We're still around.

I just wanted to update a little since it's been six months since my last post. We moved our home to a different city in March and it was stressful and we are just barely settling in. We have been continuing schooling obviously, but there have been some interruptions since we remodeled some. Now that it is summer and W is still way ahead, we have been working on the subjects we need to catch up one, one at a time. July is when we finish 2nd grade level math. Our goal is to be all the way done with math by the end of July. Then in August we will finish up Science and Grammar. We plan to stay in this house for good, so hopefully come September, we can start on a regular and consistent track.

Our daughter E is finally learning to read. I have finally been able to squeeze in some time each day to work with her a little bit on this. She is 3 years old and has been ready to learn to read for some time. She isn't as engaged as W was as a 2 year old, but she seems to like it more and more each day.

Sheltering them.

When we made the decision to home school, I will admit that it had very little to do with "sheltering them" from the world. But let me just say, that I am NOW, so very glad that I do home school so that I can shelter them from most dangers in the world.

There is so much in public schools that threaten the innocence of children. Technology, while it is a blessing, is also a great danger. Good parental values are diminishing. People are getting more and more lazy as parents, because now it requires A LOT more work! Yeah, things were simple when we were children, but they are not so simple anymore. I want to give my children the simple life that I was offered, and I can do that with home school. With public school I can't. There are too many influences in public school, even teachers can be a horrible influence. Children are not safe there, and I am not talking about crazy maniacs shooting up kindergarten classes.

When I was a teenager there were many things in the media, and in music, and in school, and right in my face as I walked around the mall or even at school, that encouraged me to be unchaste. If you consider me old fashioned and ridiculous for using that word, then you are welcome to stop reading now. But God does not change, the world does. I believe in God, and I believe in his plan of happiness and ALL that he says will make us feel happiness and joy. Anytime I slip away from the way the God wants us to live, or anyone close to me in my life slips away from it, I am a miserable person. Anytime I am engaged in His work and regularly learning about His gospel, I am happy and more kind and more productive. I know that chastity is among the greatest of God's commandments. That being said, amid all the temptations I had as a teen, I stayed clean, and it was not easy, it was hard.

I believe it is far worse now. I believe that just in the last 15 years, that virtue in the portrayals of the world pretty much does not exist. I am so worried for my children, for I believe that this is the biggest tool of the devil to thwart God's plan of happiness. Desensitization to violence is also a problem, but is it bigger? Not in my opinion. Rationalizing dishonesty and secret conspiracies is also a problem, but is it bigger? No. The devil knows the weakness of man, and he is jealous that he does not have a body and we do, so he wants us to misuse our body so that we cannot return to the presence of God and Jesus Christ. These messages and images are EVERYWHERE. Yes, even while I home school, my children will be exposed, I'm not turning Amish any time soon. But if they are in my home while they are young, my husband and I are the biggest influence on them, and we are observant of their actions and can teach them and talk to them MORE OFTEN than if they were going to a different school. Their foundation will be what they know from being in their home. Not from being in their home and also being at school, being shown things and told things all day long that they should not see nor hear as okay for them. My children will also be encouraged to play with their playmates in MY home and not at someone elses, unless I get to know their parents very well. Is this sheltering? NO. It is called being a responsible parent and trying to raise good, genuine, disciplined people. These people are successful in life.

If my children mess up, I will always love them and I will not judge them. They are human and humans make mistakes. But unchastity is like a poison. I feel some fear for them. I know of the joy that a fulfilling chaste life can bring. I want them to know that.

I will do everything in my power to protect my children from this poison and other poisons that the world offers. I will work extra hard, and I am glad that I home school because of it. This world is not anything like it was when I was younger, let alone when my mother and grandmother were young. It is full of mud and muck and misconceptions about life. I am so happy for the gospel and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints, which provides resources that help me to be a better mother. I am thankful for prayer and for the scriptures, which tell the true stories of ancient people who, when going against the commandments of God, suffered consequences which eventually obliterated them. I am grateful for these examples.

Going well, considering.

I thought I would post a small update about how things are going in our home school. Understandably, I have been very busy with a newborn and a toddler, so there has been some slacking here and there. Mostly I just want to note how great of a student W has been. He is getting so much better at not complaining and doing his work and paying attention. He blesses me with this.

While our children are small, since the schooling is mostly on me, we are considering online schooling. We have to a bit more research to do for both of us parents to be comfortable with whatever the choice is. For now, I feel like I'd rather keep doing things the way we are doing them than to pay $2,000 a year for some of these online private schools I have been looking at. And honestly, I think Utah Virtual Academy sounds attractive and worth a try. If we tried it for a year and it was a waste (which I can't imagine it would be a total waste), then it's okay because W is so far ahead academically anyway.

