Heigh-HO! Mining Treasures in 2010
January 3, 2010 by LeslieW
The trees and ornaments are all securely packed away. Wrapping paper, ribbons and bows, returned to their bins and closets, are slumbering until next winter when they’ll reemerge for the next all-night wrapping party. The festive china is stacked neatly in the cabinet and will go unused until the weekend after Thanksgiving.
Our Christmas break has come to a glorious close and it’s time again to transition our lives and homes to the familiar every day kind of living.
The table will begin to transform from the dining table/baking surface/holiday treat-making area to the learning area/science lab/arts and crafts center. The Advent calendar is replaced with the daily calendar and weather chart and world map. Christmas cards and family photos are exchanged for artwork and handwriting practice and math drill sheets. Stacks of boxes and bags become piles of books and athletic equipment. Instead of glitter, the floors are littered with eraser remnants and pencil shavings.
We mothers expend so much energy making the Christmas season a magical and memorable time for our children. We carry on our favorite traditions, we visit with our neighbors, we go carolling, we spend extra time with family, we take time to say the things we need to say, we read special stories. And every Christmas the children declare that this Christmas was the best ever. What I need to remind myself is that the routines of daily life need not be less magical, less filled with tradition.
Learning is fun and a wonder-inducing activity for children: there is so much to see ad experience and understand. As Bill Waterson notes in one of my favorite Calvin & Hobbes strips, “There is treasure everywhere!” I don’t want us to miss it. Indeed, each year of learning can be better than the one before it.
One of my favorite quotes comes from Jim Elliot, missionary who died carrying the gospel to the Auca Indians of Ecuador. He said, “Wherever you are — be all there.”
Being present is one of the most difficult things for me to do because my mind tends to move ahead to the next thing and I miss the moments.
I am guilty of rushing the children through Bible so we can do math. Then I rush through math so we can do history. I rush through history so we can go to co-op. I rush from co-op to the grocery store to home so that I can get dinner on the table. We have to rush through dinner so I can get the kids in bed on time so that we can get up early and do it all again.
My regular response to, “How was your day?” tends to be, “I can’t even remember the day.” As I’ve heard southerners often quip, “That ain’t no way to live.” Well, I don’t want to live that way in 2010.
Here are 10 things (in no particular order) that I hope will help me create a few magical moments and find a little more daily treasure.
1. Plan
I’ve heard that failure to plan is planning to fail. I have a simple plan for us to finish our school year. I only need to execute the plan.
2. Practice living in the moment.
The only time I’m guaranteed is happening right now. I need to stop thinking about what I could be doing or what I’m hoping to do next, or what I regret from yesterday.
3. Preserve our days in a journal.
I do enjoy maintaining a personal journal, but this year I’m going to add a line or two that documents something positive from our home school day. I have four children and I want to remember something special about each one of them from each day.
4. Photograph
I want to take my camera with me more this year. I missed so many memorable moments because I didn’t have my camera. I also need to remember to pack extra batteries. A photograph each day will be a great way to document what we did this year. My challenge will be to take pictures of the frustrating moments. By the time 2010 ends, whatever it was that seemed bad one day may be what makes me laugh in 2011.
5. Participate
So many times I just stand back and watch or make an excuse for not getting involved. I’m going to go to the next Mom’s Night Out. I’ll join the next co-op picnic and play date. This is going to require me to step out of my comfort zone — always a challenge — and grow new relationships. The people in my life are a treasure and I’ll be a happier woman for opening my heart up to them. Why continue to sit back and watch everyone else have all the fun?
6. Pray
I need to pray more that God will bless all my planning. For far too many days, I have put my faith in my plan rather than in the Lord. I probably don’t need to explain to you how far my plans carried us last semester — think lead balloon.
7. Pick it up
To help me enjoy the next day, I’m going to have to get in the habit of filing away all of our work from the current day and cleaning up the messes before they turn into mountains. Many a morning last year I walked into our school room only to be overwhelmed with all I needed to put away before we could get started. This teacher needs to take better care of her classroom so that she can enjoy home schooling.
8. Praise
I want to praise my children more this year. I worry that I’m too negative during our school day, and I want that to change in 2010. I want to give them more than, “Good job!” I want to be specific with my praise and tell them what I think is good. Sometimes it’s okay to give praise that isn’t attached to a certain achievement. I want them to know that I think they’re wonderful just because they are who they are.
9. Play
I say, “No,” too much when the kids want me to play with them. I have their attention during school time, and they want my attention during play time. I need to remember that my children need me to be “Mom” after I remove my “Teacher” hat.
