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September 8, 2008 By Marybeth 4 Comments

I thought I would post how I plan for school each week, in case this might help someone else as the new year begins. First of all, I use The Homeschoolers Journal from www.fergnusservices.com. I have used this week-at-a-glance, spiralbound planbook for several years with great success. Basically, I set aside some time to plan on either Friday afternoon when the week we just had is still fresh on my mind or on Sunday afternoon when everyone is resting and my husband can keep the kids out of my hair. I sit down where all of our books are kept (a section in my laundry room) and make sure to have my calendar and “to-do” notebook with me so I can write down things that come to mind, and also schedule around activities and appts for that week. I assign each child’s work for the whole week, with page numbers and all, writing it down in the planner. This time is well spent, because once I get it down, I can just check each day for the rest of the week and not have to think about what we are doing again.

Then, each day I pull out the planner and write each child’s assignment in their personal assignment book. These are 5X7 size spiralbound notebooks. Each child has their own and has a different color. (If you get these, take my advice and spend the extra money for the vinyl covers for durability. These have to last all year long and get thrown around quite a bit.) We got ours this year at Target for about $2.50. Ours are very snazzy and came with pockets, index cards and a neat nylon fabric type cover over the spiral part so it doesn’t get hooked on anything. The nice thing about only writing the assignments for one day is that if you did not finish something for that day, you can just write the makeup work or change the schedule for the next day without it messing up a week’s worth of writing. The actual writing of the assignments on my part only takes maybe about five minutes a kid. This is time well spent in making sure they know what is expected of them each day!

The idea for these assignment books came from my oldest needing more direction than I could give him when I was constantly distracted by the little ones. This way I could get him on track pretty easily by asking if he had done everything he could in his assignment book when I needed to be doing something else. He said he liked having an idea of what each day entailed by simply looking at his assignment book. I am sure for a kid that is nice since they are sort of at our mercy for most things. This helped him prepare for his day, just like I like to be able to do!

Anyway, for each day I write the day and date at the top and then simply list their assignments for that day and also chores and any extracurricular activities they will be doing. This helps them sort of gauge whether what needs to be done when based on where they have to be. I like to think this helps them learn to manage their own time a bit. They check off each item on the list after they complete it. This is a total honor system. I do periodically grab it during the day just to see where they are. Here is my daughter’s for a random day, just to give you an idea:

Day, Date

Chore: clean upstairs bathroom

Quiet Time in God and Me (this is done before they even come downstairs in the morning, but I include it as a reminder)
Read on your own (this is from a book they choose but I must approve, again, this is usually done in the evenings before bed, but I still include it)
Timed Journaling (10 minutes, done all together)
Read Pippi, p.11-16 (We were using Total Language Plus)
Vocab C
Daily Flashcard Review
Grammar C
Math, p.5-6
Science, read pgs. 10-12
Writing with Mom
Art with Mom
Bible with Mom

Marybeth is homeschooling mom to six children ranging in age from teen to toddler, as well as a speaker for Proverbs 31 Ministries. In her column “Because Life Happens”, she addresses things like burnout, dealing with interruptions, and handling homeschooling from a very practical perspective. Be sure to visit her blog, Cheaper by the Half Dozen.

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May 7, 2008 By Marybeth 11 Comments

Happy Mother’s Day!

This month we celebrate Mother’s Day . . . are you ready?

Proverbs 31:28, “Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her.”

When I think about celebrating Mother’s Day this month, I am reminded of a past Mother’s Day that will live on in infamy in my mind. Not because it was an awesome Mother’s Day, but because it was a horrible Mother’s Day. Let me set the stage for you: I woke up that morning and wandered out into the den where my family—I was certain—was waiting to shower me with gifts and sing my praises. Instead, I found no cards, no flowers, and everyone seemed too preoccupied with getting ready for church to even remember to say something to me. I felt like the character in Sixteen Candles; only instead of forgetting my birthday—they had forgotten Mother’s Day.

We went to church with me silently stewing. I was not prepared for the gauntlet of friends I had to run by at church who oh-so-kindly shared with me what their families had done for them that morning. “What did your family do for you?” they innocently asked. I just shook my head and took my seat in the sanctuary. I was embarrassed that my family didn’t care enough to remember my special day. I was angry that I had been overlooked by the very people who professed to love me most. I grumbled to God throughout much of the service and made vows that I would absolutely not make my husband’s Father’s Day special. So there.

Once we got home, I got busy trying to get an ordinary lunch ready for the family—all the while wondering where my special Mother’s Day lunch was. Finally, I snapped. I yelled and screamed about how horrible my day had been. I blamed my husband for not taking the lead. And then I went to my room and cried.

God met with me there in that room. He got my attention by showing me how out of whack my attitude had been. If He had called me to motherhood — with all the service and self-sacrifice that entailed — then why did I feel I deserved a day just for me? Why did I let the retailers and the culture build up my expectations to a place of total unreality? Why didn’t I instead turn to Jesus’ humble servant’s heart and say, “This is not about me. Even today, this is still about You.” If He is truly my model, then why did I let go of that and turn the focus on myself just because of a date on the calendar?

