School

India is back at school. She'll attend another year in Pre-K, as that was the deal with the school when we enrolled her a year early. All of India's school friends have either moved up a year, or moved abroad. Yet, she's been happy helping the teacher and being an example to the new children.

Matias will stay home this year, studying according to the Finnish system. We want him to learn the Finnish language properly. We also want him to learn subject like chemistry and physics, and to get a chance to advance in math as far as he wants. Getting him next year's math books is on my to-do-list, as he took a head start and finished with this year's books while on holiday.

Matias and I start the day early, waking up at 6 to watch a half an hour's programme of BBC world news. This leaves us an hour to get washed, brushed and fed before India leaves for school, and before we start classes.

It takes me close to an hour to take India to school. If Matias joins me, the first lesson of the day is learning to speak Arabic - the language we set ourselves to learn this year. If Matias stays home during the school run, he'll use his time to write down a summary of the world news / current events. We then study until India comes from school at 3:15 PM.

We've structured the day according to the Finnish tradition: 45 minutes of classes with a 15 minute break between each class. Lunch break is 30 minutes. This keeps our minds fresh throughout the whole day. It's a bit like driving a car - you can drive 9 hours straight without proper breaks, but you start loosing your concentration somewhere along the way, and you end up knackered. If you drive according to the recommendations: a good break every 100 km, or every hour, you can concentrate the whole day.

We'll also make sure Matias gets to socialise with peers of his own age. Besides attending classes outside our home, he'll now have more time just to be with friends. We already attended a month's course on recognizing stars and constellations, held by one of the University of Cape Town astronomy professors, and will do other similar courses on different fields this year. We'll also do art and sports, and will have more time to go to the theatre and concerts than last year.

I know my relatives are anxious about how the year will go. Please don't worry - Matias's school supports Matias in his choice to homeschool, but they're keen to take him back to school at any point of the year in Matias wants to go back.