Thankfulness

Thanksgiving Resource link:

http://www.hubbardscupboard.org/the_pilgrims__first_thanksgivi.html

I want to take this time to let my bloggy pals know that this Thanksgiving season I am thankful for you all!! You will never know the blessing you all are to me.

Sentence Building Activity

Need a great sentence building activity for your little ones? I think this is the best thing I have come across. Take the 5 minutes to make this one and you are going to love it!

I just did this print-out and just wanted to share another way to do it for those of us that do not have a laminator. I used clear Contact paper to laminate page ONE on the front and back. For page TWO and THREE I simply slid them into the clear shiney page protectors. On page THREE they will be able to draw their picture and then simply wipe it off for their next sentence they build. Note: I did not use the Contact paper for pages TWO and THREE because it is not as easy to wipe away the dry erase on.

I saw this idea on Confessions of a Homeschooler and loved it! I discovered her blog a couple of months back and if I did not have a Pre-K or K Curriculum I would use this as our curriculum (not that I do not like My Father's World, but this one is great, too...). Be sure and read this post about her Terms of Use. She wants her stuff to remain free and wants to give it freely. What an awesome gift!

Revision: I just did this with my five year old, Sierra. Page TWO and THREE can be turned back to back and placed in one page protector. This will save page protectors (and money ... frugal!) and make it easier to store and use.... It becomes just one part! I love LESS (less really is more!). You can also store all your pieces in that same page protector. The other thing I want to point out is that you do not have to feel like you have to do every part of this activity when you do it. If you have a child that is not wanting to do the drawing part or the writing part , then skip that. My daughter drew two of the pictures and wrote one of her sentences and then her "hand was hurting"..... which is the story of our lives here, but I remember sitting in a desk at school and my hand hurting, my rear hurting, etc. and that is not want I want in my homeschool. The wonderful thing is that we can do it "our way". Even without the complete set of skills she got to feel like she was reading... which she was!! This is a great activity.

"Job Training" follow-up

I really did not know if I would do a follow-up to my last post, but I have been thinking about it all week. I do wish I had gotten the proper "job training" for this current position I now hold as a wife, mother, homeschooler, and Christian. I wish that there was a majority group of men and women that understood their roles Biblically... myself included. I wish that the world viewed homeschooling as just another one of the options that they do not question the value of. In fact, I wish the world could see homeschooling as the best option. As I pondered these thoughts and the thoughts in my last post I just had this thought come into my mind:

"We are taking it back."

Little by little we are taking it back. As time passes and more of us come into homeschooling we are slowly, but very certainly, taking it back to the way God intended it to be. As more and more of those people like myself decide that homeschooling is NOT as ridiculous of an idea as it may seem and more and more people realize that they are capable of teaching their children we are taking it back. I think the two biggest issues for parents that hear about homeschooling are: socialization and feeling capable.

I can say this about the socialization (and that was a huge concern to me)... Do I really want my kid to have and increased chance of early sexual activity? Do I really think that my kids are not going to be tempted to do the other things that their peers are doing if that is what they see all around them everyday and it is seen as normal? Do I really want to let someone I do not know be their teachers and not even know what that persons beliefs are?... and that teacher WILL be a great influence in their lives! Do I really want to leave that to chance? Do you want to let your kids dodge bullies all day? Do you want one of their peers telling them about the "birds and the bees"? Do you want your child to hear the harsh words and foul language from others and think that it must be acceptable if MY PARENTS are sending me here for the majority of my time? Do you really think that your child having a whole new set of teachers and friends each year is going to teach them how to form lasting relationships? Or could it be that we are training our children to NOT know how to form relationships and therefore, not know how to socialize? What about training them to talk to people that are not their age? How is your eight year old going to have a chance to get to know her newborn sister, if she misses out on spending most of the day with her?

And I can say this about feeling capable: It really is true that "God does not call the qualified. He qualifies the called." I remember thinking that there is no way I have the ability to teach my children what they need to know, but I have found that I do know how to teach them when I just TRY. I know how to form letters and spell phonetically.... I can do addition and subtraction, mulitiplication and division, tell time, and much more advanced math, too. I am capable of learning what I do not know. God gave me a mind that is capable of learning teaching techniques. Much of it I know already, but have just never used it or even realized that I could use it. It is there... it is just being left unused. And one of the biggest things I have come to realize is that once you teach your child to read you have given them the ability to learn anything they want to learn (or you want them to learn). They can learn most things with you simply being alongside to guide them. When we stop allowing ourselves to believe what the world is telling us and that we really can do this job (and do it better) we will find our own self-confidence growing. I know that I am deeply lacking in the area of self-confidence lately, but I can see that I am going to be confident in myself one day... because God is confident in me. He alone has made me capable of this job that He designed me for. We do need to take it back to His design... not the world's design.

