Prayer in School

This year we have been very regular at starting our school day with a prayer. We start with a church hymn, then a prayer, pledge, and a spiritual thought.

My girls attend a ballet studio that offers a class for homeschoolers, and our girls go to that class this year. The other day I sat in there with another mom who told me that the reason she wanted to homeschool is because she wanted her kids to have prayer in their school. We started talking about how devoid of spiritual things the state schools are. It got me thinking about how our initial reasoning for wanting to homeschool was the incorrect version of, and cruddy way they teach, history in schools. As we researched other reasons people homeschool, our vigor and resolution become ever more firm. I have to admit that prayer in school only seemed like a nice perk and it didn't really cross my mind as a sole reason. I am almost ashamed to say that because as I grow as a mother in this increasingly wicked world my children's spiritual development and understanding has become the number one concern I have and temporal education is becoming less important. I'm beginning to find more and more flaws in myself and desiring to be a better example to my children in all that I do. This also means I beat myself up more now. :)

As we pledge the flag of the United States of America, we all are in the same place every morning. This is my son, W's, point of view while he pledges the flag.

Today, after said the pledge, he declared, "I love that when I look at the flag I can see Jesus as if he is presenting the flag and saying, 'I give you this free country'." It made me smile and feel good that he understands things in that way.

This is just a small representation of what happens all the time in our studies. When we study history or science my kids sometimes ask spiritual questions or I feel inspired to elaborate or pull out the scriptures. This causes me to reflect on my own education, because that's really the only inside view I have of the public education system (and I think it's the most important point of view), and I NEVER received spiritual understanding while learning temporal things at school. That came later as an adult. The two were always completely separate to me. Oh how wrong this seems! I feel like starting our official studies with prayer really helps spiritual learning and temporal learning to coincide. And that's how it SHOULD be! God put us on earth to have a learning experience. Are we suppose to say to our children that they should have to go to a place to learn that excludes God? All things come from God and without that perspective as we learn, we cannot be strong in our journey back to him.

I'm so grateful to live in a country that gives me parental rights so that I can have full parental choice in my child's education, and I will fight any effort to take that away and dishonor the Constitution of this land. Homeschooling is the only way to give me that full parental choice, any other educational avenue makes decisions for me as a parent and that I will not do. My children are mine and they will have prayer in their school.

Starting in 2017

Planning for the year was a lot easier this year than in years past. It was still lots of work, but I think I finally did it all so well last time and I know more what I am doing.

One thing I wish I didn't have to do is create a 36 week schedule for everything that doesn't come with a nicely outlined weekly schedule to start. Some curriculum we have is already designed to work with a 36 week schedule and gives helps on how to do it weekly, or is designed that way. With our son's logic text, The Art of Argument, I know so little about such things, so it was difficult to design a schedule out of that, but I did my best. Now that we've done a few lessons I can see it will be easy to figure out a good scheduling method and change it up if we need to. There are schedules online that organize it into semesters, like for a middle school schedule. That just did NOT work for me.

Here is how I organized The Story of the World Vol. 2 for the year.

Last year we did a big "back to school" party. We didn't do that this year. There really is no good excuse. I just wanted to get started and so we did and we planned a fun beginning day, rather than a party the weekend before. :)

We started with a wonderful yummy waffle breakfast made by Grandma at Grandma's place.

Coming up from breakfast at Grandma's place

W had so much energy and excitement. He is like that every first day with all the new books. I wish the enthusiasm lasted throughout the year. ;) He got the girls to follow him and sang a song, "Back to school train, choo choo."

Grandma made some super awesome posters, again, this year. The posters are a word collage of all that they will be learning this year. We displayed them next to their books.

L will be going to a preschool down the street from us. A woman in our neighborhood has a preschool in her basement, she does two classes, one for 3 turning 4 and one for 4 turning 5, and she only takes 10, maybe 12, students a year per class. We've been having a hard time getting L to focus on things and she won't learn to read. I felt like it was a big part because we don't have quite the time to devote to her as we did with the older two. I just had a feeling that this little preschool would help give her the boost she needs, AND keeping her busy and not a distraction to us for two mornings a week. All we need to do is walk her over. Win win. :)

We are going to attempt to teach 20 month old J to use the potty.

