Heart of the Matter

All my friends say that if they ever found out I went camping in a tent, they would have to see it to believe it. And they’re right. I am not an “outdoor girl”. I don’t like to sweat, and bugs give me the creeps! I definitely do not like the idea of outhouses, and public showers offend me. However, I am married to a man who loves the outdoors. He would have the time of his life with just his tent, water, and wild berries! He has been trying to get me to go camping for years. Until finally, one summer day, he talked me into it. I mean after all, change is good. I can learn to love the outdoors and appreciate that nature has a lot to offer our un-schooling, family.

The preparation to go on this trip was a huge undertaking. My husband was busy spit shining his canteen from his Boy Scout days, and the kids and I packed, well, everything else. There was packing food and planning the meals we would eat, clothes, and toiletries. I was so busy helping all my children pack that I was afraid that I might forget something for myself. Something forgotten as simple as my curling iron or my make-up would, without a doubt, ruin the trip for me! I had my planner laid out on the counter with everything I needed to do to make this camping trip a fun, learning experience for our children. It turned out to be something very different.

It was hot that day and we found the perfect camping spot. It was one of my husband’s favorite places and was excited to share it with us. I would have to say; it was beautiful. There were big trees to shade our abode for next few days, and a nice breeze, thanks to the beautiful lake that glistened in the hot sun. We also were camped right next to the marina, which obliged me in electricity, showers, and decent restrooms. My husband, whom is seasoned in tent camping, wasted no time and got started teaching our children how to pitch a tent. Meanwhile, I started rummaging through my designer, luggage bag to see if I had remembered to bring my sweat resistant make-up. Finally, after everything was unpacked, and the tent pitched, I looked around and my husband was no longer in my view. “Great.” I express aloud with my hands on my hips. “I’m hot and he decides to look for berries?” In a distance, I see him dragging back, what looks like, half a tree!

“I have found our firewood!” He exclaims excitedly.

I shook my head, not sharing the same excitement, and immediately got to work on neatly, putting on my Ralph Lauren sheet for my air mattress, and rolling out my Eddie Bauer sleeping bag. Soon after, my daughter, Belle, just 3 years old, ran screeching with delight, holding a frog. Her grip was so tight his poor eyes were bulging. My husband ran to the scene and he explained to all our children who wanted to listen, everything there was to know about bullfrogs. From what they eat, to how they carry their eggs. Why a bullfrog’s skin is smoother than a toads, and most importantly, what we should name him. I poked my head out of my tent to get a closer look. I noticed the fun they were having together; learning with their dad…outdoors. He was sharing what he loved with them and they were enjoying every minute. That frog was just the beginning of our adventures. We spent our days fishing, riding bikes, swimming, finding fossils, and identifying strange bugs and wild berries. By nightfall, my husband taught us how to start a fire (using half a tree), got a lesson in astrology, and taught us how to roast the marshmallow just right to build the best s’more, ever. That camping trip was not only a wonderful learning experience, it made memories.

Un-schooling is like our camping trip where learning is all the time; it is a very natural way to learn. And camping provided a great way for us to learn as a family, which compliments our un-schooling. I’m not saying it’s easy to camp with a lot of children and that I have embraced the outhouse and chucked the curling iron…but, I have fully embraced camping (as long as I have some amenities.) It’s a way of life for us, now.

In the end, it was I, who truly learned the most. I was learning about nature through my husband’s eyes, and I liked what I saw…frogs, tents, bugs, and all!

Jenny Penton is a homeschooling mother of seven children and loves the closeness that being home with them provides. Un-schooling is how they live and learn and she blogs about their learning experiences at Homeschoolingbelle.com. Jenny also has a passion for inspiring women to become master life planners and that includes menu planning. Check out her sites for life planning and her inspiring recipes on her food blog at plannerperfect.com and plannerperfectmeals.com

We love to travel. We love that we can travel whenever we want to. I secretly wish that we had been the ones to think up the Kids Love… book series idea, but alas! We’ll have to simply benefit from the travel and research that the Zavatsky family has enjoyed together over the years.

Unlike many parents I know, we do not break out in a cold sweat when faced with the possibility of car trips with the kids. I have found that even with toddlers, if you prepare well enough, you can enjoy the time spent with your kids and not not continually pull your hair out. In the past year I have taken 3 car trips from Ohio to New Jersey or Ohio to North Carolina by myself with my four children who were 9, 6, 3, and 2. While the last hour was always a bit hairy, I really enjoyed my time with them, not to mention the sympathetic looks when we stopped for a potty breaks! All I have to say is God bless the places on the interstate with family restrooms!!

