Hot Season, Homeschool and Holidays {A Chronic Voice linkup}

The last few months I've been enjoying A Chronic Voice linkups. Chronic illness bloggers use Sheryl's 5 word prompts and write a post for the month. You can see the other April ones here.

Its Khmer New Year here in Cambodia! And hot season season- with humid weather and power cuts just to make sure we get the most out of the season.

Prompts this month: Tiring, Educating, Giving, Receiving, Quieting

A Khmer New Year powder fight a few years ago.

Tiring- hot season and health

Now is not the time of year to work out if the fatigue is a medical problem, everyone is so tired and hot and grumpy, I was definitely sick throughout cool season and I’m pretty sure there is still something different now, but I will wait until this hot humid weather is over to think about it.

Do less. Drink more water. My hot season motto.

Educating- Homeschooling our kids

I was surprised to learn that kindergarten kids only need to do a really short amount of school work each day/week.  A few years ago I met with an educator and mother to ask her about homeschooling and I think she said something like just maybe 20 min in the morning, and just maths and reading/writing were important at that age.

When I was 6 I was spending the whole day at school so I think I assumed that homeschooling would be school at home, and would take maybe 5 or 6 hours a day. And maybe it does when they are older, but for early primary school just a bit of the 3 Rs is most important. The rest of the time they play, we read to them, they make things, they help cook and clean, they watch things on YouTube- sometimes just for fun, sometimes to answer all their science questions.

Being a homeschool family is more of a lifestyle or mindset for us at this stage, there is some testing we can access but it doesn’t start until the child is 8 years old. It’s cheaper than school for us here in Cambodia which was the impetus. Happily it also gives us flexibility to spend more time together as a family, which counters the disruptive unpredictable flares of chronic illness.  

Giving and Receiving- Personal holidays

Soeun and I give each other days or time off from the kids. As much as we love them and like spending time together we need time to ourselves too.

Giving Soeun time off could look like keeping the kid occupied at the front of the house, while he is in his office at the back. Or it could mean taking them out to visit a friend or play at the mall.

Receiving time off sometimes means having rest or read in a room by myself.  Often it means riding my bike into town and reading/writing in a café or even a guesthouse. The fun of living in a tourist town means even though we don’t really have parks or cool weather there are still places I can go to read.

Quieting- a foreign concept in April

Between tired grumpy kids and Khmer New Year celebrations its not within my control to quiet things down. This time of year Cambodia goes crazy. Everyone is travelling, drinking, throwing water and powder, dancing and turning up their music. Even during long hot power cuts the karaoke will not be quieted!