Mary Cuffy

At just sev­en years old, most chil­dren are mas­ter­ing the art of ty­ing their shoelaces or mem­o­ris­ing their times ta­bles. But for Se­bas­t­ian Ho­sein, a Stan­dard One stu­dent, the list of ac­com­plish­ments al­ready reads like a re­sume for a bud­ding poly­math.

Se­bas­t­ian re­cent­ly cap­tured the na­tion­al spot­light by win­ning the pres­ti­gious Mind­star Na­tion­al Spelling Bee for Pri­ma­ry School (Stan­dard One).

Yet, while his abil­i­ty to spell com­plex words is turn­ing heads, it is the unique way he is be­ing ed­u­cat­ed that is tru­ly set­ting him apart.

Se­bas­t­ian is home­schooled. His par­ents made the con­scious de­ci­sion to take his ed­u­ca­tion in­to their own hands, dri­ven by a de­sire to pro­vide him with some­thing they felt a tra­di­tion­al class­room might lack: a holis­tic per­spec­tive on life.

“Our goal was to bal­ance rig­or­ous aca­d­e­mics with es­sen­tial life skills,” his par­ents ex­plained. This phi­los­o­phy has cre­at­ed a cur­ricu­lum that ex­tends far be­yond text­books.

In­side the Ho­sein home, “school” looks dif­fer­ent. While his aca­d­e­m­ic foun­da­tion was built by his par­ents, Se­bas­t­ian’s class­room has no walls. He is cur­rent­ly ex­plor­ing the rhyth­mic world of mu­sic with Mar­quis Mu­sic, learn­ing the steel pan.

He is sharp­en­ing his strate­gic think­ing through chess with TriniChess, and div­ing in­to the fu­ture of tech­nol­o­gy with a ro­bot­ics course at Well­no­vate.

How­ev­er, Se­bas­t­ian isn’t just learn­ing about the world; he is par­tic­i­pat­ing in it. In a dis­play of en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it rare for his age, he runs his own small busi­ness called “The Green Oa­sis Plant Shop.”

There, Se­bas­t­ian does more than just man­age a cash reg­is­ter. He gets his hands dirty, sow­ing seeds and nur­tur­ing plants un­til they are ready for a new home.

The ven­ture blends his deep love for sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy with the pa­tience and dis­ci­pline of agri­cul­ture, prov­ing that botany and busi­ness can go hand-in-hand at any age.

De­spite the ac­co­lades, the busi­ness own­er­ship, and the busy sched­ule of steel pan and ro­bot­ics, Se­bas­t­ian re­mains, at his core, a sev­en-year-old boy.

He is quick to em­pha­sise that his favourite part of the day is still be­ing a kid, who loves noth­ing more than run­ning around and play­ing with his friends and cousins.

Mary Cuffy is an ed­u­ca­tor and lo­cal chil­dren's au­thor of the La­dy­bug se­ries. Cuffy be­lieves the best in­vest­ment we can make in chil­dren is in the ear­ly years.

Email mary.cuff@ya­hoo.com . IG:marycuffy . FB: mary cuffy/Lo­la and the Danc­ing La­dy­bug