Here are some of the things I do to guarantee (OK, maybe not guarantee but at least improve the odds of) a successful trip:

• Beginning weeks before the trip, I make my lists. I love lists. They make me feel much more in control than I actually am, and if I keep up with them- adding to them frequently when something else pops into mind-by the time it’s actually time to go, I don’t have that panicky feeling that I’ve forgotten something. I make lists for groceries (if needed), clothing, activities for the kids, places to visit, etc. Ahhhh, I feel fulfilled just thinking about it!

• About a week before, I set aside a folder for each child and label it. I begin printing off games, car activities, coloring pages, and anything else that I think will occupy them in the car. I also take a trip to Target and Michael’s for their $1 bins. I find a bunch of things for each child that will be brand new and in their “travel bags” once we get on the road. This usually includes cheap games, little figurines, coloring books, and snacks. Snacks are crucial with my brood!

• We do have a portable DVD player but we use it sparingly. We love to play music instead because it gets everyone involved in singing and bopping along. We also love books on tape or the Classical Kids series of CDs.

• We have some great car games by Melissa and Doug that are well-made and pass the time more creatively.

• I make mileage cards for each of the kids who is old enough to use them. I take an index card, write the beginning and ending location of our trip on top with the total mileage next to it. Then I break the trip down in 50 mile increments and write down as many 50′s as we’ll be traveling with the remainder following. Each 50 miles, the kids cross off one 50 and before you know it you’re there! There are not nearly as many “Are we there yet?” moments this way!

• I have a nice cube basket between the kids in the back and the kids in the middle of the van. They are packed with age-appropriate reading material, usually stuff that I find that they haven’t read in a while, and that have a high “activity” content. We love the “Where’s Waldo?”, “Can You Find It?”, and “I Spy” books for this purpose.

• Last, but certainly not least, I adjust my expectations to fit the crowd. There are occasionally times when someone is melting down. Usually this doesn’t last for more than 10 minutes at a time, but those minutes can seem like forever! I do some deep breathing, try to engage the whiner in a game of “count the red cars that pass us by” or “wheels on the bus”, and take it in stride.

As we get ready to go on another family road trip, I am enjoying the process of getting ready for fun! That fun can include the traveling itself if you plan the good times into your car ride. Happy Traveling!

Christine Hiester is a Christian, homeschooling mom to three boys and a girl, ranging in age from 9 to 2 years old. She is a musician by trade, eclectic in homeschool style, and continues to grow and learn along with her children in this journey of life and discipleship at home. Visit her blog at Fruit in Season.

It’s somewhat of a family tradition – my mother was born three days before my grandmother’s birthday and I had hoped one day that I would have a child I could call my ‘birthday present’.

He came the day before my birthday and he is the child most like me – in his temperament and his ways. He has a deep love of animals and nature and sports – though unlike me he’s pretty good at sports. He has a thirst for knowledge that is seldom quenched for long at the time – he is the questioner, the seeker.

And he struggles, as I did and do. We clash at times because we are so much alike but he is the one who brings the cold cloth for my head when it hurts and tells his brother’s to knock it off if I’m feeling under the weather. He’s the one in tune with my feelings and the nurturer.

I never wanted to send him to school – I had no idea he had autism until after he’d started in school. His symptoms were so different than his older brother’s and his younger brother was but a baby then. He seemed too tenderhearted to throw out into the world.

He can be painfully shy one minute and the life of the party the next. He is the who announces with excitement most mornings – ‘Time for School!’. He’s the one who eagerly is reading about the land where Moses walked with me as the other two come along for the ride a bit grudgingly. His struggles with math mirror my own when I was in school – the difference is that he has time – all the time he needs – to learn it – to understand it. He spends hours pouring over the Apologia Elementary Science series.

His name is Hebrew for ‘Gift of God’. He has lived up to his name and then some. I thank God every day for the privilege of being the mother of my children but I thank Him even more for the unspeakable privilege it is to be their teacher.

I may have started this home school journey reluctantly but it is his enthusiasm for learning – which I had lost by his age – that encourages me and helps me know I am doing what God has called me to do with my kids.

Peggy Dalley has been married to her best friend and husband for 14 years. She uses the eclectic approach to homeschool their three sons, 12, 10 and 7. Her interests include writing unit studies, Bible study, history and she is working hard to become a Proverbs 31:10 woman instead of a Proverbs 21:9 woman.

