Enough to Make Me Crazy!!

Well, the weekend was busy and good. Now we are back to Monday once again. Today we began a little later again....(I wonder how many other homeschoolers have trouble starting on time?) but I am in a battle within myself because I think that part of the benefits of schooling your children at home is that you do not have to have a rigid schedule like in public school. Those schedules are created to encompass all the required learning i.e. math, reading, science, etc. and fit in bathroom breaks, walks down the hall, recess, lunch and so on. We get down to the nitty gritty of it, and have the luxury of one on one so lessons go faster. But on the same token, I want to instill a sense of responsibility in my children at a young age, that life requires you to schedule yourself in many ways....that is the challenge. But I am ready!

A Day With Dad

So today, I had to work all day...for real all day...I haven't got up at 5:30am in a year at least. It was a beating!! God Bless my husband for working so hard every day. I put in almost 12 hours and I am beat!

The kids stayed with daddy today. I gave him a run down of school happenings, but as usual, he just went with the "fly by the seat of the pants" curriculum, which I am also schooled on, but doesn't usually meet my every day needs.

Can someone tell me why I spend hours slaving over fun activities and try to be the epitomy of a fun home schooling mom every minute of my life, but a day with dad is my kiddos equivalent to something ranking close to Disneyland? I mean, I am great and all, but the sun rises and falls on their daddy! Probably because in between lessons on Light Saber fighting and watching multiple episodes of "When Bears Attack" on Discovery (which was the day's science lesson) they are in heaven. I of course have to implement the real deal of school every day, so I can sort of see where it is fun to have a day with him. But he does do pretty much all of the disciplining and every so often the spanking, so shouldn't that raise my rankings a bit? ;)

Well, it all ended okay with the exception of two very hyper kids and a pretty messy house. He even took them out to lunch with a meeting with his boss, and all and all I am proud to have him as a schooling partner.

I just want to mention something I had a conversation with a friend about today. We listened to a preacher speak about God "getting you out of your comfort zone." He talked about how God wants to stretch us and encourage us to keep seeking Him in all things, and it made me think of homeschool. I mean, I am a teacher through and through, but until last year I never even thought about it. It is really hard for me-a really teachy teacher-to not force worksheets on every theme and read the exact books that go with each theme I want to make them do activites that correlate and so on, but now I am pursuing a totally different method of education based on what I feel is God's call for me to raise my children up in a way that pleases Him. He has essentially got me out of my comfort zone to a degree and the message excited me to continue to put my whole heart into the ministry of raising my children to be servants for the Lord. Anyways...God Bless and good night! I am going to bed for heavens sake!

Flat Stanley, Come Home!!

So today was off to a rough start...my husband woke me up very late!! So today we didn't begin until 10:30 and then we got off to a very rough start.

But then we got out our Flat Stanley pictures today. Flat Stanley is a huge project I did when I taught Pre-K based off a book by Jeff Brown, and it was so much fun!! You can check out the official website at www.flatstanleyproject.net . They took the big bulletin board down out of the hall at the preschool, and I got Trace and Avery's Flat Stanley and their pictures. Trace's are from Canada-Justin went there on a trip, and Avery's are from the Swim family in Washington. We love Flat Stanley and had fun re-living our project. Katy, my cousin who lives in Africa, has Flat Stanley now. In fact, we should be getting him back sometime soon from Swaziland. We do have two Stanley's, and Kate has Avery's so we are trying to decide where we can send Trace's next.

Speaking of Katy, she sent home a CD that is SOOO cool and the kiddos and I watched it today. It is a slideshow of her and the other missionaries set to awesome music. It made me almost cry, I miss her lots and am so proud of her desire to do God's work!! Trace and Avery thought it was awesome, too. What a great testimony from them to see someone so dedicated to serving others!

We rounded off the day doing quite a bit of reading and phonics since that is where Trace struggles. In fact it's 6:00 and we just finished reading. School has no time barriers in this family and that's the way I like it!