We had our science table in the basement last year and it was so dark and really hard to see anything under a microscope. We realized if we moved into the daylight it was an amazing difference. So I moved things around so that we could put our science table by that window in the corner.

Our bookshelf desperately needs some organization and we really should figure out some books to give up or store away. It would be really nice to have the wiggle room.

Also for our first day, we took the kids out to lunch at a place called J Dawgs, they serve JUST hot dogs (all beef and Polish), plus chips and also drinks. I knew all of the kids like hot dogs and they rarely get one, so that was fun. Then we went to See's Candies for a treat.

The first two days of school went quite well. There were a few hiccups from just beginning, but I have great expectations from these kids! We tried something a little different from last year. Instead of doing History and Science all separate we're trying to do them all together first thing after breakfast. Now it HAS been only two days, but I'm really liking it. We will do History the first two days of the week and then Science the next two. History has been easy, but Science will be a challenge for me. It's not as simple since W is learning a more advanced version of Earth and Astronomy than E and L.

I love being in control of my children's education. Hopefully I'm doing it right. It's just like parenting in general, we're kind of figuring it out as we go. :)

Summer is here!

Summer snuck up on us, to be honest. There was no big "done with the year of study" kick off or anything. We kind of weaned our way into it. There are some things left unfinished and we've worked out plans to get it done before we start fresh. Part of it was incorporated into my summer plans for the kids. Every day the kids are required to finish these tasks called their "Summer Daily Duties". Each time they finish a task they get a blue ticket. 

What's a blue ticket, you ask? Let me introduce you to our new household incentive program.

Let me start off by saying that I've been having some trouble the last long while with consistent obedience. I bet I'm the only one and no one understands me at all. ;) I've done a few other things before to encourage good behavior. For instance, at one time when the kids were much smaller and it was basically just my oldest and second oldest doing any chores, I had a marble jar. Every chore completed was a new marble in the jar. If they filled up the jar together, they'd get a special privilege. That worked for a long time, eventually it wore off it's excitement and they just never put marbles in any more. I also made up something to instill fear in them at one time, for each act of defiance or any misdeed, they got to pick from a pile of different ways to make it right, depending on the level of the infraction, there were four different piles to choose from. That's still technically in effect, but it doesn't seem to be utilized much.

Recently I came up with this incentive system for the kids. It's been going for two weeks now. I worked for a couple weeks, trying to perfect it, then after we started utilizing it I made a few tiny changes, some of which I just wrote on the charts in marker. I knew that might happen because sometimes you have to experiment before producing a finished product. I figure I may want some more changes to be done before I re-print and laminate.

Here is the "command station" in our kitchen.

The system involves blue tickets and green tickets. I bought 2 rolls of happy face raffle tickets on Amazon, and then put them on this paper towel holder that just slides under the cabinet next to our command center. I then hung jars under their chore chart for them to put the tickets as they earn them.

The blue tickets are for getting their regular chore jobs finished, and for basically doing anything for mom when she needs help and asks for it. They also get a blue ticket for each subject of study completed for the day. The green tickets are given for money jobs.

When I make my final changes, I'll be changing the title of this chart from "Chore System" to "Incentive System," as I've been referring to it here. I think it just sounds more friendly and less authoritarian.

I decided to give the opportunity of redeeming blue tickets for money because they earn blue tickets so much more often. But they also redeem them more quickly, so saving 30 blue tickets would be a big deal and a sacrifice, since they're not allowed ANY of the things on this list without redeeming the blue tickets. My oldest is ALL OVER the money jobs, but the girls are not so much. I want them to learn money management and a bit of sacrifice that comes with budgeting. I want them to understand responsibility. So I gave them 3 things they are responsible for buying with their earned money, that we normally just buy for them ourselves. This may need some tweaking over the next few months as we come up on these things. I may just make them responsible for 2 things instead of three. I put a cap on the amount of money they can earn in a week so that we're not put out of business. Ha ha. Each green ticket is worth $0.25, and each money job has a green ticket value.

I have to admit that this system I came up with is partly inspired by the Eyre's book, The Entitlement Trap. I love their family banking system, I really wanted to do it. But I just couldn't see it working for our family. Maybe because our children are little, I couldn't see it working. I think the main reason is because we homeschool. We just don't get that predictable schedule that would make a family banking system work, at least FOR ME, as the house manager.

