Babel School in Taiwan

Our very comfortable hotel - East Hotel. Instead of staying home for Christmas we decided to fly for three days to Hong Kong. It was my and kids first time on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. The city didn't really impress us much ... but we still had a great time. Views from the airport bus to the hotel - far from pretty. We not only walked around the city, but also took all possible means of public transportation - bus, tram, taxi, small bus, boat, underground and train (all of us agree that the taxi was the worst). It was very convenient with the Octopus card. Doubledecker tram, Tim on a ferry and plan of MTR.   We tried some local food and drinks. What is "Milk water egg"? Condensed milk diluted with water with a raw egg inside - quite nice. The drinks very really good and the jelly eggs were fun to eat too. Jas loves LEGO so we couldn't miss a visit to the Times Square where big Lego figures and houses were set out. What surprised...

Last year we were away from home for the whole Christmas season, so there was no reason to decorate the house or to put the Christmas tree up. This year, we are spending most of December at home, so we wanted to have the house all ready for the Holidays. We invited our homeschooling neighbours for an afternoon of making dough ornaments.     This is how they turned out. Kids also made origami and Hama Beads ornaments. We've also put out the old and new decorations, mangers and ornaments. And of course a very colorful Christmas tree! Zosia made some cute sweets from marzipan and Jas made and decorated cookies.

Zosia sharing her experience at the camp. During summer Zosia participated in a few summer camps organized by Fubong Culture and Education Foundation 富邦文教基金會. For one of the camps she went to Orchid Island 蘭嶼 off the south eastern coast of Taiwan to learn about the aboriginal way of life. At the end of the camp kids had to make a short film presentation about what they have learned. Another camp was in Tainan, where she explored the newly opened National Museum of Taiwan History 國立台灣歷史博物館 . During this camp she not only learned history of Taiwan, but also made a short feature film about one event from the history using the photos taken inside the museum. Images from "The Kite" animation For the last camp Zosia gathered a group of eight homeschoolers interested in film making and together they signed up for the film making camp. After a few days of learning about acting, working as a group and preparing a script for their movie only half of the groups w...

December 6th was St. Nicholas Day. It is a tradition that on that day kids in Poland receive small gifts, usually sweets and chocolates, put under their beds at night by the Good Old St Nick. This year St Nick was a bit busy and didn't get here on time, he was late by two days. He also thought that instead of stuffing the kids's tummies with more sweets it would be better to "stuff" their brains with some literature.  Kids also wrote letters to Święty Mikołaj, as we call Santa in Polish.  Jas even left a snack for tired Santa and carrots for Rudolph.

Zosia has just finished reading (and studying) The Usborne Encyclopedia of Planet Earth . Everything that a teenager should know about our Earth - climate, plants and animals, land shapes, rivers and oceans, the planet itself, earthquakes and volcanoes - can be found in this book. In addition to that Usborne Quicklinks's website has many links to different interesting and fun websites explaining even more in depth these issues. As a last exercise from this book, Zosia has created a mindmap about different map projections. Here it is:

This time I would like to write a few words about my 15 year-old daughter. After we got back to Taiwan from Poland I've realized what a busy teenager she is. It's really hard to believe in how many different things/activities she is involved. This semester she doesn't have many classes outside home, only art class and ice-skating. After 10 years of dancing in Cloud Gate Dance Studio, Zosia decided to quit, not because she doesn't like dancing anymore, but because of conflicting schedule. She chose to take part in the production of a first Taiwanese musical " Dancing Diva " 台灣舞孃 . One night a week she spends 4 hours observing the rehearsals and helping with little tasks. This way she is learning how a big theater production takes shape. She can see the work of director, producer, music director, choreographer and of course dancers and actors. Last week TEDx Youth@Taida took place in Taipei. Also in this event Zosia had a small part to play - she was one ...

Zosia and Jas are five years apart, so it doesn't happen very often that they can work together on something. I do try to get both of them involved in the same projects, but it usually ends up with Zosia finishing what Jas has started. Last week we started reading together one of Sonlight's recommended books for science. Zosia already knows most of the things in it, but I think it is a good review for her. Jas, on the other hand, wants to do all the experiments in the book and is fascinated with all the interesting facts about plants and animals and ways to observe them. The book we are reading: Yesterday, after reading a chapter about experimenting with plants, Jas has started a few 'experiments': How long will it take for the cherry branches to have leaves? Learning about osmosis (sugar in a potato in water). Starting to grow green beans (unfortunately we didn't have any larger variety of beans at home): Beside reading and setting up th...

Yes, that's right - last Friday Jas, all by himself, has made dinner for the whole family. Last week he has studied a few of his cookbooks and chose one of the dishes. He then asked me to buy a few things he needed to make the dinner he chose (which was Pasta with Tuna and Tomatoes). The book Jaś chose to cook from. It's a Polish edition of a "Cookbook for Boys" by Abigail Wheatley, published by Usborne. Cutting tomatoes and stirring the tuna+tomotoes+spices sauce. Adding shredded cheese on top was Jas' idea as he likes everything with cheese. The only thing Jas needed help with was opening the tuna cans. He boiled the pasta and made the sauce and later baked everything all by himself. He was very proud of himself when the meal turned out really tasty. I hope that there will be more dinners 'by Jas' in the near future.

Looks like the weather knows exactly what we need :-) Yesterday we read about the wind in our science books DK Eye Wonder Weather and The Usborne Book of Science Activities Volume III  and we made the "instruments" needed to measure the strength and the direction of  the wind: We couldn't try our "instruments" outside in the wind, because simply there was no wind, not a tiniest breeze. Today, on the other hand, we woke up to a beautiful cloudless sky and some pretty strong winds! Yeah! It was time to try out what we've made! Take a look at what was happening to our "instruments":

Every year, just before Nov.1st, Polish people go to the cemeteries to clean their family graves. Then on the All Saints Day they go back to light candles and place flowers. This year cleaning the graves was a bit difficult because of the frozen snow and leaves. Normally Tim, kids and I would have gone to 4-5 different cemeteries in Warsaw, but this time because of the weather we went only to one, where we cleaned three family graves. It was a lot of work, it took us over three hours to get the snow and leaves cleaned up. Unfortunately on Nov.1st we were already on our way to Berlin so we couldn't visit other cemeteries and light the candles.

Jaś writing in his journal. The time spend in Poland, by some would be considered as vacation or holidays. But do homeschooled kids have vacation?  For us "schooling" and learning happens all the time, no matter where we are or what time of the year it is. Visiting a different country, going for an art exhibition or to a museum, going hiking or taking a walk in the forest - all this is part of learning, part of our school.  We don't want the kids to think that learning happens only behind a desk, with pen in the hand and a book or computer in front of you. Learning is a ongoing process and it can take any form, not only reading and writing. Talking to older people about their experiences, about their childhood is also learning. Taking care of younger children or helping with the chores at home is learning too.  Some of my friends, and even my parents, think that the kids should not be given any school work during the vacation time. But how can it be done? Our famil...