Emergent Homeschool

I Wonder If He Really Meant This

2012-01-31T10:19:00.000-08:00

What Teachers Really Want Parents To Know

A sweet friend who isn't a teacher posted this CNN article on facebook the other day and applauded it. After reading the article it rattled me and I couldn't let it slide. My friend is working hard to get approval to take in foster kids so she's at the beginning of her parenting journey. I commented that further down the road she may find this article to actually be offensive.

Of course, she wants to know why and my thoughts are longer than a comment box will allow. So here is my comment:

*I am only responding to what this author is saying. I am not assuming that any other teacher thinks the way he does or communicates their thoughts the way he does. My responses are only to Mr. Clark's article not with the profession in general. I have been teaching for ten years too.

The very first offense hits me before I caneven read the article. The title isall-inclusive and assumes that this teacher speaks for all teachers about allparents. I am instantly off-put bythis. Secondly, this is published on anetwork that educated people read. It is never going to be read by the parentsthat supposedly “need” to hear it the most. So those who might backpeddle and say, “Well, he’s not talking to everyparent” or “He’s not, of course, addressing parents who care about their kids’education.” Yes, he is. Otherwise this would have been published inPeople magazine for the general populous.

The story begins about a principle, not a teacher, which aretwo different careers. So, it’s aninteresting way to start because it seems to be pulling right from the big gunsin an effort to intimidate the reader. Apparently, her comment reveals, the standards by which the principle was awarded heraccolades were not based on the needs or desires of the parents. The parents were upset with her but she still got an award. Huh. It’s the administrator’s job to relate with all the parents. If that isn’t working, then they are just asat fault as anyone else.

As stated in the article the average tenure for a teacheris 4.5 years. I generously figured that the maximum amount of time a teacher gets with my childduring one school year is about 1050 hours. And then they are done. They donot have a commitment to the best for my child. They dotheir time and they go. That’s justreality. On the other hand, I amcommitted to my child for life. I see him in every kind of situation, track his development, coach and encourage him, know his tendencies, strengths, weaknesses and dreams. Therefore, a temporary teacher is not an expert on what my child needs and when he needs it.

We don’t need to "stem the tide." The teachers who leave after 4.5 years due to conflict withparents should leave the profession because conflict with parents willnot go away. If you have students, you have parents and if you have students in a broken world, you have broken parents as well. Allowing these teachers their leave creates more space forteachers who can muster through the tough stuff and successfully listen towhat students and their families need from that teacher.

The truth is that teachers leave because teaching isn’tworking for them. Some understandable manifestations could be that its harder than they thought, the administrationside of teaching overpowers the a-ha moments in the classroom, they don’t seetheir students changing and they are pressured to produce results or any otherreason. But let's be real. Teachers, like all of us, leave for their ownpersonal discomfort. Passing the buckto parents is cowardly.

The article takes on a condescending tone at this point, “Weare educated professionals who work with kids every day.” Wow. So am I. And even if I wasn’t, lovingand nurturing kids and teaching them in a classroom aren’t even up for comparison. “If we give you advice, don’tfight it.” Like the advice that mychild needed to be medicated so that you could have an easier time running yourclassroom? Not a chance. Like the advice that my friend’s child isstruggling but doing well enough so she doesn't really need extra assistance? Stick to making academics come alive -- this kind of advice is not on parwith that of a doctor or lawyer as the author wants to assert. If youcan’t inspire and challenge then you are only babysitting.

Some parents don’t listen. That’s a given. Some parents arealso dealing with things deeper than you realize. But are you listening to them? Are you finding out theircircumstances? Are you finding outabout your future students and their life circumstances before the school yearstarts and then caring beyond summer break? If not, then don’t judge the parents and group them all into the same“disinterested” column.

The article sings the same song that I’ve alwaysloathed: The teacher is all powerful andall knowing. Its tone is swimming inarrogance and obvious insecurity. Forinstance, don’t question the student when the teacher brings up behaviorproblems. Trust it. Don’t ask for supporting witnesses to anincident. Trust them. Drink all the kool-aid,don’t ask questions, let go of your brain and any form of due process. Don’t demean the “relationship” you havewith the teacher by looking your child in the eye and asking your child toconfess or deny what has been alleged. In that moment, teacher, it is not about you. It is about parent and child and the years of relationship theyhave coming together to shape and mend and forge a new path. That is a sacred space between parent andchild. The teacher doesn’t exist inthat moment.

“And if you really want to help your children be successful,stop making excuses for them.” Fairenough. I live in this wisdom too. Butthen the article goes sideways again, though it is still in the same vein of theteacher being in control … even of summer. Summer reading assignments? Youmean other than the summer reading programs that my kids devour at twolibrarys? The reading aloud we do withthem through Narnia and Middle Earth? Other than the NFL fact books, the nature guides, the inspirationalbiographies, the middle grade series’ and the constant swarm of picture booksfor my youngest one? You mean tocontrol our summer reading, family time and fun? I thinknot. My oldest son had to read AnimalFarm over the summer. I was okay withthat because I wanted to re-read it too. But summer is the time of imagination and growth, not assignments that are detachedfrom life.

I have to quote this section because it saddens me to thecore:

His mother chimed in and told me that it hadbeen a horrible summer for them because of family issues they'd been through inJuly. I said I was so sorry, but I couldn't help but point out that theassignments were given in May. She quickly added that she was allowing herchild some "fun time" during the summer before getting back to workin July and that it wasn't his fault the work wasn't complete.

Can you feel my pain?

Didn’t you listen? Ithad been a horrible summer for their family. Regardless of when your assignment was given, summer is not yourtime. Summer is family time. And if she has plans for her family your assignment will and should come second -- every time. Keep your disappointment to yourself andshow some real compassion. Was ithorrible due to their own poor choices? Was it tragedy? Was itrelational discord? It doesn’t matterbecause you are not her judge and human compassion is alwaysappropriate. The cold and condescending approach is completely unprofessional. Good for that mom for doing what her child needed her to do; give himthe space to grow and discover and learn the lessons of life. No, I cannot feel your self-centered pain.

Without a doubt some parents do make excuses foreverything. But if it’s more than oneor two parents in your entire classroom you might need to be the one to sitback and get a new picture of what’s really going on. Your expectations may need to change. You may need to customize. Try new inspiration. Search yourown soul and dig deeper so you can teach out of who you really are, not who your district says you need to be. You teach and all you can do is give good opportunity for learning to take place. You don’t control. There’s a difference.

I agree with some of what is said in the next section. It is okay for my child to get in troublesometimes because he hopefully can learn from that if the situation is handledcorrectly. He also doesn’t have to makeall A’s and I certainly don’t want his grades handed to him. I’d love for him to get a scholarship oneday and he needs to do it on his own merit, but more importantly I’d love him to continue to carry with him the love oflearning. Grades and learning are twodifferent things.

The parents who threaten to call a lawyer are few and farbetween. They should not define yourentire teaching career. If thesecircumstances play into your insecurities, I’m sorry. I fail to reach people sometimes too. It’s just how it is. But youcan get through it. There are so many more students asking for your time and energy. IfI blamed every person I serve for the faults of one or two, I’d be jaded andburnt out too.

“I feel sorry for teachers and administrators these dayswhose hands are completely tied.” So doI, but I think the hand-tying comes from overly fearful administration and school districtsand not from parents as this article is stating. I also feel sorry for teachers who can’t stand up for what isright and speak what needs to be said. But it saddens me that this article states they are only concernedabout losing their jobs rather than losing contact and influence withstudents. One viewpoint treats my childas a commodity. The other actuallycares.

So it's no wonder that the next statement strikes me as completely patronizing: “We know you love your children. We do too.” Don't equate my love for my children with your general enjoyment or tolerance of them. They are not both love. Love sticks around for more than 4.5 years or 1050 hours. It never fails.

Kindle 2012... So Far

2012-01-30T12:40:00.000-08:00

Upon getting the Kindle last year for Christmas I knew it would not replace paper books, but it has become one of my favorite tools. Besides reading books for free or cheap and being able to carry 60 or so around with me at a time, it has helped our schooling a little and it is my new home for the Bible and The Message.

I'm looking forward to reading through these works on my Kindle this year:

Our Group's Co-ops

2012-01-21T17:50:00.000-08:00

The homeschool group I'm part of here in Colorado has kind of a two-tiered structure. There are several regular activities and gatherings that anyone can take part in. But then there are co-ops -- classes or field trips that families set up and offer for the others. The arrangement is that if you offer just one co-op then you have access to all the co-ops. It's a pretty sweet deal. This term (Feb. - April) there are about 60 classes to choose from. It's always an internal struggle to say we won't sign up for one every day.

Here are the co-ops that B & S are interested in and that our schedule will allow for

Duct Tape Creations
4 weeks of Metal Shop
Making Indian Pots
2 sessions of Math Games
A Scavenger Hunt at our Nature and Science Museum
Outdoor Games
Silk Screening
Alpaca Farm Tour
Seedling Starts
Ancient China Experience
Fire Station Tour
Day Hiking
CYT's The Music Man
Chess

Life to the fullest.

If You're Going to Leave, Just Tell Me

2012-01-14T01:12:00.000-08:00

I'm adding a new label tag today: ministry.

It could be expanded into "Things that perplex me about ministry." Or "Snapshots of the roller coaster of ministry." Or "When ministry rips your heart out." But it could most certainly not be called "Butterflies and sweet smelling fields of wildflowers and unicorn bells of ministry." Because ministry has none of that. No butterflies, no wildflower fields, no unicorns. At least none with bells. So, it's just ministry. Those of you who are in it understand why.

We currently work in the local church. We spent our youth preparing to serve the Church universal. We live and breathe and think and chew church -- both of us, my dh and I. We spend 75% of our day thinking about people in our church, present and past and even future people we haven't met yet. Mostly present. We invest, plan, prepare, anticipate, guide, encourage, wait and pray for all of these people. The other 25% of our day must encapsulate everything else we must take care of (like the children we bore, the business of life, the families we left behind, the property we own, and the ever-loving pile of laundry). If it can't fit into 25% of our day, it gets pushed to the next...o.k. sometimes the laundry waits weeks.

We do it with gladness. Absolute and complete gladness. It's an honor to get to be involved in so many people's lives. Really. We love this work of building community, of challenging others to become more of who God has designed them to be, of being present in their pain and their joy, of interpreting Scripture and creating clarity and trying to set things to rights. It's crazy-silly that two flaw-filled humans get the pleasure of doing this kind of work.

We're in an interesting time at our little local church. We've embarked on a new adventure, procured a new meeting venue, restated our purpose and are trying to give it feet. We believe it was a divine appointment; that it wasn't our own idea, actually, really at all, but a compelling call to live with mission nearer to the core. We asked our church to come with us and see what God will do. It sounds exciting, right? Well, whenever there's transition, there's -- ack, a horrible word coming up -- fallout. (See, horrible). And sometimes our smart, supportive people just don't see the excitement, the honor of it all and sometimes they simply don't want to go where we lead. Sometimes a lot of them decide this all at the same time.

Ministry.

Let me change voices here because I've discovered something. If you want to leave what it is we are doing here, be it with reluctance or relief, I'd love it if you would tell me (or us or some one of us who is giving their all to this body of believers) in person why it is you think it's time to say good-bye. Really. The in-person conversation is so much better than the email route. I know it's so much easier to try to put it in writing at your convenience and I know you did so with painstaking attempts to speak it as plainly as you could.

But when I hear it from you in person I get to see your eyes and know if the flame is still there. I get to tell you what you've meant to me. I get to send you on to the next step of your journey -- even to help you do that. And you get to see that I'm not angry. That life after our church community means new life in a new church community. I understand much more than you might anticipate. I feel compassion for where you are at -- it's not an easy place to be, I know. Most importantly, I get to tell you that it isn't good-bye. We will always be there for you. And I mean it.

You see, I'm human and the email route tempts me to read in-between the lines and when I'm reading things that aren't really there I get myself in trouble. Or if I never get to see your email (which, to be honest is the case 99% of the time because even when you walk away your pastor (er, former pastor...sigh) keeps your confidentiality.) then you're just gone. I mean, poof, gone. It's as if the time and effort we put into your lives, marriages, children, wholistic development, daily ecclesiastical operations and such simply never happened.

"Where have the so-and-so's been? I haven't seen them for a few weeks."
"They left a little while ago. But they wrote us an email."
"They did?"

Immediately following this comes the pang. All at once, I feel the weight of your absence. The stuff that was yet to be that I had imagined in my head gets instantly wiped away. The shame I feel for not knowing this sooner. Yes, shame. The sudden mis-beat of my heart. You're gone ? There is a moment of silence inside me as I adjust to this new body-shape without you. How do we continue to be the church we are supposed to be without x,y, and z of your gifts? I know that others will, and may have already, taken up residence in the places you used to serve. I know that the point of the church isn't to stay the same but to be transformed. I know that God leads people differently. I even know that your leaving may not really be about my husband's teaching (I'm gonna choose to believe that one, okay?). But I didn't get to hear from you or speak to you or anything at all.

Sometimes you don't even email. I don't even know what to do with that.

And then we meet again at the party of a mutual friend in a year or two and it's awkward and weird. And I become ashamedly stinkingly human all over again.

"So, what have you been doing lately?" (read: since you left our church)
"Oh, we've been busy!"
"Huh, yeah. Us too. How's your new married life?" (read: my husband did your wedding...)
"It's great. We love it."

I know. It's awkward and shallow. It's hard to try and guess where the other person is coming from. I can't ask you if you've found another church home because you never told me that you left ours. (And if you haven't then I feel like everything in our past was for naught.) I can't get to the deeper level of questions at all really because I'm not sure if I still have the right to meet you there. It'd be so much easier if you'd just said something when you left. That party scenario is so much better:

"So, how are you guys doing?" (read: I miss you, but I really want to know.)
"We're doing really well. The kids really like such-and-such church. And I'm involved in this and that and the other ministry."
"That's so cool. Tell me what you love most about it."
And then you tell me and I get to enjoy the kingdom work that you're involved in. I really do. Because I'm not proprietary in my kingdom work. You can do it with anyone. And in that sense we're still really doing it together.

A friend and I had tea today and she (is the second person this week that) told me that her family would be leaving our church soon. That our new venue and mission wasn't where they were at. And the conversation that ensued was a blessing (to both of us, I think). I loved that conversation. And when I left to go to my car, I did not cry or pound the steering wheel. I did ask God, "What next? For them and for our church? How do we all need to follow you next? Please show us." And I drove away.

It's Going to Be a Good Year

2012-01-11T18:24:00.000-08:00

Technology for the Ill-Prepared

2012-01-09T11:17:00.001-08:00

When I closed up school for the weekend I made mental notes to find a read-aloud, a science book about blood, make out some lesson plans, and find my old lesson plans for this unit to refer to for ideas.

This morning when I woke up I had done exactly

none

of that.

Quickly searching the web catalogs of our local libraries I found a book that would work for our read aloud. It's even on the shelf at our local branch. But at 8 a.m. I'm not getting the boys ready to go out quite yet... hmm.

Enter Kindle's whispernet and free sample. I downloaded the free sample instantly and we read the first 8 pages of our new read-aloud. In a few minutes we'll head out to get the hard copy from the library and keep up with our reading for the next two weeks. Mission accomplished and it didn't cost a thing.

Now, that science book that I thought I could find this morning is, of course, nowhere to be found. It's driving me crazy because it was exactly the resource I needed to teach with today.

Enter YouTube. I had to do a little searching through some strange things (my search was "parts of the blood") but I eventually found a video explaining and diagramming what I wanted B to know. We drew our own diagram, figured out the percentages of what our blood is made up with (perfectly tying in with today's math lesson... which is also online!) and had a decent science lesson.

Last Thursday when I brought out a video tape (yes, video tape) resource from the California Department of

Water the tape didn't work at all. I was disappointed because it had great paper workbooklets to go along with it which included some some neat experiments to view. YouTube came to my rescue again that day. I found the exact video presentation on the site and we carried on without much of a hitch. And the video tape went in the trash.

I love how homeschooling is so much easier now than it was for me when I started 10 years ago. It's not helping my work-ethic per se, but the world's knowledge is, indeed, at our fingertips.

Dragons Forever Fiction and Poetry Contest

2012-01-06T19:09:00.000-08:00

My friend Eisley Jacobs released her second book today in her middle grade series "Dragons Forever." B and I read Book #1 Born to Be a Dragon late this summer. He can't wait to read Book #2 Blink of a Dragon. I just have to get myself over to her house to get him a copy. YOU can order one through her website below or you can go onto Amazon (and maybe other online sellers) and purchase it. OR you can take part in the contest below and win a bunch of copies, PLUS get published in Book #3 AND have a character named after you.

Let me tell you something about Eisley. She's an inspiring woman who homeschools her kids, opens her home to displaced people, travels to Ethiopia on mission trips, and is bursting with enthusiasm, creativity and life. Now, if you've been following me for a little while, you'll know that my son, B, is dyslexic. When he heard he could have a character named after him he grabbed Born to be a Dragon and started reviewing it again because he is EXCITED to write his own entry. Did you hear that? My dyslexic kid is excited to write. I am amazed. And I am grateful for a talented friend who has worked tirelessly to inspire him and other kids like him.

Here's the info so you can get in on all the fun!

