Category: Homeschool

Fun & Brain-Boosting Online Games for Kids and Adults Alike

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As a homeschooling mom who spends a lot of time curating engaging yet educational activities for my son, I’m always on the lookout for games that are both fun and beneficial. While browsing online, I stumbled upon CulinarySchools.org, a site that offers a variety of online games catering to different age groups and interests. What intrigued me the most was the range of brain games, puzzles, and even sports-themed games that go beyond just entertainment—they also help with cognitive skills, problem-solving, and coordination!

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Teaching My 7-Year-Old Financial Literacy: Exploring ‘The First Ten Rules of Wealth’ by Richard Templar

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As a parent, I’ve always believed that education extends far beyond the walls of a traditional classroom. This belief has been a driving force behind our decision to homeschool our 7-year-old son, giving him the freedom to learn in ways that suit his interests and needs. One area that Mahal and I are particularly passionate about introducing to his curriculum is financial literacy. In today’s ever-changing world, the importance of understanding money, saving, and investing cannot be overstated. I grew up with a poverty mindset… that feeling that we’re always lacking… that belief that I’m not worthy of the good kind of life… and it took years of reading self-help books, and wealth-related books, and listening to Oprah and Tony Robbins before I was able to fairly say I that I’ve somehow overcome my poverty mindset and started my journey towards abundance. I want Tuz to have the right kind of thinking when it comes to money and wealth so that he will be able to live a more abundant, rich, and fulfilling life.

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How to Teach a Kid About Real Estate, Coding, Circuitry and Robotics (A Little Peek at Our Homeschool Life with Tuz)

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We’ve been nothing but super busy since we got back from our beach wedding. We actually got a bit sick for 2 weeks after all the wedding tours that ended on May 8, and we had to recuperate up until Mother’s Day last month. It’s going to be Father’s Day soon and we’re still trying to get back to our regular routine here at our mini resort, Oslob New Village, our home in Oslob, by having our morning or evening walks again,  hikes up the mountain, going to the beach, paddle boarding, biking, and playing badminton (for better physical health); planting bonsais, herbs and trees; doing chores at home, taking care of Tuz, spending time as husband and wife (a.k.a. mini dates with Mahal), taking care of my online work, and homeschooling. 

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Calculators.org Online Games: Perfect for Mental Breaks that Bring Back Good Childhood Memories

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Happy Halloween, everyone!!! 

We’ve just celebrated Halloween the last 4 days (Oct. 28-31) and again it was a blast! I’m still in the middle of preparing a vlog and blog post for it so I can share with you all how we celebrated my most favorite season this year. I hope yours was a happy one too! Stay tuned!

On the other hand, I feel like this will be the last time I’m celebrating this way my fave holiday. It’s been 20 years of blissful spooky celebrations, from Malate street and Boracay beach parties in my early 20’s, to Oktoberfest celebrations in my late 20’s, to house and costume parties in my early 30’s, to trick or treating with Tuz and Mahal in my late 30’s to early 40’s. My wish every year was to have more of the same and I was lucky enough to be given that. Thank you, universe! You’ve been good to me all these years, making me happy to have the chance and budget to party. I’m now passing on the torch to our almost 7-year old son, Tuz. I told him about my plan to retire and pass on to him organizing such parties but he said he’s not yet ready! 

Maybe I‘m just feeling a wee bit sad, tired, and drained as of late. Adulthood  is probably taking a toll on me and I will soon need a proper break — break from work, break from taking care of Tuz, break from taking care of our household, from thinking and worrying about it all. We’ve just been  on a one week trip to Cebu City to run some errands and take care of some medical stuff. Though the trip has been very productive and positive, it just left me over-fatigued and wanting of a much-needed mental reprieve. 

But since work has always been hectic (which I am thankful for, don’t get me wrong!), I really can’t afford yet to take a real vacation (give me 8 hours/day of sleep please with nothing to do in between if possible!) But I do need to take mental breaks every now and then to keep my brain fresh and ready to tackle again the next task. So one of the things I actually do especially now that HBO’s House of the Dragons Season 1 has ended is I actually play online games. I’ve mentioned to you on one of my previous posts that Tuz and I love to play online games to keep our brain refreshed and functioning well in between homeschooling and work. One of the sites I go to is https://www.calculators.org/games/board-games.php. They have these games that remind me so much of my childhood. My favorites are: 

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Relax and De-Stress with Online Games at Solitaire.org (and Decrease Your Chances of Dementia As well)

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Work has been non-stop lately (Well, what’s new? Thank God for work!!!) that the only thing I can do to de-stress is play some online games! Remember before when I shared with you 3 Simple Ways to Reduce Stress During These Hard Times? One of those stress-relieving activities I do (and I sometimes do it with Tuz too) is playing online games.

I discovered another website that brings back so many childhood memories simply because it reminds me of my mom’s favorite game that I’ve seen her play a gazillion times while I was growing up — SOLITAIRE! 

The website is solitaire.org and the best thing about it is, it has a lot of other games you can choose from like other card games, mahjong, logic puzzles, word puzzles and more! But what really caught my eye and what I’ve been playing around the past couple of weeks during my break are these three games:

 

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Typhoon Rai (Odette): Nightmare Before Christmas 

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Just when you had everything planned out for the remainder of the year — your tasks, projects, finances, celebrations… the biggest typhoon of your life hit you — metaphorically and literally. 

