Will Solvit solved it for me.- Zainab Musa

My 11 year old son is a classic case of the fruit that fell far away from the tree. The tree here being his mother. Whilst his mother has had a life time love affair with books, he seemed to hate the very sight of them.

His aversion to books probably started, as with children like him, when school started becoming tough right after the kindergarten. He hated doing home work, hated doing school work and hated having to stare into any space that required him to scan anything into his memory for future reference. We, his parents, have bought so many books just to get him to read that we have actually bought some books twice. Sometimes when I buy a book and insist that he reads it, the book mysteriously disappears and nothing I do or say will make it appear.

Once I found a small encyclopaedic book which he became attached to for sometime until he had gone through most of the interesting facts and then we were back to square one. Other times, he gets a book which he seems to like and just when my hopes begin to rise, he looses interest. He even starts reading comic books and abandons them half way through.

Then a miracle happened about three weeks ago. While browsing through  the books section in a mall, I came across a series of books all by the same author and all starting with the words ” WILL SOLVIT…” Thinking I had nothing to loose, I picked up some of the titles that sounded better than the others. I was later to find out from him that they are numbered and I picked mine at random. His father simply asked why I bothered to buy  new ones when the rest were there unread?

We got home and I gave him the books. He collected them without any ceremony and went to his room.

The next morning, I called him to go with me on an outing and to my utter shock, he came along with a Will Solvit!

He read on the way, he read on the bus, he read when we stopped at traffic lights and read on our way back home. By the time we got back home, I was literarily shaking with excitement.  I however didn’t want to get my hopes up so I didn’t say anything to him. Then, after just two days, I saw him with a different one. The same pattern of “cant keep it down” repeated itself all over. Within two weeks, he had finished all the books. Then he picked up one of his older books and read that too. Then yesterday, we again went to the bookshop so I could get him the book due to be read at the reading group I registered him in and he went straight to the shelves and started looking for Will Solvits.  He found them and of course came with both hands laden with them asking me to buy all. He said only one was missing and he asked the store manager if he could get it for him. The man eagerly took our phone number and promised to send an order for it and to notify us upon its arrival. I asked him to pick only three and then we will get the rest later. We had earlier stopped at another shop where we found miniature versions of all my favourite classics, Huckleberry Finn, Oliver Twist, Tom Sawyer, Frankenstein, Journey to the centre of the Earth and so many others. He eagerly asked me which ones I thought were the most interesting and we ended up picking eight!

On the way back home, his face literally glowed in excitement as I told him how wonderful the adventures of the Famous Five were. I used to tell him all the time but I guess because, he had never really followed a character on a journey from the beginning of a book to the end, he didnt understand how much fun it could be. Now he wants to start the famous five series as soon as Will Solvit finds his lost parents in his very last adventure.

I guess for people who don’t know how frustrating it is to be a book lover and have a child who seemed to hate them so much, this is just making a mounting out of a mole hill. For those who know where I am coming from however, they will understand how brightly the lamp of hope is shining in my heart right now.

I intend to write a personal thank you note to Zed Storm, the author of these miracle series that have turned my son’s life around. I have never seen him this enthusiastic about any book before.

I pray that this pattern continues when we start the famous five series too. After that, I hope we can start another one of my all time favourites, The Five Find Outters by Enid Blyton. I have some of them in e form but I will just let him go with the physical ones. They are infinitely much more interesting. After all, nothing beats walking on the road and reading snatches from a favourite story right?

Our Homeschooling Journey

We have just started our homeschooling journey, and guess what?

A few days ago I glanced at the calendar and realised that we have just passed the one month mark. WOW!! It has really been a rough month and the challenges are immense; yet, it’s so gratifying.

My children are at 3 very different levels although they are so close in age. My daughter is 5 and is learning to read using “Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons”. She loves being read to, and has an extra large mouth which I’m hoping to downsize soon (positively).

Then, there’s the 3 year old who seems more interested in learning through other avenues (still figuring out what that is). One day he does all that he needs to for the day, the next day he is totally zoned out and that makes life as a homeschooling mom a real challenge.

Then there’s my playful 2-year-old, always wanting more of me than I have to give! Some days (like today), he was part of the group; that made school a breeze. Other days I need to get him distracted so that I can work with the other two.

The most important part of homeschooling for us is to plan. There are tons of info on the internet to assist with planning, but bear in mind that you need to look at what works for you and your children.

Sometimes everything only gets done a day or two later, but then I know that I might need to focus on time management more seriously.

