Update on Miya's reading

We've now been consciously working on Miya's reading for a little over a year.  Last March, when we began, she was a near complete non-reader, recognising maybe only a half-dozen words or so and knowing only some of the letter sounds.

In August, I wrote about where we were at, five months into our project, and the method that we were using for her learning.

In the past eight months, we have mostly followed this same method, with Miya reading out loud to me most days and me reading out loud to her most days.  (We do skip days sometimes if we are too busy with other things!)

So, here is where we are at, right now.

A couple of days ago, we got out our Frances books (some pics of the books in the link below) and Miya started reading out loud to me A Birthday for Frances.  She didn't feel like reading it all in one session (or even two), and she will likely finish the last couple of pages today.  She is probably about 95% correct in her reading of it for the first time.

Notably, she didn't know words like "closet" and "pail" (she struggled to pronounce them and also didn't know what they were -- they are not Kiwi English words).  She also struggled to pronounce names like "Ida", "Albert", and "Gloria".  But with all of these words, after a few repeat occurrences of them in the story she was saying them smoothly.  She continues to sometimes mix up "said" and "and" with each other, as well as mix up "when" and "then" with each other -- that is an ongoing thing with all the books she is reading at the moment, though she almost always self-corrects immediately after saying the wrong word.

But all in all, a pretty good effort.  Sometimes I get Miya to read a book two or three times to solidify the new words, but I don't think we need to do this with these Frances books.

Back in 2013, I wrote about Mulan's experience reading these Frances books.  It seems that Miya, at 6 years 8 months, is reading at about the same level that Mulan was when she was 6 years 3 months.  But Miya started later and is learning faster than Mulan did.

Waitomo

Last weekend, we had a quick 30-hour car trip holiday down to Waitomo and back.

Mostly, it was in aid of showing Mama's friend from China (who Mulan and Miya call Ganma) around the country.  (Ganma is here in New Zealand for about a month, staying with us in our home.)

We left on Saturday afternoon, after Mulan and Miya had finished their morning music lessons.

Our first stop was Huntly, to do a property inspection of an investment property we own there.  The little two-bedroom cottage, which we bought a couple of years ago, is about 110 years old.

All was good at the property, so our next stop was an afternoon tea break in Hamilton.

With not much of a plan, and simply wanting a nice scenic park alongside the Waikato River, we found the Parana Park/Soldiers Memorial Park area and wandered down to have a look.

After eating, the girls and I discovered the old Rangiriri boat, and so took the opportunity to learn a bit about the history of the area.  The official information signs at the park taught us something of the English colonisation of the area in 1864.  The handwritten graffiti scratched into the signs taught us that what some see as "acquired" land, others see as "stolen" land.

And then it was off to Kihikihi, where we were staying at Free Range Farmstay for the night (no they are not homeschoolers, we were told, but they do let their kids run free there).  The accommodation was very comfortable, and we highly recommend it.  They had set up their homestay accommodation in the granny flat above their main house, giving the five of us two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchenette.  The flat had its own external entrance in the form of a spiral staircase up to the bedroom balcony.

The next morning it was raining, but we had a short walk around the farm and a swim in their pool.

Just after 11 am, we headed to Waitomo to see the caves.  Our farmstay owners work in tourism in the area, and they were able to get us discounted tickets to the caves.  So, since two caves was cheaper than one we decided to go to both the Ruakuri Cave and the Glowworm Cave.

Two years ago, the four of us had visited the Glowworm Cave during our winter campervan holiday, but none of us had been to the Ruakuri Cave.

At just over an hour, the Ruakuri Cave was a decent walk through a pretty spectacular cave system.  The highlight for me would have been the sheet-like stalactite formations on the ceilings.  There were glowworms in the cave, but not nearly as many as in the Glowworm Cave.

Immediately after that tour finished, we drove the few minutes to the Glowworm Cave entrance for the start of our tour there.  This tour is less than an hour, and has much less walking.  Once again, the big highlight for us was the boat ride through the dark with countless star-like glowworms above us.

Visiting these caves is expensive, and it is not something that we would want to do regularly, but they are indeed spectacular and must-sees at some point for everyone.

After the caves, we headed back up north towards home.  We stopped off for afternoon tea at Pirongia, parking on a side-street in front of a small alpaca farm.  The girls enjoyed watching the animals, and were fascinated to observe that each animal had a quite distinctively recognisable face.

All in all, a pleasant little holiday.  It is a good reminder that we should do these sorts of short trips more often as a family.

Free online courses

I've just discovered this site, which collects free online courses.  It looks very useful, and I'll probably sign up to some of the courses.

Typical day

On the National Council of Home Educators New Zealand website there is a page of a variety of New Zealand homeschoolers' "typical days".

I was asked to send them my "typical day" story for their website, which I did.  But I was probably too wordy (!), since they haven't added mine up there.  So, here is what I wrote:

---

On a typical day in our family, we have a mix of strictly timetabled events, important/necessary events that should be fitted into the day at some time, and optional extras that would be nice to do.

