More than Adrift

Thanksgiving is nearly here. And as I begin trying to rid myself of the thanklessness that often overshadows the blessings, I find myself growing in self control, and joy, and peace. This week in our Sunday school class, the teens walked through the story of Cain and Abel. A story which I have known for years, but settled into my heart this week. As Cain struggles with feelings of jealousy and anger, God comes to him. Speaks to him directly, though we don't have details, I can imagine it vividly. Cain is feeling rejected, jealous of God's favor towards his brother. I'd guess that there are deeper rooted issues, though I'm certainly adding my own back story here, but given Cain's enormous reaction, this probably isn't the first time Cain has felt slighted. But God doesn't walk away, leaving him to seethe in his frustration. He comes to Cain. While Cain is angry, God speaks to him gently, lovingly. "Why are you angry? Why has your countenance fallen...

We have had a lot of fun traveling through Ancient Egypt Our trip through Egypt We read a fun book about a cave discovery with all sorts of artwork painted on the walls, so this is our version :-) Homemade chariots! Kids loved this one! My favorite activity during our Ancient Egypt unit was building sugar cube pyramids! All three kids loved doing this activity. It can be small (beginning with a 6x6 base) or huge (D started with 10x10 base!) Warning: Sugar cubes are a little tricky to find! After completion, he asked me to save it so that he can show it at the county fair... so it is still standing in our garage!! Even through a move to a new house! This was another really fun activity. A lot of the books we read had maps of Ancient Egypt. We also located Egypt on our world map and drew in the Nile River and it's tributaries. So Cookie Dough maps seemed like the perfect activity!! We used premade cookie dough, blue frosting, a variety of candies ...

18 years ago, I thought I was on the brink of being a young woman. I was coming up on a big birthday, and thought I knew exactly what I wanted. I was no longer a baby, a toddler, a preschooler, even a child. I was growing up, and 12 seemed a significant age. I was a fairly typical (for West Bloomfield) 12 year old girl, and I wanted whatever most of my friends were getting for their birthdays (I think it was a cell phone) Instead, I opened a birthday card from my dad a few weeks early, and saw a gift certificate for a vacation. A vacation. Not what I had asked for. In fact, we went on vacations fairly frequently and truly, I wasn't all that impressed. Never mind that I had an amazing time. Never mind that I learned to surf, and sail, and met people I never would have met otherwise. Never mind that it was WAY better than what I had asked for. I still really wanted that cell phone. Fast forward 10 years. I'm 21, on the brink of adulthood, and I know exact...

Instead of beginning with Egypt, we decided to start at the very, very beginning. We started with creation. The book that we read was really quite pretty with great illustrations. And on one of the pages (the day God created the animals) there was a great picture of a frog! So I thought it would be great to tie in our own awesome frogs, the creek filled with frogs, and lots of fun games derived from there.... Then, we read the story of Adam and Eve (also a retelling in the same book) and in Usborne's 50 things to make and do, I found a fun (and easy, and cheap) idea to make a Shadow Puppet to re-tell the story we read. Here's K telling the story (the shadow puppet is a snake.... kind of...)  So if you know your book of Genesis, we are now at Noah's Ark. We spent two days on this story, because my kids had so, so, so many questions on this (where did the animal poo go? was my favorite) We re-enacted the story. D was Noah (of course) and C was one of h...

I am SO excited to be getting ready for our first homeschooling year. It literally gets my heart beating faster when planning it out. D asked me this week "When do we get to begin our unit on Ancient Egypt because I really want to make K's Barbie into a mummy!" This year, I am doing a hodgepodge of things, pulling together from lots of different sources, and since it's kindergarten, there is a lot of room for my own planning based on D's interests. I really need to come up with more clever names for my children on here... that will come in the next blog :-) This year we are using Math U See for math, which is a very visual, hands on program. I know that my kindergartener is quite ahead in this area, so it's likely that we'll move along at pretty quick pace. We are also beginning formal "reading" lessons with a book recommended by lots of friends, 100 lessons to teach your child to read. D already knows all of his letter sounds and underst...

One of the more appealing things about homeschooling is that I will have the ability to help shape and define my children's values, more so than an influential teacher, more than a group of peers, more than the culture we live in. Our faith will be defined as more than just attending church on Sunday. Our compassion can be learned with hands on service. Our patriotism will be redefined as a love of values, and love of man, rather than a simple love of country. Patriotism is one of the things that I struggle the most with. I love that I was born in the United States, I am grateful for it, and grateful for the freedom it has allowed me. But, I think there are better ways of doing things. I see problems with the values that our country is focusing on. I see challenges to overcome with our social systems, education, and government. To be truthful, I see more that needs to be improved on than I see should be modeled and reproduced. To me, being a Christian is loving the world. Lov...

Dreams are a funny thing. If you grew up in a good home, you were probably told things like "the sky is the limit!" "Dream big!" (maybe that was just my dad?!) And it's frustrating when your dreams become tangled up in diapers, dishes, and dirty laundry. The idea of losing yourself admist the daily grind is scary. I think this has always been my biggest fear. That my children will grow up, and I will have nothing of myself left. I will have given 100% of myself to them, and they will just grow up, and go on to live their own lives, and I'll have nothing to show for those 20 years. After years of genuinely struggling, accepting, praying, and re-cycling through these, I realize that it isn't that I don't feel like I'm accomplishing enough, it's not the accolades of a career that I really want. It's not the paycheck that I need. It's not more adult conversation. It's a legacy. I think that's why a lot of women seek out gratif...

