More than Adrift

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...