The strictly timetabled events take two forms.  Firstly, my wife and I both work from home as teachers, with my wife the primary income earner (my wife teaches Chinese and I teach critical thinking).  We have a classroom set up in our home, with paying students coming and going at various times of the day for classes or individual lessons.  Our children are sometimes involved in the classes as either teaching assistants or learners.  The second type of strict timetabling is that the children have outside organised activities (currently swimming, ballet, music, netball, basketball, athletics, tennis, sewing, gymnastics) most days, which I take them to.

The important daily events (besides, of course, our usual household duties, which everyone helps out with) include the core academic subjects.  At some point during the day (seven days a week, all year round), I work with the children on their maths and English.  The children need their free play time each day, and this involves both imaginative/creative play and outdoor physical play (we live next door to a school, so in addition to our own backyard, we also make use of the school's fields and playgrounds).  Throughout the day, I am also always on the lookout for those teachable moments, where something will inspire us to have an impromptu lesson on any subject; many hours are spent in our family observing and discussing anything and everything in the world around us.

Most days the children practice their musical instruments, and they also spend time learning touch typing.  Perhaps every second day my wife works with the children on their Chinese (our children are bilingual English/Chinese).  I frequently use P4C (Philosophy for Children) inspired lessons to teach the children critical thinking.

The optional extras typically include day-trip outings, including nature walks, the beach and playgrounds.  We often have overseas visitors staying with us, who we might show around our local area.

We probably spend about six weeks away from our home each year, with three main travel events.  We spend a few weeks each year in China (we lived in China up until the end of 2014), we have a one-week campervan road trip, and we have a couple of weeks camping over summer.

Do I believe in God?

In the past few days, I have been revisiting some thoughts I thought I had already thought about before.

Every once in a while I am asked the question, "do you believe in God?"  And I always have a hard time answering it.  It seems like such a simple yes/no question, but neither answer seems to do justice to what I really believe.

While re-reading more properly Robert Paul Wolff's small book Moneybags Must Be So Lucky (which I highly recommend), I came across a side-point example, being used to explain his main point.

Wolff writes:

Imagine, for example, that I have been raised in the Catholic faith, and have arrived at my present atheistical condition through a lengthy and painful process of questioning and selfcriticism.  The symbols, the myths, the liturgy, the language of Catholicism retain for me, as for many lapsed Catholics, a residual power that I cannot wholly subdue, and whose direct and indirect effects in part define who and how I am. If I am asked, “Do you believe in God?” how can I answer in such a way as to communicate this complex state of affairs, with the weights and resonances of the several portions of my religious condition given their proper magnitude? 

Simply to answer, “No, I do not” would be, strictly speaking, to lie. It would be to lie by omission, but to lie nonetheless. Such an answer in no way distinguishes me from one who has had no religious upbringing and who has never believed. To say, “I once did, but I no longer do” comes closer, but still misrepresents the true situation by treating the remnants of Catholicism as no longer present in me, as having been externalised and destroyed.

We might think that a true, though tedious, answer to the question would be a thorough unpacking of the situation in flat, declarative prose, more or less as I have been doing in these past few paragraphs. But that really will not do. To speak that way is to invent a voice that is neither the voice of the victorious portion of myself, nor the voice of the subdued portion, but is the voice of an external observer, a scientific reporter, a neutral party not implicated either in the original Catholic faith nor in its rejection. It is the voice of the cultural anthropologist describing native customs, of the social theorist denying complicity in the popular culture of his own society by his very manner of reporting it. Insofar as I purport to be voicing my religious condition in that voice, I am lying. In all likelihood, I would be deceiving myself at least as much as my audience. What is more, the declarative unpacking of the complexities of my loss of faith would entirely miss the sensuous immediacy of feeling that is an essential part of my present rejection of, and residual clinging to, Catholicism. 

Consider now what might be accomplished by means of the adoption of an ironic voice. Asked whether I believe in God, I might reply – employing, ever so faintly exaggeratedly, the singsong tone of the Apostle’s Creed – “I believe in God the Father Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth and in Jesus Christ…” These few words, uttered thus, would capture, for an audience capable of understanding what I was saying, the entire state of affairs: that I once was an unreflective communicant of the Roman Catholic faith, that I no longer am, that I view my former beliefs with amusement, rather than with superstitious fear, but that those beliefs, and the associated rituals, still have some power for me, so that what I now am and believe can only be understood as a development out of that earlier, credulous state. To a naive audience, it would of course appear that I was simply answering the question in the affirmative. 