10. Pamper myself
I’m not the kind of woman who goes to the salon for a massage and a mani-pedi. I have many friends who do, but that is not my kind of pampering. I like to take a hot bath in my favorite bath salts or bubbles at the end of the day, read a novel, have a cup of coffee or tea, bake and eat my favorite cookies for dessert, or go for a walk with a friend. I also like to read through my encouragement folder. My encouragement folder is for those days when I feel like throwing in the towel. You know, those days when I will have to steal a moment to cry in my bathroom? In my folder I have placed my favorite home schooling magazine articles (to remind me why I’m home schooling), encouraging Bible verses and quotes, and a home school mom devotional. It’s important to take care of my heart and mind when the days are tough.
What would you like to do this year to mine your daily treasures and make 2010 your best year of school yet?
Leslie Wiggins has been home schooling her four children for five years. She is currently teaching fifth, fourth, second and first grades. She enjoys writing and blogs at Alabamenagerie (http://lesliewiggins.com).
Help for Planning Field Trips Quickly and Effectively
June 3, 2009 by Beth
Last month at the GHEA homeschooling convention, I was delighted to meet Michele Zavatsky. Along with her husband George, they are the family-loving authors of the Kids Love Travel Guides. They were both blessed to grow up in families that love to travel. For over a decade, they have been passing on that love to other families by making it easier to create memories with the assistance of their easy-to-use state guide books.
Meeting Michele Zavatsky at GHEA
Do you find planning interactive field trips and spontaneous daycations a little overwhelming? Is it hard to get the creative juices flowing on where to go next? Wouldn’t it be nice if someone came to your state, and purposefully visited every known and unknown attraction, critiqued it, “kid-tested” it, and then gave you all of that info in an organized chart right at your finger tips? How cool would it be to benefit from 1,000 hours of state specific research that another homeschooling-minded family had put together with your family’s pleasure and learning in mind?
The first thing I noticed upon opening my state specific book on Georgia was how well organized it was. I liked that you could quickly see everything in your region on a chart. Also, in the back of the book are places listed by theme. This makes it easy to quickly see everything in your state that is Science or history related. What makes these guides so helpful to families is that it puts all of the information you need to plan a successful trip right at your finger tips. Our field trip director was able to plan out a whole year of field trips for our homeschool group using the Georgia guide in less than a day!
What the “Ultimate Field Trip Bible” has to offer:
- Quick Tours of Hand-Picked Favorites – to help you choose, if you have a limited time frame
- Day Trip Zone Categories – makes it easy to locate multiple activities in the same area
- Educational Downloads and free lesson plan links
- Quick View Charts – organized by city
- Detailed Descriptions – including pricing, hours, overview, and insider tips
- Separate Activity Index – to locate attractions by theme i.e. Science, Arts, Sports
- Seasonal Listing of Events - ensures that you don’t miss that annual hot air balloon race (My personal favorite!)
Are you going somewhere this summer that you are unfamiliar with? Would you like to know what all that region has to offer? Recently, my mom surprised my sister-in-law and I with plane tickets to Williamsburg, Virginia. This is the home of Jamestown, the first permanent colony, and Yorktown, where the American Revolution ended. But with only a week to plan what do you do? Thankfully, I had just discovered this series and I was so impressed with how well the information was laid out and organized that I contacted Michele to order a second book. By reading the quick overviews, it was easy to map out how we wanted to spend our sacred 2.5 days there. Within 30 minutes, we solidified what we didn’t want to miss and had the tools to know how we would fit it all in. Thanks, Michele for saving us hours of internet research! The Virginia guide book was just what I need to plan our trip quickly and easily.
You can find out more info and order your state specific guide by visiting their website at www.KidsLoveTravel.com.
Beth discovered how fun learning can be when she began homeschooling in 2003. She considers homeschooling to be a treasured blessing.On the path with her are her 2 boys and husband John, who is her biggest supporter and fan. Somehow she has enabled her frog loving outdoor boys to love tough subjects like Latin, Writing and Grammar. (She is not kidding!) Now if she could only get them to eat all their vegetables. Beth loves capturing life’s precious moments with her camera and decorating them with Photoshop. You can visit her blog at Pages of Our Life.
Scheduling Your Homeschool Day
April 26, 2009 by Tiany
Is there one best way to schedule and plan out your homeschool day?
I don’t think so, but I do believe we should have some kind of direction, plan and or schedule laid out for the days activities.
“He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life… But where no plan is laid… chaos will soon reign.” -Victor Hugo
The days where I have not taken the time to set out a plan or use our schedule quickly become chaotic, stressful and unproductive! A well-ordered homeschool day (even loosely ordered) brings peace and a sense of accomplishment.
My first attempt at scheduling (a few years back) started out with a 15 to 30 minute interval scheduling plan, by the end of the week I was ready to pull all the hair out of my head and throw “scheduling” out the door for good! My scheduling woes were not for a lack of trying but more so for a lack of “fit”. The scheduling plan I was using was not the right fit for my family for the time and season of our lives. I felt as though I was constantly rushing and as if I were punching a clock.
