A Day in the Life (TMI)

Yesterday was very... Educational. It made for a perfect real life account of what homeschool looks like in real time, so I would be remiss if I didn't at least attempt to catch the highlights in writing.
We took a three day fall break last week because this momma needed to put her drive in check. I had the number thirty on the wall (for days of school, that birthday passed some years ago!) and I wanted to keep going. But that still small voice told me it was time to rest after six successful weeks of keeping up with it all day after day.
The rest was good for all of us, but we have been very slow in settling back into the school days. By slow I mean that Monday and Tuesday we schooled from eight to eleven without a break, barely got done with our work, still had catch up at naptime, and several things were left unfinished.
So yesterday I woke with an agenda. "Today," I said, "we are going to finish school quickly and run errands!" See, with a potty training two year old, very new to the process, we have stayed put at our house for over a week, and I think we were all a bit stir crazy - enough to make a trip to hobby lobby sound like a Disney experience! I was determined to make that trip. Plus, I really did need to purchase supplies for my CC class.
We finish breakfast and I set out Claire's binder for her. I head to the white board to start erasing yesterday's date and information, just in time to see my half naked two year old streak to the bathroom hollering "poopoo potty!" I declare Claire to be "big" enough to look at yesterday's date and figure out what needs to be changed to make it today, then I run after Buddy.
Now, he has to sit pretty far back on the Elmo potty to keep the teetee from shooting across the front and all over the floor, but this means bad things for number two sometimes. When I arrive, he is just standing up and asking, "please wipe?" There is poop all over the potty. Not just the seat. It has this pretend tank that "flushes" on the back of it and the whole thing has poop on it, which has now run down into the cracks and is dripping on the floor.
I wipe the boy first, with a hearty, "good job big boy!" because I really am so excited to be done with diapers in this house. And I carefully pick up the potty and attempt to hold it over the real toilet so I can get the poop off. Of course I can't do this without getting poop all over my pants, but oh well. The poop covered potty goes into the tub, and my pants are rinsed and set on the laundry pile. Mother's instinct now tells me to check his room to make sure he didn't have a little sneak preview of this incident outside of the bathroom, and yep, some poop by the door and now poop on my foot.
I clean the floor first, but not until I yell at the three year old at least three times to "stay in her room!!" She is now wallowing on the floor sobbing about how much I don't understand her and I am having flash forwards to her adolescence, but no matter, we can worry about her in future years of counseling, right?
Now it is time to check on Claire. In the, I don't know, maybe half an hour of this episode, she has written "Wednesday", "September", and traced a leaf for fall, and is now staring at the board waiting on instructions or something. I erase the board and fill in all the date information telling her something like, "seriously, you know what numbers come after twenty three and thirty two, and don't I have enough to do without...". She hears something like "mom is frustrated again," as she copies my work in this first rate education she is getting.
Then it is time to jet back to the bathroom to clean the potty because now Buddy is needing to go and has nowhere to do it. I get it all wiped down just in time to get it back under him for round two of the poop, only this time he also pees all over the front of the seat all over the floor, and I'm actually grateful I haven't yet had time to put pants on because I'm kneeling in the stuff.
He and I and the potty go into the shower. I get us all clean and me and Buddy dressed (now I can finally wear some pants again) and head back to the table. Claire has finished copying her work, but written her 3's backwards and put the date and not the number of days of school in the boxes, so we fix all that. I pull out her phonics workbook and turn to the right lesson in time to hear Evie shout "Mommy! Poopoo! Wipe please!" Seriously?!?
I FINALLY finish with all the potty time, and the younger two come to join me and Claire at the table where I pull out the Bible story. Jephthah's Vow. I start to read and then I begin to remember this story - you know the one where the guy vows that if God gives him victory in battle he will sacrifice whatever he meets when he comes home, then has to kill his daughter. Yep. So I slam the Bible shut a few sentences in and decide we will just save that story for some other day. Not sure what it is doing in the Golden Children's Bible that didn't even mention Abraham's almost sacrifice of Isaac...
I set Claire on task with her Phonics, correcting pencil grip and letter formation as needed, reminding her to date her work (so that Mommy doesn't have to go back and do extra work for record keeping), and I busy myself with keeping Evie and Buddy busy with cutting, pasting, drawing, or whatever may keep them quiet and occupied while Claire works. Claire moves onto Math and I pass her some counting bears so she can do her addition without me, then I go chase Buddy back and forth to the potty a little more while Evie wallows and entertains herself by telling stories to her dolls in her room.
And somehow, by some miracle, we wrap up all this craziness by 9:30, get dressed and pulled together and head out for some relatively fun errands, where the children behave like angels and Buddy goes potty at the store with no problem and comes home with a dry pullup! We saved our reading to do while Buddy napped, but after that morning, I just shooed the girls outside to play and spent naptime quietly cutting out some stuff for my CC group while they played. So now we have extra reading to do today, and we seriously need to review CC today since we didn't get to that yesterday either, but I still consider that a successful day in the life at Corius Christian Academy. Learning in the trenches.
Addendum: When Geoff went to run Buddy's bath last night, Buddy decided to poop there, too, so I wasn't the only one who had to deal with that seriously messy day. No, Evie, we do NOT need another boy in our family. I think we are done here, people.

