First Day of School! :-)

Well, before we brought Kai Wei home I thought I'd wait weeks, maybe even a month before we started any official school--but he gets bored too easily and I don't like seeing kids on computers and game boys! Plus, I figured I'd never get the boys into a school routine if we didn't start soon.

SO, on Sunday night I unpacked that new curriculum and by Monday morning I was totally overwhelmed. Who did I think I was that I was going to teach this child English? Thankfully Monday was President's Day and still a holiday for the rest of the family and I didn't have to start school till Tuesday. By then, my merciful God had covered me with His grace and I was ready to go at it.

We started with these rather fun paper doll worksheets that helped us talk about colors and clothing and body parts. We sang Head Shoulders Knees and Toes (in English and Chinese--sad to say I still don't have the Chinese words down, but I've added some to my vocabulary) We worked on phonics--reviewing the basic letter sounds. Kai Wei knows all his English alphabet and writes well--but he does not appear to know any phonics and can not read English--although he seems to be a good reader in Chinese. Then we "discussed" a bit about our Bible lessons. Well Daniel and I discussed and Kai Wei looked a bit bored. Try getting across the concept of a scroll to someone who speaks a different language! By yesterday he seemed a little more understanding of the concept as we looked at pictures of the Dead Sea Scrolls on the internet and made clay jars to put our "scrolls" in.

Anyway, I guess the first day was a success because Kai Wei asked the next day when we would start school and seemed eager to do so! SCORE! But, it was short lived. He really did not want to do school today and we had a bit of a "battle of the wills" I felt the need to win only because I really felt he was testing me and seeing if he really had to listen.(I was glad at this point that I was already a mother of five. I've been in this place before. I think if he'd been my first child I would have felt more that there was something drastically wrong with him or me!) I figured if I didn't get the point that I needed to be obeyed across I could forget about successfully homeschooling him. Anyway, I did win and I think he felt OK about it. I pretty much let him not participate while I finished up those things with Daniel that he would not understand due to the language anyway. Although he missed the neat pictures in the science book and the trek outdoors to see the snow and icicles first hand --he had a chance to look at the pictures later and we brought some snow and ice inside for him (still a novelty for a boy from Taiwan). After that he was feeling a little more friendly toward me and I just explained to him (with my limited Chinese and pantomime) that now it was lunch time and in order to eat lunch we had to finish up where we'd left off (Singing Head Shoulders Knees and Toes--see I am not such an ogre--it wasn't calculus or composition--just a fun song I knew he enjoyed!) So with the help of Annie and Jonathan to aid Daniel and I (THEY both had a snow day--hence the lack of interest in school for the rest of us :-) we happily sung Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes ONE time (and then again in Chinese which he said he'd like) and then ate our lunch and went out sledding.

Later in the afternoon I told him in Chinese "I like you" Annie tells me this is what Chinese parents tell their kids--their equivalent to "I love you". He answered me back, "Mommy likes everyone" I wasn't quite sure how to take this. Was it a nice compliment that meant I was a kind and loving person. Or did he mean--yeah, you just like anybody? Well I said, "But, I like you!" And he gave me his cute, "shy" smile.

So, all's well that ends well!