Homeschool Shanghai

Over the years in China, I have learnt to shop on the internet. Taobao works as an escrow service here and is very popular among the Chinese. You have a Chinese bank account here and you must activate internet banking. Registration with Taobao will require scanned document for verification of identity, in this case, my [...]

The decision to put the children through ABRSM and not the exam from Shanghai Music Consortium has put us through some days of stress – good ones, I supposed, if we look into the future. ABRSM exam demands a test of knowledge of theory, aural, sight reading besides performance. Shanghai Music Consortium focus on performance [...]

Paul’s second-hand laptop gave up his ghost many months ago and his progress with Singapore Math has since been delayed, only to go back to tradition learning with textbooks which he hates. The boys have decided after discussing, to combine their red packet money from Singapore to buy a new netbook for Paul. The ASUS [...]

I had an experiment at making liquid soap today – by boiling shredded soap. It was a disaster. My shampoo from the previous experiment is still too diluted after boiling a bar of liquid soap. Worst of all, I had a burnt clump of “don’t-know-what-it-is” at the bottom of the pot – I had forgot to [...]

Michael will be on duty tomorrow in Hongqiao International Church and so he was out for vocal practice in the afternoon. He has been sick for the past few days. The weather in Shanghai is getting more and more unstable since the unexpected winter storm last year. It should be getting warmer has we approach [...]

This past week has been a stressful week for me. I wrote to a few close friends in the Homeschool Group to ask for prayers and support. It seems like any other time of the year, where recital/ play, piano exam, summer school planning and vacation bible school come together. But this year seems a [...]

Michael is sick again. Ever since he joined the teaching line, flu and sore throat are common ailments. With the increase in workload and part-time MBA, Michael has been snacking late at night as well. I had not been able to sleep well because he kept coughing at night. Germs tend to pass between the [...]

Are you stressed out trying to manage the household, teach the children, cook, shop and clean up? Are you feeling the stress? I do. But I’m slowly learning to let go a bit at a time. A friend sent me 36 Stress Reducers that I find rather useful and encouraging – how to manage life [...]

Haven’t been writing for a few days because the server at Lunar Pages was down. They suspended our account and Michael could not even log on to try to solve the problem, so he had to send emails flying from gmail to lunarpages. Unfortunately, my email accounts are with the server, so I was stuck [...]

What happen when you know too much to give up and too little solve the problem? As an ex-tech ground crew from the Singapore Armed Forces, I tell you – it’s very frustrating trying to find the missing link in a solution, especially a technical one – funny things do happen to circuit boards, a [...]