Olivia's world

If ever anyone promises you that they know homeschooling the easy way, run away as fast as you can. There is nothing easy about homeschooling. Imagine baby-sitting your children for the entire day. Now tell me if that sounds easy. Also, don't be sucked into all those endless activities where everyone tells you how your child must take part in one activity after another. You will hear about terms and conditions that you'll find nowhere else, except in the homeschooling community. And those smiling moms with the amazing homeschooling blogs and the oh-so-awesome arts and crafts that always come out perfect and look so amazing? Don't be fooled by them.  Homeschooling is anything but easy and it's nothing like traditional school. The most important thing is to drown out all the noise and focus on your child and their needs. Pay attention to what works and what doesn't work for you as a family. The beauty of homeschooling is that you decide on the routine, the work and th

  Thursday the first of July started like any other ordinary day. I was planning my radio program that was already very close to the deadline. I was cooking that long-anticipated beef stew and enjoying the smells wafting from my kitchen. The day felt good. And then I went on Facebook. Not even halfway through to check up on the status of friends, the status on Nikki Coward's page stopped me in my tracks and ripped through my heart. Celeste Phillips has died. For a long moment, I stopped breathing as I tried to absorb this heartbreaking news. Have you ever experienced one of those moments where you can't think and your mind is left completely blank because what you're reading is so incomprehensible? Celeste has died. I can not accept that she's gone. Celeste was too full of life and love. It feels impossible that someone who gave so much and loved so hard could just be gone. It doesn't feel right that I'm talking about her in the past tense. Nothing about this fe

  In the previous century, we could tell our children   to go to school, study hard and get a job.   And it worked out exactly that way. But that approach is no longer working. Now we must teach our children to become problem solvers and independent thinkers.  The challenge is how do we as parents move away from our last century thinking to teach our children how to survive in the twenty-first century ? Our children are growing up in a world that's vastly different from the one that we grew up in. We didn't have internet and cellphones, there was no Google, Facebook, or WhatsApp. We didn't have to deal with cyberbullies. We had to deal with the real flesh and blood bully who would beat you up and terrorise you, and that was bad enough. But he or she had a name and a face.  We definitely didn't have to deal with Covid19 and people close to you and across the world dying. We also could find a job much easier. All we had to do was read and write, send our CV off and then w