During the past several years, I have been drawn to people who homeschool. Their values, their passion, their love for their children, their depth of thought and analysis over education and their children's future. I am not someone who just accepts things the way they are because it's "normal." I am not someone to accept things the way they are because they've always been that way. In fact, I almost despise that method of thought. Things never change with people who think that way. Growth has never occured in the human race because a man sat down and thought, "well, I guess this is as good as it gets!" The homeschooling community, and of course everything has exceptions, is a group of families who aren't satisfied with doing things just because it's what everyone else does, it's a group of families who are excited about their children's learning, and love of learning. And I LOVE that! I feel like I'm finally not fighting a system,...

For years, I have wrestled with the public school system. Despite passionate teachers who try their hardest to make learning fun, and despite dispassionate teachers who really don't care, the system is broken at a much more fundamental place than individual teachers can fix. I first wrote about my struggles with schooling here: http://morethanadrift.blogspot.com/search?q=education    which I wrote quite awhile ago!  Having my eldest boy enter kindergarten this year has been a heavy weight on my heart this year. He is a quick learner, loves investigating, loves new books, digging into new subjects. He is sensitive, very very much so. He has a great attention span when he's interested in something, but a pretty short one when he's not so interested. A few weeks ago, we found out that his kindergarten class is estimated to be 27 students.... Schools are just not cut out for this five year old. I looked into private schools, a magnet school option, the pu...

On Mother's Day, I often have pretty lofty expectations. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I'm a pretty decent mom. I devote most of my energy to my family. Loving on them, growing them, cleaning up after them. On most Mother's Days, I find myself feeling as though I've earned some accolades, some attention, some extra spoiling even. I think secretly (or not so secretly!) most mothers would agree with that! Sadly, I hear equally as many disappointing Mother's Day stories as I hear great ones. Stories of children who are lost, stories of mothers who are gone, complaints by women who don't think their husbands notice how hard they work. But today, I am consciously choosing a different path. A much more pleasant path, and unfortunately, the road less traveled. The days that I feel better than decent, the days that I feel great (or at least borderline great) are the days that I am focused on enjoying my kids. These are the days that I hope that they reme...

I have this particular Aesop fable on audio. We listen to it in the car while driving to gymnastics lessons, or to drop someone off at school, or to entertain them as I do another of the 20 errands on my list, my kids giggling away in the back seat as the overly confident rabbit dozes off in the afternoon sun... The very last line in this particular children's version is "And the moral is, slow and steady wins the race." Slow and Steady. This story first found it's way into a printed story book in the 1500's. More than 500 years ago, people needed a lesson, a fable to remind them the value of slowing down. I think "slow and steady" has a biblical name: perseverance. The dictionary defines perseverance as steadfastness in doing something despite difficulty and delay. The hare obviously was not steadfast.  Though certainly overly confident, I find the hare to be uncomfortable relatable. Every day, I have my to do list, I have the list of things...

There's only a few days left until we've finished 60 days of pretty intense nearly daily "homework" sessions with K.  We'll see if she lets me "quit" after these 60 days, she *loves* her one on one homework time. We've made a LOT of math progress this week, so I really want to focus on how we've revamped our math. As I've mentioned, we use a math kit, "Numicon" which we had ordered online.  It's a math curriculum designed for children who need a more visual way of learning math, and has been proven an effective way to teach kids with special needs.  This gives you a good idea of what it looks like.  Each shape represents a number, and kids learn to associate an image with each number.  So if you imagine a muffin tin with six muffin spots, that is the shape that is represented by six (two rows of three each, same as on a dice)  In this picture you can see the number 3 (which is yellow) 4 (green) 5 (which is red) and 6 (is...

I am a bit behind, so I'll post our activities that took place over the past 10 days, but several of the days were spent on vacation when I had a firm "no working" rule! Day 1: My explanation on this is probably not necessary, but we were just working on a pretty fundamental math concept: Which is more?  Which has least? And counting skills!  Day 2-Day 6: We were in Wisconsin! We had a wonderful trip spending time with friends and family out there :-) Day 7: Literacy based story telling.  K was retelling the story of the Three Little Pigs with felt pieces.  Lots of fun!  Day 8: Addition skills. I have some laminated numbers that I just place on the number sentence.  K would place that number of cookies in her pan, and then count the sum.  Day 9:  A boring math worksheet, but you can see from the picture that she doesn't mind it! Day 10: Another math game. This one we use the Numicon Math Kit that we have (which is s...

This week, I've perhaps deviated a bit from my original purpose just a bit.... I started thinking a little bigger than just how well she performs on an IQ test, although unfortunately this is my only measure of how effective all of this work was! We still did a lot of school work, but I also incorporated things that I know will never be tested, but I think are important skills nonetheless. I decided that the core purpose that I'm staying true to is being very intentional with my teaching skills to her.  The other two absorb so much from incidental learning. K has just never been that way, she requires much more concentrated teaching to learn a concept, while D and C will watch me measuring out ingredients and have a pretty solid understanding of how it all works! I figure that most intense reading/writing/math workshops only meet a few days a week anyways, so I don't feel that I'm shortchanging her in the experiment! Day 1: I did three reading lessons using the E...

This week my resolve was *slightly* weakened due to an exhausting busy schedule, and it is very clear to me why most parents are willing to pay $150/hour for specialized tutoring rather than doing it themselves... it's really not because the work is SO difficult... or that they don't have the time to do it, it's just that it is a lot of work, and requires a LOT of patience, and repetition! So on to our week 2 activities! Day 1 of week 2: We played a VERY simple new game that I learned at an early childhood class I took last week. I spy with letters. We had a free printable "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom" Tree, a toilet paper tube that was decorated with construction paper and letter stickers, and a marker.  In school, K is working on using the correct sentence structure "I (want/like/have)..." instead of saying "Me (want/like/have/see/hear/etc)..."  so we played "I Spy the Letter __"  then once she found the letter, she would color it ...