How we home school 2 kids while we travel

If you’ve landed here on this post you must be a little interested in how a Singaporean family can home school two kids while they travel! Under the compulsory education act, a Singaporean child below 15 and above 6 years of age must receive primary education in a national primary school unless exempted.

The first step to homeschooling is really to ask yourself:
1. Can i commit long-term to my child’s learning?
​2. Am i willing to learn and adapt WITH my child?
3. Will i keep an open mind and do what is BEST FOR THE child?

Homeschooling is a long term commitment. For at least 6 years, you will need to make an effort to create learning moments. Don’t do it if you can’t commit to it. 

The most common comment I hear from aspiring homeschool parents or people considering it for their children is “I am not qualified to teach my own kids, i don’t know how to teach.” Consider this, we didn’t have widespread formal classroom learning in society until the recent 200 years. Human civilisation has existed for thousands of years when parents and the elders “informally” taught their children language, math, life skills etc…They weren’t paper qualified were they?

Even though Debra and I are former trained MOE teachers, we don’t know everything. Homeschooling will challenge the most qualified teachers if they aren’t willing to ADAPT and LEARN. The key is really just an open mind and a willingness to challenge your preconceived ideas of  learning. Remember, every child is different and everyone learns differently!
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The world is our classroom! Here is my fellow teacher and our students.

Here are some steps will have to take before you can legally homeschool:
(We sharing about our personal experience. Rules and regulations can change from time to time. This is not meant to be legal advice)

1. Around midyear the year your child turns 6, you’ll need to apply for a place in a public school. If you intend to homeschool and apply for exemption, you’ll still need to apply for a place in school 

2. After you’ve done that, you can write to the MOE compulsory education unit (via email) and indicate your desire to homeschool your child. They will ask for information about your child and ask for personal details etc. You’ll get a bunch of forms to fill up. You are required to school your children FULL TIME. So you can’t be having a full time job and be the main homeschool parent. They will look at the homeschool parent’s credentials as well. They are more likely to accept homeschool parent/s who are graduates. 

3. The process really starts when they send you a package of documents. This is the most difficult part. You’ll need to provide your plan for 6 entire years of their compulsory primary education. This involves extensive work prior to submission.

You’ll need to have a syllabus, a timeline of what is learnt and how it is learnt. You’ll have to cover English, Math, Science, Mother Tongue for 6 whole years. You can add on other areas of learning like religious teachings, coding or other areas into your learning scheme. They also ask for a time-table you intend to work with. 

Your child must still be able to pass the PSLE (he/she will be required to take the exam the year they turn 12). We chose the MOE syllabus for Matthias because it is something we are familiar with. 

This is really the most daunting part for most parents. We are happy to connect and assist anyone who is interested to homeschool their children!

4. There will be a home visit by an MOE officer to determine the suitability of the learning environment. Your child will also be asked a few questions about the home situation, learning with you etc. 

5. The officer in charge may write back to you and ask more questions about your learning scheme. They are usually kind enough to provide advice on how you can improve it for approval. Upon a final approval by the ministry, they will send you an official letter stating you are legally allowed to homeschool your child. The whole process usually happens between September and November. 

6. Upon approval, you can then proceed to withdraw your child from the school he/she got a place in. You can provide the ministry letter and correspondence to support your withdrawal. It is usually just an email to the school. 
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The two boxes one for each child. Their school travels! We can do school anywhere we choose to.

​Here is how we do school with two kids turning 8 and 5 this year…

There is no escape from worksheets, writing and table work when it comes to learning. We follow the MOE syllabus for all subjects and so we do use MOE text books. We travel with their text books, story books, paper, stationary, learning cards and exercise books. 

We follow a very simple style of teaching:

1. Teacher lectures
2. Teacher practices with the student
3. Child is assigned independent work
4. Teacher reviews independent work and reinforces learning with student

We intentionally make this style of learning only less than a couple hours a day with the kids. The point of homeschool is not to replicate the public school classroom. Our kids learn throughout the day in different contexts, languages and environments. 

Apart from their academic pursuits, we make sure they are learning to love others and themselves. Matthias loves coding and Gwyneth loves to draw. We give them space to pursue there interests.
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Gwyneth is starting to write and spell.

Learning materials don’t always have to be expensive. Grab a whiteboard from Daiso!

Children often develop and explore interests by what they see in their daily lives. They love drawing, photography and reading because both of us love it too. Matthias has gotten so interested with Harry Potter because Debra has been reading aloud to them every morning.

I love the orchestra and classical music. I spent 12 years of my life learning an instrument and music theory formally. I make it a point to show them the BBC proms and Cbeebies Proms. Hopefully it’ll be the live performances soon!

They learn about cooking and the daily chores! I’ll always remember my 14 year old ex-student telling me “Mr Kwan, i don’t know how to use a mop.” We all need some life skills don’t we?

Organisation, following instructions, patience and creativity. Lego is a great tool for learning!

We get to learn in our Pyjamas! We assign work and give them time on the Khan Academy E-learning apps. Completely free of charge! Go download!

Part of his education is Football education! We learn about the game, the rules, the strategies and sportsmanship. We give ourselves something to celebrate and we learn to stick with a team through thick and thin.

​My favourite part about homeschooling is that we can be flexible about when we learn, how we learn and what we learn. We can do progress faster with Math because Matthias is able to. We can spend more time on Tamil because he needs more practice. We can take a holiday from school when we need it. Their learning is tailored to their needs. We can continue with school through June because we want to. 

We learn about the weather systems when walking through the clouds on a mountain. We learn math when we calculate the tax on the restaurant bill or multiply the price of fuel by how much we pumped into the tank. We learn resilience when our bookings get cancelled or plans change. We learn Bahasa when we travel through Malaysia and speak with the locals.

Homeschool is a rewarding journey! If you are interested, drop us a message and we can connect and share more!