Sadly, the Parsley home has been a home of strife lately. Not strife between husband and wife but strife between siblings. This in turn enters into and disrupts the peace of the entire home. Just as if husband and wife quarreling in front of the children causes a disruption of peace in the home, so does sibling rivalry.

It has always been my goal to keep our home a place of peace. The world outside of our home is just plain crazy. There is not much peace to be found out there. Home should be a place where the family can just be together in harmony. It is a place that certain stability should be found.

Lately my girls have been at each other’s throats! It is driving us mad. We are desperate for this behavior to stop. We have been crying out to God about it over and over. One morning God impressed these verses on my heart to share with the kids.

“What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure” (James 4:1-3, NLT).

As I shared this with them they seemed surprised. The fact is that they did not want to be fighting all the time either.
Learning that these selfish desires are in their hearts they have started to see that they need God to live at peace with one another. They are not capable of doing it themselves. They are learning that they need to take these things to God. He is the one who can solve or resolve any problem or issue. He is the one who can see correctly straight into their hearts. He can help them to make the wrong situation right by exposing their hearts.

I really like that they are learning to see their hearts correctly. This activity is helping them learn to talk to God first
about their problems. It is helping them learn to assess their heart’s desires with God’s help. They are learning to listen to God and do the right thing in His strength.

I believe that these sisters are the very strongest tools thus far God has brought in their lives to grow them and make them more into His image. There are battles that have to be mediated. Daily I continue to point them to the Scriptures about what God says about a matter. It is tiring but in the end I believe we will have sisters who love one another better and look a whole lot like Jesus in the process. I thank Him for showing us this.

Angela Parsley, of the international ministry Refresh My Soul Ministries, is a wife and homeschooling mother to her 2 young daughters. Angela is also a contributing author to a devotional book entitled, “Standing on the Promises of God” and Radical Revolution, a devotional site for teen girls through Proverbs 31 Ministries.

What role does your husband play in your family’s homeschool? How do you manage keeping your marriage a priority when you have so many responsibilities pulling you in so many directions?

As a homeschooling mommy, it is all too easy to take on all of the responsibility of the schooling by yourself. It is also all too easy to neglect our husband’s needs because we are already pouring so much energy into our children and in school.

Just recently my husband and I went on out to dinner ALONE for the first time in about 2 years. I had a baby 18 months ago, and leaving him with someone always seemed too hard…then we had made plans, but one of the kids got sick the day we were supposed to go out. When we finally went out, we realized how much we needed that time! It is so important not to forget that, buried under all the little ones running around, the schoolbooks, the messes, etc…there is a marriage there. And it was there first…long before the homeschooling.

Having your husband help out in homeschooling is not only great for the kids, it is great for you to not feel the sole responsibility. Fathers should be involved in training our kids spiritually, but also there are many areas they can teach as well. For instance, when my 7 year old was interested in computer art, my husband (a graphic designer) taught him some “lessons.” Fathers can use any area of specialty they have to teach. This not only helps the homeschool, it helps the family as a unit. Learning from each other and building relationships are key. And in the long run, a husband’s participation can ease the load off of mom, enabling her to meet her husband’s needs as well.

So how do you manage a marriage and a homeschool? Does your husband play a big role in your homeschool? Does he do any of the teaching? How do you manage your homeschool together? How do you keep your marriage a priority?

Karen is married to the love of her life, Steve, and a homeschooling mom of 4 children ages 9,7,5, and 1. She was called to homeschool when her oldest was kindergarten age after thinking, “I could never do THAT!” Now she is passionate about encouraging others on their homeschool journey, as well as learning all she can along the way. She sees her kids as her mission field and loves the verse in Romans 10:15 that says, “How beautiful are the feet of those who carry the good news.” Follow her blog at Beautiful Feet Bring Good News.

We are closing out our first year of homeschooling and our family is ready for a super summer.

Tip 1. Take a break. Our family schools year-round, even in the summer. However, we plan for a bit of a longer break during the beginning and ending of the summer. During these breaks, our only educational requirement is for our son to read.

This break allows us to take time as a family and focus our attention on one another. When the break has ended, we feel rejuvenated and ready to go again.

Tip 2. Plan to play. Remember the fun of slip-n-slides and afternoons at the pool? How about just riding bikes and playing outside? These are some of my fondest memories from my childhood and most definitely are memories I plan to help create for my own child.

