Giving Myself Permission

I decided one little thing: that I would no longer mark my children's specific grade level in my form for the DPI. Who would've guessed what that little action did?

It allowed me to give myself permission.

Permission to do what?

1) To pray. I am praying to discern curriculum, the pace of it, and when we will start it. I am praying for wisdom and to gain better self-discipline for myself so that I can then bring that to my children.

2) To catch up with life.  In the chaos of demanding myself to get my children to point "x", many other things have been let go: the house (which I never had much of a hold on from the beginning), laundry, projects, fun...

3) To enjoy summer. It is so easy to get caught up in all the things that we can forget about the simple things that probably have more of an effect on our eternity. Where we live, the summers are wonderful, but short. The lessons learned are numerous, and will be better remembered here.

I am sure there are many other things I have initially given myself permission to do, and many more permissions I will give. It is amazing the freedom I am feeling right now, and the ability I have gained to not let things overwhelm me.

Now that we have permission, here's what our day looked like yesterday:

Impromptu crochet class. The three oldest are learning the basics, and trying to decide what they will make. It was such a joy to see them sitting in a group working on a really neat skill that will reward them in more ways than they can imagine. I also witnessed what a great teacher my eldest can be. He patiently would help his younger sister when she was stuck. He really has a gift.

A lovely walk on a lovely, lovely day. As an expectant mother, I truly need the movement, and the sunshine. The kids need it, too. The plus side is it was enjoyable!

The children spent a lot of time outdoors. Swing set, sprinkler, putzing around, roller skates, etc.

I took some time to weed my flower garden and finish planting some mail order perennials.

I was able to put some time in on building my stash of cloth diapers, and finish making my long-desired washcloths.

I was able to start laying out goals for myself, so school would run more smoothly. My current daily list of goals is:
   1 load laundry
   walk
   load dishwasher
   have a shiny sink
   drink water
   clean 1 room


When I can better my self discipline and become better organized, I think school will run much more smoothly, and I will have fewer troubles with "keeping the kids up" with conventional schooling ideas.

All my best to you all, and I hope this summer, you give yourself permission.

Setting and Re-setting Expectations

    As I mentioned in earlier posts, I am a more laid back person, and rather flexible-- often more flexible than I should be. I pray the Good Lord will continue to guide me on that journey as I tackle the other challenges of family life and homeschooling as well. 

    One challenge I have met is my expectations of each child. Our state allows us to either declare grade levels or "ungraded" in our forms each year. Each year I have listed the equivalent grade level. However, I have found that my laid back personality combined with the natural tendency towards laziness and self satisfaction of children, that we are more often than not behind in books with grade level.

    Granted, we took a long vacation-- which was also a "Unit Study", if you will. There is no better way to study the culture, geography, religious views, history and artwork of another country than to spend some serious time in it. I think the children learned more in one month there than and entire year of school. It is also something they will retain much better than any amount of seatwork over the years.

    Which brings me to my current challenge of setting and re-setting my expectations. I am frantically trying to get the children finished in their books from last year so we can start in the next level this fall. I am also trying to get together a new baby layette set and replenish my diaper stash for the upcoming little one. There are also three older ones who have grown out of most of their clothing. With little money in the bank, I need to make do with what we have. I have a great stash of fabric on hand, and wonderful basic patterns. I just need to make the time to make them! Okay, enough of that, I don't want to turn this into a cloth-diapering, home-sewing blog (yet).

  

    Suffice it to say that there is a lot on our plates, and we have summer! I don't want to lose summer. Here in the upper midwest, summer is short, and winters long. I want the kids to enjoy summer and the warmth and sunshine, not feel like their slaving away day in and out with dreaded school.

    I don't want the kids to dread school. I don't want to rush through books just so I can say they are in "x" grade level. I don't want to dread school. I don't want to burn out. And I don't want them to rush through learning, and miss mastery because they "have to" start in their next level of books by August!

    This all leads to a lot of stress, and stress leads to unhappiness.

    So, I guess I am re-setting my expectations. 

    The children will be "ungraded" in this year's submission to the DPI. I will space out their lessons to allow for lighter schedules that encourage mastery. There will be more subject-appropriate games and activities for multi-sensory learning. We will do more nature exploration and gardening as we learn about the world God created around us. 

