While Waiting

Ben has been in Abu Dhabi since late February and is enjoyin his teaching position. Talia, Elias and I are here until Elias's paperwork goes through a several step process. We are excited that we got placed in Abu Dhabi, the city instead of out in one of the more isolated places. This way, we will be walking distance from almost everything! With public transportation and walking, we won't need a car. The teachers with families are usually placed in an apartment by the beach. In most countries, I don't think I'd like that because of the scantily clad people, but I consider the beach a benefit in an Islamic country. ;)

While waiting on the paperwork to go through we've been enjoying the mild weather, since 100+ degrees will be ready to meet us by the time we get there, playing outside, homeschooling and baking. It seems we've had sets of different kinds of waiting. Waiting to find out where we would go next; waiting for the baby to be born; waiting for Ben's ticket to come so he could get started, and now waiting for our paperwork so that we can then wait on our tickets and get over there too. Something that I find helps me stay sane as a mother is finding ways to establish an easily transportable routine- something that doesn't require a lot of stuff, since most of it is either packed, sold or stored.

Babies have their own routines of eat, play, sleep, repeat; but Talia and I have been really getting into the reading lately. While she has known the sounds of the letters in the alphabet for a while, putting them together to create a word just wasn't clicking for her. Until now! I'm really excited about how smoothly she's been reading words lately. She also enjoys working with numbers, so we incorporate that into a lot of our play. While the spring weather is here, doing school outside has been incredible. Very soon, this won't be an option, so we'll soak it up while we can before we go create a new routine.

How do you stay sane with several sets of impermanent circumstances?

Hauling Books by Plane or by Donkey

Packing everything to move across the ocean can be intimidating with weight and baggage restrictions, but the part I've been trying to figure out the most is the homeschooling supplies. It's hard to know which manipulatives are worth their weight in luggage to take and which ones are better to leave.
And books. Books are particularly heavy and particularly necessary for any type of curriculum. I'm carrying them via plane. This man, Luis Soriano, believes in the necessity of reading enough to create a way to bring books to the isolated communities in Columbia. He has a round trip of eight hours on his "Biblioburro," or donkey library just bringing books so children can do research for homework or have a chance to read. He made my worries about getting enough books where we are going seem very small.



I want my children to love to read, I know how much easier it is to learn if you have good reading skills. I've seen what the lack of those skills can do to students. I also know that even if we can't take much of a physical library, we have many Kindle and online resources and, as Luis showed with educating kids to read- when there's a will, there's a way.


"Luis Soriano who started the Biblioburro initiative, also opened La Gloria's first library thanks in part to donations received from Ayoka's film viewers.
For more information: www.ayokaproductions.org"

Preschool Physics (a.k.a. Having Fun Playing with K'NEX)

Talia just discovered my brother's old K'NEX set a few days ago... this is the first thing with instructions that she chose to build:

A Ferris wheel. We followed the instructions (easy-to-follow pictures) and little by little it came together.

The coolest part was that it really moved once it was all put together. There's a center piece that can be wound that then will propel the wheel around in a circle for a bit.

Or a rolling robot:

Or a combine that works with the addition of a rubber band:

I suppose this could be considered preschool physics... ;) but it was a lot of fun, if nothing else.