As a busy Mom, it is easy to get sidetracked with cleaning and other activities and realize too late that the day is coming to a close. I have learned the hard way to just plan to play. If I write it down in my calendar or on my to do list, it gets done. I am conscious of prioritizing an afternoon at the pool over something that can easily be done after my son goes to bed.

Tip 3. Visit with friends. Just like you plan to play, plan a play-date or lunch with friends. Schedule a date with friends to have a picnic at the park or even go to a movie. You will enjoy the adult conversation as much as your child enjoys seeing his friends for the day.

Another idea that I have enjoyed is if your child’s friend’s parents work outside the home; offer to pick the children up for a day to play with your child. Not only will your child have a terrific day of playing with friends, you will be paying it forward to his friend’s parents. I remember when I worked in an office environment, I felt especially guilty during the summer months when my son was home. Undoubtedly, his friend’s parents are feeling the same.

Tip 4. Try something new. Summer months make an excellent time to learn something new. Most Cultural Arts and Recreation Departments offer summer day camps for children geared toward sports, arts, music, drama, and computers. Discuss options with your child and enroll her for a lesson in an area of interest.

Tip 5. Lighten the load. It is easy to over schedule yourself and your child year-round, but especially during the summer. Go ahead and mark your calendar for “must-do” activities like family trips, any camps for which you have registered your child, and special events. If you school year-round like we do, be sure to include school activities in your listings.

Now, make a separate listing of “might-do” activities, along with any associated dates for them. Compare your listing to your calendar and see how full it looks. If it is too crowded, start eliminating activities. Get your list down to your priority items.  Then when you are looking for activities to participate in during the summer, you will have already narrowed your list based on your schedule and priorities.

Tip 6. Plan a project. The long days of summer make an excellent time to start and complete projects. Painting the house, planting and tending a garden and building a tree house are some of the summer projects I remember doing with my family from my childhood. For more advanced projects, plan a project for the entire family and assign your child a role and activities within the project. On a smaller scale, pick an area of interest and allow your child to create his own project. For example, our son loves animals. His summer project is to study the animals we have living on our farm and create a journal about them.

Tip 7. Start refreshed. This tip really lends more to a super back to school, but I thought it was important to include. Plan a few days to go through and organize the previous year’s schoolwork and get ready for the upcoming school year. Go ahead and scan reports, create backups, file any necessary reports with your school district, sell any used curriculum that you will not be needing, and clear out space for the new school year. It may not be your favorite beginning of summer activity, but you will be able to enjoy your summer knowing you can start with a clean, organized school space when you begin school again. And to me, that is definitely refreshing.

These are my seven tips, what are you going to do to make sure you have a super summer?

Robyn Stone is a wife, entrepreneur and homeschooling Mom to one very energetic little boy who is not quiet so little any more. She shares about her journey in life on her blog Our Homeschool Home. She loves a good cup of coffee, photography, and a great conversation.

When it comes to homeschooling, hands-on experiences tend to be the most memorable for my children. It was especially important for my struggling learners to make connections between ideas and real life experiences. With that in mind, I determined that my city kids (and their city mom) should try to learn about various animals in addition to the few we could observe in our neighborhood.

I set up a field trip so that my children could see actual horses. In preparation, we read books about horses and talked about what horses were like. Then we piled into the van to go see some real horses. The children were so excited that they ran ahead of me toward the barn. Just then, a couple of horses stuck their heads out of the stalls. When my kids saw how big horses actually are, they did an about face and came back to me double time, screaming all the way. Definitely city kids!

I decided that we could learn about smaller animals on a daily basis by adding pets to our family. A family friend gave us a hamster, and “Bob” was a sweet little guy who liked to be held. The children learned to feed him, clean his cage, and make sure he had water. Hamsters don’t have a long life expectancy, so shortly after Bob passed on we visited the pet store (field trip!) and brought “Tommy” the hamster home.

Tommy was nice enough until he reached adulthood, at which time he transformed into a mean and biting rodent. The kids were afraid to feed him since he bit and latched on to any hand entering the cage to retrieve his food bowl or attempt to pet him. Suddenly, the hamster lifespan seemed much longer. For the rest of Tommy’s life, I sported little teeth marks on my hands. When he passed on, it was a relief. The children, however, felt the need to have a burial ceremony complete with flowers. When they insisted that I join them, I stood quietly by Tommy’s shoebox coffin and dutifully placed my dandelion on top of his final resting place. My children turned to me and asked me to say a few words. All I could think of was “Ding, dong, the witch is dead”, which I sang as an appropriately serious dirge. The kids made mild protests, but had to agree that Tommy was not a nice hamster. Hamsters make great city kid pets – sometimes.

