It Happened without Me

Sometimes I think that it would be so encouraging if I could trace all of the wonderful moments in homeschooling and parenting back to the great things I've done, taught or prepared.  But then all the pressure would be on me to keep them happening, wouldn't it?  And so, today, I am rejoicing in what happens without me and how God brings beauty apart from any doing on my part.

I shared here about our very simple schedule.  There are so many things I wish I could include.  But knowing my own personal limitations is the name of the game right now.  So we do what we can and we leave the rest to the Lord.  And this is what He does with it.

Last night at dinner, we each received a ticket ...

Preparations were under wraps.

A crowd gathered, anticipating the grand opening.

There was artwork, as at any gallery opening ...

But how many gallery openings have you visited that included an art history read aloud by the artist?

A generous supporter of the arts even made a purchase.

She was on cloud nine.  I  must admit that I was, too.

Mama Marriage Counselor

I'm starting a new series on the blog today and along with it a new page to collect the related posts.  You can find the text below on the Mama Marriage Counselor page (also a new tab at the top of the blog) and look there to see new posts as they are added.

Who had it first?  Who does it belong to?  Where did she find it?  What did she do to you after that?

Do you decide for the plaintiff or the defendant?  And which one is which anyway?

I used to view my role in sibling disputes more like that of a judge: hear the facts, render a verdict and hand down a sentence.

And then one day, everything began to change When God Turned the Tables on Me.

And now, I am learning, slowly, that being a mama in the midst of little people is more like the role of a marriage counselor than the role of a judge.  Sure, I can make a ruling on who gets the ball, who gets to sit there, or whose turn is next.  That is much simpler and quicker.  And it is of value to my children ... for about the next 35 seconds until another dispute erupts.  Or, I can walk alongside them and teach them how to understand what is going on in their own hearts.  I can view each "episode" as a learning opportunity for understanding people, their needs, our needs and our own tendencies.  And that is of eternally lasting value.

There are, however, two problems with this second approach.  First, it takes a lot longer.  It is a lot more challenging mentally, physically and emotionally to really invest into people's lives, to sit with them in their struggle and to be a safe place for them to turn their hearts inside out and dump everything onto the table for you to peruse.

Secondly, it will inevitably lead to your own journey of self-discovery.  You will never be that safe place unless your heart is inside out on the table, too.  But hold onto your hat, sister.  Once you start this journey, side by side with those little people who live in your home and breathe the same air you breathe, you will never be the same again.  It is like drinking from a fire hydrant.  So much testing by fire (or by water?) that sometimes you will wish you could go back to being the impartial judge and sentence-declarer.

And this is why we need to, we must take this journey in community.  Will you join us here?  Think of this as the counselors' meeting room.  Let us stir one another up to love and good works!

When God Turned the Tables on Me

Note: Even though I am new to blogging, I have been writing for years because it really helps me to process my thoughts.  Most of the things I write have just hibernated on my hard drive.  But I have shared a few things over the years, and this is one of them.  So if you know me in real life, this may be a re-run.

It was a fairly routine morning.  We had slogged through breakfast and clean-up and we were somewhere in the middle of making it through the morning.  I don’t even remember if this was one of the days when we attempted to accomplish some school work or not.  What I do remember was that the children were at each other with bickering and arguing.  I also remember that I was tired of dealing with it and just wanted it all to stop.  So, I did what (I thought) any good Christian mother would do.  I marched them all into the living room and sat them all on the sofa so that I could beat them over the head with some Bible verses (figuratively, not literally).

Although I knew better, I tended to treat Scripture as a handy list of how-to’s which, if I could conform my children closely enough to, would lead to a smoothly-run and peaceful household.  This particular day, I wanted to persuade my children of the importance of dealing with inter-personal problems according to the simple and straightforward method laid out in Matthew 18.  Follow this recipe, I wanted to convey, and we will all be a lot happier.

I opened up to Matthew 18 and scanned down through the verses until I came to the part about your neighbor trespassing against you.  I was reading to them from the King James Version and in that version, verse 15 begins in this way …

“Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee …”

I’ve listened to enough sermons in my lifetime to know that if a verse begins with something like “Moreover” or “Therefore” it means that the current statements are based on the context of what came before it.  So, in an attempt to be a good Bible scholar, I decided to back up to the beginning of the passage to put the pertinent verses in their context.  But an amazing thing happened as I read and explained.  I realized that God had turned the tables on me.  It was I who was being “beaten over the head” (although with far more tenderness and compassion than I had myself managed to muster) with these verses.

