Homeschooling convictions

I’m in my 5th or 6th year of home schooling, and I really need convictions about this.

I realize that I do well what I have strong, personal convictions about. Like birth, breastfeeding, and training children.

I had to work a lot to get those convictions however. Birth and breastfeeding kind of grew up with me out of my interest in midwifery– years of reading and poring over homebirth and breastfeeding books just naturally happened with my interest. But with child rearing, I just started with a lot of lousy assumptions, and I had to go through a long crisis before I was ready to be open and formed by God in this area. Then, I started really reading and studying and forming convictions and theology.

With home schooling …. I just haven’t wanted to get that involved in it and do the work of forming my own convictions, I confess, though there are times I’ve probed into doing this.

But I think it’s God’s Time for me to do this now, and that is a key factor. So I’m trying to open my heart and life for the influences God wants to bring to me.

Exploritory Writing Warning: So Im going to blog about the thoughts God leads me through. It will be stupid and raw sometimes, and just repeating things I logically know but don’t feel to be really true in my heart until now, meaning nothing new, just working things down into my true belief system and not just my logical assents.

Mostly right now, I need the desire and longing to have a personal conviction about exactly how and why God wants me (not everyone in the world) to do this, and I should quit being lazy about it or avoiding it just because, for some reason, it makes me uncomfortable or I don’t want to do this work. Or maybe it’s not laziness, but more that I just haven’t reached my own level of development to be able to do this before now.

I have some reasources around me to get me started. (Sorry if photos are sideways; it’s something I can’t figure out this lovely, paid website–even when I edit them and turn them upright, they still go wonky.)

Raising Your Children for Christ by Andrew Murray

Educating the WholeHearted Child by Clay Clarkson with Sally Clarkson

A Mother’s Rule of Life by Holly Pierlot (not about homeschooling, but more about focusing your life on what you’re called to do).

Ambleside Online— a free, Charlotte Mason-based curriculum plan and lots of info about studying and applying her philosophy to educating a child. I realized yesterday as I was reading here, that I will be educating myself through this process and living out the purpose of my own education.

recording a small home school milestone

Nov9

When home schooling, one makes one’s own milestones. There are no external systemic factors marking and evaluating achievements, really. Especially overseas.

So, I just want “the world” to know that we completed the first 12-week term of Ambleside online’s Year 5!!!

What I like about this year:

Last year we learned daily consistency (with video school).
This year we are READING ALOUD a lot! and that is one of my dreams come true!!!

Hip, hip, hooray!

our home school, 5th grade, 2016-2017

Sep21

The story of my life right now is self-discipline and consistency. I have always royally stunk at these two things. Though not in every way. When I was in school, and I had external guides (teachers’ expectations, homework, etc.), I was great at accomplishing things.

But motherhood is kind of a structureless thing, in many ways. I have to create and maintain my own structures. This is terribly hard for me to do. And for years, I was pretty terrible at it.

Lately, it’s been my life lesson, and God is teaching me consistency and self-discipline in several areas of life.

So, this year, we do school consistently. And that is what I want right now. I’m learning consistency, so I’m not looking for bells and whistles and exception days and gobs of creativity. I need to learn the lesson of consistency.

Here we are reading aloud:

And we’re learning Ukrainian! It’s really taking me a lot of power to be consistent with this because we’re doing this voluntarily and it can so easily get crowded or complained out, BUT NO! We’ve got a teacher coming, so let’s learn stuff!

One thing that we’re enjoying is this Young Peacemaker course about handling conflict. Oh. My. Word. Talk about relevance to daily life– for ALL of us!

It’s been a great year so far!

MEP math and my sweetie boy

Jul16

I’m going to mention MEP math here for a moment because they are worth mentioning!

The Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching is located in England. They developed a free, online, high-quality math program. I started it years ago with Skyla and Vika. Then I moved to textbooks when it was too hard for me to be so involved (read, more babies and toddlers), and this year, I’m going back to it.

I’m really impressed with the program.The lessons are brief, scripted even, and have great visuals and manipulatives for kids. It also just intrigues me how they introduce and teach concepts!

Upfront, it’s a lot of printing, and I’m doing a lot of my own printing this year for our schooling (using Ambleside Online). While I was printing out the first lesson batch for the girls I though, hey, let me print out a few lessons to do with Andre (he’s 4yo).

We’ve done 2 days so far, and he’s enjoying it. We’re BOTH enjoying it, and that is important.

On this page, meeting the family, asking questions like How many children?” Who is beside the dog? Who is youngest? … Then counting to 5 on fingers and drawing sticks.

Here, I love this picture. He drew our family. I’m the one with the big head. I like to think, because I am the largest “presence” in his life 🙂

Here we counted boats, cars, houses. We colored a certain number of them

Here he is working on the bed this morning. Things I’ve learned from this: He is fairly exact– must color in the entire space in the object. He picks up ideas fairly quickly. He has pretty good finger control for his age, too.

жизненные целы

Jun8

Многие годы, около 1-го января, я просто писала какие-то хорошие целы для нового года. Но, спустя неделя-два, целы, которые я написала, практически не повлияло на мою повседневную жизнь. За чем это сделать вообще?!

Но последные годы, этот ритуал начинается больше действовать в моей жизни.

Я заметела 3 хорошие вещи:

1. Я начала это писать на компьютере. Я сотворила папку “Целы” для этого. Я сейчас могу легко найти, и могу видеть и перечитать то, что я писала для предыдущими годы. Я могу анализировать свою жизнь: куда я иду, с чем я занимаюсь, что исполнилось но в другом время …. почему я писала такие целы когда вижу, что мою жизнь туда на стремится, и т.д.

2. Я тоже могу сейчас видеть свою жизнь в больших кусков. На пример, следующие 10-15 лет, я буду в оснавном заниматься с образованием моих детей, и строить хорошое семейное отношение с ними вместе с мужем. Важно, что цели в других сферах соподают с этим.

Когда я вижу и понимаю, что эти годы имеют и начала и конец, мне легче эмоционально посвещать себе к этому работу– даже те вещи, которые мне не очень нравится. Потому, что я вижу, что есть целы которые я могу только сейчас, в этом переоде, достигать.

3. Я тоже начала открыть и читать свои целы хотя бы раз в месяц. В файле, я добовляю под цели, дата и как он исполнается или нет. Есть целы которые я прость выбрасиваю (не уделяю, но просто поняла, что мне не надо с этим заниматся пока), и есть целы которые не исполяется, так как я хотела или как я думала, что Бог хотел, и я продолжаю об этом молиться. И когда исполняется, то я это пишу тоже!

И бонус: могу на перед планировать все праздники, важные событие, (семейные, церковные, сезонные), и т.д.

Это тоже очень большое благословение видить, как Бог меняет меня, мою жизнь, видить Его руку везде. Надеюсь, что Бог также вас ободряет через целями!

Наблюдение за природой

May31

Шарлотта Мэйсон была новатором в сфере детского образования. Вы может больше о ней читать здесь и здесь.

Она очень ценит время на природе для детей, чтобы наблюдать, рисовать, писать, и т.д. Я годами не знала, как это сделать. Но она как-то сама делается. Виталий любит природу, дети сами интересуются в этом….

Сегодня в парке, мы видели и наблюдали лебедей … такие смешние шеи!