Another factor that throws me off my bearings is that as a homeschooler, you always need to explain why you choose not to send the kids to school.

I am slowly learning how to tackle my challenges, because that’s exactly what it is: A CHALLENGE. Thus far, it been difficult because it is the start of a new lifestyle altogether, and it should be expected.

The truth is I love having to share this time with my children, and I know if I had to be back home in South Africa life would be too busy to share this lovely experience.

I pray everyday that God gives me the strength to carry on. I am sure that it is a positive move to homeschool and if for any reason I need to send the kids back to school, I know that I had a heart-to-heart learning experience with them!

Multilingual homeschooling #3: More of dad

So, what do you do if you plan to teach the children both their parents’ languages, but dad’s not around enough?

This writing will suppose that mom is at home, schooling, and dad is at work most of the time. This is not true for all homeschooling families, but for the sake of clarity one scenario was selected rather than trying to cover all the bases all of the time.

If mom is at home all day with the children, speaking her language, but dad is only there a fraction of the time (evenings and weekends there are so many other things that also needs doing) to speak his language, how will the children ever pick it up?

Some of the easier things to do are the following:

• Be consistent: dad should only converse in his language when he’s there
• Try to get DVDs (movies and documentaries) in dad’s language rather than the obiquitous English
• Spend dad’s time on enjoyable, but learnful, topics. For toddlers this could be picture dictionaries, nursery rhymes, things that build vocabulary. For older kids this could be discussing something they’ve learned from mom in her language, with dad in his language. This can include anything, ranging from mathematics (names of geometrical forms) through natural sciences (organs of the human body, aspects of ecology, behaviour of penguins) to technology (how escalators work, robotics, architectural challenges of Burj Dubai)

One important thing to bear in mind is that dad will probably want to see more results in a shorter period of time. Let the children write him letters or e-mail in his language, so he can see that they’re using it. Let them memorise his favourite poem, or learn a song that he likes, to encourage him that the time spent pays off. With mom around more of the time, she has more opportunity to see and hear their progress; if dad is around less, show him the progress!

The current favourite in our house is using Microsoft Powerpoint as stand-in dad. Having toddler / junior primary aged children, many of their language arts includes picture dictionaries and nursery rhymes. When we’re covering a new topic (unit study), we choose a few poems, songs, nursery rhymes, even short stories written in dad’s language to work with. In Ms Powerpoint we create a slide per verse, typing the words in a large font (for the early reader) and add colourful pictures (for everyone) so that the entire piece of literature has its own presentation. Then using the “record narration” functionality, dad reads this, and we save it as a powerpoint show.

During the day we then play some of these presentations, and the boys love it! They sometimes watch the same one over and over. The combination of good literature, eye-catching images and DAD’S VOICE is wonderful. Though it usually takes one whole evening to complete a new batch of literature, it pays off with the repeated use, and they enjoy learning.

Similarly, using images from the web, we create presentations for the vocabulary around a certain topic. One picture with the matching word per slide, using between 10 and 20 slides at a time, works well for us. This will differ for children of other ages and depend on their attention span. (Don’t let them become bored before the presentation is over; if it ends while they still want more, they’ll be enthusiastic about the next one.) Again, with a number of presentations ready, dad spends part of an evening reading (recording) the words.

For many days the children can listen to “dad reading” while he is at the office! And mom gets time to powder her nose…

Multilingual homeschooling #2

A is for apple. That is true in English, mom’s language and dad’s language.
B is for butterfly… but only in English, not in mom’s language and not in dad’s either.

When my older son starting looking at picture-dictionaries we quickly realised that we’re heading for chaos. I could almost see the struggle in his mind: Why is the picture of ice cream on the “E” page when I’m with dad, on the “Y” page when mom reads a book with me, and when I leaf through the book that my friend gave me, it’s on the page with “I”? The picture of a bat is on the “B”, “F” or “V” page, depending on which book you have. But not all words are like this: the gorilla, house, whale, xylophone and others are on the same page on all our books. This world of words just doesn’t make sense!

A plan was needed, and urgently. So on our long drive during the next holiday, the notebook and pencil were ready in the car: we need picture words that start with the same letter in all three “our” languages. All through the week exclamations like “Snake works out!” was the norm in the car. That means S is for Snake – in all our languages. We took it easy, there was a whole week to think up the words, and the subconscious is a wonderful thing!