I made banks for all the kids to organize their earnings. This is W's and as you can see I haven't cashed in his tickets yet. 

This is the money jobs jar. I have two sets of money jobs. The brown ones are for the older kids and the blue ones are for the younger kids. The green ticket value is on the back of each card, written in wet-erase pen just in case I need to change the value at some point. I let them pick the job they want to do. I tried to assign jobs for the $ JOBS jar that need to be done regularly enough so they aren't waiting around for weeks before they have an opportunity to earn money, but also things that aren't NEEDING to be done on a daily to every 3 day basis for quality living (such as cleaning the toilet).

This next pic is a close up of one of the individual chore charts. I've had this for about 6 years. I made the magnets way back when I had a 3 year old and a baby that could just barely sit up. So IOW back when I had that kind of time. This chart is how we've always organized who does what chores. It's worked out really well, I don't see us doing anything differently for organizing chores. I just basically decide what each kid can do based on their age and personality.

I do believe I figured out a system that works very well for us, finally. I mean, I really feel good about this one. We may not always do "tickets" and may just do "points" instead, but the kids have fun with the tickets for now, and they love redeeming them for a reward. My 7 yo daughter saved up 20 tickets already so she could have a one-on-one date with Mommy. I feel so honored! Now I get to arrange with my husband when I can ditch him with the other kids while she and I go out.

If you have any ideas or suggestions about things you'd do differently, or tweak, let me know! I love outside ideas because it helps me brainstorm better.

Insects

E has been learning Life Science. She learned about insects, and got to raise some butterflies. 

Day 1, when we got our larvae

Day 6

Day 8

Day 11

One of the caterpillars took an extra two days to climb to the top of the cup and form it's chrysalis. The day after he did so, we moved them to the butterfly cage.

Day 19

Day 27

Day 28

The same late caterpillar was late again to emerge from his chrysalis.

This whole process took MUCH longer (about twice the time) than the science text AND the pamphlet that came with the kit said it should have.

We put sugar water in the bottom as instructed, we waited about one day after the last butterfly emerged, then wanted to release them. When we went to get the cage (we had to move it downstairs because the cat kept getting to it), all but TWO of the butterfly were DEAD.

It didn't seem to bother the kids so much. But it bothered ME. I don't know if we just got some larvae that were duds, but they took so long to go through the process and then lasted only a few days.

Day 30

It was still a fun and exciting thing however. Everyone in the family took interest in the caterpillars and how much bigger they'd gotten each day, and if they seemed to be starting to form their chrysalis, and when they were going to emerge. It was actually quite exciting to watch them come out and dry their wings. I'd love to do this again.

The anti-social introvert homeschool mom: What I wish I could say to other people

Yep, that's me. I don't care for socializing, getting together with a bunch of other women and hanging out and "chatting". It honestly near repulses me. I love family gatherings and going out one on one, or even with two other women MAYBE. But activities where there is forced socialization that I didn't ask to participate in, but feel obligated to, just downright causes me anxiety. My life seems to be all about raising my kids right. That, and making God and my husband happy, are just about all I think about. I don't care that I don't get to have free time during the day by not sending my kids to school. I don't care that I'm tied down to my kids. This is where I shine. If I can dedicate my life to one thing, I'd have it be raising good, responsible, intelligent, independent, hard working, CHRIST-CENTERED individuals to contribute to the world. It doesn't bother me to be sheltered up and confined to my home and family. I like that zone, it's comfortable and safe to me. That's my happy place.

Now, because this is the case I do have to venture out of my comfort zone for the sake of the kids and get them involved in other things so my tendency to be a recluse doesn't mess them up.

When you belong to the LDS Church (and perhaps it's true in other churches/cultures as well), there is A LOT of "forced socialization". There is a lot of pressure to be friends and be kind and know what's going on in people's lives and be there to support, uplift, and encourage. I don't mind this Christ-like aspect of it. I just have to basically be something other than ME to do it. I have to force myself to be "social". I try, I really try, and I think I do okay. I'm just not great at making friends at church period. I've accepted that and I'm okay with it. (Though sometimes I am bothered when it seems people don't know a lick about me and make judgements based on ignorance - so there's something I need to just realize happens as a result of my behavior, and then learn to not care. I'm working on it.)