Contest dates JANUARY 6, 2012 - FEBRUARY 6, 2012In celebration of the release of the second book in the Dragons Forever series (BLINK OF A DRAGON), Eisley Jacobs is inviting you to take part in the BORN TO BE A DRAGON Fan Fiction and Poetry contest!
Who is elegible?
Children ages 4-99
What is fan fiction?
Fan fiction is a variety of stories about the characters or settings of a book as told by the fans. In this contest, entrants are encouraged to write a short story (200-600 words) about a missed adventure (something that could have happened but didn't) with any of the main or supporting characters in the book, BORN TO BE A DRAGON. Because it's fan fiction, this story does not have to follow the theme of the book, nor the characters' personalities. It's completely up to the entrant.
What about a poem?
Poetry is a form of creative writing in which language is used as an art. The poem can rhyme or not, it's up to the entrant, but it must be about BORN TO BE A DRAGON (or a missed adventure).
How do we enter?
You have from today until February 6, 2012 to write your fan faction or poetry. At midnight on the 6th, I will close the contest to prepare for the voting process. Voting will take place off line by a group of authors, parents, and teachers. The entries will be judged on creativity and use of BORN TO BE A DRAGON as their inspiration. Once voting is complete, all entries will be posted in the fan fiction area of Eisley Jacobs website.
Where do we send the entries?
Please send all fan fiction and poetry to Eisley.Jacobs@EisleyJacobs.com. You can also go to my website and fill out the form with the subject "Fan Fiction"(http://EisleyJacobs.com/contact/).
Teachers: If you'd like to submit all of your students entries at once, please email Eisley atEisley.Jacobs@EisleyJacobs.com and she will give you the proper address to do so.
What can I win? If your entry is chosen as the winner of the Fan Fiction and Poetry contest, not only will your entry appear in Dragons Forever - Book Three, but your name will also be tagged in the credits and a minor character will be named after you. ALSO, YOUR WHOLE CLASS AND SIBLINGS will receive autographed copies of BLINK OF A DRAGON, which means the more kids in your class you can get involved, the better all your chances are to receive the book. Homeschoolers, if one of you wins, you will receive 30 autographed books for the other kids in your homeschool group.
Contest Rules: This contest is open to U.S. residents only. All federal, state, and local laws and regulations apply. This contest is void where prohibited by law. Each child, ages 4-99, is allowed one entry, and each classroom/homeschool group has unlimited entries. By sending your entries to Eisley.Jacobs@EisleyJacobs.com they become property of Eisley Jacobs and cannot be returned. The winning entrant will have a week from the confirmation email to notify Eisley Jacobs with the names of his/her classmates or homeschoolers who will receive the books. In most cases, winning books are limited to 30 (some exceptions may apply).
This page and links can be found at http://dragonsforever.eisleyjacobs.com/fanfiction.html
If you have any questions, please email Eisley Jacobs.

Forty's Final Hours

2012-01-02T07:28:00.000-08:00

My husband had a brainstorm recently that he confessed to me last night as he took me out for my birthday dinner and shopping. He said he's just noticed that I get to have back to back introspective days. Because New Year's and my birthday are so close together (my birthday is tomorrow) he imagined that I must spend a good deal of time each year pondering the old and dreaming up the new all at once. Love that man.

Yes, I do.

I spend so many hours at this time of year wondering, 'What could be better?' 'How can I tweak me?'

'How can I create a life that's productive, more satisfying, more purposeful, more congruent?' As if my prior life were none of those things. Making new goals as if the old ones had no effect.

But each year builds on the next. Had I not been my prior person, I would not be my present person. Is there nothing about past me that I can be honored to have been? Is future me so amazing that I cannot be satisfied with and active about present me? Who knows?

Having spent a good amount of time this year thinking about gratitude and finding God in good and hard, I realize that perhaps this year,or this half of life, I don't need to push so hard into 'what's next' but rather lean into 'what is.' Where I am, who I am, why I live and breathe. As Richard Rohr says, "The first half of life is about discovering the script. The second is writing and owning it."

So, until the script for this current production is written I think I need to focus here and now; take what I know and what I am and make use of it. Looking ahead at positive change... that's all good, but at some point we have to stop forging and take a look around. We'll never arrive at the destination, but the journey is always with us.

And so this is my year to lean in.

Lean in to the middle grade dyslexic son that struggles to spell. Let's work through it with the tools we have because searching for the right thing has left me doing barely nothing to address his real needs.

Lean into the adolescent boy at the cusp of manhood as he manages new emotions (of fear mostly) and dreams. I can lean into his heart, his fears, his identity and he can know that he's not in those places alone.

Lean into the active kindergarten son who just wants to play a game with me. He needs more 'yes' moments.

Lean into mentoring and let it change me, being aware of my impact as the words leave my mouth, but saying the hard stuff too.

Lean into the women who join me in mentoring others. I support them and feed them the wine and the bread.

Lean into the hard work of developing a new Bible study leader, teaching her discernment and dynamics. And the harder work of letting her fly.

Lean into the fact that I do have a voice because there is character behind it. No integrity, no voice. And the voice needs to be God's voice, not mine, which means the character flows from him as well. Which means practicing spiritual disciplines with that in mind.

Lean into God rather than just his blessings or just his revelation.

Lean into marriage. May there never be another period of disconnect. May we continue to partner and support and love and touch. Lean into his amazingness and our impact as one.

Lean into random moments of influence among all my interactions. God will work if I trust him to be there.

Make conversations go deeper.

Heal relationships.

Press harder into justice.

Pursue and create beauty.

Practice grace and love the grace-giver.

This birthday more than others I recognize that my life is not my own. It was bought with a price. Why did Jesus do that? In return I should offer a life that means something to him. Not a fragmented life of half-finished projects and unfulfilled resolutions. But a pursuant life. One that works with God to continue and complete the work he's begun. Because that work, he says, is good.

This year, I don't want to discount the goodness of that work, prior and present. This is my memorial year and perhaps my year of feasting. I have feet; let me move them. They already know where to go.

The Books I Chewed on in 2011

2011-12-25T20:54:00.001-08:00

A Hidden Wholeness by Parker J. Palmer
was the first thing I picked up January 1.
Starting the year with Parker is my little
tradition that helps me truly expand to
greet the new year.

I've read 48 books this year. Words have encircled me. Thoughts have inspired me. The lives of others have been my example to continue to move beyond myself, to live with purpose that builds the kingdom of God, to become more me as I become more his. It's been a good year. These are all the books that I took on this year. The ones I've emboldened are the top 5 that made me think, stretched me and made me want to share its wisdom with others.

A Hidden Wholeness by Parker J. Palmer
This is a Soul: The Mission of Rick Hodes by Marilyn Berger
The Gift of an Ordinary Day by Katrina Kenison
Great Expectations: Interactive Guide to the 1st Year of Marriage by Toben and JoAnne Heim
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where you Are by Ann Voskamp

One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp
was the one book that I wanted to drink
in quickly and then just as quickly stopped
reading simply because I didn't want it to
be over. After leading women in a book
group through it and seeing the ripple
effect it has had in their lives, I'm certain
it's one to re-read over and over.

Introverts in the Church by Adam McHugh
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Don Miller
Stuff Christians Like by Jonathan Acuff
The Rock that is Higher by Madeleine L'Engle
The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence
The Me I Want to Be by John Ortberg
After the Leaves Fall by Nicole Baart
Sheet Music by Kevin Lehman
Let Nothing Disturb You - St. Teresa of Avila
Sacred Companions by David Benner
58: Fast Living - How the Church Will End Extreme Poverty by Scott Todd
Crazy Love by Francis Chan
Churched by Matthew Paul Turner
Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change Grace and Learning the Hard Way by Shauna Niequist

Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist
I resonated with the loss of ministry, the
confusion of God's call, and the heartache.
of all of it. Thank you, Shauna, for putting
words to the pain and showing the side
that no one usually gets to see.

The Prodigal God by Tim Keller
Mark for Everyone by N.T. Wright
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Love Wins by Rob Bell
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
The DiVinci Code by Dan Brown
The Shack by William Paul Young
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
Wild at Heart by John Eldridge
Between Women of God by Donna Otto
One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp (again!)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Becoming a Woman of Influence by Carol Kent
The Way They Learn by Cynthia Tobias
Can You Drink the Cup? by Henri Nouwen

The Gospel of Ruth by Carolyn Custis James

This gem was snatched up for free on Kindle

during the year. It was serendipitous that

my Bible study decided to study Ruth

and so I began this in conjunction. It fed

my soul as a woman seeking to follow

hard after God. I couldn't wait to get

into it every week.

The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules by Carolyn Custis James

The Faith of Leap by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch
Braided Streams by Marjory Zoet Bankson
Half the Church by Carolyn Custis James
Esther by Charles Swindoll
The On-Purpose Person by Kevin McCarthy
Untamed: Reactivating a Missional Discipleship by Alan & Debra Hirsch

NIV Application Commentary/Esther by Karen Jobes
Building a Discipling Culture by Mike Breen
Simply Christian by N.T. Wright
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

This summer's reading theme was "What's all the Fuss About?" It was some of the most fun I've had

reading in a while. Had I not done that I would have only

read 2 fiction books. It's intriguing to me how much non-fiction

has taken such a front seat over the years.

Untamed by Alan and Debra Hirsch
As I think more intently about mentoring
this book challenged me to create
relationships that are wholistic. In short,
it came at a very good time.

I attempted a few books that I just had to set aside. As interesting as they were, I just couldn't push through Malcom Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Kathryn Schultz's On Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, Alexandra Robbins' The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth, and David Brooks' The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement. I'd love to read them one day, but these are the kinds of works that I think I grasp better and get excited about in the form of a TED talk.

What were your most inspiring reads this year?

November

2011-12-21T20:14:00.000-08:00

DH and the boys are out in a blizzard to pick up his mother and brother from the airport. I am sitting in a quiet, clean house, noting the snowfall and drinking tea. And frankly I'm soaking up all the normalcy I can before Christmas jumps in. It's a refective time so with that here is a bit of a reflection on the last month of life.

We enjoyed Denver's Night at the Museums at the beginning of November. This year we went up to Golden to explore the American Mountaneering Museum and the Astor House with friends and their amazing kids. Amazing because they have a great story. And amazing because they just are.

B took part in a three part physics co-op wherein they built towers, bridges and containers for the egg drop. He did pretty well with his design. It didn't break from the fall from a second story window. Of course, some kids in the group were disappointed that they did so well so they did end up breaking a couple just for fun.

We studied sheep. Yes, sheep. We thought, too, about shepherds. It was a two week unit study and one thing I most enjoyed was reading to B from Scouting the Divine by Margaret Feinberg. Sometimes we assume that kids won't understand our "adult" spiritual formation books. But Margaret writes so accesibly that B tracked right along with her and we both were reminded of what the Good Shepherd does for us daily. This little craft was so cute and easy for S to make. And it was so much more fun than gluing cotton balls to paper like he's done sooo many times in Bible class.

We began to be Thankful. S made a little thankful tree. The crafts you think are overdone (i.e. ahem...gluing cotton balls to paper to make sheep) they end up loving. He said what he was thankful for and we wrote his thoughts on leaves and taped them to a branch. I think his favorite part was hacking the branch off the felled limb in the backyard. And on the computer is tenmarks.com which is B's math curriculum for the year. He and I both love that it's all online and includes instructional videos. Plus I love that it's only $10 a month. He's doing really well, and if he's ever stuck I just watch the video with him and help him work through both practice and graded problems. I can even set up rewards for him and pause the program (like I did for Christmas this week). He's halfway through his year but he's 3/4 of the way done with math!

We took a little break. J was off the whole week of Thanksgiving and we were lucky enough to find a little condo in Estes Park to rent for three days. It was out of cell phone range and had no internet access. Perfect. We played games, walked through downtown and watched the glassblower for a long time, enjoyed their community-wide free Thanksgiving Dinner, took in a movie and tried out their skatepark. Perfect. Oh, I said that.

We don't have many traditions at the holidays, but since moving to Colorado we've been to see the Littleton Christmas Tree Lighting every year. So, after returning from Estes Park we went to cute little downtown Littleton yet again and froze and watched as the wind blew all our candles out. But it's still fun.

Make Something Day 2011

2011-11-21T20:14:00.000-08:00

Make Something Day, the antidote to Black Friday, is this week! I'm feeling a little behind this year. But maybe I do every year.

Since all of our family live in other states and only one or two relatives will end up venturing this far for Christmas, I need to get gifts in the mail by December 10th. The kids and I haven't even begun our homemade items this year. Google is being my friend tonight. On Wednesday we're hitting the road for a short getaway and I want to be able to take some things with us that we can work on.

Last year we made several things to give as gifts.

1: Paint Your Own Pottery: This outing was also co-op with our homeschool group. Each boy picked a male in the family to paint a trophy cup for. Their dad uses his for pocket change.

2: Hemp Trivets: Hot glue, a cork square, a lot of hemp cording and even more patience helped J make these for his female family.

3: Truly Handmade Cards: B drew this leaf design in art class. I wish you could see it up close because there's a ton of little design work in it. We copied and shrunk it down and printed it on cardstock, he stamped and cut and assembled notecard sets to give to Grandmas and Aunts and friends far away. Signed the by the artist and totally cool.

4: Homemade Granola: I used two recipes, Maple Walnut and Coconut Almond, packed a few cups worth into clamp canisters and gave them out to all of dh's co-workers.

5. Fleece Pillow: For my sports fan son, I thought it was time for his Thomas the Tank engine pillow to grow up, so I covered it with a football motif fleece fabric. Easy. And he hasn't even missed Thomas.

6: Framed Brochures: In the summer of 2009, dh took me on an 8 day trip to Great Britain. I saved all the ephemera from the trip and finally did something with it. I cut these brochures and maps and train tickets all down to the same size, centered and adhered them to a mat and framed them. It hangs in our office to remind us to do it again someday.

7: Felt Tissue Covers: This was the boys biggest project. Not only did they send them to relatives, but they passed them out to all their teachers at their Friday classes and anyone else they could think of. It was a simple piece of felt, cut to size with pinking shears, folded over and hand stitched along the edges with a little monogrammed applique. My boys really love to hand stitch. This was perfect for them.

What are you making this year? I'd love to hear your ideas.
Here are some sites I'm drawing inspiration from this year:
sew mama sew
etsy.com
studioofmae.blogspot.com
www.marthastewart.com/275134/handmade-gifts-for-her/@center/307035/santas-workshop
www.myrepurposedlife.net/

Have a happy Thanksgiving.

October Catch Up

2011-11-02T13:40:00.000-07:00

October came and went. It was busy and good and mostly normal. My least favorite day was when S ran over his finger while sitting on a skateboard. We're still waiting for that fingernail to fall off. It's barely hanging on. I did not take a picture of it and you're welcome.

My favorite days were the two afternoons that dh and I had lunch dates. I love, love, love that all three boys on are in classes all day on Fridays. Originally I thought, "Yay, I get a day for me!" But then I discovered that even better than that was to have a day for my marriage. Whoa. So good.

Additionally, I made a little cash to go toward our summer trip to India by selling more kids items at the Just Between Friends, Denver sale. If anyone feels like donating to that cause, let me know! For you locals, I'm going to do the Spring JBF sale too and I'm accepting your in-kind donations so I can sell them. Let me know if I can take your kids' stuff off your hands.

I've started mentoring an amazing young seminary student recently and now I've added another young woman from our community. I'm loving this season of life wherein I feel comfortable with who God made me to be and am actually stepping out and trying to fulfill what I think that looks like.

We've been doing plenty of school and I'm rejoicing that we're finally in a groove that's not too restrictive. On Tuesdays we take our work to a coffee shop. On Fridays, like I said, the boys take classes away from home. And I'm trying hard to protect all the other mornings to keep them designated for getting our work down. We've had several co-ops with our local group and a couple more are coming up in November.

Other than that, here's a few snapshots of the month:

A little board breaking in tae kwon do.

A little home repair on the rotting fascia boards (this is a before picture).

Some sequencing with S.

Making mummies as we studied Ancient Egypt.

B's living history museum at Options. He was Jackie Robinson and his other classmates were Sally Ride and Amelia Earhart. Martin Luther King, Jr. showed up late.

Snow storm #1

Museum Day with a Robotics class (and real mummies!)

J's Lego creation: a giant Ninjago minifig.

Our harvest carnival outing.

Snow storm #2: this morning! I just finished shoveling the driveway. Fall in Colorado is all about upper body strength between raking leaves and shoveling snow. I'm still questioning why I maintain a gym membership at this time of year. But my resting heart rate just clocked in at 50 so I think it's doing me some good.

Do Not Be Afraid

2011-10-08T21:43:00.000-07:00

We have always been a part of co-ops and homeschool groups for two reasons.
1. P.E.
2. Art

My oldest son hated getting his hands messy, always needed to know where we were going, refused to use color and rushed through everything. Aside from the first couple of years when he was very young, I eventually determined that unless it seemed enjoyable to turn a lesson into a meltdown, I would simply not do art with him. Instead, I farmed it out to other homeschooling moms to have the "pleasure" of exploring J's creative side during the classes they volunteered to teach. Sorry, mom friends.

As a result, art has essentially sat dormant for a while. I tried to find ways to expose the boys to it in non-messy, linear ways. We looked at masterpieces and learned about artists and I have always had them drawing (lots of stick figure art going on over here). But that's essentially been my maximum effort. Because the terror of the art lessons of the past has never left me, I don't even get out the paints unless I'm really throwing caution to the wind. Sorry, Charlotte Mason, but we don't do nature notebooks.

When J was no longer schooling at home last year, B and I spent the year figuring out what worked for us. And then we spent the beginning of this year finding out what worked for him. He's an auditory/kinesthetic (large muscle) learner. His intelligences lie in the areas of spatial, body and intrapersonal. He's essentially an artist when he's not being an athlete. But he's not the kid who loves drawing and painting, shading, perspective, etc. He likes the sculpting, the building, the graphic designs, the turning-something-into-something-else kind of art. He loves to make things and he cherishes each thing he creates.

In the past month he's been busy creating. And surprise of surprises, I'm actually enjoying the process with him. Of course, I've always enjoyed art and pursuing creativity. And now, we've brought it back into our school day. It turns out that I just needed to do it with the right child.

I will no longer be afraid of the art lesson.

Here are just some of the projects B and S have done in the past few weeks:

Rice Krispie castles.
A tile mosaic crown.
A truss bridge out of Popsicle sticks and white glue.
Scarab stamps out of baked modeling clay.
Egyptian wall friezes out of Plaster of Paris

This doesn't include the lanyard helicopters, the countless fuse bead projects, the carving he wants to do of the Sphynx or the paper mache mummies that we'll try to hit this week. It's exhausting. It's messy. And it's no longer fearful.

