“A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.”
– Henry Ward Beecher

Here is a conversation that warmed my heart. Gave me a good chuckle, it did! It took place between Ms M (she is 4-1/2) and her grandmother. They had gone to visit a friend who lived at my old neighbourhood and since it was quite a distance away, my mum decided to take a taxi home. She decided to tease Ms M a little…

Jiddah (pretending to grumble): Hmph… you know it’s all because of you that I have to spend so much money today.

Marz: How come?

Jiddah: Well you see, normally I would take a bus or train, but you said you were tired so here we are in the taxi. It’s a lot more expensive by cab you know.

Marz (somewhat apologetically): Yes, I know.

Jiddah: Didn’t Aunty give you a prezzie just now? She gave you $10, didn’t she?

Marz: Yes… (long pause) … oh! Do you mean *I* have to pay the taxi fare?

Jiddah: And why not?

Marz: But Jiddah… I HAVE to save my money…

Jiddah: Whatever for?

Marz: I HAVE to save so I can buy BOOKS for MY CHILDREN!

Seen and heard..

Mum: It was nice of Aunty and her grand-daughter to visit. Did you like playing with Maymuna?

Kid: Yes, it was fun. She had a nice shawl on, didn’t she?

Mum: Yes! It was lovely ma shaa Allah… hey, it was nice of you to share your blocks with Maymuna.

Kid: Well, she was our guest. Her doll was cute. She didn’t let me play with it.

Mum: She must have thought you would take it away from her. She eased up once we told her that you wouldn’t, right?

Kid: Yeah.

Mum: Anyway, sometimes you will find people who won’t share even after you’ve shared your stuff.

Kid: Yeah. You should still share though.

Mum: Why?

Kid: Cos you don’t do it so they’ll share. You do it so Allah will be pleased.

I know … this is meant to be a homeschooling blog but the home-ed categories show precious few entries.

I’ll post some lesson plans on butterfliesnext in shaa Allah… but I will confess, the reason why I stopped posting for a while was because I felt like a fraud. What I mean to say is that I do still firmly believe that for us, homeschooling is THE road to take. My methods were another story altogether ;) Marz was (and still is) doing alright alhamdulillah but I began to crumble. I had a list of goals to achieve and wanted to do everything *just so* but this is not always possible when one has a little baby to care for at the same time. I was getting overly anxious – will I ever get the Singaporean out of me? (You’d have to live there to know what I am talking about *S*)

The beauty of home education is that it is flexible. I don’t mean to say that a parent can put in next to zero effort, let a child run willy nilly and then say that homeschooling is flexible. I mean that education is not just about and through books. There is more to a child/person than that. While I was fussing about lessons still undone, my daughter was doing some learning of her own. She learnt to help her busy mum, to share unreservedly, to give way to her little sister without resentment and to be independent.

Sometimes lessons are best learnt when you put the books aside and speak straight from the heart. Some you can’t TEACH – they can only be learnt through plain and simple LIVING.

A sister told me to relax and to breathe… another told me to just love my child and place trust in Allah.

They are right.

There is so much room for improvement where I am concerned. So we will try to do better each day but we are doing OK alhamdulillah…

I heard a thudding sound while I was making wudhu for `Asr prayer. Concerned that it would wake Bear up, I rushed out. I saw Marz sitting on her stool, thumping a heavy baseball bat on the floor.

I was about to scold her when she said in a somewhat pre-occupied way, “You know what Ummi?”

“What?”

“If I met Fir`awn, I would CLUB him with this baseball bat!”

:)

Alright… carry on then!