When I am in a social "moment" with church people, or neighborhood people, it is almost always the case that the subject of school comes up. Women talk about their kids' education, and their kids' teachers, and how they help out at the school, etc. etc. I understand that is just a big part of these people's lives; their kids. Mine too! 😊 But I don't talk about my kids education with these people since not many people ask. Surely there are other things going on in their lives to talk about, right? This has been plaguing me for awhile. Why do they ALWAYS talk about school around me? They know I home school. They can see that I don't have anything to say on the subject and am just sitting there, a third wheel, just listening. It's fine for me to listen, I'm a good listener. However, I do like to have opportunities to participate in the discussion every once in a while.

Honestly, I'm just an awkward person socially. I like to talk about politics and I have strong opinions. I'm not rude or forceful about them (unless you're an ultra sensitive person) and often there is jest or humor behind my comments. So in these superficial moments, I simply do very little talking. I'm just not interested in things most people are interested in, which is another reason I am certain I love just being with my family, because they're like me!

Recently I started thinking that these people save certain discussion points (about school) to talk about when I'm around. It just seems like that is the case because most of the time I will be with this group of people who are good friends and talk often without me around and I think, "Haven't you all talked about this together already?" I really think people feel like they have to justify their choices to me so they talk up their child's education. Honestly, it just makes me not want to be social even more so.

Here is what I wish I could say to these people (which I can't, because it isn't out in the open that they feel they have to defend their choices to me):

I believe that most parents do their best for their children based on their life experiences and based on what THEY know, their knowledge and what the spirit tells them to do. Most parents do their best, they do what works for them and their family. My husband and I just know and understand things differently, we have different strongly held beliefs. Every person on earth may come to read something new, and then they will inevitably decide for themselves if it's something that they want to believe. This goes along with learning all new things and experiencing new things. We all take in life's lessons in one way or another. My husband and I choose to believe the facts presented to us to mean that the public schools practice harmful ways to educate children, and that children can become better educated under the freedom of a home school environment. Period. That's what WE believe. We take what we believe, along with the knowledge that God our Father entrusted us to raise our children right in His sight, and we home school our children. How other people choose to raise and educate their children based on their firmly held beliefs and understandings of life and things, is none of our concern. And quite frankly, unless you're teaching them to infringe on our personal rights, I don't really care what you do. I know you're a good person and love your kids and you're not just sitting idly by. For that I admire you and am glad that there are people like you raising children in this world. Every parent should be actively engaging in teaching their children what THEY believe to be right and wrong. If you're doing that, then I give you a 10. You don't need to convince me you're doing the right thing, I assume most parents are doing the right thing for THEM, as I know my husband and I are doing the right thing for US.

Somehow I have to figure out a way to change subjects naturally in a social situation, so I can get off this tangent people get on when they're around me. But I'd have to master the art of socializing, perhaps find a way to change this title they seem to label me with, as "the one who homeschools". The question is: Do I care to go to that effort? I guess we'll find out.

Getting back in motion

I love taking the kids to the library near our house. The older ones love to look at books and the younger ones don't care about them in the same way yet. This library has a great set-up for little ones with simple toys to keep them occupied when they're sick of listening to me read to them.

The past month or two we've been passing around bug after bug in our house. Two weeks ago we just didn't even do any school for a whole week because it took us that long to recover and get things back in order. The winter has been quite gloomy and depressing and we've all been in slow-motion, it seems like. I've noticed some school work has been slacking. We're in that middle-of-the-year slump. It's time to kick things back in gear. We've been getting some sunshine the last few days, too, so that's a nice little burst of energy that can kick us in the rear.

W learned about plant reproduction so we dissected a lilly and a lima bean. I have to say that W was quite funny about this. I thought it was really cool. He kept acting like it was too gross to touch all the parts of the flower.

The lilly I bought from a local flower shop had a couple of buds coming off of it. We kept them in a vase of water. One of them opened up, as I like to say, "with a vengence". Seriously, this lilly looked angry, it opened up so wide I thought it was gonna fold backward.

We kept it and it survived for about two weeks and then the other bud tried to open but the whole plant just started to look wilted and brown even as it was trying to thrive, so I threw it out.

All in all I'd say it was $7.25 well spent.

We took 3 weeks off for Christmas and New Years and this week we are back to work. Starting fresh feels good. It was nice to take a long break.