More Than I Thought

2011-10-07T18:25:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking lately, "We need to get real with school."

No longer can I try to squeeze in just a little more summer. No longer can I use my bag of excuses. No longer can I blame my distractedness on warm, sunny days.

Though we began in mid-August, we've had plenty of stops and starts and tons of bonus field trips. It's been a beginning that felt very much like I wasn't able to finish a sentence.

Case in point, I only have two documented weeks of lesson plans and four (or has it been six already?) that I haven't even filled in. It feels to me like we haven't really accomplished much.

But we have.

Last week we finished our study of Royalty and as it turns out, we accomplished more than I thought.

B (grade 4) colored a map of the word highlighting about 6 different empires in different places and eras.
We spent time reading information about each ruler, including Xerxes in the whole book of Esther.
He's identified the different titles for monarchy at various places and times around the globe.
We've read fables and stories of kings (like Midas and Gilgamesh and Arthur) to compare to the real guys.
We moved into a little study of knights and castles simply because that was where his interests lay and he filled a lapbook with castle diagrams, weapons and armor.
We read the abridged Knights of the Round Table and a Door in the Wall.
He read The Magic Tree House Research Guide on Knights and finished the Time Warp Trio: Knights of the Kitchen Table.
He wrote his own story about Kings.
We worked up a timeline of major rulers and world events to put it all in perspective.
Art activities included making a Rice Krispie castle and a tile mosaic crown.
He's moving through fourth grade math at tenmarks.com and is doing very well in our first year of Spelling Power.

S (grade K) is happy to do anything. We've been plugging along with several things in addition to daily life skills:

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. It's perfect for him. He's so full of excitement and his knowledge base is right where it should be to begin this study.
Making Math Meaningful. We've been doing something out of it every week and so far he's completely ahead of where the curriculum is, but he enjoys the quick hands-on activities. Math has also included dot-to-dot pages, mazes and puzzles.
Writing. I have never pushed my boys to write. But S wants to. We practice just a couple letters a day on a wipe-off lap-board. And he's doing beautifully. It's amazing. Maybe I'll actually have one child with good handwriting.
He made his own age-appropriate lapbook about knights and we're tossing in some occasional study of the seasons.
He spends time each week on starfall.org practicing more reading skills. Loves it.
He's done a zillion other activities: things to move and manipulate, things to cut and color, pasting, painting, shapes to play with, measuring tapes, and play dough.

It's pure fun teaching Kindergarten level to S. All in all, his daily time logs in at around 45 minutes. It's much more than his oldest brother ever did and it's also much more structured than his other brother did at this age. He's definitely eager and ambitious. I've also noticed that he's much more patient this year. We've turned a corner there and overall our days are so much more manageable and enjoyable. So, for you mothers with distracting and demanding preschoolers, there's hope that they'll eventually get it.

Groping a Bit

2011-09-06T16:19:00.000-07:00

I heard something this summer; a quote, a phrase, an idea. It hinted that "expectations are just future resentments." Today I feel the pulse of this.

I expected that I'd have the fall semester figured out by now, that I'd have my hands firmly grasped around the objectives and projects that would at most take us toward Advent. What I have is a little cup of ideas and a swelling pile of resources. This is all that I'm working with in these first days of our 10th year. I can't determine if it's unsettling or freeing. But I feel like I'm resenting
...that I'm past time for planning and am well into the time for implementing, ready or not.
...that I used to have things so prepared. My former self seems more organized than my present self.
...that we haven't been able to fall into a rhythm. Every day is still different. Shouldn't this be a blessing?

My lesson plans in this third full week are already askew. We entertained company and opted to do two field trips. I decided to do school yesterday -- on a planned holiday. We've said, "yes," to the park day, the BMX track, the lunch meeting. We're moving through the meat of our unit... and we're not sinking.

I find that I'm sitting and listening with each moment, breathing prayers for direction.
This activity might be good to put in right here. Change direction.
This child has a need I can meet. Change direction.
This resource is confusing, let's set it aside. Change direction.
Letting the children lead more, finding the moments that connect, paying attention to bodies and energies and what matters to little boys. Praying all the while.

I've never been free to ad lib so richly. My first student needed checklists, structure, plans. Now, though I'm practicing freedom I've yet to feel the shackles fall. The way we've always done this isn't the way we do it anymore. It's interesting that I sit in the midst of resentment when no wrong has actually been done.
It surprises me when I come to this conclusion: this is not resentment, but dependence. It's the groping that I used to do back in the days when God was silent and my structured school days were the only things that I knew without a doubt. Then, I was groping for God, wishing for his voice, willing him to act, waiting on him and asking him, "Am I doing this right?" Now it's turned on its head. God has spoken and continues to be present and real, but my structures are shattered and I am utterly dependent on him to create them. My focus changed but the question remains the same, "Am I doing this right?" This daily instruction, filling of a pail, lighting of a fire. Is this the best way or just the best way for today?

The things we think we should do, make us resent what we actually produce. I, this abstract sequential being, try so hard to fight against the abstract, against the very core of self. Isn't it good for me to move from shape to shape and from this color to the next? These boys are not the same, I should not be the same either. At the end of the day, what I've created should look nothing like me and everything like them.

Bending but not breaking. This is the tension where one ought to live.

Photos are from our field trip to Miramont Castle 8/25/11

Today's Table

2011-08-22T21:56:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd do A Day in the Life based on this photo.

This is what my coffee table looked like today after our morning of school at home. I swear that sucker was clean when we started. However, it tells a pretty good story of what we did today.

When I came downstairs to begin with the kids I brought with me my tea (Green Tea Pomegranat), the book I'm reading, and the container of blueberries. After I read Blueberries for Sal to S, he had to estimate how many berries would fit inside the tablespoon you see there mixed in with the markers. Then we estimated how many blueberries long a marker was, and counted how many would go around the perimeter of Sal. Then we tested out how many we could balance on that wine cork -- he could do three. After that, he munched on the berries while he ripped and cut out his own construction paper rendition of Blueberry Hill complete with a Momma bear. I also gave him four pictures from the story and had him sequence them and color them in for fun. These last two ideas just came out of my head as we were going along.

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Magic showed up next. We're doing this fun read aloud to start the year and B is making the cardstock gameboard to go with the book (sneaking in some writing there). The idea comes from Games With Books which you can see underneath the game board. We've used Peggy Kaye's books over and over and over again. I love her ideas. (That's where some activities for Blueberries for Sal came from too.)

There's a Math Mosaics book there that got forgotten today because the game board took longer than we expected, but that's okay. While B was working on the game, S and I were on the floor with the Clifford math magnets . He had fun with those.

On my clipboard are the pages of the Math placement test that B completed today. Because I'm switching curriculum, I'm not sure if I should get him 3rd grade math or 4th grade. He's good at math, but after this placement test I think he may need a pretty good 3rd grade refresher before we move on. I knew I should have been doing math with him all summer. Underneath those papers is the Kindergarten readiness test I downloaded and completed with S today. It just told me what skills to focus on and what he already knows. I can't remember where I found it, or I'd link to it.

Let's see, what else is there? Oh, the stack of alphabet cards (the S is there on top of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle) were used when I found out that my Kindergartener really isn't sure what his last name is. He does know it, he just doesn't know the first/last designation. So we worked on spelling it out today and getting used to what it looks like. We spelled it in capital letters but on the flip side are those very confusing lower case letters, so we spent some time on those.

On the floor up in the corner of the photo is the file folder game I had prepped for S last year. But I pulled it out today just for fun. I think he's beyond it now so it's time to make some more. (Love that website!). While he did that, B and I worked through You're Smarter Than You Think: A Kid's Guide to Multiple Intelligences He took the quizzes for the first three intelligences and we settled on Picture Smart for him and found out what that looks like. Tomorrow we'll read through some of the others and see if he discovers a couple more that fit him. We're spending our first days on learning styles/ modalities/intelligences, et al. because I want my dyslexic son to know how he's smart and that "smart" looks different for everyone.

Here's how funny God is:
My child is an auditory/kinesthetic learner; I'm a visual learner.
My child is a concrete random processor; I'm an abstract sequential processor.
My child is picture smart; I am word smart.
We are complete opposites.

Finally, there on the table intertwined among the colored pencils and markers is a homemade Indiana Jones whip. Random. But that's so commonplace. At the end of every day there's several odd artifacts that have made their way into our learning space. It's humorous. And I love it.

The rest of our day consisted of lunch, grocery shopping, cleaning the fridge, LEGO building, and picking up J from school. I dropped J at Taekwon Do, went to the gym, came home to the dinner dh had prepared and then had coffee tonight with a super fun new friend that I think I'll get the honor of spending more time with in the coming months.

Today was a really good day.
And, yes. The table is still a mess.

#300 and a Blog Hop

2011-08-19T08:32:00.000-07:00

This is my 300th post. It's fitting that it's the first post of our 10th school year of schooling at home. Lots of round numbers there.

J: My dramatic one.

Here are our first day of school photos:

On Tuesday, my 12 yo began 8th grade at the charter school he attended last year. I had much less anxiety this year. I didn't feel like I was "sending him to the wolves" like I feared his first year. (You can read my thoughts about his first year in a brick and mortar school here.) We both knew what to expect (same teachers for the same subjects) so it was easier. I spent the night before reading to him selections from The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School because that's, truthfully, his demographic. He may change the world one day, but he won't change middle school.

B: finally got that new watch he's been wanting.
S: my final Kindergartener!

My other two boys began school at home yesterday. They were up before 7 waiting for the backpack fairy. We got started at 8:45 and we were done at 12:00 on the dot. How surprising and wonderful. It'll likely never happen again. Case in point: it's now Day Two and at 9:00 they are both still sleeping.

We are doing a soft start for a few days. Just getting in the habit again, playing learning games, doing some assessments to see where my 9yo should start in Math and Spelling, playing with letters with my Kindergartener and reading aloud. After their grandma visits next week, we'll get going with our full unit study.

It's now 9:27 and I hear the other four feet in the house so I think we're ready to see what the day will hold.

Blog Hop & Mixing the Old and the New

2011-08-04T09:44:00.000-07:00

I'm planning to start my 10th year homeschooling in a couple of weeks. We have always used the Weaver unit study curriculum from Alpha Omega. I love that it gives me age appropriate learning standards from K - 6th grade so I'm cycling back through it again without having to repurchase it. I've actually unglued myself from its directives over the years and just used it as a skeleton to help me know where to go next, but it's still a solid, thorough Bible-based curriculum that's great for you if you don't need a scripted curriculum. (It requires some prep.) I was going to set it aside this year because it's my 9th year using it, but in the end I decided that it was just too valuable for my kids and I didn't want to have to learn something new.

Because EVERYTHING else is new.

Here is what we are adding this year for my fourth grader:

I have just a couple weeks to figure everything out. There's a huge manual for Spelling Power that takes about 12 hours to read. Angling for Words was recommended for my dyslexic child so I have to read through that teacher's manual too. I haven't even ordered our full math curriculum yet and there are other manuals for Right Start to read as well.

The YWAM biography will be a nice break mid year. We have used their unit studies before so it's familiar to me. DH and I are hoping to take a trip to India in the spring, so we'll make it a unit study.

I still haven't quite nailed down what my kindergartener's directives will be this year. Here's a few resouces I'm going to work with though:

I've already taught two children to read and I've never even looked at Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons until now. I have borrowed this from the library to look it over. It might be a good fit for S. I've used Games with Books for years for all my young kids and we're at least going to start the year with some of these activities. The Nature Book just inspires me to get outside with my child and make things with our hands. Finally, while I used Making Math Meaningful all the way through with my oldest son, I never did the Kindergarten level which is scripted and has very little writing work. Perfect. Other than that, he'll be doing the age appropriate learning activities along with his older brother out of Weaver. We start with the themes of Royalty and Respect.

So, if you need me I'll be buried under all my instruction manuals.

Maturing Happens

2011-07-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

My oldest is 12 years old. He has always been adverse to work. From Day One this baby boy thought it was too much work to suck. He'd continually fall asleep while I tried to feed him. We'd strip him down to his diaper, tickle him, get him wet... but he'd just sleep. Then when I laid him down he'd wake up, hungry. It was amazing.

Over the years we naturally assigned chores. He put up such a fight. Even so, we'd still require things of him, but it has led to a less than peaceful homelife. I've blogged about our struggles before. Just know that it has been a constant in our family's life.

But early this year, my son said, "I think I'd like to volunteer this summer."

???

My heart jumped. Was it our random family service projects? Our lifestyle of living for more than just ourselves? Our faith? The values inherent in homeschooling? What was it that sunk to the middle of my son's heart and inspired him to 1. want to work and 2. work for the benefit of someone else? I wish I could say there was a formula that produced this result. But God is more mysterious than that.

This is a picture of him in his volunteer shirt, nametag and men's 28" waist shorts. He's so... mature. It looks nice on him. And it feels nice in our family. More often than not he now helps me carry in groceries, care for his littlest brother, and even holds the door... sometimes. He has often been the voice of reason when his younger brothers are bickering and there have even been moments when he has been calm during my frustration. He's not always successful at his attempts to be more adult, but he's trying and I applaud his attempts to move along more in this direction.

This summer he has had some great maturing moments: riding a dirtbike for a weekend, buying an electric guitar and teaching himself, hiking without complaint through a national park, staying home alone for the first time by himself, running the batting order for his brother's team, and riding his bike to the library on his own. And then there's the job with Park and Rec: washing and driving golf carts, folding gym towels, helping at an art camp, playing with babies in the day care. Amazing.

This summer he's experienced a growth spurt in his integrity and character. I had been hoping for this day to come, but honestly, I wasn't really sure that it would. It has. It's beautiful to see your child move away from childhood and step out to see what it is that he might be designed to do. It's amazingly touching to see him move toward me at a time in life when I thought he would want to move away. And, at the core, it's grace that God would work in his life in this way at this very moment.

I still say what I've always said, "My son is amazing." And he is.

Kindergarten

2011-07-10T09:37:00.000-07:00

My youngest son will be 5 in about six weeks. He's on the borderline of the cutoff when parents investigating Kindergarten are actually encouraged to "hold back" their boys from starting school. However, Kindergarten readiness has nebulous benchmarks and they're mostly social. Academically, can he count to 20? Does he already recognize at least 18 letters? If so, he's going to spend his year re-learning it all over again anyway. Is he ready to write? Is he able to rhyme? If he's not that doesn't mean he's not ready for higher thinking. It could mean, like my children, that there are other things going on... such as ADHD or dyslexia. If he's not ready in one skill set should that determine he's not ready for any skill set? Obviously, my answer is, "no."

I'm not holding him back (and I hate that term). So, I'm currently considering what to do this year for my final Kindergarten student. I've already taught Kindergarten-aged students twice so you'd think that I could just pull out the old ideas and go with them. But, no. Each child is different and I have a natural propensity for reinventing the wheel.

My first little Kindergartener was a quick student. We were doing preschool activities at home and by the end of the year when my 4 year old was reading I discovered we had actually far surpassed the Kindergarten benchmarks. So, we moved straight into first grade. Was it my curriculum? Was it my advanced child? Was it the way I made learning fun? Who knows. But that child didn't actually have a kindergarten year.

My second little man spent his kindergarten year tagging along with his brother's learning activities. We did some Sing, Spell, Read and Write without the singing and some Math for the Hundredth Day (now out of print) activities and I read aloud to him. But as our months went on, his reading wasn't progressing (as it turns out, he's my dyslexic son) and I actually relabeled his Kindergarten year as Pre-Kindergarten. The next year he started in K and then mid-year, at his birthday, he had finished the entire Kindergarten Horizons Math and was thinking and reasoning at higher levels because he was present for his fourth grade brother's education. So I bumped him into first grade everything. His reading didn't develop until a couple years later, but he was ready to think more and Kindergarten seemed babyish to him.

It turns out, neither of my older sons ever actually did a formal year of Kindergarten. So, I'm contemplating what my "Final Four" should experience this year curriculum wise. A focus on nature? Literature extensions? A simple ride-along with HIS fourth grade brother's education? As I read the Kindergarten benchmarks found all over the web he is already halfway to meeting them. The most important thing is that he daily has some of my focused time and energy and he'll easily meet the rest.

What are you doing with your Kindergartener this year?

Summer's Second Act

2011-07-01T16:39:00.000-07:00

On this first day of July we said good-bye to my parents who had been visiting for well over a week, finished S's last day of soccer camp, played at the lakeshore beach and took a long afternoon siesta.
This was our moment of rest.

This past month we've been busy getting summer under way: the vacation that wasn't quite what we'd planned, the beginning of a beautiful summer mom's park group, getting J fitted to his volunteer job, the start of B's baseball, camping with extended family. Juggling, swaying, finding a balance. The children didn't understand how necessary today's rest really was, but looking ahead I know that summer will have its tumults to come and today, if only for a few hours, was the day for stillness.

In many respects, this is the beginning of Summer Part II. Part I introduced the routine. Part II is where we live into it and settle resolutely into summer's palm. This is the part, the core if it, where those memorable quiet moments and discoveries will surprise us. Tomorrow my husband and I will entrust the children with friends and escape to the mountains for a night. It will mark the next act of summer, in which I create and ponder and reflect and grow. In these next days my plans and philosophies for what comes next will become present and I will listen to what God is speaking into my world. These are the days I've been moving toward for months. They are my only preparation for what is to come next.

I know that Summer's Third Act will come blowing in with a lesser grace and greater urgency. The endings will come one after another. And we'll launch into the unknowable future of leading and learning. For now, I am exactly where I want to be.

And Then We Stayed Home...

2011-06-07T10:07:00.000-07:00

Staycations are nice. Everyone sleeps in their own beds, you don't have to buy ice every day, it's cleaner, and we don't all have to go to bed at the same time. There's time to enjoy a summer night in the backyard after the kids are in bed, there's space for separate read aloud stories for each child, there's room for everyone's suggestions to happen.

We went out to dinner when we came home from camping and then laid out our schedule for the week:

Tuesday: Kung Fu Panda Matinee movie and evening mini golf.

