One potato, two potatoes…..nine potatoes

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We have a seasonal neighbor who recently stopped over after checking his place a few houses down from us. He had made the long trip on a sunny sky day to see how his house had wintered so far. As he was leaving, he remembered that he had something in the back of his truck for our family as a thank you for keeping an eye on his place. We’ve often been blessed by vegetables in the summer through early fall by this neighbor as he lives and works in a farming community. This day was no exception. Two fifty pound bags of potatoes needed to find a place in our pantry!As I was pulling potatoes out of the bag on Easter Sunday to make a big batch of mashed potatoes, I laughed out loud! What an extreme variety of sizes and shapes in the bag. Huge potatoes, tiny potatoes, misshapen potatoes, green tinged potatoes, bumpy potatoes. And even some normal potatoes, however I found that was an illusion because after peeling and cutting them, there were bad spots in the middle. Blech! All the potatoes had come from the same farm, but each one was very individualistic.

Hey, those potatoes resembled my family! Nine children all from the same family but what a variety coming from the same parents. As I’ve applied each child’s unique characteristics to homeschooling, it’s been an engaging challenge to come up with methods to encourage their learning. Four lefties, five right handed. Most love reading, but one hates reading. Some get math at every level; some give me a blank look when figuring out simple algebraic equations. A couple LOVE workbook style learning, some prefer hands-on, some shout “read to me!”. Some are in the upper grades while others are just learning the alphabet. A few look like normal schoolers on the outside, but have some rotten character traits on the inside that need work. As an ancient homeschooling mom, one book that helped me at the beginning of our homeschool journey was “In Their Own Way” by Thomas Armstrong. I’m certain that now there are many books available that would cover the different learning styles of children.

So, now you’re thinking that this wonderfully tuned-in mom created an individual curriculum for each of her children, right? Wrong! When we began homeschooling we had three children and now have nine. Can you say interruptions of baby magnitude? And in more recent years our parents developed health issues that required our time. Throw in my husband’s growing business and soon the time limitations to effectively individualize each child’s schooling plagued me. Instead, through the years, I used a structured and well organized curriculum which worked well for me to oversee and which I could easily tweak a bit for each student according to their learning styles supplementing when needed.

Although our schooling curriculum changed a bit as needed for each student, the constant through all the years for my children has been our daily devotional time as we begin schooling each morning. The reading of one chapter of the Old Testament and one chapter of the New Testament has been a steady part of our devotional time as well as the other materials we’ve used in addition to Scripture. The other day when one of the children was reading from the Bible, I realized that those big long strange names of people or places don’t cause them to hesitate a bit. They just say the names as normal as can be and their reading continues smoothly. A wonderful reminder of what an incredible piece of literature the Bible is for everyone and packed with God’s truth!

“Come, my children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.”
~ Psalm 34:11

Within the same family with the same parents, each child of mine – whether the first or the ninth or one in between – has received the firm foundation of God’s Word on a daily basis. I am trusting God to tweak their hearts according to His Truth while He supplements where is needed to bring forth a distinctly gifted individual who will love and serve the Lord all of their days. And isn’t that really the heart of the matter?

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