I may revisit that form of scheduling in years to come but for now I am using a very simple block schedule. Block scheduling is very conducive to a home with lots of littles, which means lots of little interruptions! Block scheduling has allowed us to have a calm, unhurried homeschool day, one where we really can enjoy the journey and not get stressed by time-lines that are not being met.
We simply break our day down into 2 to 3 hour blocks, Block 1 starts at 7am, Block 2 starts at 10am, Block 3 at 1pm and so on…
Our schedule is the map for our day but as with any map there is more than one way to get to our destination! We can always take a surprise turn or veer off the road for unexpected detours. We do attempt to stick to the schedule as often as possible and our boys know the schedule, so there is no squabbling or whining about what to do when.
A few helpful tips for successful scheduling…
There are many reasons why our schedules fail us… lack of discipline, disorganization, procrastination, laziness, over scheduling, under scheduling, and or no motivation. Unfortunately, I have learned this through my own personal struggles.
- I believe many fail to plan primarily due to pure frustration and the feeling of defeat from previous attempts.
- Be sure to work some flexibility into your schedule. Be flexible!
- Don’t set yourself up for failure with unrealistic expectations.
- Examine your day and seek the Lord for direction, allowing Him to order your days.
“Let all things be done decently and in order”. 1 Corinthians 14:40
The last tip I would like to share is one that helps me accomplish a great deal throughout the day’s many stumbling blocks… keep moving!!! Make your schedule work for you by going about your day with a skip in your step and joy in your heart!
When I start to slack, feel lazy and/or lose motivation, I think of this poem…
From an old English parsonage, down by the sea
There came in the twilight a message to me;
Its quaint Saxon legend, deeply engraven
Hath, as it seems to me, teaching from Heaven.
And on through the hours the quiet words ring
Like a low inspiration – “DO THE NEXT THING.”
Many a question, many of fear,
Many a doubt, hath its quieting here.
Moment by moment, let down from
Heaven, Time, opportunity, guidance, are given.
Fear not tomorrows, Child of the King,
Trust them with Jesus, “DO THE NEXT THING.”
Do it immediately; do it with prayer;
Do it reliantly, casting all care;
Do it with reverence, tracing His Hand
Who placed it before thee with earnest command.
Stayed on Omnipotence, safe ‘neath His wing,
Leave all resultings, “DO THE NEXT THING.”
Looking to Jesus, ever serener,
(Working or suffering) be thy demeanor,
In His dear presence, the rest of His calm,
The light of His countenance be thy psalm,
Strong in His faithfulness, praise and sing,
Then, as He beckons thee, “DO THE NEXT THING.”
(Author unknown)
If you’re planning on revamping your schedule mid-year, I pray the Lord will give you the wisdom and direction to fulfill his perfect plan for your family!
Tiany Davis is a homeschool mom to 4 little boys ages 8, 6, 4, 2 and wife to her best friend Troy for 14 years! She is an LSU Tiger fans living in Louisiana and founder of The Homeschool Lounge. You can also visit Tiany at her blog, Less of Me, More of Him.
The Modern Mom: What We’re Missing Out On
March 14, 2009 by Belinda
I’ve started with the annual start of school fever. I’m finished buying curriculum, minus a book or two. Planning gives me the same energy that shopping gives some women. Even the kids got excited this year about getting new planners. I guess I can say that this was one idea for ordering our day that was tremendously successful. As for my own planner, I definitely fell for packaging in buying my new Mom’s Plan It. This planner has tear-out grocery lists, a huge plus for me. However, as a scrapbooker at heart, I think what I really fell for was the opportunity to use these stickers:
As I got home and started to play with my new toy, I couldn’t help but look in more detail at the stickers, and about the larger implication of what is deemed important to today’s Mom:
- Parties, birthday and otherwise (27 stickers)
- Lunch dates (18 stickers)
- Dinner dates (an additional 18 stickers)
- Haircuts (18 stickers)
- Games (school-related—18 stickers)
- Phone calls (9 stickers)
- Play dates (9 stickers)
- Weekend getaways (9 stickers)
There were 54 total school-related, non-game stickers, including school events, class parties, no school and half-day stickers, open house and field trips. However, I couldn’t help but think, what does this allocation say about the new millennium mom? I don’t begrudge anybody a hair cut, but sadly, the message seems to be that a “busy mom” might be busy because she’s far more consumed with self interests/indulgences than with any higher callings of wife and motherhood. This is echoed in current feminist agendas that look upon the stay-at-home mom with disdain.
I know personally I’d be a lot wealthier if I had a dollar each time someone looked at me and asked something along the lines of, “Do you work at all?” Translation: Is staying at home with your kids all day all you do? What’s even sadder to me is my own emotions as I answer the question. As I continue to grow more comfortable in this relatively new skin, I find that I, somewhat proudly, respond with a detailed list regarding my work history and current income-bearing pursuits (I always state first that we homeschool—hooray for some level of redemption).
