade 5 and up.

Here are a few pictures of other things we have been up to recently:

Some drawings for the board game Ciara is making

Here are the game tokens all painted

Ciara made a giant cookie

And an apple pie

Saturday walking along Puerto de Barcelona

The kids love to climb on the lions that stand at the foot of the Christopher Columbus Monument

Ciara decided to make postcards of her Littlest Pet Shops

Pretty cute eh?

Since we started homeschooling Ciara has been interested in gardening, so we are going to plant some pansies.  First we need to soak the seeds in water for 3 days. 

Week 5, Monday

Well, it looks as though my homeschooling experience may come to an end after only 5 weeks.   On Friday I was feeling pretty optimistic about Ciara doing homeschool part-time and regular school part-time.  This afternoon I got an e-mail from the school director letting me know that the lawyers for the school said that it was against the law and Ciara would have to be at school full-time.

So today was kind of a hectic day.  Ciara did her best to complete all of her studies.  I feel so bad for what she has had to go through: homeschooling, no homeschooling, part-time schooling, full-time schooling, all the uncertainty, me constantly making phone calls, writing e-mails and going to meetings.   I wanted to homeschool, to give Ciara a sense of security.  I wanted her to feel comfortable and at ease while she was learning.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to provide such an environment during these past 4 weeks.

Still, I am happy that we tried, and I am happy with what Ciara has accomplished and especially how she has become a little kinder, a little friendlier, a little happier :)

We will see what the future holds...

Week 4, Thursday

Today, I'm feeling like something is not working.  Ciara has been making a lot of progress on the social and emotional front, but within the last couple of days I find that she is slipping back into her old ways: a lot of negativity, stubborness and anger.  I really don't know what it is and I have a feeling that Ciara doesn't know what is bothering her either.

Well, when I started homeschooling, I knew that it wouldn't be easy.  Every day won't be wonderful.  I need to take each day in strides, and also remember that I have 3 other children and a husband.  Because I spend so much time with Ciara each day, it is very easy for me to be affected by her mood.  I can't let it bother me so much.

I think that Ciara needs some close friends.  That's what she has been missing since we moved to Spain.  She has one friend at church, but there is a communication barrier which makes it difficult to really share her feelings.  She has had such a hard time making friends at school.  She wasn't able to find anyone who was interested in the same things she was and she was intimidated by large groups of kids.  Sadly, even her teacher and school counsellor could not think of anyone in her class last year that would've been a good fit for her.  I hope that going back to school part-time in grade 5 will be good for Ciara.  As she will be doing the most difficult subjects at home, maybe school will be a less intimidating environment and she will feel more comfortable socializing.  Let's hope so :)

Week 4, Wednesday (thoughts on quiet children)

For a long time I've been meaning to write something about a book that I read over the summer.  It's called "Quiet" and it is written by Susan Cain.  Another parent who has children at the American School of Barcelona lent me the book as we were talking about our children and their difficulties with school.  The subtitle of the book says: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking.

At first glance, I figured that the book would relate more to Nathan (my eldest son) who has always been extremely quiet.  In fact his middle name is Kiyoshi, which in Japanese mean quiet or peaceful child.   But after just a couple of pages, I realized that this book was really about Ciara.  In fact I had never thought of Ciara as an introvert, but she displays pretty much all the characteristics.  After reading this book I really felt as though I had misdiagnosed Ciara's behaviour all these years.

The first part that really caught my attention was the study by Jerome Kagan, a developmental psychologist, who studied 500 four month old babies to see how they reacted to new experiences.  Kagan found that infants who reacted strongly to new sights, sounds and smells had a good chance of becoming future introverts.  Anyone who knew Ciara when she was a baby, knew that she was a highly reactive baby.  We didn't know why, but everything used to upset her.  At the time, we could only define it as colic, that mysterious, unexplainable constant crying.  We used to have to wrap her up as tight as we could, put her in pitch darkness and make sure that there was absolutely no outside noise in order for her to sleep.

According to Jay Belsky, a psychologist and child care expert, the nervous systems of high reactive children are quickly overwhelmed by childhood adversity, but also benefit from a nurturing environment more than other children do.  Kagan found that a quarter of the high-reactive kids he studied suffered from "social anxiety disorder," a disabling form of shyness.

I have never thought of Ciara as shy, because at times she seems bolder than most kids, but it's the crippling social anxiety that makes her seem shy to others.  This is why Ciara has always  seemed like such a paradox to me.   On one hand, she can be very expressive, outgoing, determined and adventurous but when she is in an uncertain or challenging situation, like school, she shuts down and has problems even speaking.

So I highly recommend you read "Quiet" if you are or live with someone who is introverted.  It was really an enlightening book and helped me to realize that homeschool for Ciara really made sense.