Blog-cations... and Job Training

I am sorry to say I seem to be on a Blog-cation. I am trying hard to stay away from the distractions in my life. Do you find yourself there? It seems that most of the blogs I follow seem to be on bit of Blog-cation, too. It seems there is less posting (and I suspect, as it is here, more "doing"). For me it seems to be a busy time at our house, but more than anything it is really about trying to figure out all the this homeschooling stuff. I wish it was just easy to "get it". I look back and I do "get it" more each day, but it would be great if we were just raised this way and trained to do this job this way. I wonder how many centuries ago was it that women lost sight of their roles in teaching their children. And not just teaching them, but teaching them to teach the future generations. I know this is Biblical.... I did not know this a year ago and it is a shame there are so many women out there like that.

And worse than that... the spiritual leaders of our homes... the fathers, the grandfathers do not "get it", either. This weekend I spent some time with relatives. There was some talk of our homeschooling decision, but I think the thing that stands out is that at some point in the day yesterday as a group of us where standing around I heard my father-in-law speaking and I think he was really thinking it and the words just spilled out of his mouth as he said, "Just what IS this homeschooling thing anyway?!" I might note that without realizing it I totally ignored it and stayed busy at the task at hand for the moment. You get a bit "immune" to the comments on some days... the ugliness, the questions, the crazy looks, the change in the way you are treated and in the way your children get treated.... When was it that the spiritual leaders of the home decided that they just would not pass this knowledge on... or search it out in their Bibles. My father-in-law used to be a deacon in his church... I have seen him read his Bible many times, yet he seems to not "get" the idea of homeschooling. My father-in-law seems to be concerned about the level of education our children will get as opposed to what a big school could provide. This is coming from a man who sent his children to a school so small that there were only 50 or so in each graduating class. 8l

I was thinking about the diversity of this country that we all live in an it occurred to me that if anyone really thought about it much, then homeschooling wouldn't seem so questionable really. Compare with me for a moment the obvious educational diversity that one might receive in each of these scenarios:

1. A small country school; population 500; graduating class size 35; My husband actually taught at one of these schools and they even broke the "public school rule" of no prayer. They prayed during school freely, at lunch time, before staff meetings, etc.. ; being a small school funding was more limited, so there would be less available in many worldly ways; most of these kids are less subjected to drug related issues, fashion issues, and spend a lot more time at home in general because it is so far to go anywhere; they are educated in nature and country living without it being a "subject". Would you question their education... or their social skills?...
2. A medium somewhat country/city school; population 3,000; graduating class size 250; I went to school in one of these and my husband currently teaches in that same district; They don't break the "public school rule" of no prayer. They observe a moment of silence and have the "appropriate" clubs for that sort of thing. ;( ; funding is adequate and there is a fair amount of money, so they have all they need but not all the technology available that a larger school of worldly means might have. There are more drug related issues, teen and pre-teen pregnancy, fashion issues are more of a headache. They are probably split 50/50 on being "townies" and "country kids" and experience many of the same issues as the school listed in #1, but also have more upper class society influence. This is the town that I would refer to as the average "small town America". Would you question their education... or their social skills?...
3. A large school in the heart of Houston (or other majot city); population = too many ;) ; graduating class 500+ ; They are probably more similar to school #2, but they have all the technology and worldly advantages that America's school have to offer; There are more of EVERY issue in most of these schools, but ... Would you question their education... or their social skills?...
4. Use a similar size scenario as #3, but let's say it is located in New York City, NY; I can't give an accurate scenario because I have never even been there, but I would think it would be much the same as #3 with a heavy influence in the arts and theater, very busy and fast-paced; many "advantages" from an artistic perspective. Would you question their education... or their social skills?...
5. Consider the child that lives in a village so remote that it would require driving 40 miles to the nearest school to be among a small class of peers; consider that child spends 2-3 hours commuting per day to "take advantage" of a public school setting.; I met a family like this on vacation a few years back and I remember the mother telling me how crazy it would be to do that commute for her son. She chose to homeschool instead. But, once again, consider the child that is not homeschooled and lives out this scenario. Would you question their education... or their social skills?...
6. What about a family in the mountains that lives in a tiny little tourist town. The scenario might look a lot like school #1. Actually, it might be much smaller and have much less of the worldly "advantages". I met a family that was faced with this scenario. They lived off of their tourism business providing snow sledding tours through the woods via horse and buggy sleds. They chose to homeschool, but consider their neighbors in that community. Would you question their education... or their social skills?...

Do you get my point? This country is so diverse and people are recieving so many different levels of education dependent upon the size of the school district, the city population, the cultural and geographic locations, and many other factors. It just seems that homeschooling wouldn't seem so "questionable" really if people really would consider it one more option in this diverse countries options.

Maybe there's more to this post... I'm thinking on this one, so you might see a follow-up post to this one. I would love to hear some thoughts on this, so share some with me in the comments.