I am trying to work on making time to teach our 2 year old, E, to read and write. I have worked only a little on her. It's just hard with all the other responsibilities.

Homeschooling is a lot of work. I hope to make it work as good as possible and not have too much burden on me with all my other roles in life, (mother, wife, church service, etc.) I refuse to be stressed, I am quite aware of what it does to me.

Improvement already, must knock on wood

Even though I am cautiously excited about this, I have to make a note about W's improvement already since last year. It has only been three days so I'm aware I am jumping the gun on boasting, but someday he will look at this blog and want to see some praise. :)

I must also add that today he had Chinese and he has barely shown any reluctance. A little here and there, but he is being quite cooperative, considering. Our little E has been down for a nap since we started and boy has that been great! 

Here is a picture of part of his spelling assignment for today. At one point he asked for my help and I went over to him and saw this and said, "Woah, look at that handwriting, that is amazing!" He was so pleased with that reaction and started telling me how to write properly and even showed me the imaginary "middle line" where you start the lowercase letters. 

I realize he did make some errors on the picture recognition, but I don't blame him, these pictures in this book can be misleading even for 30-year-old me.

W has been doing very well at Math too. I'm not sure if I find myself more patient, or he just answers more quickly, or he is just paying better attention. I do think he is more mature now and has learned and grown a lot over the summer.

I had his dad give him a priesthood blessing Sunday night for starting school and I am sure that has something to do with it as well.

First day of school 2012

(Disclaimer: These pictures are horrible, taken with my phone because I have my camera in my hospital bag in the car. Ha!)

We had a pretty good first day of school. All in all it went well. I did have an appointment in the morning so the husband started the day off with History and then started Language, until I got home. W was good about doing his work and he got to have a little break between. We went to the library at the end of the day to pick up some books for W to read.

This is how I have it organized this year. It is MUCH more simple than last year. We are still using The Well-Trained Mind as a guide. So far I haven't figured out how to incorporate time4learning.com, but maybe it will need to come up later. 

I decided to use one of these teacher's planner books. In this state, we don't need to technically keep any record of grades until 9th grade, I believe. But I thought it would be nice to get into the habit. This book is clearly for an entire classroom, but I LOVE the planning section of it. It makes it so easy for us to plan our weeks out quite clearly.

The grade and assignment recording section will look very blank with just W on it and all the rest of the rows empty. But if I keep using this idea, then I will at least have our other children on there in the future.

I organized our shelves a lot differently, instead of a bin for each subject (which left for a lot of empty space in each bin), I will be having a bin for each child. Some of the other bins are being used for old or future textbooks or reference books, and art supplies.

Here is W's notebook:

I knew W would still want to check things off as he goes, so I found this sheet at http://thatresourcesite.com/, and had my wonderful mother print and laminate it for me. I like how it is in cursive and that W can read it even though I've never taught him cursive. 

His notebook has dividers that start with his weekly assignments with a separate pocket divider for each subject. I will be copying and/or putting pages in each pocket divider behind "weekly assignments" that he is to do during the week.

When he is done with his assignments, he puts them in this divider pocket, in the back of the binder, titled, "Completed assignments". After I've looked at them I will mark them completed and put them in the back of the binder behind the divider. I still don't know what I am going to do when the binder gets really full. I am considering for certain subjects to get a separate binder for completed assignments to keep until the year is done.

So much simpler and easier than before. W seems excited about it; being able to have all of his work in one place, and I think he feels accomplished when he puts things in the completed pocket. :)

I will update in a month or so at the latest to let you know how it's working out. Tomorrow W has Chinese lessons and we will be doing school too, so it should be interesting.

Getting ready for school in 2012

Here I am in my third trimester with my third baby. She will likely be here right at the time school is to start! I am so lucky these two overwhelming things are happening at once. (Can I get a resounding, "Not!"?)

W has become accustomed to summer freedom, even though I have been making him do more chores and a lot of reading. Last year we also cut back a lot on time spent on school and even completely stopped teaching History. As you're aware, we just felt he was too young and clearly overwhelmed for what we were asking of him, especially since should he attend public school he would be going to Kindergarten just THIS year.