We were minding our usual business… I was working and finishing my deadlines for the week and getting ready for client meetings. Mahal was busy with the resort. Everyone was working. Though we were getting news reports about an impending typhoon, upon checking, the eye of Typhoon Rai or locally known as Typhoon Odette won’t be hitting us but instead, it will head straight to Cebu City which is 3-4 hours away from where we are. We had plans of doing our Christmas shopping there that weekend so we figured that we just had to reschedule. Plus, we’ve already experienced so many kinds of weather conditions here that we became complacent. We felt confident that it’s just another one of those storms. There could possibly be a brownout (electricity getting cut off) that will last for an hour or two, or at the most overnight, but that was it. We didn’t do any kind of preparation at all — we didn’t save water; we didn’t charge our phones and electrical devices; we didn’t check if we still have enough gas; we didn’t buy supplies… nothing. It was as if it was just another day in our beach kind of life. 

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5 Things You Can Do Instead of Social Media (Facebook Disabled My Account and I’m Thankful!)

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Oh my goodness! 

It’s going to be Christmas soon, then New Year, and I still haven’t blogged about the things I’ve always wanted to blog about (like the happiest Halloween we’ve ever had)! As usual, so many joyful and exciting things have happened and continue to happen in my life for which I am very much thankful! I’m living my dream beach life and each and every day I try my best to spend it as if it were my last but without sacrificing my health too much this time around (hence, I’m not forcing myself to stay awake and do more than what my 16 waking hours would permit) coz health is one thing that we really treasure the most these days plus, at this day and age, it could really be our last with Covid around and this endless pandemic!

Anyway, it’s a blessing in disguise that Facebook disabled my account last Friday night just because I was posting photos of Mahal and Tuz in a five-star resort bathtub! They weren’t fully naked and I didn’t know bathtub photos were not allowed so I immediately deleted the post only to be disabled afterward. I can’t post, I can’t comment, I can’t react… and it’s going to be for a week! Argh! Has this happened to you before? What did you do? 

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reduce stress

3 Simple Ways to Reduce Stress During These Hard Times

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How are you? We are on the 18th month of this pandemic and so many things have already happened… deaths left and right… Covid getting closer and closer to home (if it hasn’t hit yours already… it surely did mine. 5 of our family members caught Covid and thankfully survived it despite not getting vaccinated)… businesses shutting down… people suffering…. freedom getting suppressed in many places around the world…. and all this is starting to get on my nerves. Do you feel the same? Am I alone in feeling this way? If you’re on the same boat as I am, don’t fret. There are ways we can do to try to ride these waves. And we must. I just read an article on Bloomberg that this pandemic can last for a really long time. We can’t just give up, can we?

So what can we do to help reduce our stress during these hard times? Let me share with you some ways we try to do at home to help cope with this depressing worldwide situation:

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Sunrise in Oslob

How We Transferred to Oslob, Cebu During the Pandemic

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Hello Summer! It’s been a busy 2.5 months as we started our new beach life here in Oslob, Cebu and I promise, I will be catching up on my blog posts and vlogs until I get more current with what’s happening with us. I may still insert some throwback travel posts from the past since I’ve collected a ton all these years. But for now, here is a vlog on how our transfer from Cagayan de Oro (where we lived, half the time, the other half was in Claveria) from Sept. 1, 2017 to Jan. 7, 2021) to Oslob, Cebu happened, how we got quarantined for 14 days when we got here, and what we did while in quarantine (Jan. 9-22, 2021). 

For those who are considering transferring to their respective provinces in this time of the pandemic, you can check out this related blog post:

BOAT TRAVEL REQUIREMENTS DURING A PANDEMIC IN THE PHILIPPINES (FROM CAGAYAN DE ORO TO CEBU

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unboxing Christmas gifts

5-Year Old Tuz Unboxes His Christmas Gifts [Christmas in the eyes of a Child]

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This is the first Christmas that we’re giving Tuz Christmas gifts. In the past years, we would just spend Christmas at a hotel resort, party, feast, and be merry as a family with no gifts! Now that he’s five years old, we thought that he would be able to appreciate receiving gifts from Santa, just like it was the first time for us to give him birthday gifts when he turned 5 last November.

The idea for what gifts to give him (they were mostly toys for unstructured learning) came from a lawyer I spoke with last month. We were having an affidavit done to process Tuz’s last name and for Mahal to formally acknowledge him and use his last name (long story short, I had Tuz when I was still married to my ex so to avoid problems, his last name on his birth certificate is my last name and he has no middle name). I’ve been annulled for two years already (declared null & void ab initio – meaning the marriage never really happened in the first place and that I’ve always been single) so it’s just about time for us to start processing his paternity. Anyway, in the middle of chit-chatting with this lawyer, she suggested that we buy unstructured toys for Tuz… toys that help him solve problems on his own… He already has some of these toys at home but I bought some more as part of his independent homeschooling program. 

Here’s Tuz getting excited about Santa delivering his gifts and him finally opening them! I hope you enjoy the vid! Christmas is really for the kids!

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Christmas

Unexpected Christmas Wishes Coming True

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It’s true what they say… when you least expect it, that’s when the magic happens. For the most part of the year, and the last 3 years before that, I thought we will have the same Christmas as before — we used to live in a tiny pad, so decorating our home for Christmas was not an option then. Instead, we’d go to a hotel resort here in Cagayan de Oro City and spend an overnight stay for both Christmas and New Year. Although on our first Christmas here in 2017, we celebrated it at our farm with our people. I’ve still yet to blog and vlog about those amazing hotel resort stays we did but I really plan to (next year, hopefully, as throwback features). Oh wait, I did blog about our Seda Centrio New Year Stay.  

Well, this year, (in a way, thanks to this pandemic — we got to transfer to a cozy house — looking at the silver lining here), my long overdue wish of spending Christmas in a beautiful, cozy home I personally decorated, hosting a party if possible, and just chilling and pigging out over a simple Noche Buena feast in our pajamas — finally came true!!! I’m so happy, I really can’t stop expressing it! I’ve been saying it on my social media posts and even offline to Mahal. I’m just really so happy. Hallelujah! 

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