Five Months In

So it’s been about five months since the official start of this adventure, and I’d fallen radio silent for most of it. I never felt comfortable pulling the trigger on posting any of my drafts and ended up thinking I would discontinue the blog entirely. There is something unsettling about putting my point-in-time thoughts down in such a permanent, public, and matter-of-fact manner as this. 

That’s because I feel such a sense of impermanence to everything around me. There’s no cookie-cutter mold that can fit any child, adult, family, home, or community. Further, what works for me today may no longer work for me tomorrow. That’s especially true with how quickly children grow and change. 

So PSA: take anything written here with a grain of salt and just as an update on how things are going.

I’ve had a lot of successes and a lot of opportunities to reassess and grow. Some are normal challenges like potty (or lack-of) accidents, bedwetting, and finding ways to stay fit. Others are unique, like the relocation to Ecuador, our attempt at homeschooling, and the Spanish/English language barrier.

This post is mostly an update related to our homeschooling efforts.  My motto has become “poco a poco” in all things. A little bit of anything consistently over time will yield tremendous results. 

The Basics of Our Education

We try to focus on reading and some math each day. We have various books that they read through, both physical and Kindle versions. I’m working on some custom material that I’ll write about later once I test it out. For math, we do things like Hammock Math but also try to incorporate it into games.  

Gameschooling

I’m trying to incorporate games as a significant component of the “curriculum”. We play:

• Monopoly Jr. and Money Bags to begin learning the basics of financial literacy and practice math. 
• Playing games like Chess, Sequence Jr, etc. all involve the development and application of logic and strategy, which I believe will help them begin to think critically through challenges. Seeing my son start to think ahead in chess by looking at a situation, seeing a piece in his way, and coming up with a plan to address it, has been a really cool development.
• Even if a game has no immediately observable learning element, we introduce math flash cards as a component of each turn to help reinforce basic math.
• Where possible, we’re converting our dialog into Spanish as we play. For example, in Go Fish with animal cards, we’d ask “Tienes una vaca?” for “Do you have a cow?”

Books:

Books are a huge part of our lives. We’ll read generally for 1:1 time with the kids, always for bedtime, and also possibly in to other situations as the day goes on. Many books are just for fun, but there are other ways that we use reading:

• Dragon Masters – My son absolutely loves this chapter book series. I’ll read three chapters to him and then he reads something to me and does some verbal math.
• “How the world works” – There are many children’s books that cover educational content, like how seeds become trees, caterpillars become butterflies, or about the water cycle. These are short, illustrated, and help cover any number of topics.
• Textbooks. There are some interesting books I’ve stumbled across, like:
  • The Story of the World, vol 1, which is a 353-page book that covers history from the Earliest Nomads to the Last Roman Emperor. It’s broken up into a bunch of smaller stories which help bring the kids into those times. In theory, covering a volume is the equivalency of a year of history study between grades 1-5. 
  • The Sir Cumference math book series which is a series of books that are cleverly written in such a way that the story teaches math concepts. We’ve only read the 1st one so far, but both kids understand the terms circumference, diameter and radius. I’m holding off on the rest of the series because it may be a little advanced for them at the moment.

A Note on Technology:

I know that screen time can be demonized, but it plays an essential role in our lives. 

• TV shows: When the kids watch anything, it’s by default in Spanish. This helps with the immersion factor.
• Amazon Kindle Fire. These are relatively inexpensive and very durable tablets aimed at kids. While I think the interface is genuinely terrible, it’s the free year of Amazon Kids+ service which is really great. It gives the tablet access to a huge volume of books that you can basically search, click, and load to read at any time. With our move to Ayampe, we lost access to one of the greatest resources back in NJ: the public library that was a block away from us. In lieu of being able to walk through aisle after aisle of books on any topic for free, we use the tablet as our portal into books.
• Learning apps: We use various apps with the kids which help them learn Spanish words through games and songs. This is especially helpful to me because I can focus on one child 1:1 while the other plays (learns Spanish) on the phone. A bonus is that with a pen, the Kindle tablet can even be used for practicing handwriting.

Passions:

Besides the core learning of Reading, Math, and Spanish, one of the things that I am loving about homeschooling is that we can follow the passions of our kids. 

Example: Computer Science. My son (and actually now even my daughter) are very interested in Computer Science. In our short stay here, my son has completed the full Kindergarten and 1st Grade Computer Science courses of the Code.org curriculum and is now halfway through the 2nd Grade one. It’s arranged as a series of videos and challenge puzzles for them to work through. Interestingly, in the 2nd Grade course we had to review interdisciplinary subjects like math where he needed to learn relative directions like left and right as well as North, South, East, and West. This included needing to learn some more advanced concepts like 90-degree right angles, acute and obtuse, as well as basic distance measurements in pixels. It’s really exciting to have him want to tackle a challenge that then requires learning concepts like these, because he already has a reason to want to learn the concept – to solve the puzzle.

The Challenges Encountered

Challenge: Managing kids of different ages.

While my daughter shows incredible mental agility, she’s still significantly younger than my son in terms of these crucial younger years (she’s four and he just turned six). Her interests, her level of focus, and her abilities are not as developed or just different. There are many ways that I can modify group activities, like making math activities addition/subtraction for him and addition-only for her, but there are still some activities that only he would have an interest in. I need to find ways to occupy the other child when I’m working 1:1 with one. The best is when Santhra is there because she can either work or play with one of them. If not, they’re pretty good about independent play, and so can work with their magnet-tiles or some type of art project on their own. Alternatively, this is where I can employ technology like Spanish learning or handwriting apps for them to use. Sometimes the other child will just wander out of the house and go to our neighbor’s house – who warmly welcomes them in to play with their almost two-year-old. 