I am convinced that as a community of women, we’ve bought—hook, line, and sinker—into a lie that says that something is wrong with a woman whose primary goal in life is to minister to her family. There is even a television show—the 1,000,000th reality show—featuring stay-at-home moms who decide that they want to “see what they’ve missed out on” for a time. I’ve never watched it; having worked “a real job” and then coming home to the “real-est” job I ever had, even the commercial preview bothered me. I would love to ask them, what do you think you missed? Your interests and passions being sucked right out of you with all kinds of organizational policies and politics that have nothing to do with why you’re there in the first place?
I’m thankful that most of these stickers will land in the notebook of a soon-to-be 5-year-old. However, the stickers I used were the ones that are most important—to me and to God. They deal with the uplifting of family, of ministry to them and to others. Every drop of water I pour, every nutritious meal I prepare, matters to Him. May He bless my efforts to serve Him in my own small way.
Belinda Bullard is a wife and homeschooling mother of three, Belinda is an author and the owner of A Blessed Heritage Educational Resources, a literature-based history curriculum featuring African-American presence in history, as well as the contributions of other races to American history. A chemical engineer by formal education, she also serves as adjunct faculty for college distance learning programs.
Surviving the Mommy Meltdown
February 24, 2009 by Beth
Mommy Meltdown:
aka tightening of the chest, slowness of breath, a lack of desire to tackle the world, extreme hyper focus on the unaccomplished and uncontrollable things in life, an overwhelming urge to jump on the nearest plane and escape reality as you currently know it.
You know you are about to have a mommy meltdown when….
1. You are getting ready to pay your bills and realize that for some reason the online payment did not go through last month when your internet crashed, which means you now owe $490 instead of $245.
2. You realize you have to explain it to your very understanding husband.
3. You head out to the freezer in the garage to get meat for dinner and notice that you still haven’t unpacked a bazillion boxes of who knows what even though it’s been a year since you moved in.
4. While you are carrying the frozen meat, you realize that your writing class is tomorrow and you still haven’t prepared for it because you sacrificed your planning time to go to a very important unplanned event.
5. While the meat is thawing you check your email and the sweet librarian has emailed you that those 49 books you checked out are all overdue. Hmmm….
6. But you don’t have time to calculate your fines because you also just realized that your dinner plans have been foiled because that very important ingredient you desperately need is not in your pantry.
7. And your husband is already on his way home.
8. While you are scrambling to find a substitute ingredient the phone rings and its bad news.
9. The head of the volunteer program you work for has just resigned and they need you to fill in but it’s only for a short time they assure you.
10. As you hang up the phone you realize it’s that time of the month and for some reason you forgot to write down unmentionables on your toiletries list when you went to the grocery store.
We have all been there. We have all experienced moments in life when the snowflakes of stress can suddenly snowball. Instead of being able to enjoy life we find ourselves at the bottom of a hill watching as the huge snowball prepares to take us out.
Recently, I was there. Just before the snowball took me out I realized that some of the best things in life and the greatest victories come with a stressful price tag. Just because something is causing us stress does not mean that it is bad or that we should shrink away from it.
Where there are no oxen, the manger is empty,
but from the strength of an ox comes an abundant harvest. Prov 14:4
Simply stated oxen poop. They smell and create a huge mess. The farmer knows that but he is willing to clean up after his oxen because he knows the price of his reward far outweighs the stress he is now experiencing.
So, the next time your feeling a little ”covered up” and things don’t smell just right in your home. Grab the nearest shovel and start digging! And while your digging put a smile on your face because this is one of the benefits of reaping an abundant harvest.
My meltdown stopped when I realized that all of my internal stress was coming from good things. Things I am thankful for. Things I gladly invest myself in because of the abundant harvest that will come from it. When I focused on this truth the rolling snowball suddenly stopped and I survived the mommy meltdown.
Beth discovered how fun learning can be when she began homeschooling in 2003. She considers homeschooling to be a treasured blessing.On the path with her are her 2 boys and husband John, who is her biggest supporter and fan. Somehow she has enabled her frog loving outdoor boys to love tough subjects like Latin, Writing and Grammar. (She is not kidding!) Now if she could only get them to eat all their vegetables. Beth loves capturing life’s precious moments with her camera and decorating them with Photoshop. You can visit her blog at Pages of Our Life.
Planning for Independence
February 5, 2009 by Belinda
When I began homeschooling, I followed my nature and planned. I didn’t write separate notebooks for each child, but I planned for me. As an aside, I have my own self-developed planner now which I incorporate into the large notebooks I receive from a curriculum vendor, but a bought planner that I particularly enjoyed was the Corebook developed by Tanglewood Education. I wrote long-term goals, vision statements, 5-year plans, annual goals, and daily plans. My homeschooling friends laughed at me, and maybe I’ll look back and say that I was a bit too methodical, but as of today, I’m glad I took the time to document—for myself—what our days would look like. What that rather extended activity did was to expedite our homeschooling routine. I’ve gathered peace where I once felt guilt about leaving our children at the table after Bible study and read-aloud time.