In Matthew 18, Christ begins by talking about little children.  In order to enter the kingdom of heaven, we must become like a little child.  In fact, God’s love for his little children is so deep and so fierce that he has stern warnings for those who cause one of his little ones to stray.  He compares himself to a shepherd who will do whatever it takes to seek after lost sheep.  And it is in this context, directly on the heels of the sheep-seeking illustration that the “Moreover” of verse 15 arrives.

Suddenly, it hit me.  Verses 15 and following are not intended primarily as a neat and orderly protocol for mediating human disputes and achieving justice (though in God’s providence, that may result).  Instead, these verses are a quick-reference guide on the active practice of participating with Christ in the sheep-seeking mandate.

So, what does someone sinning against you have to do with seeking lost sheep?  Well, presumably, if the sin was committed against you, then you were the first one to know that one of Christ’s sheep strayed off the path.  You were watching when he wandered out of the pasture, so, naturally, the first responsibility falls to you to run after him.  And, if you can’t manage the rescue on your own, you need to get help!

Even in the moment, I felt the difficulty of these words.  Wait a minute, someone sins against me, wounds me, disrespects me, treats me wrongly … and God is expecting me to joyfully jump up and go cheerfully after him, coaxing him to come back and hang out with us?  In a word, Yes.

Thankfully, the Lord anticipated my incredulity, and apparently Peter could relate to it, too.  You can hear the tension in his voice when he asks the Lord how many times one is expected to do this.  Doesn’t there come a point when we are released from the seemingly-impossible task of running after someone who has just hurt us?  Isn’t there some kind of limit or breaking point?  As was often his way, the Lord responded to Peter (and to me) with a parable.

The parable he tells is about the wicked servant who is forgiven an impossible debt by the king and then refuses to forgive a small debt to a friend.  Essentially, Christ was saying, “Well, Peter, I’m only asking you to do a small fraction of what I did for you.”  How can Christ expect us to run lovingly after someone who has just spit in our faces or slapped us or mocked us?  Because that’s exactly what he did for us.  Except our sins against him are sins against the infinite God and Creator of the universe, whereas the sins of others against us are simply sins against finite, created human beings.

When someone sins against us, we should be concerned about the offense that was committed.  But we should be concerned about it more fully as it serves to hamper that person’s relationship with the almighty God than in whatever sense it damaged that person’s relationship with us.  David recognized the much weightier sense of sin as an obstacle to his relationship with God when he said, in Psalm 51, “Against thee, thee only have I sinned …”  Certainly it was true that he had sinned against Uriah, Bathsheba, Joab, his soldiers and even the people of Israel as a whole.  But in the ultimate sense, the greatest weight of his offense was found in sinning against God.

So, here I was facing my children with a Bible in hand that I had planned to use like a wrecking ball to smack them around a little bit and whip them into shape for my own personal pleasure and convenience.  And instead, the Lord used Matthew 18 to say to me, “Are you running after these little sheep like I would run after them, to coax them back tenderly?  Or are you doing a better job of chasing them further away with your arrogant, self-centered attitude?  Watch out.  I don’t take kindly to those who cause my little ones to stumble.”

I considered myself warned.  Instead of lecturing, I confessed my sin to my children and I asked their forgiveness.  Thus began my journey into understanding that, while there is something truly unique and special about the privilege I have been given to be the mother of these dear children, there are also many ways in which my relationship with them is very like my relationship with my other brothers and sisters in Christ.  And because of this, there is no shortage of wisdom in all of Scripture, and in Matthew 18 about how to be a good mother to the little portion of the flock over which my Father has given me particular care and jurisdiction.

This post is a part of the Mama Marriage Counselor series.

Do Over

This is the sixth part in a series based on this cost/benefit analysis.  Here you can find Part 1:Scoping out the Sequence, Part 2: Making the Grade, Part 3: Unscheduling, Part 4: Why DIY? and Part 5: Race to the Finish.  Next I want to talk about this "plus" for us in letting go of our math textbooks:

• A LOT less time spent explaining work and correcting (and re-correcting) work.

I want to say up front that what I'm comparing here isn't really, purely, textbooks vs. no textbooks.  What I'm comparing is the way we used to do math vs. the way we do math now.

