Minli Posted July 20, 2012 Share Posted July 20, 2012 Hello, everyone! This is the first post on TWTM forum and I am writing because I desperately need help as soon as possible. A few words about us: we are a Romanian family of teachers, trying to homeschool our daughter in Romania where homeschooling is almost inconceivable. Our only solution is an umbrella school, which we have found. Things are getting complicated: all the materials I want to use are in English, but our 6 year-old daughter can only read and write (a little) in Romanian. She understands quite a lot of English because we speak it in our house daily. However, her knowledge is not rich enough to be able to listen to long stories in English. We want her to be able to read and write well both in Romanian (a phonetic language) and in English but we are aware that we might have to send her to public school next year, when my maternity leave ends. I simply cannot decide on the materials :confused:(I love the Peace Hill Press ones) because I am afraid she will not meet the American standards (we have to send reports and samples of her work), not knowing the language well enough ... There is also the money issue: our income per month is somewhere around $ 500 and while I believe education is truly important, we simply cannot afford paying for many of the great books I have seen on the Internet, nor for the considerable shipping rates... I want her to have a beautiful, unforgettable experience, to study with the same enthusiasm I have been "studying" the homeschooling issue for several years and not to feel embarrassed when comparing herself to other children attending public schools. I want her to love to learn! Ideas and suggestions are warmly welcome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blessedmom3 Posted July 20, 2012 Share Posted July 20, 2012 (edited) Buna Iulia, I am Romanian, living now in FLorida for over 10 yrs. I homeschool my dc in English because we live here but if I were you and had no plans to emigrate , I'd homeschool in Romanian, adding English as a second language, speaking ,reading and writing it as much as possible. Why do you need to use an umbrella school, is it required in Romania ? If it is, then I suppose you have to homeschool in English to meet the school's requirements . In this case you can add Romanian as a second language. Anyway, living in Ro , your dd will learn to speak it fluently. I have a 16 yo niece who left Ro when she was 5 , she does speak a broken Ro , but since she has never learned how to write&spell, she is not able to write it correctly. Her 25 yo sister was schooled in Romania until 12 , therefore she writes very well. I suppose , with some work you could do both and since she is living there it will be easier for her . You could also apply TWTM ideas in your Ro materials. I highly rec SW Bauer mp3 downloads. For history, I recommend the CDs so that your dd can hear a native speaker but I wouldn't start that until she is older and fluent in English. My dc are unfortunately not fluent in Ro. I am teaching them French instead. I emigrated to France a long time ago before I moved to the us and I am fluent in French , but I want to introduce Romanian soon . If you have any questions, please feel free to pm . :) ETA : if you plan to send her back to ps next year, then don't worry about teaching her Romanian. She will have time to be proficient in her language in the following school years. Just teach her English as much as you can, at this age, children absorb like sponges. But also they forget quickly if the language is not practiced. My 4yo son used to speak fluently Romanian when my mom was here for 6 months,but he forgot everything because I did not speak Ro to him... Edited July 20, 2012 by blessedmom3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Minli Posted July 20, 2012 Author Share Posted July 20, 2012 Blessedmom, homeschooling in Romania is illegal... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blessedmom3 Posted July 20, 2012 Share Posted July 20, 2012 Blessedmom, homeschooling in Romania is illegal... Wow, I didn't know that :confused: I assumed it was legal. In this case, abeka (I think) provides a recognized curriculum but it is very expensive and very different from a classical curriculum. Also CLASS homeschools -Christian liberty press offers an umbrella school and although it similar to abeka, it's much more affordable and I heard they offer free scholarship to Romanian families . You can contact them and ask, but as I said they offer a traditional curriculum, not classical. There are a few families from europe , hopefully someone will chime in and offer you some suggestions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C_l_e_0..Q_c Posted July 20, 2012 Share Posted July 20, 2012 I would homeschool bilingually. Since Romanian is phonetic, teach reading and writing in Romanian first. The knowledge will transfer to English seamlessly in a few months. Read books in either language. I used to read the same level of books to my kids, even though their English was non existent. We were just taking more time in English. Implement some sort of Five in a Row approach for English. You read the same picture book 5 times, so the child picks up the vocabulary and the phrasings. Topic discussions are done in whatever language the child is more comfortable with. If you think she will