Wednesday: Pirate's Cove Waterpark. The trick is to go before all the day camps start.

Thursday: The warmest day. So we went swimming at our local pool and had A&W root beer floats after dinner.

Friday: A trip to the nickel arcade and then Krispy Kreme for National Donut Day.

Saturday: Hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park.

We hiked through snow (!) to Alberta Falls.

and enjoyed a walk around beautiful Sprague Lake.

We ate the food we'd intended to eat if we'd been camping and we only spent the cash we had on hand so there are no vacation bills to pay. (We pocketed the extra to pay for a car repair.) We read books on the lawn, worked in the yard a little, stretched out that camping laundry all week long, and just relaxed. Sunday was kept for doing nothing, our tradition of transitioning back into regular life. We did still clean up the house and do a little bit of work, but because we left town at the beginning and the end it still felt like a vacation.

Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons will always be there. We just know to go at the end of summer now. So, August 2012 you'll find us there.

Well, We Did Go Camping...

2011-06-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

...but this was Plan C. The night before we were to leave for Plan A, S came down with something that really knocked him askew. The forecast for the Yellowstone area was going to be down in the 30's at night with snow likely. So, if he was sick, it wouldn't be the best time to go tent camping. All of us in one cold tent with one coughing child eleven hours from home... yeah, we cancelled. Plan B was to stay home a few days and when S was better we'd camp at Rocky Mountain National Park for a few days. Still camping, still a National Park, but much, much closer and hopefully warmer.

And then S woke up the day were were going to leave and he was FINE. He's pulled this trick a couple times so he MUST have allergies, but I can't tell the difference until he's over it. We debated a bit, but after phoning the ranger in Yellowstone and finding out that there was snow on the ground and more to come we still opted for Plan B. But then our friends called with Plan C and we jumped on it. Camping with two other families with kids (yay!) and dirtbikes (yay!) out in the middle of beautiful nowhere Colorado. I'm talking pee-in-the-woods-nowhere.

It's not the Grand Tetons, but it's Mount Princeton in the Collegiate Range near Buena Vista, CO. We actually had a beautiful campsite with a stream running nearby, a zero-depth sandy entry shoreline, and rocks and a thirsty Cottonwood to climb on. It was windy and warm. Sunburns and drama happened (random Jeep crash in our campsite on night number 1, lost child, vomiting, dead van battery). But we were so glad to have begun our summer with friends and freedom. Thanks for the invite, Noy and Dawn!

Finishing Year 9

2011-05-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

In two days we'll be done with our ninth year of homeschooling.

We'll finish up our study of the American Civil War. We'll sum up our notebooks, play a fun review game, explore a DVD and check off a few more skills on our annual evaluation. And the next day we'll pile into the van and take off for the great outdoors. But we must finish.

After all these years it's still very hard for me to finish the year well. We want to be outside. We want to be done with formal learning and move on to the enjoyment of watching our perennials bloom, weeding their beds, shooting hoops an constructing things. We want to move into summer learning, summer reading, summer math quizzes (at my children's requests!) and summer squirt gun wars.

We want to pile in the van and take off for the great outdoors. This Saturday we'll be in the Grand Tetons and then Yellowstone. Later in the season we'll explore Colorado Springs, Keystone, and Grand Lake. We'll take in a Rockies Game, camp with our church, meet friends at the pool. My oldest is working his first job this summer volunteering at our recreation center, my middle is going to enjoy baseball in the evenings, my youngest will move up a level in swim class.

How do we finish with all of these enticements ahead of us?

By putting one foot in front of the other if for no other reason but for closure and encouragement. To affirm my sons with the knowledge and character they've attained. I want to sit back and look at my nine year old son, no longer a third grader, and tell him that this was worth the effort, that he is worth my effort. I want to look again at my now-Kindergartener and be reminded that some things, some people are just beginning. And I want to finish the story of Joseph with my boys, the redemption that came through family helping family, brother forgiving brother, and the years of togetherness they shared, establishing it as our backdrop for the summer days that lay ahead.

Almost there, sisters. We're almost there. But rather than the ending being so enticing, I think it's the beginning of what comes next that enthralls and draws me. I can't wait to see what this next season brings for all of us.

Summer Reading 2011

2011-05-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

The 10 weeks of summer make such a nice package that it's become my habit to create a theme to my reading. Maybe I'm just that much of a unit study kind of a person that I want everything to have a common thread. My theme this year kind of silly (not like the year I only read stuff from Nobel prize winners), but I'm excited that it's almost time for it to start. I am pushing through the last few books on my nightstand and then I get to begin...

"What's All the Fuss About?" Summer Reading 2011

...in which I will read all those books that - recently - rippled through our culture to my great ignorance.

1. Harry Potter. by J.K. Rowling. Now, someone please tell me, what is the first one in the series and can I borrow your copy? I wish I could get it on Kindle because I don't think I want to carry these big things around.

2. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. A friend gave me the first book for my 40th birthday this year. Which made me laugh. I understand Jacob is the most popular boys' name 12 years running in part because of the character in this book.

3. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Maybe my fundamentalist side has cooled off enough that I can read it for what it is. Which is fiction.

4. The Shack by William Paul Young. My husband says it takes place in a location where we've vacationed before so it's pretty vivid. And there's something sad about a child. How should I prepare myself?

5. The Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell. I read Outliers a couple years ago and it was interesting. An interesting read may help me stop crying after reading the Shack, yes?

6. In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan. Or some other recent book that exposes the food industry's indescretions. I've intentionally not read these because I didn't want to have to change the way I lived. But it's time for me to be a big girl.

7. Love Wins by Rob Bell. I went to hear him speak about his book last month here in Denver. He was in a very friendly room so it was an enjoyable time. But I'm curious to see what all the stink is about.

8. Simply Christian by N.T. Wright. It hasn't caused ripples, but I think it has made a big impact in my circles and it's on my "must read" list for the year so I don't want to go the whole summer without pushing through that list as well. I'll find any reason I can to read N.T. Wright.

What should I add? I'll take your suggestions for fairly recent books if you can think of any others that impacted large segments of our culture.

Of course, there will always be Uncle Tom's Cabin...

What We Learned From A Year "In School"

2011-05-15T10:18:00.000-07:00

Last year at this time, we made a huge decision. Based on our family’s needs, our oldest son’s needs and taking into account his strengths and weaknesses, we decided to send him to a charter school. I had homeschooled him from his beginning and I still fully believe in the merits of home education (I have two other sons I continue to teach at home), but simply said, there needed to be some new elements added to the life of my oldest.

Keeping in mind that there is good and bad, sweet and sorrow, “beauty and blood” in everything I’ll just say that we’ve had a year of growth opportunities. New struggles have popped up but new joys were found as well. Now that we’re at the end of the year, it seems right to evaluate our experience. And it seems right to do it gracefully.

Unexpectedly, I didn’t feel the relief; the fulfillment of that wistful, desperate homeschooler’s dream wherein the yellow bus comes and takes our ornery children off to school making all things right. There was no wistfulness in my heart when he left our home each day. In fact, my favorite time of day became 3:00 -- when I got to have him back. On our ride home we’d talk through his day, make a plan for getting the week’s assignments done, walk through tough situations he’d had and I got a general feel for the state of his heart. So very sensitive to the state of his heart. And based on that daily conversation, either my peace was proved or my suspicions confirmed. The rising and falling action were continual for me.

My days were filled with a new kind of tension. A homeschooler at heart, sending my child to an institution grated on me for the entire year. Those first months I was looking for reasons to pull him out and bring him home and almost fell prey to creating an insurmountable situation just so I could do that. I had to buy him boxer shorts because his tightie whities were pointed out in the locker room. His math teacher tried to put him two years behind in his placement based on my brilliant quirky kid’s performance on one math entrance exam. They couldn’t keep his records with confidentiality. I didn't see the results of his hearing screening. The lunch menu wasn’t published in time for him to take part in pizza day. You name it & I made an enormous desolate internal mountain out of it.

But I never had, and still don’t have, a peace about bringing him home. As much as I hated the negative peer interaction, the amount of volunteer time we had to put in, the lack of communication between the school and the parent, and the daily exposure to degenerate phrases and values, I really loved the content he was working with in his core classes. He was reading Poe and Bradbury, writing poetry, drawing. They covered rough riders, concentration camps, genetics and other topics I hadn’t even scratched the surface of. His science teacher actually skipped the chapter on evolution and he aced his human reproduction test. I was okay with both of those.

The son I have at the end of the year is different from the son I sent at the beginning. Through different forms of hardship, he has learned more about who he is. His experiences with bullying put him a position to confront his aggressor with objectivity and to consider his own levels of compassion. (In the end his words to me were, “Maybe one day, I hope he and I can be friends.”) His class time rekindled his love for the social justice of FDR, his speaking abilities were affirmed, his leadership qualities surfaced. They read together 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens and I saw him implementing the habits in his own pre-adolescent baby-step kind of way. He figured out that grades are really strange ways of measuring knowledge and ability, but learned to roll with them when they offered the honor roll kids ice cream. In his first semester when the social aspects were really, really tough, he reminded himself that he was there to learn and if the kids around him were getting in the way of that he’d have to adjust. All of my conferences with his teachers were positive and complementary and I like to think he was a bright spot in that school, which was something I never imagined that my easily frustrated, explosive, inflexible, brilliant, romantic child could be.

I didn’t love the peer interactions that he had. He had a couple good buddies that seemed to be the grease in the wheels of his day. But, when the parents’ end-of-the-year survey asked me if he felt respected by his peers I had to say, “no.” For the most part, his peers are clueless to the ways of grace and integrity. Of course, I wasn’t there with him every day. I missed those small moments of acceptance that must have been there. I didn’t hear his teachers’ affirming words. I didn’t see how his principle noticed the days when J wasn’t his happy self. I have to give the school the benefit of the doubt, that at least the adults around him really did care and really did try to make learning and growth happen. I’ve been in youth ministry. I know that you can only give young people an opportunity, but they must choose to take it.

We've decided that he will return to his school next year, where he will have all the same teachers, will know the culture and will understand the expectations from the moment he sets his size 10 foot through the doors. And I will learn again to live with the tension of wanting to teach him myself in a place where he is loved and yet wanting him to make personal choices while he still has me to run home to. He is becoming himself and being challenged and he can stay as long as we see him moving toward those two things.

In the end he made the honor roll both semesters and his goal is to make the dean’s list. He performed at a higher standard because that’s what we had always expected of him and it’s the standard he’s now adopted for himself. He performed quality work. He engaged in the things that captured his heart and politely completed the rest. His teachers awarded him with the ownership award for exhibiting that “key of excellence.” He was given the opportunity to make good choices outside of my reach and to my proud delight. He recognized that the values of the world really are very different than the values of our family and he chose to stick with the family’s values. He still hugs me, still says he loves me, and I didn’t lose him just because I let go of his hand.

On Feeling Wrong

2011-04-28T11:05:00.000-07:00

There's been an interesting discussion on my homeschool group's forum this month. This question came from a first-year homeschooling mom who is trying to tread the waters of unschooling i.e.: detoxing her kids from the way of the system so that they can then move into their way of learning. She asked,

"When does it stop feeling wrong?"

"Wrong" meaning that uncomfortable feeling that we all probably experience when we realize our child isn't experiencing what everyone else's child is experiencing?

It's an interesting question to me for semantic purposes. What does my new friend mean by "wrong?" Not right? Not right in whose eyes? Not right for her child? Not right in the global set up of society? What kind of society?

I can't say that I have ever felt "wrong" for what I do. I've felt unsatisfied, unqualified, and frustrated. I've been impatient with the process and wished for the end result to happen way before its time. I've wanted to give up, questioned my methods and philosophy, been jealous of other families, painted unrealistic scenarios of alternate choices. In retrospect, I've even set myself up for failure and sabotaged my own efforts.

But I've never felt wrong.

My entire "career" I've actually felt right. Right for the moment, right for the child, right for the end goal, right for his weaknesses, right for my passions, right for this season in life. But the next moment, next child, next goal, next weakness, passion or life season... well, that is anybody's guess. I don't go into the next moment a lot. I can't rightly anticipate what it will hold.

We could define wrong using other terms: incorrect, unsatisfactory, perverse, mistaken, misguided, erroneous and so on. But I think the definition in my friend's head at this point in her homeschooling career is probably, "bad." "It's bad to homeschool my child and give them experiences that are out of the norm."

When we start ascribing moral judgments on this amoral thing that we do, we can easily fall into the darkness of doubting. All revolutionaries must feel it at some point, but the point where they succeed is when they grow accustomed to wrong feeling a lot like right.

I watched another TED video today on this very topic. You can see it here: http://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html

Kathryn Schultz says this: "The miracle of your mind isn't that you can see the world as it is. It’s that you can see the world as it isn't."

When we determine to homeschool our kids, we are seeing the world as it isn't. We are projecting into the unwritten future what our kids will look like as a result of our intervention and involvement in their academic education. We create a goal for them and move them toward it. They, of course, aren't always going to reach that goal, but that doesn't make us wrong. It makes us, and them, human. We envision things differently. "That's why," Kathryn says, "we get things wrong."

But "the source and root of all our productivity and creativity" is our obsession with figuring everything out, our desire to get things right. That desire is evident when we see that the nation's classrooms are producing things that we don't think we can produce, so we enroll our kids. But when the classrooms fail in productivity and creativity we figure out how to make those things happen and we bring our kids home. It's the way we're made. As co-creators, and I would say as co-creators designed by God, we continually seek the renewal of all things. We won't stop doing it.

"When it comes to our stories [plot twists, red herrings, etc], we love being wrong. Our stories are like this because our lives are like this. We think one thing is going to happen and something else happens instead."

I can't predict how my children will respond in retrospect or what effect my efforts will really have. But neither can those who are publicly educated. They may look at me in 10 years and say, "Mom you really screwed me up," or, "Mom, you were a visionary and a prophet," or they may be ambivalent and just go on with their life. I think one of these is more likely than the other, but what I think is going to happen may not be what actually happens. The outcome is completely not up to me.

But I don't feel wrong. I feel charged with a vision and when I hit a bump that seems insurmountable, I turn. Something else will happen. And it will be right.

Cleaning up After Lent

2011-04-27T12:14:00.000-07:00

This is only my second year observing Lent in any fashion. Each year, I've taken something up for the season, something that I felt would draw out my passion for God, that would stretch me a bit and help me sense things anew. These activities, to some extent, succeeded at reaching inside of me to bring out my true self that continually gropes for God.

The wider practice, of course, is to give something up for Lent; foregoing something enjoyable creates a void, one God longs to fill with himself. Perhaps one year I will feel so moved. It is certainly good to make that kind of room. What I saw however, and only in some instances, were those who attempted the most difficult thing imaginable, tackling it as a personal record of sorts. Or those who make Lent into a do-over, a chance to kick a bad habit. Or even those who test God by giving up life-giving things like medication ...or marriage.

"I understand the significance of self-denial but if we’re not careful, we can so easily just fall into religious practice for the sake of religious practice. If the goal is merely the giving up of something without taking up of something more significant, the focus is just merely on the stuff which we give up or really, the focus is on the practice of giving up something." -- Eugene Cho

During this season, I kept coming back to Jesus's words in Mark where he declares all food clean. "Listen now, all of you— take this to heart. It's not what you swallow that pollutes your life; it's what you vomit—that's the real pollution."

It's not what we put in, or fail to put in, ourselves that moves us closer to God; it's what comes out of us. What draws us closer to him are the acts of devotion that we create, not necessarily the disciplines we follow.

I have two friends whose Lenten practices inspired me. One decided to give up yelling. Another determined to give up ingratitude. Perhaps I courageously could have followed suit with something from Jesus' list? "It's what comes out of a person that pollutes: obscenities, lusts, thefts, murders, adulteries, greed, depravity, deceptive dealings, carousing, mean looks, slander, arrogance, foolishness—all these are vomit from the heart. There is the source of your pollution." These are examples of the things that come out of us that wreck us, that cloud our ability to see truth, that make us impatient with the process of God. These are evidence from our hearts that what we really believe is that God's love ends. These are precisely the kinds of things that God wants to transform and clean up and bring to himself for renewal.

‎"The practice of entering into the Lenten season has often been reduced to the question: “What are you giving up for Lent?” ... The real question of the Lenten season is: How will I find ways to return to God with all my heart? This begs an even deeper question: Where in my life have I gotten away from God and what are the disciplines that will enable me to find my way back?" -- Ruth Haley Barton‎

Now that the celebration of Easter is upon us (should Easter have an end?) I find that I am staying in my vein of Lenten practice: listening more intently to what I think the Father is saying. I do not feel as if Lent was just a season for holding my breath until I can go back to what I once knew, or was. Spiritual activities ought to grow us more deeply in our love for Christ, enabling us to better sense his presence from that point forward. They are not temporary interruptions in our otherwise predictable patterns. Easter is a celebration of the new creation. Let it be so in me.

Time Alone with TED

2011-04-26T09:31:00.000-07:00

My husband is off to Q Portland 2011 today. Our whole team of TNL pastors are attending the conference and I look forward to the energy and inspiration they return with.

Since we at home are on Spring Break, he took my youngest two sons with him to Oregon so they could play with my parents for a few days. My oldest is in school and I stayed behind in Denver to care for him and hang out in the evenings. The two of us began our morning at Starbucks for some hot chocolate -- good start before I dropped him off at school. He hopped out of the car and said, “Go have fun, Mom!”

So, what do I do for fun? I bet you can’t guess.

I came home to watch TED lectures online. Call me whatever you’d like, but I’ve always wanted to just sit and absorb some of these ideas. Today’s the day!

I watched this one and was inspired: Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation. If you don't want to spend 18 minutes watching it the gist is this, "Rewards narrow our focus and restrict our possibility... they only work in a narrow band of circumstances." While he wasn't taking it this direction, this applies to education as much as it does to business. The rewards we offer our kids for completing a task, a lesson, a project are typically extrinsic and unrelated to the actual task. i.e.: "If you memorize the Bible verse/poem/Gettysburg address you can pick something out of the treasure box." This creates a situation where my son's mind can actually only focus on the reward. The task becomes a secondary and much smaller slice of his focus, so he'll forget the Bible verse once he gets the reward. There's no connection, no buy-in on his part. I might feel like a cool mom-teacher, but he didn't actually learn anything.