Since this point is, in fact, the pivot on which my entire argument turns, I shall belabour it a bit at the risk of growing tiresome. The literary complexity of an ironic reply to the question, “Do you believe in God?” is required by the complexity of the speaking subject who gives the reply. If the self were substantively simple, so that either it believed or did not, asserted or did not, and so on, then simple declarative discourse would suffice. Even if this simple self had emerged from a complex process of development, in the course of which first one belief, then another, first one passion, then another, had held sway, even then, so long as the product of the developmental process were simple, unambiguous discourse would suffice to express its present state. The complexity of the historical development of the self would require no special complexity of expression, so long as that complexity were fully represented in the unified nature of the present ego. But if the speaking self is complex, many-layered, capable of reflection, self-deception, ambivalence, of unconscious thought processes, of projections, introjections, displacements, transferences, and all manner of ambiguities – in short, if the history of the self is directly present as part of its current nature – then only a language containing within itself the literary resources corresponding to these complexities will suffice to speak the truth. [my emphasis]

In the example we have been discussing, the immediately experienced tension between the antireligious conviction to which I have won my way by an inner struggle and the old, defeated but not banished faith that still asserts its claim upon my allegiance is a part of what I actually believe. It is false to suggest that I believe the proposition “There is no God” neutrally, unambivalently, purely assertorically, but also that, as an added and separable fact of my consciousness, I am experiencing certain inner feelings that can be characterised, phenomenologically, as feelings of tension or conflict. The tension is a tension in the belief, in such a manner that my belief differs in its nature from that of a complacent atheist who has never known God. It would be strictly false to say that we two believe the same proposition, and it would be manifestly obvious that we might fail to communicate with one another if each of us were to say to the other, in turn, “I do not believe in God “

This rings true for me.  I was raised in a Christian faith, and have arrived at my present atheistical condition through a (now distant, and occasionally painful) lengthy process of questioning and self-criticism.  And not only is my current state a development out of that earlier state, but I am also sure that a lot of those early beliefs and attitudes remain.

However, I wasn't raised in the Catholic tradition, meaning that all those fancy ceremonies and traditions are alien to me.  The version of Christianity that I was raised in was ceremonially simple, and the Apostle's Creed is not a part of me.

Moreover, I don't now view my former beliefs with amusement, so that singsong irony doesn't sit comfortably with me.

And there is family to consider, too.

So, Wolff's example ironic response would not work for me.

And I am struggling to think up any alternative.

The best I can think up is to say that I was born into Christ's house, and when I left home Christ came with me.

Not perfect, but I think I sort of get the right ironic tone of voice with that.

Flute update

Sometimes the Chinese friend network doesn't work.

You might remember I wrote here about how we bought a flute for Mulan in China.  We got it from a friend of Laolao's friend, who used to make flutes.  At the time we chose to trust him completely with what would be best for Mulan, as we don't know enough about flutes to trust ourselves.

When Mulan tried the flute out before we bought it, she commented that it was hard to play the low notes.  The friend's response at the time was that Mulan has been used to playing a Yamaha, which has larger keys, and it will just take a bit of time for her to get used to this other one.  Fair enough we thought, so we bought it.

When we got back to New Zealand, Gugu, who has played the flute for many years and teaches it part time, had a look at the new flute.  She immediately spotted three problems with it:

• The low notes are hard to play because a key isn't sealing properly, as it is not properly aligned.
• A pad is cracked, and will need replacing soon.
• Another pad is sticky and loose, and will also need replacing soon.

The clear message is that this is an old flute that at the very least needs a good servicing.  And that would cost about half again what we paid for it.  Either the friend should service it or give us a refund.  The friend chose to give a refund.

So, with no one else to trust to help us get a good cheap flute, in the end we went with the tried and trusted and bought a Yamaha.

Mama bought a YFL-212DR online for 2468 Yuan.  It also came with a music stand, which the girls are delighted with.  Hopefully we will have many years of trouble-free playing with this flute.

Maths update

Here's another update to what I wrote four months ago on Mulan and Miya's maths learning.

Both Mulan and Miya are still using Khan Academy, logging in and doing a few problems every day, seven days a week.  Some days this might just be a few minutes each, while other days it may be 30 minutes or so.  But the important thing is that they do something every day.

I sit alongside the girls 90% of the time while they are doing their work.  Even though Khan Academy is theoretically a self-teaching resource, with video lessons, etc, I am still there alongside as the primary teacher.

Both girls have now got to their right level with their learning, both completing all the way from the beginning at US Grade K.  What they are each doing is challenging for them, but still doable.  As of today, Mulan is 92% through US 6th Grade, while Miya is 52% through US 3rd Grade (making them both, as far as I can see, about two years or so above their age level).

Now that the girls are at their right level, we have slowed down with introducing and mastering new skills.  What we now do for both girls is this:

1. We look through the skills at their grade level that they have not yet started, and choose one that looks good.
2. On one day, they complete the "Practice" problems for that skill.  Sometimes they may need me to explain things a bit, possibly working through some problems together before they can do it for themselves.  Occasionally we may watch the video lesson together, to give another perspective on how to do it.
3. For the next two or three days, they then complete "Mastery" problems, one per day.  They level up that skill until it is mastered, while at the same time review other skills that have previously been mastered.
4. When that skill has been mastered, we return to step 1, choosing another skill to work on.

At the rate we are now going, my rough guess is that the girls might complete a grade every eight to ten months.