On a Superior Education

I have been having a tremendously hard time coming up with something to say here. This is not because nothing is occurring around here, but because I don't just want to add more words to the world. If I open my mouth I want to speak truth, beauty, life, meaning, not drivel.

So I have been silent.
Somewhere in proverbs, a verse says, for you it is wisdom to be silent. Lately I have been making this choice more and more often.
But I am thinking a lot and learning so much, especially when it comes to how to raise and school my family so that we honor God. And I've had a fairly insightful breakthrough and change that is worth sharing or chronicling so that I don't forget it over the years ahead.
I'm going to confess something now. When I first felt drawn to homeschool, I think a large part of my motivation was that I wanted my children to be smarter than everyone else's. I didn't have the money for private education, but no matter, I was so smart I would think, who better to give them an Ivy League education than me, right? I know, don't laugh...
Seriously, though, besides the pride at the heart of this assumption, what I found when I started to dig deeper is that I had an underlying belief that education was about knowing stuff, and not even possibly important stuff, but just more stuff than everyone else. Because of my strong belief that education, knowing things, was one if the most important things in life, I would give my children the absolute best I could. This meant a classical education of course. Latin is essential to life, not because it provides a great foundation for understanding so much of the English language, but because I like the way it feels when people hear my child talking about declensions. After all, she is only in kindergarten!
Who doesn't love to impress people? What mother doesn't want to hear others praise her kids, seeing as how they are a direct reflection of her hard work, amazing intelligence, and gracious parental wisdom. Okay, now you can laugh! I just did.
I recently found that the heart of my homeschooling had become, me. Oh, God was in there, certainly. I mean, what God believing mom doesn't worry about what her children might be exposed to in the public school system? What christian homeschool would be complete without a child who can recite whole books of the bible, not to mention obey all Ten Commandments and outshine every other child in her amazing character? After all, the best compliment a mother can receive is to hear one of those other moms saying "why can't you act more like those Peel children?" Right?
We could all get a good laugh if I continue to point out my serious character flaws, but let me tell you what I've realized recently. If I give my children all of the best education this world has to offer, but they choose not to follow God, I haven't done my job as a parent. The bible is not some subject to be mastered like Latin, but it should be the guide to which they will turn for the rest of their lives. Prayers from memory are only a stepping stone toward an intimacy with God that they will need to develop in order to walk in truth, love, beauty and wisdom in this fallen world. And the scary part of recognizing these truths is that some of this, I can't "teach" them.
When I started looking for more "challenging" curriculum and I thought I could search for classical, christian, or classical christian, those search terms played again and again in my head. And God spoke to me and said, "which search term would you sacrifice for the sake of the other?" Would I be willing to teach a secular curriculum because deep down I believed it was higher quality or more important than the christian version? And that's when I repented.
I do not want to give my children the whole world only to find that they haven't found God and therefore are left with nothing of value in their lives. I don't want them to see God as an a la carte course to tag on to their superior education. And I am not saying that giving them a schooling that is not explicitly christian would keep them from knowing Him. Truly, they see their mom seeking with my heart to follow and serve God and that is the best way I know that they will find God.
But in obedience to God, I am changing my beliefs about what constitutes a superior education. I am so grateful to Him for showing me now, before I am in over my head, where my values were and where they should be. I am free now to teach my children what is important to God, not what makes mom (or them) look good, and I believe that teaching them to value things the way that God does is the best education I could possibly give them.

