Bismillah . Ju is still in school. She isn't sure when to leave . She has the enticing Langkawi trip to think about besides the coming annual cross-country . It's okay . Let her be, we'll sneak the syllabus into our routine bit by bit till she gets comfortable . In the process of conjuring a decent syllabus for our school , alhamdulillah for the availability of scores of options . The wonderful thing about the networld , the minute you post a query .....most of your friends are ready to jump in to help.... ..haha. Thanks to the educational revolution over the past 30 years or so, we now have access to a staggering array of quality home-school websites which would have been far beyond our reach in the days of pre-internet austerity. Nevertheless, memories of my father's tutoring is still fresh as spring . It goes without saying , his modus operandus is going to be my guiding compass .
ENGLISH : My Dad's English lessons were indelibly associated with vocabulary-building .
Pak Atan's English Class
Read a selected English reading material.
Underline only 5 words new to the student.
Look up the meaning in The Oxford Dictionary.
Write the down the 5 words / the meaning of each / the sentences
Memorise each of the written , 5 times.( or 10? )
What Else ? With respect to grammar, we were made to learn by heart : DAILY, irrespective of our age.
Noun - Kata Nama
Pronoun - Gantinama
Verb - Perbuatan
Adverb - Rupakata
Adjective - Rupanama
Preposition - Kedudukkan
More ?
For every name of town , city , river or any geographical identity that we came across in our reading for the day , we had to look it up in the atlas and sometimes on a Globe.
On that note , any topics unknown to us, that we stumbled on in the particular read, are to be researched in The Brittanica Encyclopaedia. ( regardless of what grade/age we were then in )
Simply put , it was like an all-in-one subject.
One More Thing !
And we have to learn a proverb or an idiom per day too! Based on the above ...What Would My Version Be ?
No disrespect for what tremendous efforts ( time + energy, hence money) my old man has pumped into educating us himself , I find the need to modify accordingly with my ideals and my student in view. Firstly, I do not believe in overloading a child with academics in the formal sense . I strongly would emphasize on 'loving- what- you- do ' kind of learning ....employing all your senses . I don't have a liking for the exam-flavour . I think its a joke, for the most part .So, I will not have a separate text for English and Science as an instant. In fact I will pick a Science Text Book in English , thus merging the 2 subjects into one. In a similar fashion , I will combine Malay and Geography in one book and so on and so forth with the different permutations for our subjects of choice which include mathematics, religion , cooking , hobbies and invariably business.
One might have thought that the unconventional nature of 'Our School' would be a problem, but I believe it is going to be tremendously rewarding.
Ps : I can't stress
enough that to work this , as a newbie can be difficult ....regardless.
Among the variety of recommended websites , the first was Khan Academy .
I am impressed .