There are a number of planners available, either store-bought or developed from homeschool-specific vendors, for logging your student’s assignments. You can also develop a form that works for your school. These can be very economical (and sometimes free!), and the obvious benefit of filling them with upcoming assignments is that they allow your children to work independently, freeing your day to complete other activities. Personally, however, I’ve seen and heard an immediate disadvantage of the child-specific planner: it depends on you as the parent to list the assignments, one more thing on the list to do.
Although the routine has had some variance over the years—an extra workbook here or different teaching element there—we have pretty much stuck to the same schedule and basic subjects each year. Without additional prep work (besides my own), our children know what is expected of them each day of the week. Unless we have an interruption (a field trip, travel, or unplanned event), they can sit with books and complete their work whether I’m around or not. Only once in our time at home was I too sick to get out of bed, but I stood astonished and thrilled that the kids came downstairs and did everything they were supposed to do, only consulting me if they had questions.
Routines are just what the name suggests—routine, boring, and monotonous. I can, however, offer the carrot in front of this ho-hum horse. As a college instructor, I reach out to students each day who are having a less-than-successful start in post-secondary studies. In some cases, they are simply not college material. However, in many cases, they are bright learners who could have an academically successful experience but they lack the skills to be good students—discipline, time management, and concentration. As much as we hate to admit it, these are the roles we often play as parents in the homeschool.
So the question becomes, how do we transition them to do these things themselves? Cutting them off cold turkey after 12th grade doesn’t work in many cases, so we have to create an environment for certain habits to form. Moreover, those habits must form in us first. We can’t lead where we aren’t willing to go; how dare we expect children who can manage themselves when we present ourselves as flighty and undisciplined! School can still be filled with love and laughter, but think about and certainly pray about making it boring enough for your children to learn to discipline and manage their own lives.
Belinda Bullard is a wife and homeschooling mother of three, Belinda is an author and the owner of A Blessed Heritage Educational Resources, a literature-based history curriculum featuring African-American presence in history, as well as the contributions of other races to American history. A chemical engineer by formal education, she also serves as adjunct faculty for college distance learning programs.
Movin’ & Schoolin’
February 2, 2009 by Julie
It wasn’t in my lesson plans.
I didn’t have it scheduled for that summer.
Heck, it wasn’t even on my radar.
But after 15 years of living in my beloved Oklahoma, the summer of 2005 brought change on a major scale.
We were moving.
I’d had my share of moving as a kid, following the space shuttle program as my father-the-rocket-scientist (for real) followed his career goals from the West to the East Coast with some stops in between. So I felt I had pretty much checked that life experience box a few times, particularly that stretch that included me attended three different high schools.
Good times.
Marriage and babies had only further facilitated my goal to never, ever, never move again. And I didn’t. For a decade and a half.
And I’ve been paying for that sabbatical over these last five years.
We’ve lived in two new cities in four different residences over the last 55 months. The last move occurred when I was five weeks away from delivering the twins. Boxes, moving vans, changing utilities, exploring new churches, new phone numbers, fresh tears, adjustments.
Oh…and schooling.
Had we not already been homeschooling through this gypsy season, life would have been far more complicated. Our housing would have been more difficult as we would have struggled to stay within particular school districts. We would have been separated more as a family in trying to keep the traditional school calendar.
But schooling while in transition is certainly not a feat for the faint of heart. The learning curve for the Moving Mama has been steep and rocky at times. But it can be done, embraced, even, with a little advance work and a whole lot of grace.
1. Be very, very clear about the homeschool laws in your new home state. While homeschooling is legal in all 50 states, some states are much more friendly to our kind. We actually turned down a couple of very promising offers because the states in which those jobs were located would have made our homeschool experience more complex.
2. Do some early homework on the homeschooling community in your new town. While you may ultimately not end up involved in the co-ops or play groups, you can at least get a feel for what may (or may not) be available.
3. Purpose to spend the first couple of weeks in your new locale making field trips to the new sights and attractions your nouveau city has to offer. We very much enjoyed the new museums, natural parks and other venues our new towns boasted. It’s a great way to incorporate the history of this unfamiliar place you are now calling home. It’s also an opportunity to teach how to read maps, follow directions and navigate to new places.
4. Consider adopting a more convenient curriculum for at least the first semester following your move. Our moves ended up being difficult, with sluggish housing markets and the necessity for the kids and I to travel back and forth to check on real estate. While I have always loved unit studies, switching to workbook based curriculum was a life-saver. We could pack our studies up in a backpack per kid, bringing only the workbooks on which we were presently working. This effectively eliminated me having to locate faux dinosaur bones, Pilgrim costumes and pipe cleaners from my stash of unit study materials buried somewhere in boxes.