Nuts and Bolts or a Day in the Life

For those wondering about the nitty gritty, here are some of the nuts and bolts of how we are carrying out our homeschool at Corius this year.
Our oldest is in kindergarten, but our two and three year old are both quite ready for some real preschool as well. Therefore, we scheduled two blocks of school time in our day, one involving all three children each morning, and one during the afternoon nap for just our oldest who no longer naps. At least, in theory the younger two nap during this school block.
We are using memoria press kindergarten curriculum, but rather than follow the daily plan that they provided, we opted for the simplicity of a timed approach which I will explain in a moment. We also are beginning our first year in Classical Conversations with a new community here in town. Not only are we paricipating in the program this year and therefore learning the cycle three material, I am also tutoring the five and six year olds in our community. To the memoria press and classical conversations, I am adding phonics pathways which we were already over halfway through in our reading studies, and We Choose Virtues for our biblical character study.
Our time based approach has really allowed us to simplify. Rather than stressing over getting through a certain number of pages in a study each day, or feeling like we cannot move ahead with the next assignment since it is planned in for another day in the week, I have opted to simply allow time to dictate when we stop and start each subject in our day. When the twenty minutes are up for a subject, we move on. We get as much done in the time block as we can and don't sweat if it is a lot or a little. Simply homeschool.
So our morning block which involves all three children involves bible reading and prayer, character study, date/calendar, weather graphing, journaling, geography, classical conversations grammar review, phonics, math and enrichment. Our younger two are free to come and go as they please after we finish the character study. They tend to wander away and come back for enrichment.
Enrichment is an activity and is different each day. Mondays we conduct a science experiment. I find simple ideas online, and from books we own. Wednesdays we practice a life skill, Montessori style. Some the kids have chosen, like Claire wanting to brush her own air or perform a cartwheel. Others just present themselves, like making a sandwich or tying shoes. Thursdays we do art, using Kindergarten Art with Mrs. Brown online. All the children love art days of course. Fridays I read a story or stories related to our history sentence of the week. Many readings come from Bennett's Treasury of Virtues and from books in our personal library. Our morning schooling usually takes around two and a half hours. When the younger two children nap in the afternoon, Claire reads for twenty minutes with me from the phonics pathways book.
On Tuesdays we have classical conversations community in the mornings. Since I tutor, we are there from about 8:30 until 1:30, so I do not do any other schooling on Tuesdays. I do help Claire to create lap books for the material from CC, and she can work on those during the afternoon naps on community days, but many times she opts for look and finds and art projects on her own while I rest with the others. Tuesdays are exhausting!
We school at our kitchen table, which my husband wisely selected for the fact that it has a hinged top with ample storage. I have two magnetic whiteboards hanging over the table, with magnetic letters across the top and dollar tree domino decals strung across in a number line from one to ten. The door to our laundry room holds my enlarged US map, our schedule, family rules and virtues, and the children's chore charts. We do our reading cuddled up on our couch and our classical conversations grammar standing altogether.
So far, so good. Each day we adjust a little and grow more efficient. Each day I work a little more at simplifying my homeschooling and teaching. Each day seems a little easier and a little more normal than the last. It feels like we've been doing this forever, actually, which is great. And that's all I have to say about that for now.

Spinning Lessons from Rumpelstiltskin

I have been stewing lately over the story of Rumpelstiltskin - specifically about that straw that was spun into gold. I have a lot of unanswered questions in this story. What on earth inspired the miller to come up with the idea of spinning straw into gold to begin with? Once spun, did that gold straw act like gold or like straw (i.e., if lit on fire would it melt or be consumed?)? Did the king ever run out of gold and ask his wife to spin him some more, and if so, what happened when she couldn't do it?
Have you ever seen wool or cotton before it has been spun into thread? It is amazing to me that a big jumbled mess of fluff can be neatly and seamlessly arranged into a fine strand that is strong and smooth. I think this makes a good analogy for what we are doing in rearing our children, not to mention for what God is doing in rearing us as His children. He is taking the jumbled mess of our lives and working it over until it is smooth and strong and useful for playing its part in His kingdom tapestry. And we are to assist in His work in the way we train our children.
The bible tells us that the foundation is God's as the maker of life, but that we will each be judged based on the materials we used for building on it:
1 Corinthians 3:10-15 "According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire."
There are times in my life when I am spinning straw and spinning straw and spinning straw and all that is coming out is a tangled mess of spun straw, not useful for anything. No matter how much I want to believe the outcome of my activity will be pure gold, my work is worthless because my material is worthless. Hear me in a different way: the reason my straw spinning didn't result in gold has nothing to do with my effort and work; it has everything to do with what I was working with. I want to be certain that I choose the right materials when I build on God's foundation (Christ being the Cornerstone), in both my life and my children's lives.
My mother and I were talking the other day about the finitude of our capacity for just about everything in this bodily form. This wasn't really a talk about food, but that makes a good analogy for where I'm going. When my kids fill up at snack time, they won't eat dinner for me. Why? Because they are limited in how much they can eat by the size of their stomachs. They can fill that space with all manner of things, some good, some bad. And they will be judged based on what they fill it with, won't they? Whether or not they made good choices in their eating will be reflected in their weight and health years later, or in whether or not they are able to keep the food down in the present!
In our children's eating, our goal as parents should be to encourage a good appetite for what is good. But the stomach is not our only organ with finite capacity. How much can the heart hold? How much can the mind? In our children's reading, we should encourage an appetite for what is good. In our children's watching, we should encourage an appetite for what is good. In our children's buying, playing, time, studies, we should encourage an appetite for what is good. We should put gold in if we want to get gold out.
Because the truth is, there really is a Rumpelstiltskin in this world trying to convince us that we can use straw to make gold in our lives. This world is full of straw disguised as gold. And this world is full of people who are building with and storing up Rumpelstiltskin's gold, not realizing that it is worthless straw.
To save the life of her child, the miller's daughter had to learn Rumpelstiltskin's name. Our challenge as parents is to know the name and teach it to our children. Call the liar the liar. Call gold, gold. Show your children straw and teach them the difference. And begin with identifying and removing the straw in your own life so that your children will be free to follow your example.