Before:

"Math" every day was sitting with one kid at a time and explaining to him what to do on his math assignment.  It went something like this:

"See, they're showing you that in order to divide by a fraction, you just flip it upside down and then  multiply.  Does that make sense?  Here, try this one.  Exactly! Good!  Got the idea?  OK, so you are going to do these five problems about that.  And then how about if you do one of these ... and one of these ... one from each of these sections ... and a word problem and, sure you can do all the Roman numerals.  OK, go get your sister and tell her it's her turn."

So, basically, it was like math, minus all of the best parts of math.  There was no exploration.  No wonder.  No awe.  No lightbulb moments.  No connecting the concepts.  No conversation.  Like a Dementor had kissed our homeschool math.

Maybe we can get into all that some day, I'd tell myself.  Some day when I didn't have to spend 15-20 minutes x 4 kids just telling them what they had to do on their worksheet for the day.  Someday when I wasn't exhausted by all of the exertion of the "management" of six other people while I tried to spend an hour meeting with each of the least destructive ones individually.

And what about quiet work time in the afternoon?  It went something like this,

"Good, all of your Roman numerals are correct.  Oooh, sorry, your long division problem is wrong, so you'll have to do that over.  Stop grumbling; math is supposed to be challenging.  And, oh, wait.  Yikes!  You weren't supposed to flip BOTH of the fractions upside down.  Only the second one.  Oh dear.  I guess I didn't really explain that very well.  OK, maybe I can go over this with you tonight and you can do all these over tomorrow along with tomorrow's math."

Good fun, right??  Can you tell why the kids and I all dreaded math?

Now, all of the exploration of new concepts happens together in a group.  There is still some "people management" - there always will be - but usually the oldest four are engaged (they are either hands-on or answering with their dry erase "slates") and the younger two are coloring, which is their version of "doing math".  And quiet work time?  Sure, they still get problems wrong.  And there are still corrections to be made.  But not as many because:

1. They are only doing review work - not work on new concepts.
2. There are only five problems.
3. There is only one problem per topic, so no more discovering that they've done eight problems in a row wrong because they didn't understand one concept.

I've gotten some questions about what "family math" looks like these days.  I promise to write a post on that when I'm finished with this series (almost done!) but I have to say up front: we've been doing this less than two months!  I can tell you what it looks like so far, though, for what it's worth.

Little Points of Light

Sometimes when I read blog posts or look at pictures that show the amazing things other homeschool moms are doing with their kids, I hate those moms just a little bit.  I imagine that they are better than me and that they look down on me.  I want to argue and defend myself and explain what life is like here right now and beg them to be understanding and to know that I'm really doing the very best I can right now, here in this moment.  Foolish, right?

But what if that's not why moms share things on social media?  What if it isn't to prove they are better than everybody else?  What if they share things for, well, for the same reason that I do?  What if life is hard.  What if there are lots of scary, dark corners and lots of messy problems.  What if there are many moments of discouragement, frustration and sorrow.  What if there is a fight against bitterness, resentment and ingratitude.  And then, in the midst of that, a spot of light breaks through the darkness.  A little point of light like the tiny points of light I could see through the paper my son pierced over and over with the point of a compass.

And it is such a relief, such a moment of refreshment and feels like an oasis in the desert.  And you just want to share because you are overflowing with joy that, in the midst of this chaos, the baby has yummy, chubby legs.  And the four year old curled up and fell asleep in the fort his brother made for him.  And your daughter is teaching herself to knit.  And your first grader drew a picture about mixed fractions when you didn't even realize she was listening in to that discussion!



And so, on that very note, could I share?  Things are hard here.  Energy is at a premium.  Days are hit or miss.  Weeks ago my husband had asked for the day off yesterday so that we could go to Colonial Williamsburg during their "homeschool days".  We had to pay for the tickets in advance.  But energy is a limited commodity these days, so we really couldn't know until the morning of whether we would actually be able to go.  Yesterday it was freezing cold and wet.  But thankfully we were able to do our Saturday stuff yesterday and move our reservations to today.


And today, there was energy in abundance.  Like a rainbow after the rain.  A mercy I don't deserve, the Lord granted the perfect day for our little homeschool bunch.  So may I share it with you?  It isn't impressive.  But it just felt so good to be able to make this happen today with my kiddos, and I am tearfully rejoicing as I thank the Lord for his favor and blessing.

In the gift shop with my three costumed characters.

