The Ups and Downs of Homeschooling and The New Year

This picture was taken in the last days of 2009. We were working on our science projects making salt crystals.(the calm before the storm) The very next week was a test of my true desire to homeschooling. The older boys were fighting, the baby wasn't sleeping and everything just seemed incredibly loud. One of my fellow home teaching families put their oldest two into school for the first time and upon giving her God inspired hope and encouragement, I thought well, why don't I just put mine into school and save myself from the craziness that my children are putting me through? I'm not at all saying that having my child be taught outside of my home would really be any easier. I would still be as involved as I could in their school. Not to mention all the hours of homework, the friendship lessons, the correcting of attitudes and phrases that would have to be reexamined. I think that that would make it so much harder to instill into my boys why we believe what we believe and behave the way we behave. To"commit yourselves wholehartedly to these commands I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to you children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are away on a journey, when you are lying down and when you are getting up again."(Deuteronomy 6:7) How could I do that if for 8 hours a day they were at another place? After praying, and speaking to my co-teacher, co-parenting, best friend, he reassured me that what we are doing isn't just for the educational purposes, but for the relational and spiritual as well. That while in the present it is hard, but that is just what parenting is, its unselfishness, its giving and not expecting to get anything in return. If I expect immediate return then I set myself up for heartbreak and resentment. Even if our children when to school, private or public, we would still face the exact same dilemmas. Except for one thing, in our classroom we are encouraged to pray to our heavenly father, to find our Creators works in math, reading, writing, art and history. We read His Word and follow His commands and laws. In homeschooling our children we are free of worldly interpretation from a teacher who may or may not be picturing my child as an adult fulfilling his specifically designed purpose. I don't want to just be a helper in my child's learning I want to be a participant, fully engrossed in every aspect of what enters his growing mind. I love knowing what makes him tick, what excites him and what are his challenges. So, before last weekend was up I had gained a new resolve, to keep doing what God has called me to do, to keep teaching my children at home.
So here we are back into the saddle of school work. We have many great things that we are learning and I'm finding creative ways to keep making it fun. One way is adding fun science projects, so far this year we have done are salt crystals...


dyeing eggs...


and more to come!!

The other "new" thing that we are doing is taking a dance break to re-focus.

This has become one of our favorite times during school. We move to the music to interpret what we are hearing. Here are some photos that Clayton took of me...

then pictures that I took of them!

The next "new" learning tool that I am trying, is using scrabble cheese-its to practice our spelling and sight words. This has been lots of fun and fun to eat up our good work!!

So now armed with a fresh perspective, fun and new ideas, I can press on and "I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to heaven." (Phil.3:14)

I can only hope and pray that our efforts to raise these boys into men of God is received by them. That when they go off to college, get married and have children of their own that I can step back and praise my Father in Heaven for his wondrous grace, mercy and love over these formative years.

Before we know it they will have lives of their own and we must use this time to prepair them for the world and to prepair us for them to go off into it!

How fast they grow.....