5. Try to establish a routine as quickly as possible. In the first few months of our protracted first move, our schooling was the one thing that seemed familiar. To gather at the table in the morning, whether we were back in Oklahoma or gathered at the card table in the lease house on the island, was a true blessing. We had a sense of normalcy in those study times that was transportable. In those transitional months, our school routine lent structure and comfort to a tumultuous time.
6. Give yourself lots and lots of grace. And then give yourself some more. Whether your move is much desired or hotly contested, moving is tough. Determining the flow of the new residence, finding all the items necessary to run a household, even just navigating a new grocery store, all conspire to sap emotions and energy. And your kids may have some struggles of their own, particularly if they have left dear friends or family behind. But that experience of making it work as a family, of relying on each other and being each other’s best friends can build tremendous family dynamic.
Through it all, you may find an amazing thing happening. You started homeschooling out of a desire and passion to give your kids a quality education and to have the daily time to help them build strong character. And in the crucible of transition and change, the occassion for new experiences and the practice of heading into the unknown with a confident outlook provide exactly that.
Even if no one can remember in which box the crock pot is packed.
Julie Carr, aka Octamom, has been steering her homeschool ship while falling behind in laundry for over 12 years now. A mother of eight children ranging in ages from 18 years old to 20 month-old twins, Julie enjoys a slightly obssessive relationship with photography and writing. Be sure to follow her blog at Octamom.
Starting Somewhere: Homesteading with Suzanne
January 23, 2009 by Suzanne
Confessions of a Beginning Homesteader
Although my daddy grew a garden every year and my mama canned at the end of each summer I was a mall-goin’, car cruisin’ kind of girl. When I got married all I brought to the table was my ability to make macaroni without having to look at the directions on the side of the box.
But I have a secret. I want to go green.
Bake my own bread. Can my own produce. Make my own soap. Sew. Mend. Darn (as in socks, right?). I was so gung-ho. When my mom brought over all of her old canning equipment and even a few “vintage” how-to books I did a little dance and got giddy over how my cabinets would look full of beautiful jars, how much money I could save, and how wholesomely my family would eat. All by my own hands.
I dream big.
But I fear bigger. So I stashed those canning supplies in a cabinet set aside just for them and kept telling myself I would tackle that challenge soon. My excitement grew stale and my defeat found roots before I’d even begun.
“I can’t do this.”
“I have no idea where to start.”
“I can’t even keep one house plant alive, much less feed my family from a garden.”
“If I don’t have a garden, then there’s no point in learning how to ‘put up’ my own goods.”
“I can’t afford a deep freeze, I might as well just keep doing what I know.”
“My days are full enough without having to add more stress.”
I closed the door on that cabinet and allowed life to happen. Feed those little mouths, wipe those little bottoms, change nothing, risk nothing, fail at nothing. I can’t do it all, after all. It’s overwhelming to know exactly what to do. Studying all of the must-have’s, just-so’s, best way’s put my perfectionist heart into a stand still.
But each time the toddler opened those doors and pulled out those jars and pans and lids to play with them – I would dream again.
I decided if I wanted to really do this and make it a lifestyle that I needed to make one small change at a time. I accepted that I could not transform myself from Consumer Extra-ordinaire to Producer Supreme in just a few months.
I started smaller than small.
Baking bread seemed so intimidating. So instead I went to my regular grocery store and found a pack of 3 loaves of bread in the freezer section. I still had to let it rise but I started the process a few steps ahead instead from scratch. I spent one-third the money I spent on the regular bread aisle. And I pulled from the oven golden mouth-watering confidence. I did it! I baked bread for the first time ever! I focused on that success instead of the lingering “but I still don’t understand those little yeast packets and all that kneading stuff.” I continued to bake that kind of bread until it was “normal” –just something else I cooked in the kitchen. That allowed me to conquer one fear before moving onto another. And each accomplishment is one more habit that becomes a part of our every day life.
I say all of this to say, this is not a how-to. I’m no expert. Please know: I don’t have the foggiest idea of what I’m doing. But I’m trudging forward. I’m willing to learn. And I really want you to join me – everything new is easier with a friend, plus, I’d sure like to share some fresh-baked bread with you!
Join me, as I keep you updated on the progress of my currently ungreen thumb and the rescuing of my cabinets from that brightly colored parade of store-bought labels. Email me at suzanne@heartofthemattermagazine.com with ideas of what you’d like to see me try next. And by all means, please keep the suggestions, links, and encouragement coming.! Just remember, living off our own land is attainable. We only have to start… somewhere.
Suzanne is wife to one and mama to four. She “eclecticly unschools with lapbooks the Charlotte Mason way.” In other words, she doesn’t have the slightest clue what she’s doing, but does it anyway. She lives in a world where there are few absolutes. The dishes don’t stay cleaned, the laundry doesn’t stay put away, and the children don’t remember what she told them yesterday. But in their chaotic lives they have found joy. Visit her at www.thejoyfulchaos.com.
Room for Improvement?
