Mind the Gaps

I've mentioned that our job is to fill the gaps. Thai children are being educated for success in Thai society. We want our children to thrive in Thai society, but we also need them to survive in South African society... We cannot expect the school to help us with that, and we don't.

Emily and Nina are in kindergarten - kindergartens here need to have the child reading and writing by the time they enter P. 1. This is essential as most primary school classes have over 40, even over 50, kids and if the kids cannot read and write the teacher's job becomes almost impossible. Kindergartens which do not achieve this goal lose status and may even "go out of business". Even Montessori kindergartens veer off track so that they can teach kids to read and write early on.

When the focus is "academic" like this, clearly creative work and play is NOT. This is the main gap in kindergarten: creativity, play, sports. I spend time with the girls doing creative work, role play, and free play in their afternoons.

In primary school there is more. English as a first language is a major gap as they teach it as a second language. Another big one is problem solving. Creativity, sports and exercise are far less than in our home country, we think because its too darn hot here! We fill these gaps by following the WES (Worldwide Education Services) curriculum. English is the main focus - and there is quite a bit of creativity in this course, its lovely! The maths is centered around problem solving, so while Jonty learns 5 plus 9 is 14 at school, at home he learns how to apply that in every day life.

Another issue is that we do need to give far more emotional support to our children than we would if they were at school in SA. Emotional first aid and daily debriefing is necessary. Another important consideration is Home Assignment – we need to be preparing the children NOW to cope in SA schools, and while on HA we need to be preparing them to fit back into Thai schools. This means that while in Thailand we’ll homeschool (Jonty is following the WES curriculum, he has almost finished Y1 and moving to Y2 in about September), Em and Nina will follow the same pattern. When we go on HA we will buy the Thai books for their relevant years and try – as far as possible – to keep them on track.