Homeschooling Malaysia Parents Blogs

Considering homeschooling in Malaysia but don't know how to go about it? The best thing is to talk to parents who have been through it. However,  how do you approach these parents. You don't know of anyone personally. That is the reason for this post. You can read up from parents who have been through it. Here are some parent bloggers who have either researched on homeschooling or home schooled their kids.

• Mazlyn's Blog - In this blog post dated April 7, 2014 she talks about her research for homeschooling. At the time, she did not actually homeschool her kids but opted for the hybrid approach (I am not sure about now). Read the comments too to get an interesting view from the discussion on homeschooling in Malaysia
• Chit Chat Over Coffee blogspot - This is an excellent post dated May 9, 2012 when she pulled her child out of mainstream school at age 11 due to her dyslexia. Highly recommended to read if you are thinking of homeschooling in Malaysia. She goes on to talk about what is homeschooling, why homeschool, the legalities and implication, how to get started and more. Though just 4 months into homeschooling at the time she wrote this post, you will benefit from reading her been there done that sharing. 
• Homeschooling Malaysia Wordpress Blog is by a homeschooling parent. You can read up about her homeschooling adventures and browse over to the "Why We Homeschool" tab. However, I did not link to the homepage but rather to the blog post on 5 Things To Know Before You Begin Homeschooling written on September 29, 2015 for you to get a very good insight from this homeschooling parent.
• Homeschooling Frontier - you can find lots of information on this website run by homeschooling parents. For starters, read this one on homeschooling FAQs including the concept of homeschooling, how many students are homeschooled in Malaysia, the legalities, curriculum options, challenges and more. Navigate to "My Homeschool Journey" to read the musings of the homeschooled child which links to more articles from other homeschool children.
• Hafidz FCU Malaysian Homeschooling - I've linked to the article on "Mengapakah Perlu Homeschool (1) on this family's homeschooling journey. Check out the sidebar of this blog for more links to other Malaysian Homeschooling Blogs and Muslim Homeschooling Blogs.

There are many other such homeschool blogs by Malaysian parents and students who are homeschooled. This will give you a very good idea about homeschooling in Malaysia. 

Roald Dahl's The BFG And Other Roald Dahl Stories

Roald Dahl's The BFG is coming to the big screen some time in July and I can't wait for it! I'm a huge fan of Roald Dahl ever since I bought my boy a set of Roald Dahl books for his birthday and he highly recommended that I should read them too. I did and I loved his writing. His stories are full of adventure of the craziest kind and filled with zany made up words that kids will adore.

The BFG stands for The Big Friendly Giant is about a little girl's adventures with a scary looking giant who turns out to be a kind hearted soul. I won't say any more than this less I inadvertently give away spoilers for The Big Friendly Giant movie which is a Disney movie directed by Steven Spielberg, the 3 master storytellers of our time.

Speaking of movies, which will you do first? Will you watch the movie first or read the book first? Well, whichever you choose, you can get the book and read it now or you can keep the book and read it after you watch the movie.



Books Kinokuniya Malaysia Webstore is currently having a Roald Dahl promo from now till end of March 2016. Just enter the promo code RD10 for 10% off selected Roald Dahl titles including:

The BFG
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator
The Complete Adventures of Charlie and Mr Willy Wonka
Danny the Champion of the World
The Enormous Crocodile
Esio Trot
Fantastic Mr Fox
The Giraffe and The Pelly and Me
George's Marvelous Medicine
James and the Giant Peach
The Magic Finger
Matilda
The Twits
The Witches
Boy
Boy and Going Solo
Going Solo

Online Malaysian Textbooks For SK, SJKC and SJKT

Whether your child is studying in SK, SJKC or SJKT, their school bags are heavy. As parents, we often try to lessen the burden by asking the children to leave some non-essential text books behind in school if possible either in their desks or in lockers if the school has them. However, sometimes kids forget to bring their textbooks home. Sometimes a friend takes their books home mistakenly. So what do you do when your child says

"Ma, I have Math homework today but I forgot to bring my Math textbook home/I can't find my Math textbook."

Some parents try to overcome this by buying their own textbooks. Currently textbooks are on loan for all Malaysian kids. However, some parents buy their own as spare or to split up the textbooks into little "modules" to lighten the bag load. Even then, spare textbooks can get misplaced too sometimes. 