Happy New Year, folks! I don’t know about you but I’m so thankful the holiday season is finished and we get can back into something that resembles a routine, at least a bit of one anyway! I always love the holidays and birthdays we have during this time of year, and the celebrations are spectacular, but if I let everything keep dragging on without any formality of school life, then it will be summer before I know it and I will be scrambling. That’s NOT a pretty sight and its not worth the frustration it heaps upon my family!
Now is the time to get back on schedule. I like to take a few days before the children start back up with their studies and ask myself a few questions.
Has the material we’ve been using worked for us?
Are the children bored with what we are using?
Are they learning anything new?
Is it sticking?
What simple changes can I make that will improve our education experience or, perhaps do I need to give our Academy a complete overhaul?
Proverbs 1:8-9 says ” My son, hear the instruction of they father, and forsake not the law of thy mother: For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck.” I always like to take a few moments throughout the year to make sure that what I am teaching my children is useful and good and built on wisdom. If it isn’t, then what is the point of teaching it? I want to ensure that I am not “d
ecorating” my children with useless fake baubles around their neck, but instead that I am adorning them with real chains of wisdom.
Thankfully, there hasn’t ever been a time when I thought our whole school routine needed to be reworked, but there have been instances when I realized that my son wasn’t reading at the level I thought he was previously, or that another son may have needed a different math program because what we had just wasn’t working. Sometimes scheduling might need to be moved around because of co-op classes being rescheduled or a new sport being added on.
For our family, especially since we have a child on the autism spectrum, it has always been better to keep the routine as regular as possible so that might mean changing our habits now at the beginning of the new session rather than waiting to change them when the actual new activity is added in. Also, our daughter is moving into her final work for high school now and so we need to add time for her to practice for college entrance exams as well as completing research for scholarships and sending off letters to schools she is considering attending.
For our family, we are adding two large changes for the new year school schedule. The largest change we are making to our routine this session is a special area of study for our boys that covers manly subjects such as hunting, camping, and knife whittling among other things. They are scheduled to go on a hunting trip with their father and grandfather later this year. Our family knows absolutely ZERO about hunting, field dressing an animal, and other things like that, but Opa does and so we are turning the boys and Mike over to him for this instruction. There is nothing like real life experience for sure, but we are adding a session to school once a week to read and practice some skills that might be needed in the “wilds of Colorado” later on this year.
The second area of change we are making is a garden. We have finally moved back to a place where the temperatures are good for a typical garden routine and the seasons are more along the lines of what I grew up with as a child. My husband and I, along with our children, are planning a container garden that will hopefully yield enough produce to allow us to can and preserve our harvest so that we may enjoy the fruits of our labor throughout the rest of the year.
These areas are perhaps not regular school subjects but they are areas that our family needs and wants to learn about and so they will be part of our upcoming months of school. That is one of the thrills of homeschooling that I so enjoy… we broaden our education because of what is important for our own families!
You may not choose to teach the same subjects, and really that is not the point here. The object is to assess what you are doing, and make adjustments so that you are always improving your curriculum. So, whether you are starting a whole new school year, or are just starting back up mid-term after winter break, make sure to take a few moments and ask yourselves a few questions to figure out if your school routine is really working for you. They may be the simplest of questions but they are a world of help when working out a review of the past school session and planning for the months ahead. My prayers for you are that your new school year will be richly blessed with many new discoveries and a routine that works for you!!
Sallie is an off-again, on-again homeschooling mom to her 4 children, ranging from elementary to high school. In her writings, she discusses the challenges of homeschooling a child with disabilities and offers insight to those who sometimes feel all alone in a round hole world. Please visit her at Seaside Tales.
Letting Go of Teaching
January 7, 2009 by Lee
“I always thought the idea of teaching was highly overrated. I was more interested that my kids learned. ”
~Lee Binz
Stop Teaching and Start Learning
Do you sometimes long for an “escape from teaching?” I sure did, especially as my kids got a little older. The good news is that your days playing the “teacher” role will someday come to an end. Instead your role will evolve to that of a “learning facilitator.”
It’s true: there comes a point in most homeschools where you must let go of the idea of “teaching” everything. Usually, this comes in high school, with calculus, physics, and foreign language. Depending on how passionate your student is on a particular subject, this time can come much earlier. Sometimes that will mean you find self-teaching curriculum and allow them to learn without your help. But sometimes “not teaching” really means just letting go!
If your child loves something, and you see that it is your child’s area of specialization, then you don’t need to have control over it. Kids truly enjoy learning about their interests. You don’t have to test them, or make them write papers. You don’t have to outline a course or develop a learning plan. You don’t have to give quizzes or have oral presentations. Just let them experience it!