    I will find a simpler way to organize the school room so what is needed is accessible and labeled.

    I will find peace. We will all find it.

Summer Adventure

We were fortunate enough to spend an entire month in Ireland. This happened in May. It was a wonderful experience as a restful vacation, spiritual journey, and homeschool adventure. We stayed at various houses- one on many acres with cows and sheep as the neighbors, another on the Beara Peninsula in the south with low/high tide and mountains as neighbors, and another in County Mayo with a ruined abbey and the filming location of the Quiet Man  as neighbors.

Everything was a delight to the eye. The scenery has an ancient quality to it. The stories told are close to our hearts: Catholics who would die for the Faith, who were forced to leave their homeland in search for a better life, others who continued to stubbornly rebuild their churches, and those who organized protests and uprisings. This was the land of Saints and Scholars.

With this great vacation, though, came the necessity to put formal schooling on hold. This happened much earlier than I anticipated (a month before leaving as opposed to a week!), and we were already trying to cover extra ground to start at conventional school grade levels in the fall. Soooo, we are schooling through the summer- or trying to.

You may remember my mentioning my more laid back and flexible habits. I have a hard enough time keeping myself according to some semblance of order (as anyone who has seen my dresser can attest), but add a house, meals and children who need to be dressed, cleaned, fed and schooled-- I'll leave it there.

So, it would be no surprise that while were on our way to completing our second full week-- my husband's car broke down. On last Wednesday evening, I towed his car behind our mini van into town (WISH I had a picture of that!). So, I was without a car Tuesday and Wednesday. Car came back Thursday a.m., which ended up being a day off. This is because I had shopping to catch up on, a car repair for which to pay, a prenatal appointment to make, and a dog to visit the vet (he recently came down with an ear infection). We did this all on Thursday. And none of the stops were in the same town. According to my personality, I can't have Thursday off school and be expected to jump back in for one day on Friday. It goes against my very being! So, I did school research, and let the kids have another day off. Oh, yes, the car wouldn't stay running on Friday, so I was without my van again. Good thing is that the mechanics didn't charge for the towing and fix even though it had nothing to do with what they repaired previously!

So, our adventure involved map skills, the virtue of patience, behaving in a vet's waiting room and trying not to enjoy Culver's too much for lunch when mom and dad said we spent enough money eating out in Ireland to cover a year's budget at home!

In the Beginning...

Well, this isn't the beginning of homeschooling for us, but the beginning of blogging and journal-ling about it. Currently, I have (as of this fall) a fourth grader, second grader, pre-k/kindergardener,  and a toddler. There is also another "student" on-the-way (due at the end of October).

Homeschooling isn't something I had planned on doing-- I married into it, so to speak. When options dwindled for my husband's highschooling, he followed his older sister's path into homeschooling. He's a very self-motivated person, and I think he transitioned rather well. He went on to be valedictorian of his liberal arts college, and land a job at a very successful company. So well went his homeschooling, and so strengthened became his values from being homeschooled, that he never wanted his children to enter the public school system.

So, I, who had never known about homeschooling until I met a homeschooler in highschool, married a man committed to the practice. I was hesitant about it, but knew how much it meant to him, so I promised to give it a try.

Fast forward almost nine years, and I love it. I am completely at peace with the choice. This doesn't mean that everything is perfect, flows perfectly with sunshine and roses every day. In fact, I'm a complete organizational and structural mess. I'm more of a "B-type" (although I hate labels), and have a tendency to be super flexible. This is a great quality to inspire children to explore and make the most of each and every discovery. However, there is a definite place for order and organization. (My husband would whole-heartedly agree).

This is where I struggle, and one of the reasons I have started this blog.

I get to chronicle our adventures for posterity, learn from mistakes, and have one place to keep ideas for inspiration. This all gets done without taking up any more space next to my computer (score 1 for less mess).

So, on occasion, I will post here. I will put a lot of links in to places/things I like. I will also become an affiliate for various places to replace-in a minor way-our many dollars spent on supplies.

I hope you enjoy this blog, and perhaps, maybe, I might inspire someone else, or help someone avoid my messiness through this set of adventures!