Babel School in Taiwan

Just finished a lapbook with Jas. This time it's an animal lapbook about zebras. Because I no longer have time to design the lapbooks myself, I used a template from a wonderful website Homeschool Share . You can find there all sorts of lapbook templates, lesson plans and unit study plans. It's difficult to get Jas involved in making a longer project, that's why this time I decided to plan ahead and set a certain amount of lapbook work for each day of the week. This way we managed to finish the whole project in one week! Zosia could work for whole day on the same project and for Jas it's impossible - he has to do bit by bit. Getting all the pieces ready. The front page  and the middle pages unfolded. In the middle is a poem by Shel Silverstein that Jas copied. Some of the flaps and booklets, unfolded.

Wre are still trying to figure out which software to use for creating mind maps on the computer. We looked through quite a few, downloaded them and Zosia tried them out. So far nothing beats the full version of iMindMap - it's easy to use, colorful, makes really cool presentations, has lots of clip-art and simply appeals to Zosia a lot. But ... there always has to be a but ... it is too expensive. Some mind mapping tools are too simple, too boring or they don't have the presentation mode. We also tried Vue - Visual Understanding Environment , XMind and now Zosia is trying out the NovaMind software. So far so good, she likes NovaMind and it is cheaper than iMindMap! Here is a mind map made with NovaMind:

Since the publishing of our book we've been bombarded with requests for interviews, from newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations. Looks like almost overnight we've become some kind of celebrities. Below I am posting a few links to articles about our homeschooling experience: "Taiwan Lihpao" - a quite comprehensive article on our homeschooling experience "China Times" "ETtoday" - an Internet news article which is just a compilation of other news articles More articles are coming up soon. I didn't know that the author's work doesn't finish even after the book has been published. We are also having meeting with the readers. For more information please go to Facebook - 陳家國際自學校 Where to buy the book on-line? Cite Eslite Kingstone books.com.tw PCHome

Another project by Zosia on Mind Map. This time it's a family tree of a Polish king, Mieszko II.  

A few days ago Zosia and I saw some interesting books on making notes. Today we searched the web for info about how to make the graph notes and we found a really neat software called iMindMap. http://www.thinkbuzan.com We immediately started using it to make notes on the chemistry lesson about air pollution. Here is what Zosia came up with (it's in Polish, sorry). The free version is only for 7 days and later you have to pay big bucks for it. What are we going to do?

Sleepless nights, kids left to do their homework all by themselves, minds full of thoughts and memories, stiff fingers from typing - all this leads to one great thing - A BOOK. After a lot of work on our and our editor's 黃靖卉 side we are coming closer to publishing our first book. Tomorrow we will be going over the blueprints and tomorrow night the printing begins! It will be for sale in bookstores island wide at the end of April or beginning of May. What is the book about? It is all about our experiences in raising and teaching kids in a multicultural and multilingual environment.  You can read about the reasons for choosing homeschooling and how we actually teach our children, how others do it and what resources there are for kids around Taiwan and on the Internet. We've been planning on putting our experiences on paper for quite a while, but we never could have gotten around it if 黃靖卉hasn't contacted us last fall and hand held us all the way. Thank you, 黃靖卉. The b...