Dan Pink also said, "If/then rewards destroy creativity." And I'd have to say that based on my experience, this is unequivocally true. My sons will do the minimum it takes to get the reward; and the product won't be colorful, personal, or though provoking. If I want my child to truly engage in something, I can't hold a "carrot" out for him hoping that he'll be inspired. He'll only focus on reaching that carrot when what I really want is for him to experience the journey to new knowledge.

Inspiration begins within. Dan pointed out that "unseen intrinsic drive matters." For instance, letter grades are essentially a carrot. If you answer everything correctly, you get the carrot. You don't want your grade to fall, so you continue to answer correctly. In this instance, answering correctly doesn't come out of a bubbling well of inner passion. It's only a means to an end. In order to think creatively you have to develop something else in the process besides its end.

Some studies are showing that these extrinsic motivators actually make productivity and creativity decline. So what are we left with? Pink says this:

Autonomy - the urge to direct our own lives.
Mastery - the desire to get better and better at something that matters
Purpose - the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

This is the good news for homeschoolers. At our very core, I think we agree that these are the goals we strive for. As much as my son in a classroom wants to learn toward mastery, his mastery will stop at the end of the school year. -- I remember being in middle school and throwing out all my folders at the end of the school year. The school even provided the big trash cans in the hallways. But my son at home can keep pursuing an idea, a craft, a problem, until his thirst is quenched. Mastery is a big buzzword in homeschooling because that is our goal. Grades are not. Autonomy is what we hope to move all of our children toward as they grow in maturity. But if you release a little more to their direction, they'll have more to actually take on. And if you align what they are learning with their own individual purpose, that God-given bent that is different for each of them, you'll have an inspired, passionate student (who will naturally move toward autonomy and mastery).

Take this final portion of your school year to re-examine your methods through this lens. Is what you're trying to accomplish in agreement with these three areas in the life of your child? If not, give everything a tweak. Give them 20 minutes to do anything they want, read or study anything they want, build anything they want and see what they move toward. Throw a problem out for them and see how they'd solve it. Or give them a project day where they can take anything from your study that week and turn it into something tangible, self-directed, self-created. It may just be the thing that they remember forever. No treasure box necessary.

Spring Break Starts Now

2011-04-16T22:09:00.000-07:00

We are now commencing our two week spring break tradition. With Easter being so late this year, perhaps we'll actually get outdoors while we're off. But who knows. In fact, the best part of our break this year is that I haven't scheduled it to death. We have things to do this Wednesday. And that's about it.

I'm wondering if I'm shooting myself in the foot by not having a game plan [insert saying about idle hands here]. Perhaps I should feel compelled to clean the oven or sort the clothes in the boys' closets? But it's Holy Week. And I want to leave room for the mystery.

During our second week I'll actually have four days at home alone. Dh is taking B and S to visit my parents while he attends Q in Portland. I'm staying behind with J who is attending a charter school. My job is to take him back and forth to school each day and then hang out with him in the evening. But while he's away, I have those four days all planned out... gym, coffee/lunch with a friend and some very specific writing time.

Perhaps I know that since two of my boys will be gone soon, I am leaving room to just enjoy them. They are the sweetness in my life. Case in point: that picture above? It's what I get when my boys ask if they can pick blossoms from our crabapple tree. I get the entire branch. Boys and spring just go hand in hand.

Money Unit for Elementary

2011-04-11T16:27:00.000-07:00

This is our last week of school before we take our Spring Break. We're finishing up a unit on Money and this is some of what we've covered:

We found a very cool online site at www.minyonland.com. It teaches B about spending, saving, and investing by way of some really fun games and strategies.
Aside from that we've worked through the Kids Money Book that I found at our library (but can't locate on Amazon to link to). It's taken him into big ideas like inflation and recession as well as more easily grasped topics like credit and ATM's. It also covered the history of money.
I printed out some blank checks and a register and gave him bills to pay.
We're reading Lawn Boy by Gary Paulsen aloud and learning about some fantastic economic principles as we go. I highly suggest it for 3rd grade and up.
Tomorrow we'll toss in some geography and highlight what other countries call their money.
Everyday, he has the opportunity to "earn" money as we completes his school tasks...about $10 a day. At the end of each week I've given him a couple bills to pay, had him save 10%, give 10% and then I set up a little "store" that he can choose to shop from or save his money, or give more. The giving money will turn into actual cash and be given away for real this week. The second week, I also gave him the option to borrow money if there was something he really wanted to buy, but the credit card bill would come the following week. He chose not to overspend or borrow. That's my boy!
We set up a grocery store and I had him attempt to guess what the prices for each item would be (Mountain Dew was worth $5 to him!). Then he practiced making change with his brothers.
Naturally, we've done many, many money word problems.
We're finding verses in Proverbs that talk about money and think through their principles before he copies them down and illustrates them.
He is mastering some vocabulary such as counterfeit, value, currency, money, and denomination.
This week he is writing a "how to" essay entitled "How to Save Money to buy the Lego Star Wars Death Star." I'm using his interests to help build up his weaknesses. Having him write anything is a challenge. But he's been wishing he could buy the Death Star for a couple years now so he's inspired. Last week we did a graphic organizer of his ideas and this week he's doing the writing.

It's been a good study and while I'm a little tired of picking up all the play money laying around I think that B really has a grasp on what good stewardship looks like and I see him putting his knowledge into practice.

What do You do for You?

2011-03-26T20:57:00.000-07:00

"What do I ever do that's just for me?" This is a question that most moms wrestle with from time to time. And once we've asked the question, we begin to wrestle with the validity of the question. "Is it okay to even think about what I need to do for me?" We have to be able to answer, "yes" to the second question, before we can even be real with the first one.

I have a few patterns that I repeat frequently:

Go to the gym three times a week. I am a creative person not an athletic one. In fact, the history of my intentional physical exertion prior to now could be bullet pointed like this...

20+ years ago: marching band for three years of high school.
17 years ago: weight training for a semester in college with a goal of fitting into my wedding dress.
9 years ago: walking the neighborhood with the toddler in the stroller and the baby strapped to my back to sweat off some baby weight.

I did seek out a gym membership in college once after my grandmother died of heart disease. But you can correctly guess that fear of a cholesterol-laden death was not quite the motivator I needed ... and I was already in the best shape of my life. But, as is true for everyone with age, I recently began to see negative physical changes. Couple that with a downturn in my emotional well-being and I had the means and motivation I needed to make room for purposeful, challenging, regular exercise. The emotional and spiritual effects of working out have been amazing. And so I will press on.

Volunteer in my church within my giftings and never outside of them. This is a life-giving activity for me. My husband gets paid to work for the church. I don't. But the fact that I still do it outside of a paycheck is a good clue that this is the work that excites me. If you ask me to plan an event, I'll likely say no. If you ask me to organize volunteers, I'll likely say no. If you ask me to work in the children's ministry, I'll for certain say, "no." But, if I get to do what I feel passionate about doing -- which, as of lately, is leading book groups, connecting moms, exploring scripture together, mentoring, extending justice, and supporting marriages -- I'll be there with the energy of a thousand burning suns.

Accomplish school planning and prep in the morning and not at night. Why? Nighttime is when I recharge. I put the boys to bed and then I read and journal. Oh man, I look forward to this time all day sometimes. If I spend all the quiet hours of the evening reviewing curriculum and cutting out letters for my preschooler I. will. burn. out. I am not so new to home education that I don't have a large "tool box" to pull from. And so, I fine-tune my sketched-out lesson plans in the a.m., collect some online resources and we're off and running.

In addition, there are a few things I do for myself occasionally:

Take two or three days a year to spend in silence and solitude. This one is new in the past two years and my introverted self rejoices whenever I get to type one of these days into my calendar. I take an inspiring book -- maybe one with probing questions at the chapter ends --The Message, my journal, a writing notebook, some notecards, a pen and my lunch and I go off to a retreat center to rest, pray, seek, walk, chew, and write. The day is completely unplugged, quiet, and wrapped in nature and mystery. I have one coming up in June...

Take Mother's Day off from mothering. I imagine this might send shocks rippling through you, but I actually leave my family on Mother's Day. Way back when my very young Active Alert / Inflexible /ADHD/Explosive/ODD son had the hardest time with special days, I set myself up for disappointment thinking he could treat Mother's Day with a sense of specialness. After a couple heartbreaking years, I gave myself permission to let those expectations go. My understanding husband then began to take my children to worship without me on Mother's Day and I would go for a walk through the fields near our house, work on photo albums, or take a nap and before they came home I'd leave the house and treat myself to lunch, shopping, writing in a sunny spot or maybe a movie. I come back a refreshed mother... one who was so appreciated as to be given the day off.

Have coffee with friends. I sometimes get this mixed up with ministry, but I try not to. There are coffee dates that are really counseling dates in disguise. And then there are coffee dates with friends who genuinely want to catch up with you. You can tell these because they ask me very little to do with homeschooling methods and they aren't probing to find out the backstory of stuff going on in the church. I'm talking about coffee with friends who can offer true give and take. I seek these out at least monthly if not more often.

Attend a conference that has nothing to do with homeschooling. I attend an annual home educator's conference as well but I view that weekend as more of a "teacher inservice" time that's attached to my work. This year I'm looking into attending a conference on life-mapping, another on spiritual formation and I'm actually signed up for one regarding mentoring. I look forward to finding new avenues that help me become the me I'm intended to be.

Your habits may look very different from mine, but you may want to explore the idea of repeating something daily/weekly or with more regularity as well as incorporating activities that only happen seasonally or annually. Just having coffee with friends once in a while isn't enough for me. So, I've found a way to balance the schooling, family, ministry and friends that helps me recharge with a mind toward wholeness.

I'd be interested in finding out what other things you do just for you.

Cookie Unit for Preschool

2011-03-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

Cookies are a ton of fun. And in December we seem to make a different kind every week. This is a great unit to get your kiddo into the kitchen with you. It's only fitting that the activities in this unit require the consumption of lots and lots of cookies, but you can use whatever you like when an activity calls for a reward.

Cookie Unit for Preschool

Verse: Psalm 119:103 "How sweet are your words to my taste. Yes, sweeter than honey to my mouth." Create hand motions for the keywords: Sweet=use your pointer fingers to draw your mouth smiling a big, sweet smile. Words =Shape your hand like it's operating a puppet and make it talk. Taste = Stick your tongue out and point to it while you say the word. This makes them laugh every time. Yes, sweeter = Nod and then do the motion for "sweet" again. Honey = use your pointer fingers and buzz them around like bees in front of you. Mouth = close your mouth and point to it.

Letters: C (cookie) + O (oatmeal) + Z(zoo) + J (Jesus)
Use 9x15 construction paper. Cut out a large chunky letter. Your child will be decorating each letter with things that start with it. After he does this, I attach it to a different colored full size sheet of construction paper, and write the capital letter, the small letter and the word underneath it.
C = Cut out cookie pictures from magazines and glue them on.
O = Use white glue to cover the letter O and let your child sprinkle on some oats.
Z = Animal cookies work great for this activity. Glue them on a big letter zoo with white glue.
J = We glued on candy canes, turned upside down to represent Jesus (and read the Legend of the Candy Cane). But you could use nativity stickers or a rubber stamp creche image if you have them.

Books and Activities:

1. Cookie Trail. Use anything to create a trail through your house to find a cookie at the end. I have a whole hoard of miniature erasers, but you can use beans or Legos or whatever you want. Just wind the "crumb" trail around the furniture, under a table, or up and down stairs to make it fun. Have them collect all the crumbs as they go and let them have the cookie at the end.

2. Sniff Around. Hide a real or a fake cookie from your child. Have him try to find it by asking you as many as twenty questions requiring "yes" or "no" answers.

3. Make the Big Letter C.

4. '10 Little Cookies' Flannel Board Song. Cut out 10 brown flannel circles. As you sing the song, you can let your child either put them on the flannel board, or put them on ahead of time and let your child pull them off.

(To the tune of 10 Little Indians)

1 little, 2 little, 3 little cookies.

4 little, 5 little, 6 little cookies.

7 little, 8 little, 9 little cookies.

10 little cookies with milk (and pretend to glug down a glass of milk).

Similarly, if you use glue to make your flannel cookies sparkly you can do this rhyme:
Ten little cookies in a bakery shop,
Shining bring with the sugar on top.
Along come (Name) w/ a nickel to pay,
He buys a cookie and takes it away.
Nine little cookies...

5. Cookie Mobile. Cut out a big cookie shape out of brown construction paper. Provide tiny black triangle shapes for your child to glue onto their "chocolate chip cookie." OR let them use a hole puncher all over the cookie to let the light through. Write their memory verse on the back of the cookie and hang it by a length of string from the ceiling.

6. Ding Dong! Game. You'll need to make some playing cards by drawing six cookie shapes so that you fill a piece of white cardstock. Do it again on another piece of cardstock. Now, you'll draw a chocolate chip on one cookie. Draw two chocolate chips on the next cookie. Keep adding a chocolate chip to each cookie as you draw until you have a cookie with 10 chocolate chips on it. Leave one cookie blank and on the last cookie write DING DONG! You'll need two sets of these cards, so make a copy of what you've just made and cut them all out. You can discard on of the Ding Dong cards as you only need one.

Play the game like you'd play Old Maid. Deal out all the cards. Lay down any matched pairs you have. In turn, each player draws a card from any opponent, trying to avoid the "Ding Dong" cookie. If you draw a card that matches on of yours, lay down the matched cards. Then, the turn passes to the next player. Play continues until a player gets rid of all of his cards.

7. Cookie Division. You can use the cookie cards from Ding Dong! to practice division. Use a dozen cookies and figure out how many different ways you can evenly divide them. Add more cookies and figure out how many ways you can evenly divide two dozen.

8. Make the Big Letter O.

9. Cookie Gifts. It was nice of the Grandmother to bring over a gift of cookies in this story. Collect a couple empty Pringles cans and clean them out. Cover the outside of the can with white or colored paper and let your child decorate it. Then, help your child make a batch of cookies, sizing them to fit in the canisters. Stack the cooled cookies in the canisters and give them as gifts.

10. Story Sequencing. Make up some sequence cards that go with this book. On blank 3x5 card draw draw one of each item: a cookie, a glass of milk, a straw, a napkin, a mirror, a story book, a pen, a piece of notebook paper, crayon, scissors, broom, matchbox bed, and scotch tape. Use clip art or let your child help with the drawings. Then have your child retell the story by only looking at the cards. Similarly, you can mix the cards up and let them put them back in the order of the story.

11. Bake Cookies. If you haven't baked cookies yet, don't wait any longer. Get in the kitchen and let your child help you measure and mix.

12. What's Next? Practice sequencing in real life. Give your child an instruction. Let them follow it. Then give them the same instruction and add on one more. Do it again. Generally, this age can follow up to four instructions fairly well. Make it as difficult as you think your child can manage without frustrating them. Make the instructions fun, physical acts and this should be a favorite skill building game.

13. Cookie Cutter Matchup. Trace 6-8 Christmas shaped cookie cutters and cut them out. Lay the cut outs on a cookie sheet and set the cookie cutters nearby. Let your child match up the cookie cutters to their correct shape. You can also do this activity by cutting out play dough shapes with the cookie cutters instead of using paper cut outs.

14. Stuffed Gingerbread Man. Find a clip art outline of a gingerbread man to use as a pattern. You'll want your pattern to fill an entire sheet of brown construction paper. Copy the pattern onto two piece of brown construction paper and cut them out. Stack them and use a hole puncher to make holes all the way around the Gingerbread man about an inch apart. You'll also need a shoelace, some tissues and some construction paper scraps. Let your child decorate the gingerbread man with the construction paper scraps. When dry, let them wad up the tissues and sew them inside using a simple stitch with the shoelace.

15. Gingerbread Man Chase. Set up an obstacle course for your child. This works best outdoors. Prepare about five stations where your child is across, crawling under, skating over, running through, or hopping between something. Have him start out by saying, "Run, run run as fast as you can! You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!" Then let him take off and say outloud what he's doing as he goes. "I jumped across the sidewalk, I crawled under the swing, I skated over the driveway, I ran through the garden, I hopped between the trees and I can run from YOU I can, I can!" Then it's your turn! (or another sibling).

16. Make the Big Letter Z. You could connect it with the animals in the story of the Gingerbread Man if you want to. My boys were just excited to work with animal cookies.

17. Compare and Contrast. The Gingerbread Man and the Gingerbread Boy are two very similar stories. I used this opportunity to put them side by side and let my sons tell me what was similar and what was different about the two stories. Then I let them make up their own version with different characters by asking, "Who would your gingerbread man run away from?"

18. Recycled Paper Ornaments. Using your Christmas-shaped cookie cutters and an old phone book you can make some cute little homemade gifts for Grandparents. Let your child rip pages out of the phone book. (Ripping is a great skill they need to practice). Then let them put the pages in a bowl of water, one at a time. Squeeze them out and start wadding them up together. Stuff them inside of a cookie cutter being sure to push the paper all the way to the edges. Once these dry in a day or so, you can push the paper out in one solid shape, thread a needle with some pretty thread and push it through the top of the ornament, looping it around to make a hanger.

19. 'Christmas Cookies' Flannel Board Song. Make 10 cookies out of felt: Green, red, yellow, round, square, white, striped, big, small and the last one a creation of your choice. As you recite the poem, let your child remove the cookies from the flannel board.

Ten Christmas cookies
All in a line.
(Name) ate the green one,
Then there were nine.

Nine Christmas cookies
Cooling by the gate.
(Name) ate the red one,
Then there were eight.

Eight Christmas cookies
There never were eleven.
(Name) ate the yellow one,
Then there were seven.

Seven Christmas cookies
That were really fun to mix.
(Name) ate the round one,
Then there were six.