Here are two key strategies that will encourage a passion in your children without turning it into a school subject:
Find a Mentor
Encourage them in their interests by finding mentors through clubs and colleges. Ask yourself, if you had that interest as an adult, how would YOU find a way to meet like-minded people? If your child loves birds, you may need to Google “ornithology clubs” to find a group, but I know there are many. You can find mentors by contacting small, friendly colleges to find a helpful professor. Ask around at church and other community groups to see if you can find an adult with the same interests. It took a LONG time before we found suitable mentors in economics for Alex. The first two mentors we tried weren’t a perfect fit, but they were still helpful, because they eventually led to the two great mentors. Dr. Doug Downing (left), Seattle Pacific University Economics professor and author of “Algebra the Easy Way,” encouraged Alex (right) to present his research at an international economics conference. Dr. Jay Richards, co-author of “The Privileged Planet” (center), allowed Alex to collaborate with him on his upcoming book.
Of course, following their interests also means that you have to go with your child, drive them, wait for them, and all the other inconvenient things that happen to parents who encourage their child’s interests. Sorry about that! On the bright side, after spending so many hours waiting for my son at various coffee shops, I became friends with my barista!
If you hit a stagnant period, there are things you can do to spur on your child in their pursuits. You can search curriculum catalogs, and see what books and curriculum your child seems to love. My son actually ASKED for Sonlight American Government when he was young, just because he was interested. Accidentally leave various curriculum catalogs scattered about the house. See what the pick up and start reading. Pick up interesting videos from the library or from The Teaching Company. Watch videos on the subject they are passionate about and listen for clues about how to get involved while your child is just enjoying the content. You could search for scholarships in their area of interest, and see if they can apply for scholarships within that specialization.
Eleven year old Courtney became a Vet Assistant by following her dreams. How daunting that must have been for her mother! But if she can do it, then we can find a way of encouraging passion in our children, too! Here is the link to Courtney.
Don’t Work Ahead – Follow Behind Instead!
Don’t work ahead of them by writing tests or worksheets. Relax! You don’t have to assess them with tests, just look at what they are doing and saying. Allow them to write school papers on the topic of their choice. Then if they produce some high school writing on the subject they love, then you can include that in their documentation of the class. I tried OFTEN to give them the choice of writing topics. Toward the end of the year, however, I would have to say, “Ok, but this time NOTHING on economics or American history!”
As they are enjoying their interests, follow along behind them and try to shovel up what you can for class documentation. It will help in the long run if you keep some high school records. When they produce something on their own, make sure you save it in your file. Perhaps they will make a short video, perform with their violin, or teach a homeschool class. That’s how you know they are learning – you don’t have to give a test! Save the item, rejoice that they are learning for fun, and don’t stress about it! As they are learning naturally, think about what they are reading, using, or doing – and keep track of it. It may be book titles you can save, but not always. It may be plays they attended, computer tutorials they viewed, or instruction manuals they read. Later on, you can group those things together, and write a posthumous course description. It still doesn’t mean you have to control what they do when they are learning. You’re just writing down what they did while they were learning on their own.
Writings, drawings, work experiences, record of group meetings, etc. Just grab samples of what they do for fun, without making them do anything. When the year is done, you can group those experiences together and use it as a course description of what was done.
Resources
Take a look over my “Homeschooling College” Dig Deeper page, and see if you get some ideas from there. I have a page on “Homeschooling Gifted Teens.” I got a lot of support from Hoagies Gifted Education. It has a “Gifted 101″ page that may help you think through the issues and talk to your family.
On my website, you can read about my Sample Comprehensive Record, you can see an example of how we did “Self Directed Courses” (see links on this page.) Critical Thinking, Public Speaking, Occupational Education, and Russian History were on Kevin’s record. My other son had self-directed courses in Economics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Business Law, Psychology, Principles of Marketing, etc. It’s possible for kids to learn things JUST because they love it. And parents can pick up the mess they leave behind and turn it into a wonderful course description for what the kid has done!
God put these passions in your children. He has also given them to you to love, encourage, and grow. It’s very challenging to have “passionate” kids, and each one is unique. It helps to remember that you are the best person for the job (in God’s opinion, anyway!)
Links:
The Teaching Company: http://www.teach12.com/teach12.aspx?ai=16281
Courtney’s Critters: http://courtneyscritters.googlepages.com/
Homeschooling College: http://www.squidoo.com/How_2_Homeschool_College
Homeschooling Gifted Teens: http://www.squidoo.com/homeschooling_gifted_teens
Hoagies Gifted Education: http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/
Gifted 101: http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/gifted_101.htm
Self Directed Courses: http://www.thehomescholar.com/products_samplerecord.php
Check out my article on page 30 of the new flipbook edition of Heart of the Matter Magazine.
Lee Binz is a veteran homeschooling mom of two and the owner of The HomeScholar, “Helping parents homeschool through high school.” She has a new free minicourse called “The 5 Biggest Mistakes Parents Make When Homeschooling High School”. You can sign up for her free email newsletter The HomeScholar Record and get your daily dose of wisdom via e-mail from The HomeScholar Blog.
