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Homeschool Week 1: You Learn Something New Everyday

We officially started homeschooling this week. It's been okay, so far. Preparation takes a lot of time, especially for an OC person like me. I have a comfortable 3-week buffer so I guess that should make me calm down. But I admit that I am a bit anxious if I can sufficiently explain more complex topics to R. We'll see, we'll see.

The sort of broken road that led us to homeschooling deserves its own blog post. But the trainings and actual homeschooling itself have reaffirmed that we made the right decision. Yes, I sometimes feel inadequate. And some nega people around saying elongated Okayyyyyy and Good luuuuuuuucckkkk whenever we tell them R will be homeschooled are not helping at all. But I just keep on telling myself that hey, I can always learn alongside R. I don't need to know everything. If there's something I don't know, we can always research together. I just need to pray for patience and wisdom. And so far, I have really been learning a lot with him and from him.

R has taken a special interest on Shakespeare. I can't recall when it started but I just remember him pointing to my husband's book of Shakespeare's works. It's in old English so obviously he won't be able to understand it.

We saw some supposedly Shakespeare books for babies at the bookstore. R was pestering me to buy them. But when I checked them out, they were just Shakespeare-inspired. They relate basic concepts like numbers, colors, shapes, etc. to the characters of Shakespeare's stories. I told R they were not nice books.

My husband was hesitant to expose R to these stories at a young age. He says he won't appreciate them because they were tragedies and tended to be morbid. But I wanted to take advantage of his interest. I was not exposed to the classics. I only came across Romeo and Juliet because we had to watch an old movie version in an English class in high school. Of course, I saw the Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes version in the cinema. But I never got to read the entire story on book. I thought it would be boring, as a typical high school student obsessed with modern day romance books would. So, no, I don't want R to make the same mistake so I wanted to jump on his desire to learn about these stories.

I found Book Depository online and they're selling kids' versions of 20 of Shakespeare's works. Each story is around 65 pages long with some drawings. My husband hesitantly agreed to get them. I was anxious because the books did not arrive within the 10-day promised turn around time. I could not track the package because it was sent through regular snail mail. After 3 weeks, they finally arrived.

We've been reading one book each for bedtime and we're done with Romeo and Juliet and King Lear. I was totally clueless about King Lear. As I was reading the book to R, he told me that one of the moons of a certain planet was named after one of the characters. I asked him if it were true. And he said, "Yes, because that planet's moons were named after characters from Shakespeare's stories. Like Juliet."

Ooooohhh...that explains why he suddenly became interested in Shakespeare. He's into outer space stuff at the moment. Whew.

I really am learning alongside him. And it's amazing that he's teaching me new things too. And King Lear is really a very tragic story. Much more tragic than Romeo and Juliet. Now I'm looking forward to reading the other 18 books. :)

Whenever I feel I am not good enough, I will just look back to this day when R gave me his toy shopping cart filled with fliers we got from hospitals, dentists, etc. He gave them to me and said, "Delivery for the best teacher ever! Here are your presents!" Maybe he didn't mean that or maybe he did. Whatever it is, I will just find comfort in the thought that I must be doing something right to deserve that praise or bola. :D

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