First Day of School

Schools start pretty late here, but of course, not as last as December.  This is just me trying to catch up on blogs.

I showed you Keira's new school.  Caleb and Karis attend the same one they did last year.  And Kylie is trying on-line school for the first time.  It was supposed to give her opportunity to get ready for college in a non-rote environment (most subjects here are taught on the basis of memorization, not gaining knowledge or understanding) and still give me freedom to study language. 

However, we chose a challenging curriculum, and she can't keep up with the pace, even working 7-8 hours a day.  Another challenge is the lack of power in the winter.  

Our power goes off around 8am (if it actually is on during the night), and it doesn't come on again until somewhere between 3pm and 5pm.  The internet can stay charged by a battery till around 3pm, but her computer battery starts dying before that.  (Not to mention, it's really cold in our house).

Many days, we head to a coffee shop, and we stay there, plugged in until it's time to go get Keira from school.  After that, we come home for a late lunch and her computer remains charged until power comes back on.

It's not quite the "dance" I want to do every day, but it will have to do until power gets better, which will be around March or April.

A few weeks after school started, Keira turned 5.  We had ordered a few things for her from America that arrived JUST before the airports shut down.  Unfortunately, the gifts from her grandparents' were stuck in a warehouse, waiting for a way to get in.  Someone smart solved the problem, and two months later, during the first week of December, she had another mini-birthday celebration.

On the actual day of her birthday, Kylie made her a giant cookie cake, and our language helper and his wife bought this one for her, pictured below.  It says, "Happy Birthday, I baby."  

When we went to eat at our language helper's house the first time last year, he had a television station on for his younger son.  The station is, in fact, called "IBABY."  It plays nursery rhymes, the alphabet song, counting songs, kids silly songs, etc. all in English, all day long.  Many children here learn English from this channel.

Ever since, our teacher saw Keira enjoying this channel, he has called her "I Baby."

She doesn't seem to mind.