I went back and forth on how to manage our homeschool this year. I strongly considered using K12 curriculum through Utah Virtual Academy. We spoke with someone there and it didn't sound like it would hinder W, it actually sounded quite nice. But the husband didn't want to give it as much thought and has basically said no to it. I am fine with that for now. I really didn't like the idea of there being another teacher in charge of W's education and having to check in all the time with him or her. I didn't like the idea of having to be on someone else's schedule and not being able to take a day off if we wanted to go on a family vacation or just take a breather. And I really didn't like that it is basically public curriculum, which meant history wouldn't be taught in the classical style (which I really want him to learn it in that way), and they wouldn't be using Singapore Math (which W has really responded to well and both the husband and I like it a lot). There are other things too. It just didn't feel right. I tried to find and look at other online schools and either it didn't seem like a full curriculum or it costs a lot of money.

I am basically going to organize our homeschool differently this time around. I am going to simplify it more, which I think will help W be more independent in our homeschool. I am still going to go with the classical style again this time around as our "guide". I am going to likely try out a website called time4learning.com so that W can have fun on the computer and get breaks from so much workbook work. You pay month to month, so if I don't like it I don't have to keep doing it.

I am very worried about W starting to get use to doing more work. I guess we will have to see and perhaps we may have to cut back more again, and consider his age and disregard his intellect. I really don't want to overwhelm him and I want to keep him on a strict schedule regarding his academics because I know it is the only way that he will survive this. He does so much better when he knows at a certain time he needs to do something and continue with it until another certain time arrives and then he can play. If we spring it on him he throws a complete fit and it really stresses the whole house out. He needs to expect it.

Please pray our family will do well with all the changes coming about.

It is my opinion that academics come before extra things that parents want to make their children learn. Sometimes parents will double up on learning things that really are not imperative to their academic success in America and I see it as unneeded stress! Moderation is good in all the extra stuff. The basic subjects of a classical education is much more important, and also just as important, they need to be able to have freedom and playtime. I just can't be the mother of one of those families that has their kids doing everything from language lessons, to sports, to gymnastics and piano lessons IN ADDITION to academics! I do NOT have it in me at all. I am a mother first and foremost, not a chauffeur. My children should be home with me most of the time and busy families just aren't very close. And when they are out often enough doing other things, then have to come home to MORE working, I think it would make them hate life, certainly not love life at home. I strongly believe in prioritizing what matters most, and I think you have to have an eternal perspective on that. The only thing we can take with us after this life is knowledge (and our family). The other stuff is not as important.

Give them a good foundation

My husband brought up a good point last night as we were driving to my mothers house in terrible traffic (construction). He said that he doesn't understand why people say they worry about sending their children out into the world (school) at such a young age because they worry about the influence of evil. He said he just wants to tell people, "Uh, you don't have to!"

It kind of summed up an already inborn passion of mine that relates to my desire to home school. It seems like there is more and more pressure from the world as time goes on to essentially "give up our kids" and entrust them to someone else, younger and younger. I'm sorry but 5 years old is too young to just send them out and have someone else teach them basic things that you already know yourself. I think that if you are worried about this (I would be), then keep them home and school them there until they have built a solid foundation of goodness and knowledge of God and the Plan of Salvation. Engross them in things of the gospel, watch their testimony grow and strengthen and witness their character come out and say, "I know Jesus is my savior. I will follow him. I won't do any drugs, I don't think it's cool. I won't swear or talk negatively about someone else. I won't listen to bad music because it makes me feel bad. I won't partake in immoral behavior because I know that making babies is only suppose to be done while married and for a very special and specific reason. I know that serious sinning will make me unhappy and will make it harder to truly partake of the blessings of the atonement. I know that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love me. They are my friends and my cheerleaders and I can't disappoint them." Then send them to school.

And let's face it, a five year old may "know that the church his true", that he "loves his family and friends", that, "he is thankful for a prophet", that they "want to be baptized", etc. etc. But is it a true conversion? A conviction? A public, and even private, school is full of random other children who are aware of random and countless things and talk about them. It is understandable that you wouldn't, by nature, want your children exposed to that. Don't let the "socialization myth" scare you. It's easy to get your kids socialized in the way YOU want them socialized when they are really young. They aren't picky about friends and playmates at a young age.

What age do they cease to be "young"? Well, that is up to your child, and your discretion. It is our responsibility as parents to teach our children, is it not? So if your decision is to send them to school even though you waiver in the decision, then you have to understand the consequences. You will probably have to work harder to make sure they understand the value of a good, true, and faithful heart.

The most important thing to me as a parent is to provide my children with a "sure foundation" in the gospel of Jesus Christ. That is THE most important thing to me. Academics come second, and at this age, there is not much that is complicated about teaching them. There are too many resources it is overwhelming, you can't miss a beat.