Six Christmas cookies
Guess who should arrive.
(Name) ate the square one,
Then there were five.

Five Christmas cookies
Who could ask for more?
(Name) ate the white one,
Then there were four.

Four Christmas cookies
Smell good as can be.
(Name) ate the striped one,
Then there were three.

Three Christmas cookies
There are just a few.
(Name) ate the big one,
Then there were two.

Two Christmas cookies
Now we're almost done.
(Name) ate the small one,
Now there's only one.

One Christmas cookie
As yummy as can be.
(Name) at the last one,
Now there's none left for me.
-- Natalie Hill

20. Gingerbread Man Chain. You'll need a gingerbread man pattern to trace around. Accordian ford long strips of construction paper to fit the size of your pattern. Draw the pattern so that the arms go off the folded sides of the paper, so that when you cut the pattern out and unfold the paper, all the men are attached at the arms. You can make your chain as long as you like. On the gingerbread men you can write out the days of the week, months of the year, ordinal numbers, or just use it to countdown to Christmas.

I'm sure you can find so many more activities to go along with these books by searching the web. I bet this doesn't even scratch the surface. Remember, too, that baking cookies with your child can help them practice all kinds of necessary skills and you can even practice the letter sounds with your child by baking letter-shaped sugar cookies. Enjoy.

How We Saved our Homeschool Week

2011-03-15T12:56:00.000-07:00

It's normally dh's job to take J to his charter school every morning. I get to pick him up every day. But every Tuesday morning it's my turn to take him.. This allows dh to get to work to prep for the day (TNL meets for worship in Tuesday nights rather than Sunday morning). This means I get the other two boys up early so they can come along on our drive to J's school.

It's been my habit to just wake them 5 minutes before time to leave, grab their blankets and let them ride along in their pajamas. Breakfast came after we returned home -- when they were a little more awake.

Last week I had them get dressed because I knew we'd need to stop for milk on the way home so they could eat breakfast. And then it hit me.

We should do some of our schoolwork at the coffee shop.

What a fabulous idea it was. After saying good-bye to J we arrived at our local haunt at 8:00 and ordered hot chocolate with whipped cream and sprinkles. By 10:30 we were done and an amazing sense of freedom ensued.

What's wonderful about doing school at the coffee shop?

1. The boys aren't making a mess in our house.
2. All of my supplies have to be in my bag which means I'm little more prepared.
3. I am not distracted by email or dishes or laundry or the general mess that is our house = They have my full attention.
4. They are excited to get up early!
5. They have a comfy couch with a family bathroom in a direct line of sight (meaning S can go on his own).
6. There are games that S can peruse when he's tired of the activities I brought for him.
7. We all take a game break together.
8. We're done before lunchtime.
9. We're already up and dressed so running an errand or two is completely possible.
10. I have at least two hours in the afternoon to get other things done and to give S a nap.

We can't do it everyday. What we can accomplish there is a little limited -- we leave home projects with many parts, book research, internet activities, etc. But we can bring markers and colored pencils, math, our read aloud book (have to wonder who else is listening in from afar), and most other things.

I think we may have just saved our homeschool week from end-of-the-year doldrums.

Forty Days of Praying

2011-03-09T10:32:00.000-08:00

Last year, I tried a Lenten practice for the very first time... I took up writing for forty minutes every day. I know most of you might think of Lent as a time to give something up for forty days, but I wasn't so moved. And it was good.

This year -- and as it turns out, in congruence with my desire to grow into a more helpful person -- I'm taking up 40 days of praying. For you.

Well, maybe ;-)

This little book above is a month of guided prayers for morning, throughout the day and then in the evening. My practice is simple: Read the morning prayer and listen. Then read it again and identify a friend to bring before the Father and who I can share the prayer with. And continue throughout the day and into the evening.

So, if you get an email from me with a snippet from St. Teresa's thoughts, you were the one God brought to mind that day.

And it was good.

I Will Not Let February Get to Me: Ending Quietly

2011-02-24T11:22:00.000-08:00

We've had a busy month:

Two snow days
One son's physical
Swim lessons for two boys
Taekwon Do for one
A movie making co-op
Bible study every other Friday
Retreat planning
Retreat cancelling
Going to visit a friend
Having a cousin come visit here
Tae bo workouts
Tebow's autograph
Volunteering for picture day
Babysitting for a single mom
TNL each Tuesday
Free the Girls event
Meeting with a right-brain tutor
Doing the left-brained taxes
A co-op Valentine's party
Our homegroup on Sunday
Two parent/teacher conferences
Coffee with two friends
Classes for B on Fridays
A tour of Celestial Seasonings
Two boys to the dentist
One unit on water
And now... sickness. Which means we missed out on the aquarium and a play.

February didn't get to me this year. Our regular schedule was interrupted, we found new inspiration, we accomplished a unit of study, I focused on being intentional, we played and I'm not frazzled, worn, discouraged or derailed.

We've been purposefully busy. So now, it's okay for my two littlest to chill on the couch -- albiet coughing and moaning -- and let February slide on out. We will greet March with healthy new bodies, a new unit of study, longer hours of daylight and the beginning of Lent.

We made it.

Whew.

I Will Not Let February Get to Me: Finding Affirmation

2011-02-16T13:10:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned before that B is dyslexic. I've also vowed to get him some help and this Saturday I did.

I contacted a local educational consultant - slash author - slash "Outlier" (he's completed his 10,000 hours in the field for any of you who've read Gladwell's book), Jeffrey Freed. He's worked with a couple of my friends' kids and I knew he'd be just the man to help B out and give me a feel for where we're really at with this.

I can tell you, I've never had an experience where I felt more affirmed. I think I was beaming as B completed every little activity Jeff asked him to do, even when it became more and more difficult. Jeff assessed him in reading, spelling and math skills and when he was done he touted B's brilliance and giftedness and definite "right-brained" slant. He even said, "I don't even think he's truly dyslexic, he's just that right-brained." It's so good to see your child attempt something that you know is hard work and succeed (can you spell perpendicular backwards without a pause? Now do it if you're dyslexic).

It's also good to be affirmed for making all the right choices for B in his life so far such as keeping him out of a cookie-cutter school experience, avoiding situations where he could be labeled or emotionally abused, giving him a non-pressured learning environment and encouraging him to continually push his feelings outward.

All these years, I've truthfully homeschooled for my oldest son. He was the one that would have wilted in a classroom (or killed it, take your pick). And in the past couple years as I've clued in to B's exceptional needs it turns out that homeschooling was the exact thing he needed too. He wasn't just a tag-a-long in my endeavor to help my oldest, he was getting his needs met as well. That's amazing because at one point I was almost convinced that he'd be a great public school kid...

God is good to us.

This week, we are customizing B's curriculum. Since I'm already a unit study practitioner, it's already fairly customized. But I'm trying out some of the things that Jeff suggested. B is happier, I feel less pressured to add in more and more (Jeff said take stuff out!), and I'm praising him for asking questions. Here are three things I'm focusing on right now:

1. If B can't visualize it, he can't learn it. This means, write words in colors, even changing it at each syllable. It means as he's reading silently to remind him to get a movie going in his head of what he's reading. It means have him close his eyes as I take him through an auditory sequencing scene.

2. Work his left hemisphere. Because he sits so strongly on the right, his left is obviously weak. So we're creating crossword puzzles, working through some sequencing exercising, and determining how similar things are different. As I find more ideas I'll incorporate them.

3. Use intensity in short periods. The photo above is how we took a break yesterday. Rather than plowing through our work before lunch, the boys went outside (yay!) and played in the biggest pile of snow we have left. After about an hour of play we finished our reading exercises and called it a day. It'll take some getting used to for me to have a break in the middle but I think it's good.

I Will Not Let February Get to Me: Remember to Celebrate

2011-02-15T08:06:00.000-08:00

Midway through February comes a little day of love, like a built-in day to take a breath and remember why we do this: love, intense and never-ending for these little people learning to become big people.

I spent most of Sunday working on our taxes and when that was finished I decided, spur of the moment, to have a little family celebration. It is our tradition to have two desserts on Valentine's Day. So, I made a chocolate souffle to go with strawberries and vanilla bean ice cream. B & S decorated the table while I made quick, simple valentines with chocolate candies on top for the boys. Then I went and picked up heart-shaped pizzas.

Love all of these boys.

Yesterday, we went to our homeschool group's Valentine Party: all the bowling and video games you can fit into two hours. My boys have never had the opportunity to exchange valentines and they were thrilled to find their bags filled with little notes, candies, pencils and silly bandz. It was so cute. They also each picked out two pieces of candy to give to their older brother who wasn't at the party.

And that's all we did yesterday. I didn't squeeze in anymore school work in after the party. I just let the day be the lighthearted day it was supposed to be... remembering sweet moments with my kiddos, enjoying how they are growing, appreciating their strengths. Celebrating.

I Will Not Let February Get to Me: Bite Sized Pieces

2011-02-10T07:49:00.000-08:00

Where my boys ate lunch yesterday... crawling on the counter as if they're part cat.

Our Wednesday routine is this: I take J to his school and then I go to my gym to workout. Back at home dh begins B on his Math and one or two other things I've left out for him to get to. S follows along with something he considers to be similar. (Love that little brother HAS to imitate his big). After I return, dh leaves for the day, I shower, eat and I start with B around 10:30.

Yesterday didn't happen like that. The icy roads made traffic slow and I wasn't able to make my class in time. DH was flexible yesterday and suggested I try for the next class after I come home for a bit. (Love that man.) I went home for a few minutes, let B finish his breakfast and then did our read aloud time, in his jammies laying in the sunlight pouring in over our couch. Bite Number One.

I gave him instructions for three things to work through and then I went to the gym. When I returned B proudly announced that he had finished two if the items including all his math AND the math we didn't complete the day before "without complaining." So proud... both of us. Bite Number Two.

I determined that we'd have lunch and then get going on the rest of our stuff. I didn't lie to myself. We actually did it. We chunked it up: Water experiments, pond life food web activity and then I combined his grammar lesson with his daily writing... making a list of adjectives that describe life in a pond. My son was engaged and I was completely present. Bite Number Three.

In the last few minutes before we needed to pick up J, I had B read to me. Gathered on my big bed with my two sweet sons, knowing we had completed everything, I listened to my dyslexic son read a chapter at his grade level (!) while his little brother took a quiet nap next to him. It was restful. I didn't feel anxious listening to my slow reader because everything else was done and, frankly, I didn't want to be anywhere else. Bite Number Four.

Me: 4
February: 3
Pulling ahead.

I Will Not Let February Get to Me: Getting to it When I'm Prepared

2011-02-09T20:06:00.000-08:00

I read a post on Donald Miller's blog yesterday and it simply made me laugh. There are so many mornings after breakfast that I say to my boys, "We're starting at 9 o'clock!" and then...

I answer emails and check out Facebook (still have 30 minutes left).

Quickly make up that flipbook for B's notebook page and research some online activities to go with learning about pond life (10 minutes left). "Boys get dressed please."

Then I remember what bills need to be paid, which makes me balance the whole account, add some things to my to-do list for the day, download some ecoupons to my shoppers card because one of my to-do's is to go grocery shopping, check email again and start responding again... and before you know it, it's 9:30, they still aren't dressed and I'm feeling very distracted.

I can so relate, Don.

So, I didn't want to jump into yesterday until I was ready. I had to shake off the distractions and organize myself a bit first. I began yesterday by doing the planning I should have done over the weekend. This cut into our school time, but the boys were playing with Hot Wheels tracks nicely so no harm done. When I've planned a little, I feel so much less stress. In trying to tackle February I'm also trying to tackle my stress level and flying by the seat of my pants doesn't support that goal. Over the course of the day we implemented much of what I'd planned and felt no stress. Goal reached.

As we pursued our plan I had two sweet moments:
1. While teaching S about yeast so we could make his big letter "Y," we pulled out my bread machine. It became a project for all three of us. B chose what "flavor" we made (sweet white bread), S helped to measure and turned it on. We all looked forward to it as it baked. In fact I had a ton of snow to shovel off the driveway and when I came from finishing that chore, I came in to the relaxing smell of freshly baked bread. I loved that most of all.

2. While teaching B about water we've been doing some experiments out of a book I got for free from the library cast-offs. It's actually a great book with accessible experiments utilizing items I actually have in the recycle bin! But the best part is seeing B's excitement to do the simplest tests: coloring water, freezing it to see if it expands, melting the colored ice in warm water while watching the denser, colder water fall to the bottom of the pitcher, and mixing salt water and fresh water and seeing where things will float. He's really excited about doing these things. And that is exactly why I enjoy being a homeschooler.

Score:
Me 3
February 3

I'm catching up.

I Will Not Let February Get to Me: Taking the Pressure Off

2011-02-08T07:57:00.000-08:00

Pressure Point Number One: As I sat down with my lesson plan yesterday morning I felt instantly behind. This two week unit on water and famine was supposed to wrap up this week, but a fun field trip last week made me behind a day. Getting behind a day when you only have 8, hurts a little.

Pressure Point Number Two: Looking ahead I saw that our next unit is supposed to be plants. Obviously, my curriculum hasn't looked outside my house where at least a foot of snow is covering all my plants. How was I supposed to make that work?

Pressure Point Number Three: My 4 year old was supposed to start a new unit at the start of February, but with two snow days and a field trip day, I kept putting him off. He wanted to begin, but I hadn't prepped at all.

Pressure Point Number Four: We were getting a late start. This always happens as winter settles in. Getting out of bed is harder, pancakes sound better than cold cereal, bathrobes are more cozy than clothing and before we know it, it's later than I wanted it to be.

My solutions:

#1: Program a new script in my head -- "Field trips are not superfluous goof-off days." I never consider field trips to be part of our curriculum unless they directly address what we're studying. But this cool opportunity arose and so we took advantage of it: B was at the Microsoft store making a commercial with a team of two other boys. They were learning about technology, working together and thinking in terms of creative possibility. I reminded myself that everything in my curriculum can't be so matchy-matchy. That break from the usual is often the place where our learning clouds open and we get something we didn't get before.

#2: Remember that I am not teaching a curriculum, I'm teaching a child. Because we just extensively covered plants several months ago and because we're in the dead of winter and don't have an outdoor lab we're telling the curriculum, "no." Pushing plants to a time of year when they're actually growing makes more sense. Instead, we're going to extend our water unit because we can and because B is really into the book of water experiments that we're going through.

#3: Give my preschooler just a little bit and he'll be happy. I don't have to have a full-fledged lesson plan for the day with all the parts and pieces cut out and laminated for him him to effectively learn. His time is more about getting my attention than it is about learning something new. I read him a cute book and then took some previously used pieces from the last time I did this unit (with B when he was 4) and ran with them. I showed S the idea of fractions: 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4. He discovered two things all on his own: 1. that 2/4 = 1/2 by stacking the pieces on top of one another and 2. If we cut two halves in half, we get 4 pieces. High fives all around and he was filled up for the day.

#4: S can review his letters and other skills on the computer and it's perfectly valid. While he's doing this, B and I can move much more quickly through his lessons and projects and memory verses. Without little brother asking for another copy of a color page, a chance to play with me, a snack, etc. we were done by lunchtime, S was happy, B was interested and yesterday was a good day.

I Will Not Let February Get to Me

2011-02-07T08:20:00.000-08:00

Home educators often get discouraged in the middle of winter.

We are very aware of how much there is left to cover for the year and some of us even wonder if the first half of the school year meant anything.
The weather is less than ideal and so we are Vitamin D deficient, our events get postponed on icy days which creates disappointment, and the children can't easily go outside (tomorrow's high is going to be 12 degrees and we have 4inches to a foot of snow on the ground depending on where you stand).
Besides all of that, taxes need to be filed, summer vacation reservations need to be made and we might still need to get Christmas boxed up and put away.

I neared the end of January and felt like I was in a good place to meet February this year. I was feeling confident. Then we had some terribly cold weather and school was cancelled for two days. (For those of you who don't know, my oldest is in a charter school while I home educate my two younger boys.) This meant that my oldest was home and it created some tension. When he's off and his brothers aren't I give him study time to complete homework or to work ahead on his school work. But he's continually coming to ask questions and it's disruptive to our flow. I'm still figuring out a balance so he doesn't feel like a disruption. Needless to say, my expectations weren't being met and I needed to lower them a bit. But by Friday I was still feeling that February feeling. Rats. I thought I had it beat this year.

So, I'm determined to stare the month in the face. To look at each day with the blessings it holds and be thankful for the moments that mean the most. I am determined to not get sucked in by the discouragement and just know that in the thick of things is when most of the change is happening.

Bring on the changes, February. I'm ready to learn.

The Ridiculous Book Pile

2011-01-25T15:28:00.000-08:00

My reading list is growing and growing and I'm almost at the point of being overwhelmed by it. New things just keep begging for my attention even though there are a few I haven't been able to get to.

I am pretty prone to wandering around the 200s section in the library. As I did so, I found A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life by Parker J. Palmer. It became my New Year's read, leading me into 2011 with a new purpose: "How do we change those deeply embedded habits of fixing, saving, advising and setting each other straight?" My hope is that I'm a better listener this year as a result.

  I wanted to look into the life of someone who lives out compassion. This Is a Soul: The Mission of Rick Hodes is just such a life. His work in Ethiopia came to my attention as my friend, Eisley, was headed there herself (with my luggage full of things for her "adopted" child's family). So, I thought I'd enjoy a look into where she was headed and found an extra helping of inspiration as well. It's back at the library if you want to check it out.

  Something about this story plays into my overactive sense of justice. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is about THE woman whose cells have been used for just about anything science has done and discovered in the past 60 years -- and yet her family can't afford health insurance. It's intriguing and heart breaking at the same time. It's a bit of a tangent from my usual repertoire, but I'm diving in.

  I'm leading a little Bible study group and we've taken on the task of the whole book of Mark this session. As it turns out, the study guide we're using relies on Mark for Everyone for it's "answer key." I'm a bit disappointed that the guide uses leading tactics, but reading this commentary is worth the frustration of encountering the unanswerable question.

