一期一会

A few months back I had a message from the mom of Opeie's penpal asking if we would be interested in being interviewed by a Japanese newspaper who were writing a piece on education and had been let down by a home ed group. The whole thing sounded really interesting and I thought it would be a great experience for Opeie and something fun to add into us documenting his home ed journey.  To make the visit even more exciting too, Opeie would get to meet his penpal Caelan as his mom Melissa was driving the journalist over to our home.

On the morning they arrived I was a little apprehensive, mainly because our house isn't a classic style home and although everyone that has visited here seems to love the way that we live, I wasn't sure that would translate well to the journalist (I'm pretty sure eventually someone will think we are idiots). It turns out there was no need to worry, when Melissa, Caelan and Saori arrived they all seemed pretty excited by the madness and as we talked I think it was clear why I chose to have our home this way.

The boys hit it off straight away and disappeared to play LEGO while I chatted with Melissa and Saori. It was really lovely having someone so interested in our home ed journey and despite being filmed (which is really out of my comfort zone) the morning was very relaxing. I feel like we have been home-schooling forever, it's the norm for us now and has been such an exciting adventure for the both of us. Being asked all about the reasoning behind home ed and my feelings on the education system in this country reinforced my passion for why we took the step.

Another thing that really reinforced this was Opeie's confidence talking to Saori and feeling completely comfortable with her observing him and how we are together as a family. He happily played his drums, discussed his beetle project and explained how much he loved having his work on display around the house. I'm pretty sure that Opeie comes across as a very content child to everyone he meets and this one to one education along side our happy home life is definitely responsible for this. I genuinely don't think that he would be the same child being dragged through the education system. 

The article was published last week and it was really interesting seeing the both of us in a Japanese newspaper. It definitely wasn't the way that we were expecting to be starting our first week of home ed this year but every September we have done something special to make sure that we realise how lucky we are to be on this education path for Opeie, and our presence in The Asahi Shimbun Globe is definitely this years bit of magic.  

"Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud."

Back in November I wrote about Opeie's news paper 'Happy Times', which started out as a fun activity one afternoon, thought up by Mrs M. They took photos of Opeie's toys and came up with funny stories to go with the pictures. Opeie got so excited making it that we decided to incorporate it in to his homeschooling and back in Decemeber we started the second edition which Opeie decided was going to be titled "The rainbow edition".

The news paper has been great for both Opeie's reading and writing, we've used this for all sorts of different activities and it has really helped with keeping him motivated with this side of learning. On top of all the other positives its great for keeping me coming up with new places to go, its all about the experiences.

When I asked him a few days back why he loved writing Happy Times? He told me that he thought it was like the blog, but on paper which I thought was really lovely. Its great to see Opeie so confident with what he is creating too. Whenever we have people over he is eager to get it out and show it off.

I'm really hoping that when he is older this will be something great to look back on, to show him all of the great things that we got up to during this homeschooling adventure. It has been interesting for me as we have gone through the pages to see the clear development in the penmanship and the confidence in his writing.

'Happy Times' is here to stay and as his writing progresses I'll look more in to the structure of the sentences he is writing to help him further with creative writing. Even though I am loving the home education I still have days where I worry that I am maybe not doing enough but then I see him producing work like this that he is excited about doing and it completely backs up our decision to keep Opeie home and educated in a way that is suited to his needs and development.