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Since we are a homeschooling family, the decision to homeschool our newest children was a fairly simple one. We are open to considering other options for our girls if they became necessary for some reason. But my experience with homeschooling has me convinced that homeschooling offers many benefits to newly arrived children. Some of the biggest benefits include the tutoring style of teaching, and the ability to personalize curriculum to the children’s needs.
We’ve made it through our first week of homeschooling, and so far things are going pretty well. There are the usual pangs from various children as we leave our summer routine and move into the more structured schedule of school. Let’s face it– swimming IS more fun than multiplication. But the schedule seems to be working fairly well, although I do need to come up with some better activities for the two year old. (I’ve bookmarked a friend’s website where she shared some great ideas for younger kids.)
As far as curriculum for our new daughters, this semester we are focusing on the basics. We are working on reading, writing, spelling, English, and math. I am really liking the ‘Read Naturally’ program for reading. It is working well for the 11 year old, who came home already able to read English fairly well. The 9 year old is working on a few simpler books and reviewing some phonics, but she also can already read simple English, so we will be moving on to Read Naturally soon.
I looked at a lot of math books, but had a hard time finding a book that did not also require a lot of English. I figured that explaining story problems would make all our heads hurt at this point. So for now we are starting by reviewing multiplication and subtraction with some simple worksheets. Once we get some more English, then we will move into some more standard math books that also do story problems.
For spelling, I found a book of lessons that covered the most commonly used words in English. It begins with the most simple, and works fairly quickly toward the more complicated words. The kids look up each word in their Amharic dictionary and write down the Amahric meaning. Then they write each word 5 times in English. Once they have the spelling memorized (3-4 days) we do a test and they move on.
For English, (besides the ‘immersion program’ of living with 10 English speakers!) they are spending 15 minutes or so a day doing Rosetta Stone English on the computer.
Our handwriting books use Bible verses as part of the writing practice. To help the girls keep their Amharic, and the help them understand the English better, they are writing the verses in Amharic as well as English. They also read to each other in Amharic at bedtime from some books we bought in Addis. I am really hoping that bits of Amharic mixed in with English during the day will help them keep their Amharic as well as becoming fluent in English.
I’ll probably be tweaking things during the year if needed, and later in the year I’ll add science in some form. But that’s how we are starting. What I’ve described takes about 3 hours each day to complete, which is a good start on school, while still giving the girls time to play and relax.
Related Links
Bilingual Books for New Arrivals
ESL and Newly Arrived Kids Part One | Part Two
I love that you’re trying to help them keep their native language! We’re just in the homestudy process right now, but we recently finished some education on helping children keep their racial and ethnic identities….great ideas!
We have an Ethiopian orthodox church nearby, maybe check around your area and see if anything is available. It seems like that would be a wonderful opportunity to keep the children connected to their language and people. Can you tell we’re thinking about adopting from Ethiopia??