have to go back to school the following year, keep up the math and the main language to the appropriate level, otherwise the school system will hold her back a year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joan in GE Posted July 21, 2012 Share Posted July 21, 2012 A few words about us: we are a Romanian family of teachers, trying to homeschool our daughter in Romania where homeschooling is almost inconceivable. Our only solution is an umbrella school, which we have found. Hello! Did you know there will be a European home ed meeting at the end of July in Poland? It is the low cost type - so hopefully you can go and meet people. Joan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Minli Posted July 21, 2012 Author Share Posted July 21, 2012 Hello! Did you know there will be a European home ed meeting at the end of July in Poland? It is the low cost type - so hopefully you can go and meet people. Joan No, I didn't know. However, I can't afford that either though I"d hove loved it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Minli Posted July 21, 2012 Author Share Posted July 21, 2012 Do you know Galore Park Publishers?They offer a great affordable curriculum. If you order at www.bookdepository.co.uk you have no shippings and/or customcharges. www.alibris.co.uk is a secondhands site with cheap but slow shippings. More and more publishers have PDF books, but printing might be too expensive. Keep asking questions... HTH Thank you!:001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Love_to_Read Posted July 23, 2012 Share Posted July 23, 2012 (edited) Lay the foundation in Romanian for reading and writing. As another person posted, it will transfer into English. In fact, it will transfer much better from Romanian (her strongest language) into English than if you were to use the English materials first. What can you obtain for schooling in Romanian? Are there any sort of phonics books provided by the umbrella school, or recommended by them? Are the libraries similar enough to what we have for you to be able to use them for history and science readings? You might be able to buy something like Singapore Math and just write the directions in Romanian above the English. Since you have to keep records to prove yourself, I would probably do the majority of her schooling in Romanian for the first 2-3 years, with only reading stories to her in English to learn the language receptively, then transition to more direct instruction in English language arts (phonics, spelling, grammar) for another couple years to help transfer literacy skills, then add more instruction in science and history in English to exercise her literacy in the content areas....but always attending to the Romanian first to the standards of public school given your situation, and adding the English gradually to the extent that she is capable without falling behind. In situations such as in the United States when students do learn to read in their second language first...for example, when an immigrant student learns to read in English by attending public school but has not learned to read in his home language yet...in those situations, there is a delay. There is so much effort devoted to puzzling out the reading process in the new language, everything appears delayed for the first 3-6 years, before both languages are strong enough to appear on target. When you measure how many words the child knows, his vocabulary is larger in total than a monolingual child, but it appears smaller when examined in one language or the other, because the quantity is split between the languages. So, let us say for an example that a small monolingual child can speak three thousand words. A bilingual child of the same age can probably speak four thousand, but perhaps only about 1,500 in one language, 2,500 in the other, so both languages look smaller than the expected 3,000 even though the total is 4,000. So, in the beginning stages, if you try very hard to balance the bilingualism, your child may appear behind from having the effort divided. Thus it may be safer to focus on a primary language and add the other as an extra. Edited July 23, 2012 by Love_to_Read Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Minli Posted July 24, 2012 Author Share Posted July 24, 2012 Love to Read (and all the other nice moms), Thank you for helping me understand what I need to do. I'm already teaching her how to read and write in Romanian, so I'll go on with this. I've decided to use Miquon math which I'll soon order (in the meantime we are doing MEP in English+Romanian:) ) As for History, I was thinking of using The Story of the World and a free online Science curriculum combined with Usborne encyclopedias and some other Romanian books. We have many Romanian books that we can use, plus acces to British Council library and American library, so hopefully I'll be able to find at least some of the books I read about here or on other homeschooling sites. There's also Bible studies to cover, and I haven't really made up my mind on the materials, but I'll definitely use the Bible itself and probably lives of the Orthodox (especially) saints. The umbrella school does not recommend anything in particular and allows hs in Romanian, as long as I translate the samples they need into English. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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