  I am helping to plan a retreat for newlyweds and as we've prepped our content and purpose I discovered that Great Expectations: An Interactive Guide to Your First Year of Marriage, by a new friend of my husband, happens to be hitting all the topics we'll hit on the retreat. I'm going to speed through this one so I can pass it on because I think it will be very useful. BTW -- click on the button on my sidebar to follow the progress (praise God!) Joanne is making as she recovers from her stroke.

  This is on my Must Read List for the year. I have One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are on my Kindle and I'm reading it slowly because I never, ever, ever want it to end. It's quite possibly the most beautiful book I've ever read. My friends who are reading it concur. It's that amazing.

I haven't read anything by Tim Keller before but everyone I know who has says it's completely worth the time. The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith was another birthday gift.

The books that popped up since New Years.
  I see a little unit study of my own in these three: telling and hearing the story of our lives. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life one has been on my "B" list since it came out, but when my mother-in-law gave me Storycatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story book for my birthday and when I finally was able to locate The Rock That Is Higher: Story as Truth (one of my "must reads" for this year) it seemed appropriate to put them all together for some concentrated thought.

Books to toss in when other stuff gets too heavy.
I'm saving a couple for a time when I just need to stop thinking and read something for fun. A friend gave me Stuff Christians Like for my birthday for my new Kindle. I've laughed at the blog so I expect it will be truthfully amusing. Churched: One Kid's Journey Toward God Despite a Holy Mess is another chapter in my personal quest to read all-things-by-disillusioned-church-kids. I hear it's funny. We'll see.

From the used vortex.
  Our libraries all have "used" sale sections and I swear it's a dangerous forced vortex. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books showed up in my hands and I neglected to put it back, though I have no idea when I'll get to it. An Altar in the World: Finding the Sacred Beneath Our Feet is by an author that I've grown to appreciate in the past few years and I didn't know she had anything new out. I'm looking forward to fitting this one in.

See. It's ridiculous, right?

Teaching Boys About Women

2011-01-23T08:41:00.000-08:00

B and I are doing a little overview of history right now. It's a loose and interesting unit with a few goals:

To give him a sense of being part of something bigger. As we work through our timeline cards he gets a real understanding that the world was already in process long before he arrived and, God-willing, it will be different as a result of his being here.
To open up a sense of his own purpose. We're putting his personal timeline alongside the significant events of the past decade and we're doing a little talking about how those events may have affected how he lives. When we put ourselves among important things we begin to share in that sense of importance.
To give him an introduction to just a few of the major players of the past. Really, we're just scratching the surface here.

As we go through this little survey I'm taking the time to tell him stories of strong women in history. So many of the curriculums focus on the ingenuity of men and only highlight a few women. While men have been busy driving the bulk of humanity's advances, their wives - at the very least - were raising the next generation of history makers. That's no small deal. Many women did more than that and while the vast majority of their contributions went unnoticed, there are many whose stories can be learned.

So, I'm teaching them to my son. I want him to see men and women as intellectual equals and not as competitors. By excluding women from our history telling we teach through silence that the future is left up to the men. I'm not comfortable with that silence.

I'm taking him through two books that are appropriate for his age:

They Led the Way: 14 American Women (Scholastic Biography Series) by Johanna Johnston.

The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh

We're also talking about some men: ;-)

Men of Science Men of God by Henry M. Morris

But mostly we're talking about B, his family history, how the world changed during the lifetime of his grandparents and will continue doing so during his own. The question is, what condition will he leave the world in and how will he treat the people around him?

Dyslexia Discovery

2011-01-22T07:23:00.000-08:00

B has been more than frustrated with Math lately. (If I'm honest with myself, it's been longer than "lately." I believe I went looking for new curriculum this summer and ended up simply continuing with our current pick.) He displayed some extreme frustration this week because he'd neglected to finish one day's assignment and therefore needed to finish it and do the current day's assignment. He cried. "I just have SO MUCH math to do."

But I don't think that was why he was crying. I think he cried because it's not making sense. And I think it's not making sense because of his dyslexia.

His curriculum utilizes spiral learning. So at the same time that he's learning to multiply and divide, he's reviewing addition and subtraction of some rather large numbers. Every day that he has subtraction he asks me,

"Do you take the bottom out of the top, or the top out of the bottom?"

Every time.

When he has big numbers to multiply he uses the white board to write out 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 x7 x 7. Then he groups them into 14s and adds the whole thing. I look at this and wonder why he uses the extra white board step and when I see the doodles all along the edges I assume he's spending the time unwisely.

"Not so," says his dyslexic father who encourages him to keep using that method. He's being visual and I am reminded of some things I've read about right-brained children...using the whiteboard is easier on the hands and eyes...visualizing is powerful...

And then I get it. Not only does dyslexia affect his reading and writing, it affects math too. I knew it affected the way he saw the world in total, but I'd excluded math from that world somehow.

I'll be more sympathetic toward B's math struggles, to be sure. But more importantly, I'm finally going to apologize to my bank account and do what it takes to get my boy some help.

New Year Troubles

2011-01-12T12:16:00.000-08:00

In this new year I've had a few troubles.

I have a finger that keeps cracking and bleeding. Same thing, same finger, last winter -- our first in Denver. Dry, dry air here. It hurts and it takes months to heal.
I sliced off part of a fingernail last week. It's all healed up but it was equally painful.
We slid in the snow and hit the curb, and cracked the rim of our tire. After changing the tire during the snowfall, we had to buy a new rim and now have to re-do the alignment. Stinks.

But seriously, that's nothing compared to a fellow CO homeschool mom who spends her days learning at home with her girls, is incredibly smart, has a knack for speaking and is pushing hard after the kingdom. Her troubles for the year consist of this:

Out of the blue, had a major stroke.

I'm humbled and rattled and sitting at the feet of the father today for Joanne Heim. Won't you join me?

EH Best of 2010

2010-12-31T11:15:00.000-08:00

Looking back over this blog for the year I find that my voice has actually been a bit quieter. I pigeonholed myself a bit too much with the homeschooling title and as a result I found that when my thoughts were turned to other facets of life, I tended not to share them. On the other hand, I did share a lot of reading ideas as well as preschool unit plans. So, if you're looking for inspiration in those two areas, I hope I helped a little. Here are the 2010 posts that stuck with me longer than it took to hit "publish post."

10. Thoughts on how we celebrate Epiphany.

9. A little educational method from Jesus.

8. How our homeschool group raised over $5,000 for Haiti relief.

7. In which I reflect on how our kids take after us.

6. A quiet little momentous occasion.

5. The one I was afraid to publish.

4. On teaching friendship.

3. Doing what you think you ought.

2. Enjoying our new reality.

1. The same for one as for the other.

Enjoy what the new year has in store for you.
-- Debra

Christmas Break

2010-12-22T10:49:00.000-08:00

Two nights ago I woke the older two boys up in the middle of the night and invited them outside to watch the eclipse. We laid huddled together in hats and thick blankets and let the universe do its thing. We joked about the cold, made up acronyms for each other, looked for constellations and just waited for the first phase to finish. It's amazing how entertaining it was. Of course, staying up late is a fun treat for all three of us. We let Dad and S sleep. To each his own.

We did two days of school this week to finish up our unit study on communication. One day was spent watching the Doctor Dolittle musical (we just finished the book). The next day we finished some art and a book about Helen Keller, finished up a newspaper page, plugged through math and reviewed some timeline cards. We were going to then watch the Miracle Worker, but Christmas break was calling and we wanted to be done. So we put on Christmas music and read Christmas books and made cookies instead.

It's going to be a quiet Christmas here with just the five of us. It will be interesting to find out what our own traditions become. There's no snow in Denver this year but one son is getting a gift that may require a drive up to the mountains to play for a day. Other than that, I expect to keep going through my reading list.

May you find ways to enjoy what the season has in store for you.

The Books I Chewed on in 2010

2010-12-21T21:18:00.000-08:00

I read 37 books this year. This is a record for me. I remember well reading avidly when I was younger -- to complete library summer reading programs, to fill my own wall to wall shelf with books, to escape into the comfort of my inner self -- but since I've been a parent, I haven't put the time into it until now. These are the ones that left the biggest impression on me:

1. Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation by Parker J. Palmer. In the throes of my own identity crisis, I picked up this little book and my soul breathed a relieved, "Thank you." All those outside voices and unrealistic expectations were put into proper perspective and I felt free to spend the year trying to identify and claim those "birthright gifts" I'd abandoned.

2. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. I happened to simultaneously read this as I was preparing some thoughts on mentoring. Coincidence? No. This novel is a wonderfully composed case study of what effective, loving mentoring looks like and the lifelong effects a nurturing guide can have on a life. It should be required reading for all spiritual directors.

3. Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith by Henri J. M. Nouwen. I went to this hoping for insight into being a more congruent spiritual director for others only to discover it's really a posthumous collection of Henri's ideas on being a spiritual director to the reader. It was exactly what I needed it to be and more. My only disappointment is that I read a library copy and don't have it to refer back to again and again.

4. The Critical Journey, Stages in the Life of Faith by Janet O. Hagberg and Robert A. Guelich. Our church leadership uses the language in this book to help us understand the community's individual walks of faith. One weekend, while I was sick, I finally got around to reading it. It changed the way I understand and address the spiritual journeys of everyone around me. Placing myself in the spectrum also congealed past experiences to that which was useful and as I work to form priorities toward continued growth I can hang them on the shape of my present stage. It's exciting stuff.

Happy reading in this coming year. And let me know the very best stuff you come across.

Turkey Unit for Preschool

2010-12-18T19:20:00.000-08:00

It dawned on me that I hadn't posted this unit, so I'm about a month overdue. These ideas are pieced together from all over the place. If you did a quick internet craft search you can easily find tutorials to make a turkey out of different materials every day of the month. I grew tired of making turkeys and took a couple different turns in our study. On your nature walks this month, scout out a real feather to use with the fourth book in the list below. If you don't already have colorful craft feathers you'll want to pick some up from the craft store.

Turkey Unit for Preschool

Verse: Genesis 1:21 "God created every winged bird after its kind and God saw that it was good." Create hand motions for the keywords: God = point upward. Created = work your fingers together like you're kneeding clay (we use a lot of playdough so this was an easy way to visually connect to the idea of creating). Winged Bird = flap your arms out wide like your flying and keep doing it until the word "kind". God = point upward again. Saw = make glasses around your eyes with your hands. Good = thumbs up.

Letters: T (turkey) + F (feathers) -- still more voiceless sounds.
Use 9x15 construction paper. Cut out a large chunky letter. Your child will be decorating each letter with things that start with it. After he does this, I attach it to a different colored full size sheet of construction paper, and write the capital letter, the small letter and the word underneath it.
T = I bought a pack of turkey shaped stickers and he decorated his T with them.
F = We glued colorful craft feathers all over the big letter F.

Food Ideas:

Make turkey sandwiches for lunch. If you cut the sandwich into different shapes or use a turkey shaped cookie cutter, you can do this several days out of the month.
Turkey Track snack: Buy the dry chow mein noodles. Coat a cracker with peanut butter or cream cheese and arrange three noodles on the spread to look like a turkey footprint.
Turkey nuggets. If your kids like chicken nuggets, you can make these (especially with leftover Thanksgiving white meat) just as easily.
Turkey cut out cookies. Get a turkey cookie cutter and make some sugar cookie cutouts. Or if you have letter cookie cutters, spell out t-u-r-k-e-y.
Turkey cookie place card. We made big chocolate chip cookies, wrapped them in saran wrap, then glued a construction paper turkey head to the front and colorful feathers to the back of it. The kids wrote on the feathers telling Grandpa what they loved about him, and placed it at his place on the Thanksgiving table.

Books and Activities

1. Hungry Turkey Picture. The turkey in this story eats and eats and eats. Glue a simple turkey cut-out to a piece of construction paper. With brown or black ink pads let him make "fingerprint" feed all over the ground around the turkey.

2. Eaten Letter. Put 4 - 6 letter flash cards in front of your child (letters he's learned so far). Have him close his eyes while you quickly take away a card. Ask him to open his eyes and identify which one the turkey ate.

3. Plastic Spoon Turkey.  Use permanent markers to draw a turkey face on the underside of the bowl of a spoon. Or glue on googly eyes with construction paper beak and waddle. Create a fat, brown construction paper body and glue on colored craft feathers for the turkey's tail. Poke the spoon through the body. From the back side, tap the end of the spoon and make him peck at some make-believe seed on your table. Or tape the spoon to the back of the paper to keep it stationary.

4. Make the Big Letter T.

5. Turkey Trot Game.  To make three Turkey gamepieces I adhered three turkey stickers (the ones he used to make his big letter T) to craft foam and cut each one out. I made a gameboard filling a 9x15 sheet of construction paper with 3 columns and 13 rows. The bottom row in each column says Start. Place the game pieces on start and race the turkeys. Use a die to determine how many spaces each turkey goes at a time. First one to the end, wins.

6. Colorful Turkey Tail. DLTK-holidays.com has a really cute Turkey craft online. The feathers are all little spaces for your child to cut out and paste 15 different color swatches. Use your color ink cartridge and print it on your 'best' quality so you can tell the difference between shades like gray and silver.

7. Color a Tom Turkey. I found one on Enchanted Learning that labels the parts of the turkey.

8. Bird Sounds. Print out pictures of different farm birds (rooster, chick, duck, hen, turkey, goose, etc.). Hold up each one and say the wrong bird sound. Let your child correct you. You can add to this activity by reading "Cock-A-Moo Moo" by Juliet Dallas-Conte.

9. Turkey Bingo. Print out a blank bingo card which you've fit into the outline drawing of a turkey. Slip it into a page protector. With a dry erase pen, fill in the spaces with the letters you've worked on so far. Write the letters again on the white board or a piece of paper and point to them as you call them out. Let him erase one letter each time until he has a bingo. My son always wanted to erase all of his letters -- which was just more good practice for him!

10. Shaving Cream Art. Spray a couple handfuls of shaving cream onto a dish or tray. Drop four or five drops each of red and yellow food coloring into the cream and slightly swirl it in with a craft stick. Cut out an outline drawing of a turkey and gently press it face-down into the shaving cream. Let dry to see the bright swirly print your child made. You'll have a lot of shaving cream left over, so you could do this with several cut-outs of the different farm birds.

11. Turkey Nest. Use some die cut leaves, or cut them out of magazines. Let your child glue them to a piece of brown construction paper. Write "Turkey's build their nests on the ground." Then type 'Turkey Nest Picture' into Google images and print out your favorite one depicting a clutch of turkey eggs. Let him cut out the picture and paste it onto his nest on the ground.

12. Turkey Puzzle. Using whatever large turkey picture you like, print it out or glue it to cardstock. Cut it into about 6 different jigsaw pieces and then let your child put it together. Unless you have an avid puzzler, I wouldn't make it more than six pieces. And making sure you print or draw a border around the edges might be helpful for your little person as well.

13. A Turkey is a Bird Booklet.  It's a good time to drive home that turkeys are birds. Cut out several identical copies of a turkey outline. Staple them together to make a booklet. On the front write 'A Turkey is a Bird.' Then, use this list on First-school and cut out each picture and it's caption (i.e.: the little yellow duckling graphic and "D is for Duck") Draw a "D" on the page for your child to trace. Let him glue on the captioned duck image and then do the same thing on the other pages for as many birds and letters as you want to practice.

14. Flying Turkey Mobile. To practice our memory verse, we wrote each phrase of the verse on little turkey die cuts and glued a fluffy feather on the backside. We glued two popsicle sticks together to make an X. Then, we punched a hole in each turkey, tied it with strings of various lengths to the sticks and hung the whole thing from the ceiling.

15. Make the Big Letter F.

16. Feather Painting. Pull out a few colors of tempura paint and let him paint with a real feather instead of a paintbrush. You can then leave the feathers stuck to the paint on the page.

17. Find the Turkey. I have a turkey shaped cookie cutter that worked well for this, but you could just use a picture. Simply hide it somewhere in the room and have him find it. This activity never gets old.

18. Flannel Board Story. There are a lot of fun turkey flannel stories you can find online. I've used "Turkey in the Brown Straw. Ha! Ha! Ha!" (sung to Skip to My Lou) with all my preschoolers. You can find the instructions and the song a little ways down the page here.  There's other great ideas on that site as well.

19. Turkey Headband. You simply have to make one of these from Family Fun.

20. Feather Bookmark. Simply take a real feather (washed) and adhere it between clear contact paper. Punch a hole and put a ribbon through to finish the bookmark.

21. Two Turkey Handprints.  #1 It's time for the traditional turkey handprint craft! Paint your child's hand and press it to paper. Draw a beak, eye and wattle on the thumb and glue craft feathers over the fingers. THEN  #2 make a Mayflower ship. Stamp his hand again in the middle of yellow construction paper. Cut out a wavy ocean from blue paper and adhere it just covering the bottom of his handprint to look like a ship in the ocean. Then cut out a few squarish sails and glue them to his "mast" fingers. Add a sun and clouds if you like. It's adorable.

22. Thankful Card Stamping. I have an acrylic turkey stamp that I let my son use to make little notecards. We printed "Thankful for you" on each of them.

23. Pine Cone Turkey. You can google several different ways to make one of these. Essentially, get a pinecone and lay it sideways. Adhere googly eyes, a beak and wattle to the front of it. Use chenille stems to make some turkey toes for it to stand on and then insert craft feathers for a tail. Alternately, you can use chenille stems to form tail feathers if you like.

24. Turkey Sandwich Game. Using craft foam cut out the following sandwich pieces: two pieces of bread out of white, two or three pieces of sliced turkey out of pink, two or three tomato slices out of red, one squiggly line of mustard out of yellow, two pieces of cheese out of orange, two pieces of ruffly lettuce out of light green, two connected pickle pieces out of dark green, and anything else you can think of with any other colors you may have. Alter a die to cover three of the sides with the letter "T." Give your child a piece of bread to start. Let them roll the die. Every time a "T" comes up he can add a piece of turkey or tomato to his sandwich. Any other number allows them to pick from the other items. After three "T" rolls finish the sandwich.