Here is another alternative besides spare textbooks and rushing out to buy a textbook, going to school to search frantically or borrowing from a friend. They are Online Malaysian Textbooks For SK, SJKC or SJKT. Yes, we do have online textbooks available for Malaysian parents. Not every textbook is available and there are some which are incomplete. However, you can still find quite a number of textbooks available online for your use. You will also find these online useful for taking a sneak peek at the next standard or level of books.

One of the sources of online textbooks is FrogAsia, a virtual learning environment provided for schools. You can access FrogAsia via your 1BestariNet ID. 1BestariNet is a nationwide project carried out by the Malaysian Ministry of Education and YTL. Under this project, every parent, student and teacher has been provided with an ID that enables access to a variety of online learning tools.

Here is how you can access the online textbooks. Most schools would have instructed the students to create an id or to inform parents to create one but if you haven't done so yet, here's what you need to do.

Before you proceed, for parents with kids in Standard one,  your child's school may give you the id and password to access. You can do the steps below if you lose that id and password given to you. However, the school has to set it up first before you can do that.

IMPORTANT!

UPDATE JULY 2016: UPON CHECKING THE WEBSITE WE FOUND THAT THE INTERFACE HAS CHANGED. TO LOGIN GO TO THIS LINK. ON THE TOP RIGHT CORNER, CLICK ON HOP IN IF YOU HAVE AN EXISTING ACCOUNT. IF NOT, CLICK ON I'M A NEW VLE USER AND FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS THERE. 

Step 1. Go to this link. You will be greeted with the page you see below

Step 2. Follow the steps on the right side bar. Do not click "Hop In". Do the Steps 1,2 and 3 first. Click on the Pink, Green and Orange buttons in that order. 

Step 3. Retrieve your id. (Pink Button) You may be required to key in your name and I/C number to retrieve your id. (If it says id not found, then you may have to wait for your child's school to key in your child's info to the system first before you get access. You may get a id and password from the school, in which case you can just use the id and password assigned to you and follow the instructions given by your child's school).

Step 4. Retrieve password. (Green Button) You may be required to key in your mobile phone number to retrieve your password. Click "Send Password" and your password will be sent to your mobile phone. (You can change the password later but try to remember it)

Step 5. Activate your id. (Orange Button) You will need to key in your id and password which you received earlier via your mobile to verify your account.

Step 6. Finally, you may now click on "Hop In". You will need to key in your id and password each time you "Hop In" so remember it.

Step 7. When you are in, you can see the names of your children on the left bar. You will also see links to your children's school on the left side bar. If your children's school is active in using the site, you will be able to see more activity here. Otherwise, nothing much to see. Let's move on to retrieve those online textbooks

Step 8. Once you "Hop In", Click on "Frog Store" on the left side bar. You will be greeted with the following page. Then, click on "Books" at the top left hand side.

Step  9. You will be greeted with the page below. Do a search by clicking on the drop down menu's (circled in red). Select your level, subject and whether you want free or paid. (Malaysian online textbooks are provided free). Then click "Go". You can also do a search for specific books by typing in the search box at the top right corner of the page.

Step 10. Example: I did a search by clicking on Level "Tahun Satu" and "Go", leaving the other choices blank. This is what I see. Click on  "Add" to add the book you want to your library. Now you can access the online textbooks from your library.

Note: Once you have added the online textbook to your library, you can access it from the "My Library" icon whenever you "Hop In" to FrogAsia.  The book icon that represents "My Library" is located at the top right hand corner of the page as shown below.

After completing the initial steps above, the next time you want to access your online textbook, just do the following steps.

1. Click "Hop In"
2. Key in your id and password
3. Click on "Frog Store"
4. Go to "My Library" to access your online textbooks (as shown below)

Finally, this is what you see when you access the books. The example below comes from a book called Glosari Matematik Sekolah Rendah. Good for SK students. You can search for this book by typing in the search box on the top right hand corner of the page.

Besides books, you can also access, images, videos, and audio etc. I hope this guide helps you. I was very confused the first time I used the site as there are too many links to click and I didn't know where to navigate.

Here is another online resource for online textbooks for SK and SJKC. I have not seen SJKT textbooks in this link. This is an online drive that was created and shared on social media. Unfortunately, I do not know who the creator is so I can give credit. This link is much easier to access compared to the FrogAsia one above. Just one click here to access the Malaysian Online Textbooks.

You may find the resources above useful when your child needs to refer to his/her textbook for homework but the textbook is missing. Do note that you will have to replace missing textbooks at the end of the school year when the school collects the books on loan for next year's students.

Did you find the above post useful? If so, help to share it with your friends with school going kids.