But if the time the other child is spending yields too much fun, then I risk losing the child I’m working with to that activity too. Both kids love going to the neighbors. This is constantly a topic on my mind – how to find things to engage them both together or work 1:1 while simultaneously keeping the other one safely engaged and out of trouble.

Challenge: Quitting when something gets hard.

This is one of the simpler lessons I suppose, but I struggle with the line between letting my kids do what they want and making them do what I want. I struggle here because there are activities like Karate and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu that are available for the kids and which they’ve tried, but are having difficulty getting over the learning curve and pushing themselves outside of their comfort zones. If their initial reaction is that something is uncomfortable, I can understand why they would opt not to do it. However, how will they learn that to get good at something, they need to put in time and effort? Bailing at the first sign of discomfort will lead to stagnation rather than growth.

They’ve chosen “no” to continuing karate, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, surfing, and even school. But they’ve also said “yes” to all of these things at least once to try them and found grooves with other activities like music, aerial acro yoga, and computer science.

I have to balance this with the hope that when they find something they fall head-over-heels in love with, their love for the activity/topic will be enough to drive them forward relentlessly. And perhaps timing is a factor as well. Maybe they’re just not ready for some things at this point in time, but might be later. I have to have faith and trust that they will find their groove and learn this very important lesson about persistence.

Challenge: What’s the fastest way for my kids to learn Spanish?

This is a trick question, but the answer to this I’ve heard more times than I can count: School. Put the kids in the local Spanish-only school and they’ll learn the language in a matter of weeks or months. I believe this to be true, because so many people have shared their experiences on the matter with me. The catch for me is that right now I want to spend the time homeschooling my kids, and sending them to school will consume all their time and energy available for learning.

We did try a hybrid approach, where we sent the kids to the local escuela part-time at 2x/week. This was an interesting experience because the kids and the staff were so kind, and my kids enjoyed it. For a month or two they were able to voluntarily go, but I knew from the start that we were walking a fine line with them. They went because they felt they had the option to go. What would happen when one day they said they didn’t want to go? Both not knowing the language and going only part-time, the experience can feel reasonably outside of their comfort zone. On the fated day when my daughter told me she didn’t want to go, what was I to do? Force her? That would instantly change the entire concept of school for them from a place of fun to a forced detention center. Allow her to stay home? She might never choose to go back, because the more she stays away, the more difficult it would be to voluntarily place herself back into it. 

In the end, I allowed her to opt not to go, and watched in amazement as my son said he wanted to still go alone. He had more bravery than me, for sure. This was one of the few things or times where he and his sister weren’t together. In any case, while he went to school, my daughter had a beach adventure with me and my wife, followed by reading me some books and working through some computer science puzzles. I was totally okay with her experience (but I wholly acknowledge that it threw a wrench into any kid-free plans I had for this time :/). The following day, my daughter chose not to go again (not surprised), but my son woke up early and got all the way to our front gate before changing his mind and staying home too. What happened next was essentially a four-hour playdate with another girl who was late to school (they don’t open the gate for students who are late) at our home, complete with arts & crafts, imaginary play, and snacks. Needless to say, that brought about the end of our foray into school for now.

But back to the original question: the fastest way to learn Spanish? If, as I’ve said before, my new motto is “poco a poco” or “little by little”, then the answer I have is: it doesn’t matter. While total immersion or other such methods may be the fastest, I’m not in need of the fastest. If it takes my kids one year to become fluent in Spanish instead of 1 month, then so be it. Between apps, songs, neighbors, friends, tv shows in Spanish, Spanish tutors, and our own guidance, there’s an abundance of options to “immerse” them and get them to fluency in a comfortable manner. I’ll write more later about our approach to the language, which is varied and evolving, and we’ll see how things turn out.

Challenge: How to remain flexible to the ever-flowing nature of life (and especially life here in Ayampe) yet keep forward progress with the learning.

When we first moved, I found a lot of success in the “go with the flow” approach we had to life. If we went to the beach in the morning, we could work on reading when we got back. If a day became too busy with play and such, it was balanced out by other days that ended up quite stacked with learning activities. If half a day was spent at the escuela, I could count the Spanish learned as a way to offset the lack of other things not covered.

In theory this sounds great, and it worked for quite some time. But after a while, the magic began to unravel. Certain things, even key things like math and reading, began to fall through the cracks, with the number of missed days adding up as the number of friends and activities and other fun attractions distracted us. 

I’m finding that I’m grasping for more control of the situation. If we had two days of adventure and on the third day they reject the options for learning, it becomes frustrating. Where I’m at right now is formulating a defined rhythm where the formal education (still games, books and the like) is allotted to the morning. Create a routine where the expectation is to cycle through our activities until lunch, and then enjoy the wonders and joy of stress-free adventure and freedom for the rest of the day. I truly hope this new pattern will work for us, because it will bring about so much more peace of mind for me to also be more present with them in the latter hours of the day if I know we aren’t missing or ignoring these important objectives.  

Moving Forward

Whether this actually works out, time will tell. Ensuring that we get through our learning, however, is fundamental to many of the assumptions that our entire relocation is based on. If it doesn’t work, the whole picture of our existence is up in the air.

I want to spend this time with my children while I can and give it my best shot to equip them with the knowledge and skills to know that there is no “one way” to get to where they want to go. They can have the confidence to know that if they have a goal, they were born with the capability to achieve it with their creativity and grit. Most importantly, I want them to feel unconstrained in how they lead their lives: to pursue the interests and the dreams that matter to them, not to those around them (including myself). Is that possible? Perhaps to some extent no, but it is worth the shot.

Poco a poco, we all move forward and manifest our dreams.

Final note – reach out (comment below or send me a message) if you have thoughts, suggestions, or are interested in me diving deeper into any specific topics.