25. Feather Float. Take a fuzzy craft feather and hold it over his head. Have his blow up under it to keep it afloat. See how long you can keep a feather in the air.

26. Thanksgiving Meal. As you get magazines throughout November cut out pictures of traditional Thanksgiving dishes that your family might enjoy. Let your child glue them to a paper plate to create his own Thanksgiving dinner.

As always, this list is not exhaustive and the ideas aren't even original to me. I've been doing some of them so long I just don't know who to give credit to. If you want to link back to my Apple or Popcorn units you may find more instructions there for typical activities as well.

Take Part in Colorado Gives Day

2010-12-08T09:53:00.000-08:00

Even if you don't live in Colorado, you can do something great for someone else today. We talk a lot about doing something good for ourselves, but there's a balance. Consider giving one less gift to someone this Christmas and giving that amount to one of these great causes today.

1. charity:water
My church, The Next Level Church in Denver, Colorado, held a benefit last night at a very cool and very premier music venue in town, The Gothic Theater. Our band was fantastic, my dh gave his most compelling message and we talked about people other than ourselves. People who have to drink dirty, diseased water. People who have to walk miles or hours each day just to get this essential nutrient for life. I water my lawn, run the dishwasher, let my kids fill water balloons with this thing that is really the key to physical life or death.

TNL wants to raise $5,000 to build a well for a developing country. 100% of your donations go to building that well. The organization funds it's infrastructure in other ways. Your donation simply gives water...life. If we exceed $5,000, well, then let's just go for $10,000. The link above will take you there and you don't have to be part of TNL, and you don't have to live in Colorado to be part of a clean water solution. Just give.

2. Sponsor a Child
My friend, Eisley Jacobs, a fellow Christian homeschooling mom and soon to be published author of a middle grade fantasy novel, sponsors an Ethiopian child through World Vision. There are 139 other children living near her child that need a sponsor. $35 a month. These kids live in communities severely affected by the HIV virus and your sponsorship gives them nutritious food, health care, education and clean water. Use the link above to sponsor a child and make Eisley's day knowing that more children will be cared for across the world. (She's going to Ethiopia herself right after Christmas!)

3. The Gathering Place
This is a Denver day shelter for women and children affected by poverty and homelessness. It's a phenomenal facility and the motto is essentially, "You are accepted here just as you are." They have a daycare center, counselors, food, clothing, a nap room, a cafeteria, an art studio... it's a wonderfully affirming place. Donate to them today like this:
1. Go to our GivingFirst webpage: http://www.givingfirst.org/thegatheringplace
2. On the checkout screen, enter your dollar amount
3. Choose "yes" for the question, "Is this a recurring donation?"
4. Set your "First Installment date" to 12/08/2010
5. Choose 12/10/2010 for "When should this donation end?"
6. Click "Add to cart."

Less is More 2010

2010-11-21T15:24:00.000-08:00

This Friday is Make Something Day at our house. We've observed this day for three years now and we all enjoy knowing that we don't have to do anything the day after Thanksgiving except make Christmas gifts for our family. We have most of our supplies ready to go. I can't let you in on what we're making this year, but I can tell you what we made last year.

Our homeschool group had a co-op day in December where we assembled bath products with essential oils. The host had the pretty tins, bags and tags all ready to go. These were the gifts the boys gave their Friday school teachers.

As a newbie at high altitude I don't know what possessed me to try giving baked gifts, but I think it all turned out okay. We iced some ring cakes like the one on the right and gave them to dh's co-workers. We ate everything else you see here.

For friends far away we make a little photo album every year with one or two pictures from every month so they can see how the boys are growing. This little album was just 4"x4".

B loved this project. He grated up several bars of soap (it made for a couple quiet hours), we mixed the shavings with a little bit of water and then pressed them into cookie cutters and let them dry. He packaged them into clear cellophane bags for his cousin, uncles and grandparents.

This was B's other big project. He wanted a sewing project. This kit we bought at the craft store made six cute silverware holders for his grandma's Christmas table. He did get tired of the detail work toward the end, but most of it was his own work.

J's gift turned out really cute. These are little throw pillows we made using a freezer paper stencil that he drew, cut out, ironed on the fabric and painted with fabric paint. We borrowed a friend's sewing machine to put them together. Then he stuffed them and hand sewed the opening. Two grandmas and two aunts enjoyed the results.

This was my project. Post-it note booklets and magnetic refrigerator pads with very small pencils.

S painted some wooden ornaments but I didn't get photos of them. If you're interested, you can google all of these projects and find out how to make them. None of these ideas are original to me. If you want to see what we did the year before you can see that post here.

Here are some other sites I've enjoyed looking at to get ideas for this year:

I'm Reading Some More

2010-11-18T13:26:00.000-08:00

I can't really pinpoint what it is that has inspired me plow through nine books in the past seven weeks. There have been full years when I didn't complete half as many. It's been a lot of quiet nights at home, but definitely a good time.

I recently finished I Want to Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth by Brenda Peterson. I had to read it. She, too, was raised as a Southern Baptist with a Forest Service employed father and for a time lived in the Bay Area. It was like picking the brain of a cousin. And it made me think. Though I haven't landed in the same place spiritually, I resonated with her frustration with the fundamentalists that discard this present world just because there's something better on the other side. It was a good read. If you're a recovering Southern Baptist with a heart for creation as it currently operates, you might pick it up. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

Here's more for the list to get through by Christmas:

I actually just finished the Lucado book last night. Someone in the blogosphere said it was the best book they'd read this year, so I requested it from the library. Turns out, it reads just like a Lucado book. ;-) Lots of stories, great metaphors and fleshing the scripture out into "what if it happened a little like this?" scenarios. A good chunk of the back of the book, however, is what I'm most excited about. It has a host of reflection questions and suggested action points that I'm going to peruse with seriousness during my day of silence and solitude on Saturday.

The Kenison book is one that I'm curious about and was also another gift from the library. It just came in so I'm pushing that to the front of my list to read before it's due back. I'm making some slower headway through Streams of Living Water: Celebrating the Great Traditions of Christian Faith by Richard Foster so this might be a good one to read at the same time that I'm chewing on Foster.

The Slezak book was a .50 purchase last week. A friend and I are considering starting a sort of a book group and getting some insight for .50 seemed like a good idea.

And finally, when Barnes and Noble gave me 25% off anything, I broke down and bought Anne Jackson's newest book. So many conversations lately have touched on this topic of "Why doesn't the church talk about x & y?" that it seemed I could justify the expense. And if my intution serves me well, it may be the best topic for the aforementioned book group. Want to come?

He's Doing It

2010-11-16T07:58:00.000-08:00

B is dyslexic. One of my hopes for sending J to a charter this year, was to free up some space to get B some reading help. However, financially, I am completely unable to get him outside help from a reading specialist. So, it's just B and I working through auditory skills together. I'm continually educating myself on what works for him and what doesn't.

This year, I was still picking up readers from the library easy reader section for him, thinking that if I kept his reading work a level below where he actually was, he'd be encouraged by what he could do and not discouraged by what he couldn't do. Self-perception is so important and if he begins to believe he's a reader then that will help him push forward.

He stumbled through them all and read ever so slowly. I was a tad bit discouraged that they were too hard and looked at the budget again to find a way to eek out a couple hundred dollars a month to bring in more help. It turns out that they may not have been too hard but perhaps too boring and maybe offensively easy.

I tried a different tactic. I picked up a Magic Treehouse Chapter book. He's been reading them to himself for a few months. I'm not sure how successfully he's read them but at least he appears to understand them and enjoy them. He also enjoys the audio versions and this might be the key to his success here.

When I sat down with him to have him read a chapter to me. He flew through it and because he's reading it faster he's understanding what he's reading a little more. Because he's already familiar with the characters he gives them a wee bit more expression and because he's reading a chapter book aloud to me he's stinkin' proud of himself.

I'm not afraid to push my dyslexic son anymore. As long as he's enjoying what he's reading he's willing to do the work to get through it. He's doing it.

Once and Again

2010-11-14T13:45:00.000-08:00

Q: What is the point of this picture?

If your first thought has something to do with Halloween, there'd be some truth in it. I could write a post about how my views on Halloween have changed gradually over time. Where I once was adamantly against the ridiculous celebration of all things departed, I have come to a more gracious resolution in its regard. I still don't put any effort into the day, but my children enjoy it a little and so I was happy to make my littlest son into a raccoon this year -- moreso because it was utilitarian than for any other reason.

The picture could be the starting point for an animal mask tutorial, but that's not my forte. Taking pictures at every step while trying to maintain a cleanliness factor during crafts with young hands is not the kind of plate juggling I'm apt to do. So, that's not it either.

Something in me said, "Take the picture. Remember this."

You see, the mask on the left was made seven years ago, by my first four-year-old son. As we studied popcorn and read through Raccoons and Ripe Corn we made our own paper plate mask and pretended to be raccoons raiding a cornfield. We went to the cornfield maze in Penn Valley, California with my not-yet mobile 9 month old and my whisker-embellished preschooler. We discovered that raccoons would have enjoyed the activity more than young humans because it takes little boys far too long to complete a cornfield maze with no emergency exits.

The mask on the right was made just a few weeks ago by my current four year old son. (My middle son, didn't get to do this project when he was four because our library at that location didn't carry the book). The process was fun for him, but the wearing of the mask was not to his liking. We did not take it to a cornfield maze. We attached a tale to a gray sweatsuit and made it his costume for Halloween... because we'd already made the mask and we needed a way to use it. We discovered that it's really not a lot of fun to wear masks. Tails on the other hand...

And yet, seeing these projects side by side evokes something. There are seven years between their creators. A different world for one son than is shaping up for the other. My youngest is no less us, but he will never know what it was like to live in California like his brothers remember, to fly with less airport security, to have a daddy with ten toes... so many things have changed. I have changed. All things considered it's odd that I even pursue these identical moments at home with them -- reusing the same curriculum for the third time now -- when so much of my mentality and circumstance is different from before. However, I am still moved to teach them the principles and structures that they can hang their curiosities and strengths upon. These masks say to me, "At the same time in their different lives I was there next to them guiding their explorations and opening a door for learning. The same for one as for the other. No one gets shortchanged."

In a way this picture represents that no matter where their paths take them, they did start in the same place. I've sent my oldest son on to middle school now. I've seen the development of his psyche, his intellect, and his heart. I've seen that homeschooling works and that the youngest years are the years of absorption. The boys will only look more and more distinct as time progresses. But at one time, each was four and was given the same opportunity to fully become himself.

Proximity

2010-11-09T13:31:00.000-08:00

"We get to place them

in proximity to the divine

and then let the divine

do the supernatural in their lives.

It's such an honor. It really is."

-- Michelle Anthony,
author of Spiritual Parenting: An Awakening for Today's Families

Popcorn Unit for Preschool

2010-10-29T16:01:00.000-07:00

We've wrapped up another month of preschool activities at home and, as promised, I'm sharing them with you. I received a lot of hits for the apple unit for preschool last month, so I hope this popcorn unit is just as helpful. Refer back to the apple unit for more instructions on some recurring ideas. You'll also need to put your glue sticks away and pull out your white glue for this one.

Popcorn Unit for Preschool

Verse: John 4:35(b) (NASB) "Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest." Create hand motions for the keywords. (Behold!: Do a fist pump with your arm. Such a fun way to start. Say: touch your lips. You: point to each other. Lift: point to your eyes and bow your head and lift it up as you say the next few words. Look: shade your eyes with your hand and survey the room. White: hold your arms out wide and circle them in together as you gather the 'harvest.') Then explain to them that corn is a grain that has to be harvested. (Remarkably, there are no verses about popcorn in the Bible).

Letters: P (popcorn), K (kernel), Q (queen). -- all voiceless sounds.
Use 9x15 construction paper. Cut out a large chunky letter. Your child will be decorating each letter with things that start with it. After he does this, I attach it to a different colored full size sheet of construction paper, and write the capital letter, the small letter and the word underneath it.
P -- we popped some popcorn and glued the white kernels all over the P with white glue.
K -- glue a zillion unpopped kernels to the K with white glue. If you have Indian corn kernels that adds some interest as well.
Q -- Since Q is so hard to put words to I put it in this unit because we read the book Popcorn at the Palace and tied it into the story. I printed out photos of the current and pretty recent reigning queens as well as some crown clipart. He cut them out and glued them to the Q after reading the story.

Food Ideas:

Pop some microwave popcorn. Let him watch.
Pop some popcorn on the stove with oil. Let him stir.
Make cornbread.
Pop some popcorn (either method) and add different seasonings. We liked cinnamon sugar, but you can also do Parmesan cheese or something spicy if you like that.
Make popcorn balls. I make them like you make Rice Krispie Treats with marshmallows and butter, but you can use your own recipe. When the balls were put together they were cool enough to let my son roll them in chocolate sprinkles.
Eat sweetcorn for dinner.

Books and Activities
1. Copy Pop. Clap a short, simple rhythm and see if your child can copy it. If it's too easy, add to it.

2. Colored Kernels File Folder Game. Find a popcorn piece of clipart and copy and paste it six times onto a piece of paper. Then make photocopies on colored cardstock: 1 red, 1 yellow, 1 blue, 1 pink, 1 purple, 1 green, 1 orange, 1 white. Cut them out. On 3 red pieces write "r" "e" and "d." Spell out all the other colors in the same way. Create a file folder game by stapling the back side of a file folder to the front side of another one, making a "page" in the middle. Create 8 pockets out of colored construction paper clearly writing the name of the color on each one. Tuck the popcorn pieces into the pockets for storage. To play, pull out the pieces, point to each letter on the pocket and have your child find the matching letter, putting them in the correct order to spell the word. They don't need to know that they're spelling, just that they're matching (or sequencing).

3. Flannel stories. There are a lot of good popcorn flannel board stories found online to do with your child. One easy one is to cut out five yellow triangles and do this one:

Five popcorn kernels sitting in a pot

They snuggled together and got very hot

They danced all around with all of their might and

Out popped a kernal all fluffy and white

...

Four popcorn kernels...

You just can't practice counting (backwards) too much. I incorporate other rhymes regarding corn/corncobs as well.

4. Make the Big Letter 'P'.

5. Kernel Counting. Make a workpage with 5 numbers down the left side (whatever numbers you want to work on) and down the right side put five empty circles. The child can simply use white glue to fill the circles with the corresponding number of unpopped kernels.

6. Letter Bingo.   Print out a blank bingo card. Slip it into a page protector. With a dry erase pen, fill in the spaces with the letters you've worked on so far. (We had done A, L, W and P). Write the letters again on the white board or a piece of paper and point to them as you call them out. Let him erase one letter each time until he has a bingo. My son always wanted to erase all of his letters -- which was just more good practice for him!

7. Growth Cycle Cards. Create 6 sets of cards. Each set of cards should have a graphic of 1. a popcorn kernel, 2. a corn stalk, 3. an ear of corn and 4. a popped kernel. Adhere each set to 6 different colors of cardstock (choose the colors you want your child to practice) leaving a border around the edge. You can use these in several ways. First, teach your child the growth cycle of corn (from kernel/seed, to stalk, to an ear and then popcorn. This is basic science. If you want to get more specific, choose different images, because a popcorn ear of corn looks very different from a sweet corn ear). Go through each set of cards telling him the growth sequence. Once he understands it, mix the cards up and have him put the sets in order again. He can also match the images and make stacks of them, or match the colors. You can play "go fish" with the cards or even concentration. Use them over and over again.

8. Raccoon Mask. Kids love pretending to be something. Copying the cover of the book, we made a mask out of a paper plate, paint, construction paper and elastic. With my first son, we then went through a cornfield maze. My third son, just wore it around the house -- for about a minute. And then we turned it into his costume for Halloween with gray sweats and a fuzzy striped tail.

9. Fingerprint Corn. Using yellow ink, have him stamp his fingerprint in rows on some white construction paper. Then cut it into a corn cob shape. From green construction paper, cut out husk leaves and tuck the ear behind them. Tape some dental floss to the top for "silks."

10. Make the Big Letter 'K'.

11. Indian Corn Sequencing.   Purchase some real Indian corn from a craft or grocery store. Let your little person push the kernels off the cob into a bowl. Separate them out into the different colors (brown, red, yellow, etc.). Then pick up a few kernels and create a pattern such as brown, brown, yellow, red then start over with brown and let him continue the pattern as long as he can. Start with a new pattern and do it as many time as he has interest.

12. Canister or Frame. Use white glue to affix either Indian corn or yellow (or both) kernels to the item. You can put a pattern on it if you like. We did my son's initial. When dry, coat it with Mod Podge. It could become a gift for grandma.

13. Make the Big Letter 'Q'.

14. Kernel Timbrel. You can put two pie plates on top of one another, punch holes in the edges, fill them with kernels and tie ribbons through the holes to keep the tins tightly together. Or you could hot glue them together. Let them actually play with it, as annoying as the sound is. ;-)

15. Corn Husk Doll. Make a doll like "Victoria" in the story. Use the husks from your Indian Corn or you can buy some separately at a craft store. Find some instructions online that suit you.

16. Colored Popcorn Dragon. You'll need to print out an outline of a dragon head and get your hands on some powdered tempura paint. You'll only need about a quarter of a cup of one or two colors. Pop some popcorn and, in a zip lock bag, shake to combine about a cup of popcorn with the powdered paint. Let your child glue the popcorn to "Dexter's" head with white glue and then thoroughly wash their hands. No eating this popcorn!

17. Corn Cob prints.   We used those cobs we exposed for painting. Cut them into about three inch pieces, let them roll them in paint and stamp or roll them on paper.

18. Dice Counting. Have a bowl of popped corn, a die and a movie popcorn bag or bucket ready. Let your child roll the die and put that many popped kernels in the bag/bucket. Keep going until they can't stand not eating the popcorn any longer.

As always, review letters daily and back up your letter learning with other activities. Letter Bingo is a great re-useable and changeable activity as is the Monster Munch I mentioned last month. I also have little booklets for each letter that my son can color in. There are a zillion things you can print out from online resources just like it.