Busy days

  I have spent the day away from my husband and blessings today. I enjoy an occasional time away from them but only a couple of hours and I am so ready to see them. I stopped by our church where they were with my husband to drop off some things. It was so refreshing to see them.
May the Lord find us faithful.

Morning

This is our second cloudy, breezy day. It did not rain one drop yesterday which is odd. We will see what today will hold.

We had one of the missionaries we support in our church last night. He gave an update of the work and he preached. He shared with us from Romans 15:30-32. He spoke on how our praying here at home greatly impacted the work on the field. It gave me a renewed thought process on that. It is something I know but had filed in the back of my mind. Maybe all this is coming together since I have started a Bible study on prayer. But I know I will pray more specifically for our missionaries. Praying for our missionaries will be a part of our homeschool schedule this year, specific prayer for each missionary.
May the Lord find us faithful.

Learning

If any one would have told me 20 years ago what I would be doing now I would have laughed and thought they were crazy. I only knew one person who was homeschooled and they were very strange, and the reason they homeschooled was mysterious.

I am learning so much from homeschooling the blessings. I am researching everyday, reading about education "genres" and seeking what works for us and how and what to teach the blessings, how to be Biblibally balanced, teach the word of God to our children so they have a firm foundation on which to serve God. I am not looking to raise "good" kids, our goal is to raise useful servants of God. We do not seek to raise kids like everyone else, the goal is to go beyond the status quo. Not for our glory but for God's glory, they are his not ours.

On another subject, I am trying very diligently to get back into some kind of routine. I miss our daily schedule where chores and violin practice fall into place without much thought. We are taking baby steps to get there, inch by inch.

May the Lord find us faithful.

School prep

Good morning to you,

No jelly making to day, I have a sick child, we had to cancel violin and we will not be going into town. No pectin, no jelly.

We are gearing up for school to start. I am going to run down what we use.

I am planning for my Kindergartener and 1st grader to follow the amblesideonline.org booklist and schedule for year 1. I am not quite so sure about my 3rd grader yet. (I am classically and Charlotte Mason minded, alot of overlap with both and I am trying to figure out where I stand on the differences! I love the concept of the gentle art of learning!!!!) So,

Bible:

The Bible

Character Sketches

 

Phonics:

I have used Scardey Cat Reading system last year and will continue on.....

I might use Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons with my younger 2

 

Grammar:

Maybe Rod and Staff? 3rd grader

 

Math:

All- Math-U-See

 

Science:

Apologia- Exploring Creation with Astronomy

 

History:

Mystery of History vol. 1 Chronological Study

 

Foreign Language:

Hey Andrew, Teach me some Greek

 

Penmanship:

We have StartWrite

 

Writing:

Writing Strands

 

Along with nature study, artist and composer study, narrations

 

We are making notebooks little by little. Last year I focused on Science with our oldest blessing. (We also worked on a timeline notebook a little, more on that this year)

May the Lord find us faithful.

Blessing in frustration

Well, I learned a lesson today. Our dog has a habit of exploring outside her boundaries. We are working on teaching her the boundaries but she wanders on occassion, and today was one of those days. We were driving trying to find her and I spotted tons of raspberry canes that I have never seen before. So, once the dog was safely in the house the blessings and I and the neighbor kids set off to pick raspberries and tomorrow we are going to make jam!

May the Lord find us faithful.

Life as we know it

Life as most Americans lives it, is full of fast paced, overcommited, busy, fast-food eating junk. Our Sunday School lesson for day included the statement, "Overcommited lives and underdeveloped spiritual lives." That statement stuck out to me like a sore thumb. I have always work diligently to keep our lives in check and not overcommit, especially when it comes to our children. They are too young to be overcommited. They need time to be children, to play in the sand and dirt, ride their bikes and all the other things they do. Swimming was an eye opener to me, lessons lasted for forty five minutes but there was the prep, drive(short as it may be), it effected our whole day! The blessings learned a lot and we will do lessons again in the winter, BUT we will not be on the sign up for this and that lesson bandwagon. We will be working on developing their spiritual lives this school year!

May the Lord find us faithful.

school supplies

We walked through the school supply aisle at Wal-Mart today. I realized that we really did not need much this year. Maybe a few pencils and a couple of new things to get the blessings geared up for school. I do have a few more things to order curriculum wise but we will get to that soon enough. We did go to Barnes and Noble today and I could have spent a small fortune there but decided to go when the blessing were with Dad so I can take my time and get what  we need and forgo unnecessary purchases. The kids did have their own money to spend and they made a few purchases at Barnes and Noble.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Rhubarb

    We harvested our first rhubarb today. I made a rhubarb crisp to take for dessert at a friends for dinner. It was yummy!!!
May the Lord find us faithful.

Many blessings

The days are slowing down here a bit. Swimming will be over on Friday, I am glad. The blessings have enjoyed the classes but two weeks is long enough for Mom. I need to sit down and plan out my orders for school. I normally do a lot of odering in the spring to avoid the fall purchase rush, but not this year. I need to place an order with Bright Minds and couple of other companies. I am ready to plunge into this classical education thing with both feet and make a big splash. I do not want to belly flop!!

May the Lord find us faithful.

Birthday

One of the blessings had a birthday today. I used to do the whole birthday thing and then I decided not to do the whole birthday party thing with all the stuff that went along with it. Now, the birthday person gets to choose meals for the day and what kind of cake they want and we usually do some thing special that they want to go do. So, today we went for target practice as a family. Generally, this is a Dad and blessings event but I went along for the birthday special event. ( I do enjoy target practice but rarely take the time to go with)

A good day was had by all.

May the Lord find us faithful.