In the end, my sheepish husband and children snuck off to WalMart to get me some hanging baskets I had been wanting, and they ordered my favorite Chinese takeout for dinner that night. In trying to salvage the day, I saw their love for me displayed. I also faced the reality of the fact that at that point in our lives, a lavish gift and expensive restaurant meal just wasn’t financially possible. My expectations had not met with my reality, and I played the victim to the hilt. Shame on me. I resolved that in the future, I needed to lay all my expectations down and wait on God to surprise me, as His surprises are so much better.

Later that night I was talking with a friend and she asked how my Mother’s Day had been. I told her it had not been a good day. She replied, “Did it involve locking yourself in the bathroom, running a bath, and then crying your eyes out? Because that’s how my Mother’s Day went.” In that instant, I realized I was not alone. From that conversation, my friends and I resolved that perhaps we should not place so many expectations on our poor families. Perhaps we should instead make our own Mother’s Day plans, and let our husbands off the hook. So that is just what we did.

And so, this year my friends and I are getting a plan together for how we are going to spend our Mother’s Day. We have chosen a great chick flick to sneak off to in the afternoon, then on to a nice dinner and perhaps a latte afterwards. Our husbands are breathing a collective sigh of relief and our children are learning that sometimes mommy needs a little R&R just like everybody else. But then again, mommy doesn’t expect it or act like a diva about it. I will always remember the Mother’s Day I got an attitude adjustment and will try to keep this day in perspective in the years to come. In the end, that has made Mother’s Day at our house much happier. I hope your Mother’s Day is happy and that, in some small way, you are loved, appreciated, and remembered.

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April 8, 2008 By Marybeth 4 Comments

Because Life Happens…Sometimes we teach what we know, and create beautiful memories that last a lifetime—without even meaning to!

Learning Love Language At Home

This weekend my thirteen-year-old daughter and I are going shopping. While this might not seem like a big deal to some, it is an event for us that has been marked on the calendar in big red letters. Between her theater schedule, her siblings’ schedules and my own, carving out a whole weekend afternoon for just the two of us seems like nothing short of a miracle. But I know how important this is to her; I see the excitement shining in her eyes. I know this will be an afternoon that is about a lot more than buying clothes and experimenting with makeup. This time together is going to be a time for speaking my precious daughter’s love language.

I first heard of the concept of love languages while attending a parenting seminar years ago. Taken from the book The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, this concept revolutionized the way I viewed my husband, family members and children. I began to see certain things about them that I had missed before. Where in the past I had found them insensitive or unresponsive, I had a light bulb moment in simply realizing that I had not been speaking their love language and they had not been speaking mine. While I still had quite a bit to learn, this was a significant beginning for me.

It was easy for me to pinpoint my love language as I scanned the five choices. I needed only to dig into the past and picture my mother. She had done an excellent job of cultivating my love language (quality time) while seamlessly blending it with hers (gift giving). How? By taking me shopping. As we spent many hours at the mall, walking and eating and talking, she was filling up my love tank. While passers-by might have thought we were just another mother and daughter frivolously spending money, we were in fact making investments in our relationship that would last a lifetime. As I remembered those shopping trips from my turbulent teenage years, I knew that my love language had been discovered then and has never changed. My husband knows that the way he can speak volumes of love to me is to spend time with me—whether taking a walk or eating slowly at a restaurant, the point is to just treasure the time to talk and share from our hearts.

Now that I am all grown up with six children of my own, my opportunities for quality time are severely limited. But that doesn’t stop my mother from expressing her gift giving love language every chance she gets. My mother never comes to my house with empty hands. She might have a spatula she found because she knows I melted mine, a shirt she saw that she knew I would like, or some other little trinket she knows will bless me or brighten my day. Sometimes my husband rolls his eyes and calls these little gifts “junk.” But I know better. I know she is saying loud and clear, I love you in the best way she knows how. What’s more, I know that I can make her day by doing the same for her—picking up a candle she would like, or a piece of stationary with her name on it, even a cute magnet for her refrigerator. I don’t have to spend a fortune, I just have to show her: I thought of you today and I love you. Here’s the proof.

Those years of shopping with my mom were actually years of love language training and I didn’t even know it. My challenge now is to continue to apply these lessons as I relate to my own children in a way that will resonate with them. I recognize that we may not all speak the same love language—but real love is about being willing to speak someone else’s love language, even when it feels foreign to you. And like any foreign language, you can only learn someone’s love language with consistent practice. My mom has inspired me to find my children’s love language and speak it to them loud and clear. Whether I am making my oldest son his favorite meal, spending time alone with my daughter or giving my middle son an extra hug in the midst of a busy day, I am learning to be intentional in my expression of their love languages, different as they all are. Through gift giving, quality time, acts of service, physical touch and affirming words, I can reach out to them and give them the same foundation I was given: a love that is irreplaceable and irrepressible. It is not enough, I know, to just say I love you. I have to show it in a way that will speak to their hearts. My mother taught me that.

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