As you walk the foot path from the Visitors Center to the Revolutionary City, these little "notes"
in the sidewalk take you backwards in history.  Luke read this and then explained to his sisters,
"You didn't have to pay taxes!  And there were no police!"

Authentic Colonial Animal Cracker Snack

The Cobbler's Shop

Of course, Sutherlands have to try out the Colonial Board Games.

Standing Guard

Why DIY?

This is the fourth part in a series based on this cost/benefit analysis.  Here you can find Part 1:Scoping out the Sequence, Part 2: Making the Grade and Part 3: Unscheduling.  Next I want to talk about this "plus" for us in letting go of our math textbooks:

• I get to create the lessons and activities myself.

I've said this before many times, but I want to stress again that this series isn't meant to be an objective argument against the use of textbooks, or textbooks for math.  It is simply an exploration of why that choice has "fallen for me in pleasant places".  So if you read the above "pro" for going without textbooks and you think "Why on earth would anyone want to create things from scratch when they could be purchased already done?" then by all means, purchase them ready-made and don't give it a second thought!

I have a dear friend who is constantly knitting things for her children.  One Christmas she made her boys really cool real-looking "chainmail" with yarn!  She makes baby gifts (several for us!) and all kinds of other wonderful, cozy homemade treasures.  For the longest time I felt intimidated.  I saw all of the things she was doing and I thought to myself, "This is what good, dedicated mothers do - they knit.  Knitting is such an essential homemaking skill and it is frugal and it is such a wonderful, productive kind of busy.  If I was a good mother, I would do this, too."

I did try learning to knit, but I wasn't very good at it (maybe just because I didn't give it much of an effort) and I was disappointed in myself.  I thought, "My friend is so diligent and has so much good will power and self-control.  Why don't I have that?  Why don't I make the time to do this important thing?"  And then you know what I realized?  She doesn't knit because she's convinced it is a morally superior way to nurture her family or because she has the self control to "do hard things".  (She would probably laugh out loud if she knew that's what I was thinking.)  She knits because she likes to knit.  She knits because it quiets her soul.  She knits because that is where she finds peace and relaxation.  She knits for the joy of knitting!

And that, my friends, is why I love to make up my children's math work myself.  Please hear me. When I say "love" that is exactly what I mean.  I don't mean "I feel frugal," I don't mean "I feel diligent" and I don't mean "I feel educationally superior" I mean "I just like doing it".  When the children are in bed and I sit down with a stack of fresh notebook paper and a spreadsheet (just another thing that I love, because I'm a dork like that) it isn't a duty thing.  It just clicks with how I am wired.

The other day, I needed to make an activity for my six year old in sequencing numbers.  She's been working on place value to the hundreds, so I was going to ask her to order these numbers from least to greatest:

102
201
101

But just for fun, I also included

½

This isn't something most first graders would come across in their math books.  But she has been having fun with fractions recently.  At Sunday lunch she was given two cookies.  She carefully bit off half of a cookie and then held them both up together and said "Now I have a mixed number!"  I knew she could handle ordering a fraction in with whole numbers, and she loved it!  It just stirred my soul to get to make those choices myself.

Have you ever bought a used item of furniture or clothing with great plans to pull it apart and remake it just the way you wanted to suit your particular purposes?  And then at some point, did you come to the realization that using the bits and pieces of the pre-made item had actually become more complicated than scrapping it all and starting from scratch?  Well, that's how it was for me with textbooks.  Even after I had made changes in how we did math, I tried using textbook pages (because I still have four half-used consumable textbooks that are sitting on the shelf).  I was surprised at how hard it was to find one page with five problems that fit what each kid most needed to review.  Making the problems myself was just quicker and easier.

And, just to make sure you don't leave this post saying, "She is so good and diligent.  If only I could be a dutiful mother like her" (pardon me while I laugh myself to tears) I want to assure you that it's not all that complicated.  First, it's only five problems a day per kid.  And secondly, remember, I have  a handy spreadsheet (which I did not create myself) that helps me to pick what kind of problems to make.  It might sound intimidating to just make up five math problems.  But what if I said "Write down a three digit subtraction problem that requires borrowing."  You could do that, right?  That's all there is to my job.  It's just that I love doing it!

For me, it was a huge relief to drop slogging through pages of a pre-made textbook and instead much more energizing to make the problems yourself.  So what's the take-away?  The take-away for you is to know how you "tick" and to understand that using that as one of the factors in choosing how to homeschool isn't selfish or lazy - it's just a smart use of limited resources!

