Homeschooling in Accra: The Cardwens

This was probably the first set of questions I got from family & friends when we first announced we were going to homeschool our children. Everyone wants to know: How will you know how well or bad they are doing? How will you know ho well they are grasping concepts? Can they still be competitive when they don't classmates? Are you sure they'll be able to pass standardised tests? ... we still get these and many more questions and yes each of these are valid. I think that the nature of these questions also tend to expose that misconceptions most people have regarding homeschooling. Homeschooling is a unique adventure for every family, but at the same time it's also pretty structured (at least for us). Do feel free to check out our schedule  and our curriculum to give you an idea what a typical day looks like for us.  Back to Standardised Testing   Since we ran an accredited international curriculum, our program requires us to post our children's in...

To be totally honest, we're only about a year into homeschooling so perhaps I'm still a newbie on this. In the era of Instagram & Youtube where we're bombarded with beautiful photos, tour videos, day-in-the-life content etc it's pretty easy for you to over romanticise the idea of homeschooling. I worked in PR & Marketing for years so the internet is a VERY familiar territory for me lol. Either ways if you're considering homeschooling your children, here are a few points to debunk before going this path... Do not homeschool if... you do not have patience you're looking for an easy way to save money on school tuition you're not ready to commit 110% of your time you're too concerned about public opinion you're not passionate about education Now here's the break down... Patience: You've got to pray for this attribute- because trust me you're going to need ALOT of it. We all love our children so dearly and want the b...

The start of a homeschool journey can be a very daunting experience, especially when you have zero experience or jave no one to learn from. It was no different for us when we launched out earlier this year (April 2019). I remember feeling like 'I wish i could have someone sit me down to take me through the entire process. After deciding on a curriculum, the next big thing was 'our school schedule. Well, depending on what curriculum you are using, you may or may not have a daily school schedule outlined for you. If you happen to be looking for scheduling inspiration for your homeschool? Here's what our weekly  schedule looks like; in addition to monthly fieldtrips and activities planned once every month of the school year. Our 2nd grader is 6years so in designing this schedule, we tried to put as much breaks in as possible to be able to grab his attention. Some days have been challenging since this is our first year; so there's still quite a bit of a...

We're 6months into homeschooling and still stocking up our library. I know this is not much, but I'm totally excited because it's just the start. Stocking up a home library can be a very expensive project so we are doing a combination of approaches as we go along: buying already used books from some friends. Buying from the Ghana Book Trust. We also buy from EPP Bookshops- they do a great job stocking children's books by Ghanaian / African writers. And of course our curriculum comes with on average 12-15 additional reading books each year. We also get to borrow books from the Accra library which offers an opportunity to borrow about 30+ books per year for as little as ghs35! Not bad at all huh?  Hopefully in the short term, we'll open our library to the other children in the neighbourhood who'd otherwise not have access to a library. We have heard great things about a few other places which we are yet to visit. We'll share our exp...

Shipping our curriculum books from the US to Accra can be an expensive project. Our first experience was nog great. It cost us over $300 to bring in our first set of books by air.  No! We're not doing that again. A friend introduced us to regular shipping. Typically this takes about 7weeks and it's much cheaper.  We are 75% through this year's curriculum and thought its a great time to start shopping for next year's curriculum (if we're going to be shipping by sea). And there we are. Some of our books finally arrived, and it cost us $50! Still waiting for a few more to arrive  in the coming weeks. Grade 3, K5 & K4!!! Loving every bit of this homeschooling journey with our cubs. Thank you Jesus! #homeschoolingInAccra #ghanaHomeschool #AbekaHomeschoolingInAccra #AbekaAcademy

Yay! One month in and Kwame has one reading book down! 9 more to go. I'm so proud of him and the pro reader he's growing into.  He's able to read aloud all by himself 99% of the time except for a few big words. What 2nd Grade Books Are We Reading? Our curriculum (Abeka) comes with 12 reading books for the whole school year of 9months and that's what we are going to be using for now. Each of the books is about 145 pages. We thank God he hasn't had any challenges with reading just yet, except that he gets grumpy towards the end when he's tired lol. So here are the selected books for Abeka's grade 2; 1 . Fun with friends I love the fact that at the end of each chapter there are about 3-4 questions for the child to answer  to test how well they understood the text they read.  There are also a list of words from the chapter to practice; this is to help improve the child's vocabulary & spelling ability. Remaining Books to be Re...

Photo Credit: Abeka Deciding on a homeschool curriculum especially for us homeschool newbies with a Ghanaian educational background, was a really tough one! First of all, there's an overwhelming amount of information out there on the internet to get you started incase you're ready to dive in. However, before finally making a decision, we laid out top 7 things we wanted to achieve with our homeschool journey. I'll share the steps we used below to decide on one. The 4 Things We Wanted For Our Children International Worldview: We knew from day 1 we wanted our children to have an education that gives them a wholistic international worldview to give them the needed confidence to face the complex world we find ourselves in today. Knowing Their African Roots:  THIS was priority for us. In as much as we want them to have an international worldview, having a solid Pan-african  footing / understanding was also important.  Personalised Learning:  With all 3 of our...