Simplicitas for the overachiever

Overachiever. 
Yep, that's what she said. The word rang in my ears and I wasn't sure if it was a compliment or a criticism. I know she meant it in a positive way, but I'm not sure how I felt about it then, or even now.
So many years of my life could be summed up in that word - namely my school years. But those years were also weighted down by a plaguing sense of guilt. Could've, would've, should've, more, more, more. See, there was always a greater expectation than I could possibly meet. Rarely did that expectation come from any outside source (though I can think of a boss or two I could mention...); I have never needed anyone but me to push me.
Such high expectations, such an extremely huge distance to fall when I fail to meet them.
And what I discovered recently, as I have been trying to pry into why I lose control when I lose it (and trust me, I lose it too much!), is that this place is where the rub is. Somewhere in that space between my expectations and reality. 
How do I respond when I don't meet my expectations? Or more importantly, when you don't meet my expectations? How do I deal with disappointment?
Somewhere we have all heard (Benjamin Franklin, Winston Churchill, or some other famous person quoted in Internet memes), that the secret to contentment is not to have more but to want less. Contentment is key, isn't it, the key to not being disappointed? Our consumer society always pushing us to buy more, work more, want more, learn more, play more stands in direct opposition to the cry of our hearts, the cry to live simply. Simplicity is a great weapon in the fight against my overachieving expectations, against my discontented consumer spirit. It is with simplicity that I want to homeschool.
I fight the urge to buy into the gimmicks. Teach your child to read with no tears in thirty days! Have the world's smartest child using this one easy memory trick! You can do it all! I don't spend my time pouring over Pinterest boards searching for that perfect clever way to teach the "ch" sound that involves a month of constructing a full scale train in my living room. I don't need a special school room, or a teacher name, or anything really that I have to buy and don't already possess. 
Simply homeschool. 
Simply read to your children. Write letters on the whiteboard over your kitchen table. Use your homemade flashcards. Go to the library. Teach your children. Learn with your children. Find what interests them and dive in head first, even if it means plowing through two huge volumes of dinosaur stories full of predators stalking prey complete with illustrations every single time your kids get a choice at reading time (trust me, I feel your pain). Gently turn their faces toward God's truths when their interests carry them away. Stay home. Be fully present and available.
Simply homeschool.
Simply read simply the scriptures and suddenly you will discover that God is the one opening your sweet child's little heart to the truths of His word. The Jesus Storybook Bible, the rhyming bible, those piles of other cutesy gimmicky bibles might have given her a love for David and Goliath and Noah's arkfull of animals, but the word in its glorious simplicity is giving her a love for God Himself!
And that is the greatest blessing a parent can witness, to be the conduit through which God reaches down and touches the heart of your child.

Gearing up

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. - Benjamin Franklin

Three more days until CC orientation and my quiet life in jammies all day with the kids is altered forever. I live in routine, you might say I thrive in it. Always the planner, always knowing what is coming up next. And I am raising three routine gluttons. My oldest can hardly make it through an activity without either asking "what next?" or giving everyone in the room a point by point analysis of the remaining hours of the day. But thus far my routine has been simple, quiet, at home.

The new plan has been spelled out carefully, painstakingly, lovingly in my homeschool planner. In pencil. See, I know that the coming year cannot be inked in anywhere. How quickly will Claire breeze through this reading program? Much too quickly, I am thinking, but the math may keep her attention. When will I fit in time for dishes, laundry, cooking gluten free bread? I have literally scheduled Buddy's potty training when it is most convenient for me during the school break, but will he even be interested or capable then? (Please, Lord, let that answer be yes!) When Evie Jane is four will she suddenly decide to be too old for childcare, and if so where will I find the tuition money to send her to class during CC?

So many variables, and yet one amazing constant and the foundation of it all. I know that God has called me to homeschool my children. I don't have to pencil that in. I am not homeschooling out of  a knee jerk reaction to the crumbling standards of public education, or because the city just rezoned our district, or because I can't afford private school, or because I don't want to go back to work. I am homeschooling because God clearly directed Geoff and I to choose this path for our family. And I'm excited!