For more encouragement on the freedom to choose the method(s) of schooling that works for you, definitely read Teaching from Rest or check out Julie Bogart (founder of Bravewriter) Scoping about the "divide" between structured and unstructured learning.

And just for fun, head on over here and check out Mystie Winkler's page on your Homeschooling Personality Type.  You know what mine says?  Here are some relevant snippets:

The ENFJ ... loves to put together a plan just right for her family. 

• Strengths: mentoring, teaching, relationship-investment activities like read-alouds and family vacations
• Struggles: people-pleasing, her own intensity, anxiety and inner conflict
• Style: whatever she feels allows for the best development of her children; she will prefer an eclectic approach that follows her gut.

I don't believe that personality tests are perfect or that they dictate choices.  But it was pretty fun reading through that list and identifying some of my friends and their gifts and loves and seeing that there is so much variety in how we each are wired and how we homeschool.  That's a good thing, guys!!

I don't knit, but she does.  To each her own!

Unscheduling

This is the third part in a series based on this cost/benefit analysis.  Here you can find Part 1:Scoping out the Sequence and Part 2: Making the Grade.  Next I want to talk about this "plus" for us in letting go of our math textbooks:

• I can school without the parameters of a "school year" or a "work week".

Textbooks are designed to be used by schools and to meet the needs of a school schedule. And so they should be; this is not a criticism.  They generally plan for students to have 32-36 weeks of lessons and to complete lessons five days a week.  They intersperse new material and review material to round out the appropriate amount of assignments needed.  But couldn't a family use a textbook and still choose their own schedule?  Absolutely.  Here are some of the ways I've adapted our various subjects to fit with our own schedule.

• Our on-line History program has 32 topics with 5 "lessons" per topic (4 lessons and a test).  We do the test along with the fourth lesson so that we have four days of history instead of five per week.
• Our Latin textbook has 32 chapters of material, but interspersed along the way are review chapters.  Sometimes we skip the review chapters or sprinkle the review material in with other chapters.  Also, we often don't have a chance to complete all of the activities per chapter since we don't school 5 days a week.
• Our Math textbooks contain 170 lessons each.  In some grade levels, the textbook authors expect you to have a test (in a book you purchase separately) either every 5 or every 10 lessons (presumably every Friday or every other Friday).  I've never used the test materials and we've been skipping over those lessons that are only review with no new material presented.

So yes, you can use textbooks and make them work on most any schedule.  In other words, if I were trying to compile an objective list of reasons why one ought not to use textbooks, this one wouldn't really fit.  And even in a list of my own personal cost/benefit analysis, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that it was a secondary benefit rather than a driving cause.

See, in my imagination, our school culture would look something like this.  We would be a home where learning was part of the normal activity of the household.  We would study a variety of topics and read a variety of things.  We would wholeheartedly engage with what was in front of us, explore further if we wanted to, read extra, do some more problem solving or spend another day on it if needed.  And, when we had a need or an opportunity for a break, we would take it.  And when we had refreshed ourselves through a break, we would get back to the business of learning whatever was next.

And yes, this is doable with a textbook.  But when (for other reasons as well) we moved to going without the math textbooks, a wonderful benefit was realized in terms of the increased freedom to break when we need to and begin again when we are ready (which, at this point, has mostly included sick-days and broken arms!).  Perhaps, in the final analysis, this "benefit" speaks more to my own personal hang-ups over loose-ends and tidy finishes than to any objective characteristics of textbooks.  But if what we're doing is an individual cost/benefit analysis, personal hang-ups carry weight, too!

Making the Grade

This is the second part in a series based on this cost/benefit analysis.  Here you can find Part 1: Scoping out the Sequence.  Next I want to talk about this "plus" for us in letting go of our math textbooks:

• I can school without the restraints of grade level and (related) comparing my children to other children around the same age.

As I mentioned here, I was stopped dead in my tracks by this quote from Andrew Kern of the CiRCE Institute:

 To what level has my child mastered this skill?  And what is next?  Nothing else matters.

We are only a couple of weeks into this experiment, but already I am thankful for the release of focus on grade level and what each child "should" be doing or "should" have covered at this point.  In some cases, I have been astonished to realize that younger children were perfectly capable of grappling with concepts I intended only for older siblings.

