July 31, 2020 - Friday (Eid al Adha)

Dear Diary,

Today, we started homeschooling for my seven-year-old son. I worked for three hours from 6:30 am to 9:30 am to prepare today’s lessons for all subjects including:
- Computer
- Values Education
- Civics, Culture, Geography, and History
- Music, Arts, Physical Education and Health
- Technology, Home Economics, and Livelihood Education
- Mathematics
- Science and Health
- Filipino (Pagbabasa, Pagsasalita, Pagbabaybay, Pagsusulat)
- English (Reading, Speaking, Spelling, and Writing)
- Other Languages: Nihonggo

I was already hungry but my son was still sound asleep so I ate breakfast alone and took a shower right after. The drinking water delivery guy arrived just as I was about to get out of the shower. I had to wake my son up and ask him to receive the delivery.

My son was unwilling to get up because he was up late last night. I told him to never sleep late again since we are starting homeschooling from today. He was dragging his foot to the door but he still unlocked the gate for the delivery guy and received the delivery. He also put back the keys to the holder. All this happened while I was putting clothes on in the dressing room. I am proud that I could now count on my son for some assistance.

After I got dressed, I prepared the table for my son to have his breakfast of plain rice and chicken adobo. While he was eating, I fed the dogs. After he had his breakfast, he asked not to take a shower yet and not to wash his dishes yet as he was so full. I allowed him to do that on the condition that we will start our homeschooling immediately. He hesitantly agreed.

We started at 11 am with Computer lessons and he was evidently distracted after an hour. He learned these today:
- how to turn on your computer
- how to log in to your account
- what is a UPS
- why is a UPS important
- how to log off from your account
- how to shut down your computer
- how to save a file
- how to use Spotlight to search for files

My son was asking for a break and is looking sleepy but I still asked him to watch a video for Values Education about the story of Abraham’s Sacrifice from YouTube since today is Eid al Adha. It took him 10 minutes to finish the video before he finally stood up from his computer.

I decided to negotiate with him to empower him to make his choice and to encourage him to take accountability as a responsible child. I explained that if we finish the video for Values Education and discuss today’s holiday for Civics, Culture, Geography, and History, we would not have to rewatch the video again later after the break. And we could then move on to the next subject. But that if he decides not to discuss Eid al Adha and take a break right away, we would have to rewatch the video for Values Education to refresh his memory. Then we shall proceed to the discussion of today’s holiday. He chose well. He chose to finish the discussion and have a good one-hour break before we proceed to the next subject.

While discussing Eid al Adha with my son, I learned that Christians and Muslims have different versions of the story of Abraham’s sacrifice. In the Bible, it says that Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away before the sacrifice happened. So the son that was sacrificed was Isaac. However, Muslims believe that it was Ishmael that was sacrificed by Abraham and saved by God. Maybe the Quoran says so.

My son and I discussed Mosques and the practices of Muslims regarding birthdays and their version of the story of Abraham’s sacrifice. He found the discrepancy funny but I explained that everyone has his own version of the story. Unfortunately, since he is playing Mobile Legends most of the time these days, he thought that any angel looks like the hero, Angela. I had to tell him that it is different. And he also asked if God was the sun since the video showed God as a ball of fire. I had to explain that the sun and God are not the same. "But where is God?", he asked. I just told him that God is in heaven. I am grateful that he did not pursue that line of questioning because it would be difficult to explain at this point.

He proceeded to ask about chocolate and where it comes from, as well as where water comes from, and if it comes from animals. So I discussed the cocoa tree and a bit about the water cycle. We were also able to discuss the meaning of sacrifice, love of parents, how parents love a son, and the habit of praying.

We took a break at 1:15 pm and got back at 2:20 pm. We resumed with Home Economics and our lesson focused on Making Beds. I showed him some reasons to make the bed and a video of people earning a living by making beds. I noticed that he felt challenged when he saw how straight the sheets were made by the person in the video. Afterward, we made our own bed. It took us 25 minutes to do all these.

The next lesson was to make a self-introduction for the English subject. It took us 40 minutes to do this since he is a bit playful at this time. He seems to not see the importance of this yet. We moved on to spelling, which he seemed to enjoy and find as “easy peasy” that he laughed a lot within the whole duration of the 30-minute exercise. He got a 6 out of 10 on the spelling quiz, which took 20 minutes, felt tired and begged to call it a day.

We were only able to cover these subjects today: 
- Computer
- Values Education
- Civics, Culture, Geography, and History
- Technology, Home Economics, and Livelihood Education
- English (Reading, Speaking, Spelling, and Writing)

We will try to cover these tomorrow:
- Computer
- Music, Arts, Physical Education and Health
- Technology, Home Economics, and Livelihood Education
- Mathematics
- Science and Health
- Filipino (Pagbabasa, Pagsasalita, Pagbabaybay, Pagsusulat)
- English (Reading, Speaking, Spelling, and Writing)

I finalized “his notes” for today and prepared the lesson for tomorrow in a shorter time because I just had to use the leftover materials we were not able to cover today which are Math, Science, MAPEH, Other Languages, and Filipino. It took me a full 40 minutes to do this and to ask him to shut down his computer. What a first day!

Yours truly,

Ella

P.S.
I was able to create my own image for today using Canva. try it for free! https://www.canva.com/join/jzx-yvs-nzd