By this time my youngest, Beckie, had made it clear she had an affinity for cats. When she was four years old, we decided she’d demonstrated her ability to be gentle with animals and her love of all things feline was not fading with time. We saw an ad in the paper for free kittens, and off we went. Field trip! Beckie picked out the nicest kitten, and we added Popcorntail to our family. Popcorntail, unfortunately, is the very nervous type. Instead of a cute little “Hello Kitty” kind of cat, she was more like a “Goodbye Kitty.” Knowing nothing of her background, we speculated that she was exposed to bad catnip in utero or perhaps experienced some kitty trauma prior to our relationship with her. Surely she would eventually learn to thrive among us.

Despite Popcorntail’s quirkiness, we loved her and cared for her until one day she appeared to become quite ill. She kind of staggered around in a stance I’d never seen before. She made these awful noises and I became alarmed that she was either dying or in great pain. I called the vet and was told to bring her in right away. I had all three kids come with me and counted it as a field trip. We all huddled in the small examining room, trying to comfort Popcorntail in her distress and fighting back tears. I wondered if we should say our goodbyes, but held off in the hope that the vet could save her or at least alleviate her obvious agony. After a careful examination with three anxious kids watching his every move, the vet looked up and calmly announced, “She’s healthy enough, she’s just in heat.”

Three city kid heads swiveled toward me questioningly, and asked in unison, “What does ‘in heat’ mean?”

This is an example of “real life” preceding the introduction of any related ideas! Hmmm. Equally calmly, and thinking at the speed of light, I turned to the vet and said, “Please tell them, doctor. This will be part of our field trip experience.” City kids and city mom got a bit of an education that day!

Over the years we’ve added fish to the city kid pet list. Some of the carnival-won fish had to be flushed down the toilet bowl before they even made it into a fish bowl, but we weren’t too attached to them yet. (Note: Do not give carnival fish names until they have survived at least a few days. It is harder for city kids to say goodbye to ANYTHING that already has been named.) One fish, a beta, demonstrated amazing resilience by surviving his distractible owner’s failure to add water for weeks at a time. She could remember to feed it, but the water purification takes both time and multiple steps. These are not the forte of those with AD/HD, yet the little fish survived his near-drought experiences in between his floods when fresh water arrived.

A few years after the Popcorntail incident, we decided that she needed a cat friend to help her learn to purr and be social. When my daughters went to camp and fell in love with a little female kitten that was “free” to a good home, we brought home our little Buttercup. She was an orange tabby, good-natured but a bit aggressive at times. We thought she was wonderful, just like her namesake in the movie The Princess Bride, though Popcorntail did not share our opinion and avoided her or else let loose with a “Goodbye Kitty” hiss.

Your browser may not support display of this image. At Buttercup’s first vet visit, the vet did his examination and spoke as he worked, stating that Buttercup was very healthy. We beamed with pride at what good animal caretakers we obviously were. Then the vet lifted her tail and announced, “Buttercup is a boy.”

City kids and city mom decided that Wesley, Buttercup’s true love in the movie, is a much better name for him. Wesley has shown no gender confusion, and in fact we think the experience has made him all the more versatile. He responds to his own name, his former name, and even names like “Bambi” as long as he thinks there might be food involved. All in all, having animals around us has been quite educational and memorable for my city kids.

Melinda Boring has been married to Scott for 25 years and has three homeschooled children. Her 22 yr. old son and 21 yr. old daughter graduated from home school in 2006, leaving Melinda an “empty desker” of two along with her 17 year old daughter who will graduate in 2011. Two of her children and her husband have been diagnosed with AD/HD. The children also deal with auditory processing disorders and sensory processing challenges. The name “Boring” just doesn’t fit this family, and Melinda shares many humorous moments in her speaking and writing endeavors. Melinda is the author of Heads Up Helping and has been a contributing author to multiple publications. She is a workshop presenter with a passion for helping struggling learners and providing practical strategies, compassion, and understanding for those with special needs. Melinda is also a speech/language pathologist with over 25 years experience and the owner of Heads Up, a company with products for those who learn differently. You can find her blog at the Heads Up website, where she writes as “Heads Up Mom”.