Learning from Your Child One Page at a Time

For this Science lesson, instead of telling my boy to color, which he despised lately, I told him to just circle the pictures that showed how to take care of one's body.

BOY: Teacher, DONE!

MOM: Hmmmm...Can you explain why you think reading, like what this lil boy in the picture is doing, showed taking care of one's body?

BOY: What, Mommmyyy? He's taking care of his body.

MOM: Well, you did ok on all the pictures, but I'm just wondering how and why you think reading can also be a way of taking good care of your body as you would take a shower or brush your teeth or eat good food ?

(Mom was trying her best not to say "You're wrong" right away for her son's debatable answer)

BOY: Mommmmyyyy, right Daddy always tells us to read books because it will protect our brain? We needed to take care of our brain too. Right, Mommmyyy? Reading protects your brain...it also makes you smart too. Daddy always says that.

MOM: Oh, I see...I see...

BOY: I told you so.

These two photos above are sample pages of what you can see inside my girl's notebook in World History. She reads Mystery of History Vol. 2. At the end of every lesson, she would usually narrate to me what she learned and discovered on her reading time. I would act as a student listening to my "Teacher" telling me a story, oftentimes, verbatim. I'm still in the process of learning the art of "not interrupting" while my child articulates her ideas. Photo 1 shows men wearing plaid Scottish skirts while photo 2 shows young Marco Polo with specks of cinnamon powder around him.

Yes, we've moved out from our old schoolroom to this new spot at our kitchen. Moving out from our old school space was the next best thing to do to accommodate a pre-schooler boy that's highly tactile and kinesthetic; a boy who can't sit still, a boy who kept asking for a water break every 3mins, a boy

who needs to be strategically seated near the pantry for when he had to do his counting drill with manipulatives like MnM's, Kisses, Fruitloops, Cornflakes...

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My heart was in a good place when I requested my husband to include a marble island in our tiny kitchen, to which he readily obliged. We were a young couple brimming with hopes and dreams as we started building our first home. To my mind, it wouldn't hurt if we used the few pieces of immaculate white marble tiles that were left with my side of the family after enduring a business bankruptcy just years before I got married. I wanted it to serve as a reminder of the Lord's faithfulness and lovingkindness for the next generation to see. How He gently ushered my family of origin into a life of full dependency on Him in the '90s, minus the earthly possessions that my parents had invested in through years of honest and gainful hard work. It will be a reminder of how the Lord saw us through during the humbling times of letting go by way of eviction . Back then, eviction , spelled with a big "E", was not yet glamorized in the entertainment industry such as in the...

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Baking banana bread is not rocket science. All you need are the basic wet and dry ingredients such as eggs, butter, over-ripe bananas, flour, fast acting yeast, salt, and sugar respectively. These ingredients are readily available at supermarkets anywhere in the world. So, it's really not a problem finding your supplies because they are actually your kitchen staples. You may not have to leave the house to buy them because it is likely that you already have a stash of them in your pantry. What I've found a bit tricky though was measuring each ingredient in the exact amount as we would have done back home in beloved Philippines. Although we're grateful for our tiny, yet homey kitchen here in Moscow, where there's an old but well-maintained electric stove-top and a good-sized oven, it does not have the luxury of your kitchen baking implements like measuring spoons and cups, baking pans, mixing bowls, sifters, or an electric mixer. And I have been disciplining myself...

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