Other times I realized that, though a child had successfully completed problems on a given topic many times, she didn't really understand the concept and I was thankful to have another pass at it as we learned as a family.  In one case, I decided to simply make a note of a concept that I felt she wasn't ready for (though she had completed many such problems in her current and previous math book) and come back to it later.

If we discuss a concept as a group and someone is not developmentally ready to comprehend it, then there isn't really anything that can be done at that point to force them to "get" it.  In fact, (as I have witnessed before) "forcing" the issue is what leads to my strong math thinkers "hating math".  Sure, if you work within the outlines of a grade level, you can control at what age you present the material to a child.  But you still can't control the age at which they master it.  

I can't quite predict how this will play out long-term.  To what extent - especially within the context of our culture - is it realistic to push aside concepts of "grade level" and move forward based on my children's developmental preparedness only?  If one of our students doesn't make it through calculus by age 18 does that mean this approach is flawed ... or that that child wasn't developmentally ready for the material and wouldn't have been ready under any system of instruction?

Perhaps my comfort and confidence with this approach will have a lot to do with whether I perceive my children to be getting "ahead" or "behind".  If this method primarily enables the younger ones to explore and master concepts they normally wouldn't have encountered so "early", then perhaps I will feel confident in our choice ... and less so if it leads to mastering concepts "later".  Hmmm ... that would be ironic, wouldn't it?

Scoping Out the Sequence

Back here I gave a rough outline of my cost/benefit analysis of going without textbooks (at least in math).  Since I've gotten some questions about the the reason behind them, I'd like to do a brief post expanding on each of the items I mentioned as "pros" for us.

• I'm not constrained to a particular scope and sequence (order of topics) and can order them based on learning opportunities, whole-family instruction and the developmental abilities of each child.

I want to stress (again) that there isn't anything wrong with purchasing curriculum with a scope and sequence or following one.  As mothers, our resources are limited.  It is not a cop-out to choose materials that take some of the work off of our plates!  However, at this point in the life of our family, the scope and sequence in our textbooks felt more like a restraint than a help.

As I looked through the children's textbooks (grades 6, 5, 3 and 1), I realized that there was a great deal of overlap in topics - at varying degrees of complexity, but related to the same general ideas.  However, these topics were not presented in the same order in each grade.  My first impulse was to tear all of the pages out of each of the (consumable) books, rearrange them by topic and use binder clips to clip together all of the pages that fell under the same general concept.  The problem with that idea was that since I'd be teaching the topics out of order (according to each individual textbook) and since an Abeka math page is about 25-40% work on the current topic and 60-75% review, the children would potentially be assigned "review" problems for concepts they had not yet learned.

Sure, I could create a system for keeping track of what each kid had already learned and then assign or skip over review problems accordingly.  But if I am going to keep track of those details and have that close of a handle on who needs to review what, the limited options offered on each math page actually become more of a restraint than a boon.  More on this when we talk about ...

• I get to create the lessons and activities myself.

A Very Simple Schedule

At the beginning of the week, I felt a moment of crisis because I knew that I needed to spend more one-on-one time with my new reader and my struggling reader.  The schedule already felt packed and scary and the thought of adding one more thing was daunting (to put it mildly).  Monday evening, I attended Part 2 of the Focus and Align class at the Read Aloud Revival and the beginnings of some ideas began to percolate.  We had two hard, rough days, followed by two good, smooth encouraging days, followed by one more hard, low, rough day (as viewed from my internal perspective, only).  And here, in retrospect, is what I think has settled out to be our new schedule*:

• Breakfast (sometimes while listening to a recorded book or story)
• Morning Chores, Joseph (1) to nap
• Read the Bible
• Talk about Math
• Talk about Language
• Meet one-on-one with Luke (10) and Robyn (6) to practice reading skills
  Emma (9) and Ruth (8) take turns doing things with Henry (4) and Hazel (3)
• Lunch
• Quick Straightening, Hazel (3) and Joseph (1) to naps
• Quiet Work Time (Math 5-A-Days, Latin and some silent reading)
  On Tuesdays this is replaced by "Latin Class" with another family
• Play Outside
• Final Clean-up
• History (on-line course the kids do as a group) while Mama fixes dinner

That's it.  That is all we can do in a day.  And some days we don't accomplish all of that.  If you look closely, you'll probably notice things that aren't included.  I bet your list wouldn't be even a third of the things that are on my mind.  But I'm setting that aside for right now.  Let tomorrow worry about itself.  This is what we can do right now.