Learning Centre For Home School In Cheras

So you want to home school your kids but you don't know how and you do not have any connections or network. What do you do now? Consider an alternative option. A learning Centre for home schooling.

Some who do homeschooling say that there is no such thing as a homeschooling centre because homeschooling should be taught at home, hence the term "home" schooling. However, homeschooling is not easy, especially if you do it on your own. You need to have a good network of other parents so that your child has a chance to mix around with other children, get together to do projects and share teaching duties with other parents. Not all of us are expert educators in every subject so some home schoolers specialize in subjects and alternate teaching with their network. That's why in the past home schooling used to be done in ready communities eg. a faith based organization.

These days, there is a new option for parents who

• do not wish to send their kids to public school
• do not have the networks for home school
• do not have the know how, patience or time for home schooling
• prefer not to send to private or international schools because they want to save their funds for tertiary education

This option is a learning centre if you prefer not to call it a home school centre but it essentially provides education for kids who want to opt out of the public school system yet do not want to pay the hefty fees of international schools.

Let's take a look at one such learning centre in Cheras. It is called Kensington Academy. Kensington Academy offers IGCSE courses for their students which is the preferred course for most home schoolers.

Below you can see the comparison between public school and IGCSE as shown on the Kensington Academy website. IGCSE is offered at Kensington Academy starting from Year 1 or age 6. However, you can join at any time. For example, you can study at a public primary school up to Std 5, then move on to Kensington Academy to do your Year 7 which is equivalent to Form 1 level in public school. Alternatively, you can do your UPSR, then move on to Year 8 at Kensington subject to an aptitude test, interview with the principal or course coordinator and approval of your application.

Below are a list of the subjects your child may be studying under the IGCSE syllabus in Kensington.




At Kensington Academy, students can take the IGCSE exams that many home schoolers and international school students do. They can do projects together and have the social interaction just like in public school but at a fraction of a fee of an international school.

To know more about the programme, facilities and admission requirements at Kensington Academy, visit their website Kensington Academy or Facebook Page. Located at Cheras, the academy also arranges transport for students at a minimum fee.

Breakfast Ideas For Malaysian Mums With School Going Kids

Are you in a rush every morning? You want to feed your child a nutritious breakfast before they head off to school to take goodness knows what type of canteen food during break, yet you are often in a rush and you are running out of ideas on what to make. Welcome to the mad morning rush moms club. We have lots of those moms in our group: The Malaysia Primary and Secondary School Parents on Facebook and here are some of the mom approved breakfast ideas for Malaysian mums with school going kids.

Here are some ideas for the most rushed mornings when a quickie breakfast is all the time you have for.

FOR RUSHED MORNINGS

Try bread cut into funny shapes and a side dish of fresh fruits

Hard boiled eggs or soft boiled eggs whichever you prefer is also fast and easy to prepare

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Rolled oats, fruits and nuts. Yum. Yum.

Sandwiches cut with a mold or as it is if you don't have the time.

Vegetable salad. Good to train them from young.

Mission wrap triple cheese and egg.

Peanut butter and banana french toast with fruit and milo

Rolled oats, quinoa, spinach,pumpkin and sweet potato, vegetable shake and protein shake.

Wholemeal kaya toast, apples and soft boiled eggs

Sandwich toast and waffles with jam 

Sushi and cherry tomatoes on the side

Mission wrap with any filling of your choice

Mini Chicken Katsu Bento

IDEAS FOR THOSE WHO LIKE TO BAKE

(Some of these can be prepared overnight and heated in the morning to safe time)

Egg Muffins with bread, ham, cheese and sausage

Baked eggs with fresh milk, cheese and baby spinach

Mini Hotdog Rolls

Milk Buns

Mixed vegetable, minced meat and cheese and quinoa muffin

Potatoes, pumpkin, ham and egg muffins

Double Cheese buns - stuffed with cheese and topped with cheese

Kaya and Nutella Puffs

Marble Cake

French Madelines in Bear Shape with yoghurt drink

Red Bean or Sausage Buns

Fruit tarts and swiss roll

Doughnuts 

Hot Steamed Rolls

Pumpkin Mantou

Chocolate Mantou

Credit for the photos: Thank you very much to all the wonderful mums in The Malaysia Primary And Secondary School Parents On Facebook group who shared their photos and their ideas.

Though the ideas are plentiful, we can't share them all and being Malaysians we haven't even begun to include our local fairs like bihun goreng, nasi lemak, etc.

Hopefully these pictures give you some inspiration and some ideas of  your own.