At the end of the week we had a list of words, including one or two compromised letters (Q and Y being the most notable). Back at home it was time to be creative. Using craft, colouring and picture books to find easy, yet appealing pictures, we soon had pictures to match our trilingual alphabet word list. Using peel off window paint, we transformed the window of our son’s bedroom into an alphabet picture book.

Later we also used the same pictures to make our own home-made alphabet book, which both our sons now use to page through whenever they want to.

Still later these same pictures were used to make our own “Alphabet poster” on a huge cardboard sheet.

These pictures have served their purpose, over and over again. They are used to look at and be enjoyed; they are used to teach the alphabet; they have been used again when teaching handwriting (to have a familiar picture to associate with each letter); they have been used to teach phonics. Everything is still there to be used by our other son, so the time spent once is being used repeatedly.

Sometimes multilingual homeschooling poses challenges, but there always is a plan to be made!

Multilingual homeschooling #1

Between mom’s language, dad’s language and English as international language, the world of a multilingual family can be very interesting, stimulating and fun. Or it can be frustrating and confusing. Which will it be?

Coming from a country with 11 official languages, a national anthem consisting of 4 languages and many multilingual families, having two first languages (and neither of them English) is not unusual. The difference between us and most of the other multilingual families back home is that we’re homeschoolers, and therefore education also happens in more than one language, rather than the language medium of the chosen school. When moving to Dubai, we met many other multilingual homeschool families, and have decided to share some of our experiences of languages. 

“Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. When you read you begin with A-B-C, when you sing you begin with Do-Re-Me…” When sharing your experiences, it seems a good idea to start with the background.

Before our first child was born, we were concerned about the conflicting advice we received from many people. Some say you should only speak you own language to your children, so you do not teach them your erroneous second language. Others say a child should only learn one language at a time, otherwise they’ll become confused and then they can’t speak any language properly. Others had other ideas. All this was very disturbing to first-time parents-to-be. As if the choices of “cloth diapers versus disposables versus diaper-free” and “breast feeding versus bottle feeding” and “disciplined routine versus on demand style” were not overwhelming enough, now even our languages were a potential danger!

After many hours of reading, checking up various professionals’ opinions, studying language acquisition in linguistics and comparing the results of studies done all over the world, we decided upon our strategy. Please, please do take note that this was our personal decision, and that does not mean that any other choice is wrong, this is simply the way we decided to do things.

We took the “one person one language” road to language. This means that dad will speak will speak dad’s language to the children, and no other language (to the child) ever, until he’s at least 4 years old. In the same way, mom will speak mom’s language to the children and no other language (to the child) ever, until he’s at least 4 years old. Even if there are other people in the company who do not understand these languages, each parent will continue to speak their own language when addressing the children. For the sake of good manners, after speaking to the child, you can summarise the conversation in another language so that everyone is up to date. But under no circumstance address the children in a language other than the one you always speak to them.

Right, time for an example! My family does not understand my husband’s language. Even so, when we visit them, my husband addresses our sons in his language, and they respond in his language. Only when the father-sons conversation is finished, does he tell my family “what it was all about” in a language they understand. Similarly, when we have English-speaking friends over, we speak English to them (the friends), but not to our children.

This might sound confusing, but it is not. Simply speak your language. It might sound like effort, and that it was, because sometimes it would have been easier to speak English when friends are around, rather than speaking one language to the children and another to the friends. However, it didn’t take very long to get so used to this, and now we don’t even think about which language to speak.

The really amazing thing is that our children respond to us in our own languages. The very first time I sent my son to my husband with a message (talking my language of course), and heard him deliver the message in my husband’s language (of course, because he’s speaking to dad now), I was dancing and jumping! He GOT it. And later, when our second son was about the same age, the same thing happened. They both got it. Years apart, in two different countries when it happened, but it happened.

Our family conversations might appear strange to other people, because I speak my language, my husband speaks his, and the children speak either, depending on who they address. Wonderful! Magnificent. Marvellous, I love it.

They speak two separate languages fluently, without mixing them up, or getting confused, or being unable to talk, or any of the other dooming predictions cast upon us.

What about English? you may ask. They need to be international after all. Well, since we have many English-speaking friends, and in most public places are served in English, they get a huge amount of English input. Also, since all those people consistently only speak English to them, there still is no confusion. Our older son (now 6) often replies in English with ease and confidence, although still with some grammar errors. Our younger son plays happily with his English-speaking friends, without worrying about their language. 

So we’re off on a good start to homeschooling in a multilingual family!