* We do school Monday-Thursday.  Fridays are for laundry, housework and maybe projects.

The Next Thing

One of the things that I have recently found to be a crushing burden of homeschool (for me, for now) is the feeling of needing to "finish" something in a given time.  I fear that if I don't finish it, my kids will be "behind".  I fear that if I don't finish it, I will have wasted the money I invested in it.  I fear that if I don't finish it, I'll miss out on that break I was hoping to take when it is all done.

For some (and even for me, in other phases of life) the structure is helpful.  It's nice to have someone else plan out what a year's worth of work includes, how much to review when and what should be included in a day of work or practice.  It feels very tidy to have five days worth of activity and begin again on Monday.  When we are able to get it done, it brings a sense of completion and closure.  But those days are getting much fewer and farther between.

Perhaps I'm less able to accomplish something that would be good to accomplish.  Perhaps the new pressures and constraints of life at this moment are revealing "shoulds" that never should have been "shoulds" and I am now releasing myself from them.  But whatever the case (and in some ways, it really doesn't matter) there is only this: what can we - at this stage, with this present grouping of children and this present, tired mama - accomplish in one day?  That is it.  What has God given us to do on this day?  Let's do it.  Let tomorrow worry about itself.

And what if we get to the end of the day and it wasn't all done?  Then not all of those things were things God meant for us to do today.  Yes, maybe there was time wasted.  Maybe we could have been more efficient.  But on this day, at this moment, whatever the causes, the task is still the same - trust to the Lord what wasn't accomplished and wake up tomorrow to start on the next thing.

As much as possible, I have moved away from organizing our subjects such that they must be done on a daily or weekly schedule in order to "work".  I've tried to avoid setting up things such that if we miss a day we are "behind" and have to try to cram two days worth of work into one (or three into two).  Instead it has worked much better for us if Mama has a general sense of the next thing(s) she'd like to teach or work on with the children.  When we come to school time, we do the next thing.  And if we don't get to it, it is tomorrow's next thing.

Didn't read a chapter of our read aloud book?  It will still be there tomorrow.  Talked about place value but they didn't fully "get" the concept?  Talk about it some more tomorrow; try another approach.  Time to start school but not all the morning chores aren't complete? They can wait until the next slot of time for getting a little work done.  (Or, do a little more housework and some school things can wait until later.)

The only way to make this system a reality has been, as much as possible, to unchain activities from each other so that each piece can move forward (or not!) independently.  Since our math discussion and written practice are no longer directly linked, we can do one without the other, if needed, on any given day.  Since the children's Five-A-Days are all things that we have already covered and they are just reviewing, we can take more time than I expected to work on our current concept without interfering with the Five-A-Day work I picked for them.  Or, conversely, if we didn't get a chance to complete the Five-A-Days, they can wait for the next day and our morning math conversations can keep happening.

This week, my oldest was only able to finish three out of the five problems on his Five-A-Day one afternoon.  Rather than requiring him to "catch up" on those two and do five new ones the next day, I simply took those two problems, added three more and they were his Five-A-Day for the next day.  If we've determined that five problems in a day is what we can manage, then why plan to do seven?  There will always be more good things to discuss and practice.  What do we gain by "doubling up"?  What are we racing against?  More and more, for us, the answer is: nothing!

Note: The two subjects that still "need" to fall into a weekly pattern are History and Latin.  And for now, I'm going to let them stay that way.  I'm not at all convinced that Latin is something all homeschoolers must do, but I have a degree in Latin and, quite frankly, it's something I love to teach.  Plus, our pastor's wife and her two youngest come over on Tuesday afternoons to do Latin with us, which is a big plus in the be-with-people category (perhaps even more for Mama than for the kids!).  We began three years ago with Song School Latin and are now working through the Latin for Children series.  We are on Primer B out of C, so after next year we'll reevaluate what to do next.

Though it is not absolutely essential, our history program works best done in five-lesson-a-week rotations because every five lessons covers one topic.  I absolutely love the Veritas Press History for many reasons.  Content-wise, it covers history, including Church History, map skills and lots of historical context.  Each era of history has its own song which helps the children to have a mental framework for the order and relationship of historical events, as well as some key dates.  Another plus is that it is on-line, very interactive, and the kids can do it on their own (mostly) while I watch and listen from the kitchen as I make dinner.

