Babel School in Taiwan

Many months have passed since we've visited Berlin in November last year. This was first time for Zosia and Jas to go to Germany (not counting the airports, of course). While in Berlin we went to many historical places and museums, for example - Checkpoint Charlie (the most famous checkpoint between the East and West Berlin, the Wall, the DDR Museum, the Stasi Museum etc. Both kids got very interested in the whole "East and West Germany thing" and Zosia wanted to make a project about it. Two weeks ago she has finally started working on it. She gathered lots and lots of information from the Internet and books about the Wall. She then typed and printed out some of the more interesting facts and planned the whole 3D project. This is how far she got: At work Arranging everything Scraps of magazines photos for the Wall Checkpoint Charlie Brandenburg Gate

After 3 looong months of learning, reading, researching, writing about dinosaurs Jas' BIG project is finally finished!  You can read about the materials and books we used in this post .  In April Jas has already finished a part of the project - the dinosaur mural - you can see his post with photos of the mural on his blog . Jas with his dinosaur folder I prepared template for Jas to fill in with information about different dinosaurs. Jas wrote information about 33 different dinosaurs. Incorporating a bit of math into the project   Jas also solved some dinosaur word puzzles.  

Last week our new books from Sonlight arrived. It took 6 days for the box to reach us! What an amazing speed. Don't remember the order getting to Taiwan so fast in the previous years. It took less time for the books to travel from one continent to the other then for me to place the order ... This year I really had hard time deciding what I should order. About a year or so ago Sonlight has made some big changes to their curricula.  The so called Core used to consist only of History/Geography modules and Read-Alouds, the Bible Study was optional. Now not only the Bible Study is incorporated in the Core, but also Language Arts (Spelling, Handwriting, Grammar, Vocabulary, Creative Expression). That is FAR TOO MUCH. We don't need all this additional subjects, we are only interested in the History/Geography part. That's why I had to hand pick one by one all the books. It also didn't make sense to buy the humongous teacher's manual, because most of the pages were deali

Yesterday Zosia took part in the first part of a modeling competition - 2013 Eeling Star - organised by one of the biggest modeling companies in Taiwan. The competition was fierce, 2175 people signed up. All of them had to prepare a 30 sec. of self introduction and 30 sec. of talent presentation. Zosia was worried that she is not able to present her 'talents' on stage - how do you show that you can ice-skate or ski beautifully? She chose to give a short multilingual speech. She said a few sentences in Polish, English, Chinese-Mandarin, Taiwanese and Japanese. Her performance was shown on 4 different news channels! Today the results were announced - Zosia is one of the 90 young people that got chosen to take part in the second part of the competition/training. Now many days of training are awaiting her. She is going to learn about make-up, acting, posing, how to walk on a cat-walk etc. After the training the best new model will be chosen. The price is a brand new car, Subaru.

How is it - do homeschoolers have school in summer? Of course in our school learning never stops. We learn all year round, no matter where we are and no matter how hot or cold it is outside. This summer both Zosia and Jas have different attractions - cruise, camps, competition and of course normal classes and lessons with Mom. So what have they been doing so far? At the end of June they took a cruise to Japan and Korea. It was a short trip, just 5 days, but it was also something to remember. They liked being on the cruise ship a lot and they made some friends with the staff (especially the bartenders). Unfortunately they didn't enjoy the time on land - trying to see too many things in a very short time. Jas' new idea is to become a bartender or a chef on a cruise. Let's wait and see... (Note - we, the parents, did not go with them, Taiwanese grandparents and aunts did.) Right after the cruise Jas went for a week long basketball day-camp. He has

Lately I've been very busy. I didn't even have time to write here as often as I would like to. Some of you already know why I am so busy, others will find out soon :-) . I just remembered that I haven't even mentioned the big event in our family... Two months have already passed since Zosia's Confirmation (Bierzmowanie - in Polish). I have been thinking about Zosia's Confirmation for a while, not knowing how to go about her receiving the sacrament. There are no other Polish kids her age in Taipei and the only parish with English language Sunday school is very far away from where we live. That's why I was very happy to hear an annoucement in our church about this year's preparation for the Sacrament of Confirmation. It turned out that Zosia would need to meet with sister Florence for an "exam" or should I say, to see if she is prepared to receive the sacrament. On Sunday, May 19th, 2013 Zosia has received the Sacrament of Confirmation in the