I know a lot of my friends are getting to the point in their parenting journey where they are thinking of schooling options for their kids. I am at that point, too! Although, my options look much different than people that are going to live in the United States!
A lot of people ask me what we will do for the schooling of our children once we are in Indonesia. The truth is, we really don't know yet since we don't know the exact base we will be living at during our service there. Some of the bases have schools and some I'm not sure about. I know one base has an international school K-12 and some of the other bases have K-8th grade. MAF is really great about meeting the needs of individual families who are serving in Indonesia. I know one base in Papua had only one family with children (they may have been the only family at that base, too, I'm not sure). They had two children and MAF was trying to find a teacher to send there to help out with the schooling of only two children. I think that's pretty great! Our thoughts for now on teaching our kids is that we would love to send them to school in Indonesia if one is available, but we are prepared to homeschool the first few grades if we need to. I think it would also be fun to join some kind of homeschool co-op where a group of moms each have a role in teaching all their kids combined.
Daniel and I have been trying to stock up on supplies to take over to Indonesia and one thing on my list is supplies to help with the schooling of our kids. Daniel's mom took me to a homeschooling store yesterday and it was so fun to look around! They have TONS of new and used materials for sale there. Plus, the are Christians, so they had a lot of faith-based curriculum to choose from as well. For anyone in the area who is interested, The Homeschool store is off of 290 and W 34th street. The address is 1355 Judiway Street or http://www.thehomeschoolstore.com/.
I was looking at a curriculum called Sing Spell Read and Write. It looks like a great program that includes everything you need for teaching 4-year-olds and up. My mother-in-law used it for her children. They loved it and I've been reading of a lot of others who loved it, too. It is an expensive program, though. I think if I were living here, I could probably put together something for less money, but this looks like a good program to pack with us because it seems like it has everything needed to teach our little ones.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this program? I'd love any input or suggestions as we prepare to move to Indonesia and keep up with the schooling of our kids!
Bonus Picture: The whole Galveston '10 crew on our beach vacation!
2 comments:
Sonlight :) It was created with Missionaries in mind, in the sense that it's a fairly mobile program, and it's very book-based.
Oh! I just saw this and wanted to comment...if it's not too late. I'd suggest not buying/taking much home school materials with you. MAF pays for your child's education, so if homeschooling is the only option, they'll pay for your materials and shipping! We're going to Palangkaraya and will home school there - MAF will help us order and have shipped all that we need for the next school year when that time comes. I was worried about getting materials but was relieved to realize it wasn't something I needed to concern myself with until later on.
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