Do the Next Thing

I just love this poem.  Some sites credit it to Elizabeth Elliot.  Others mention that she shared it as from an anonymous author.  I haven't been able to find out for sure who wrote it, so I'll leave it unattributed for now.  I have had a copy of this poem for quite some time and think of it often.  But recently it seems to have risen to the surface of my soul as a kind of "theme song" of our homeschool (or at least the theme song of my own processing of thoughts about our homeschool).

Do The Next Thing

From an old English parsonage,
Down by the sea,
There came in the twilight,
A message to me;
Its quaint Saxon legend,
Deeply engraven,
Hath, as it seems to me,
Teaching from Heaven.
And on through the hours
The quiet words ring
Like a low inspiration
 “DO THE NEXT THING.”

Many a questioning, many a fear,
Many a doubt, hath its quieting here.
Moment by moment,
Let down from Heaven,
Time, opportunity,
Guidance, are given.
Fear not tomorrows,
Child of the King, 
Trust them with Jesus,
“DO THE NEXT THING.”

Do it immediately;
Do it with prayer;
Do it reliantly, casting all care;
Do it with reverence,
Tracing His Hand,
Who placed it before thee with 
Earnest command.
Stayed on Omnipotence,
Safe 'neath His wing,
Leave all resultings,
“DO THE NEXT THING.”

Looking to Jesus, ever serener,
(Working or suffering)
Be thy demeanor,
In His dear presence,
The rest of His calm,
The light of His countenance
Be thy psalm,
Strong in His faithfulness,
Praise and sing,
Then, as He beckons thee,
“DO THE NEXT THING."
-Author unknown

Just a random picture that makes me smile.

The Good, The Hard and The Ugly

I said early on in this blog journey that I wasn't here to share "answers" but to share the journey, the questions.  Well, today is one of those days where the answers seem very far and outnumbered by the questions.  While Math is in the process of being re-worked and other things are fair game, a new card was tossed onto the table last night.  I was on the Read Aloud Revival forum reading a post from another homeschool mom.  It was titled "Late Reader or something more ..."  In it, the author shared how she discovered her son's dyslexia.  I replied to the thread.

Oh. My. Thank you for sharing this.  My 9, 8 and 6 year old daughters all love to read.  They will curl up and read in a corner just for fun.  They beg to read aloud to the younger kids.  My 10 year old son, not so much.  I have been telling myself all the things you mentioned above.  “Well, he’s a boy.  Let him learn at his own pace.  Some day it will ‘click’ and he will love to read, etc.”  The more I read from your post and the more I read on the website you mentioned (thank you!!) the more I wondered if this wasn’t exactly what we were dealing with.

He was sitting here in the room with me, so I asked him about some of the things I was reading.  This is what he said, “You know how in Chinese, there is one character for each word?  Well, that’s how I read.  I know the shape of each word.  And if I don’t know the shape, I don’t know the word.  Or maybe I try to think of another shape I know of that looks like the shape of that word.”  He also said “When I am reading, the letters seem to fall out of order.  I will read the first part and then when I read the second part, I forget what the first part says.”  When asked if he found reading exhausting, he said “YES!” – not with a tone of complaint, but with a tone of relief that someone finally asked!

On one hand, I am thrilled (impressed, actually!) that he is so clearly able to articulate what he experiences when reading and to help me to understand it.  I feel like it gives me a new direction to consider and that brings a sense of relief and hope. BUT I am also fearful!  I started out this school year SOOO overwhelmed and reading Teaching from Rest (and the Focus and Align class) have been so helpful.  We’ve experienced SUCH a positive change and a relief.  Now, I must admit, I’m fearful about discovering that I have a child who is going to need some mommy-time-intensive help!

But thank you for sharing!  Now I’ve got something new to research and think about. :-/

I have to be honest, this feels very heavy right now.  Very hard.  The work I've been doing to change how we do math, to streamline the process?  Yea, that was an effort to make this job feasible ... not to make margins, not to get free time, just to make it all fit.  I keep telling myself that as the older kids get older they will transition to more independent work, that as new little ones come on to the official homeschooling stage, the older ones will have more ability to work on their own.  I want to do right by Luke.  I want to invest the time needed to help him to read comfortably.  But I also have a 6 year old who is learning to read, and so far I've averaged about 2-3 times a month of actually getting to sit down with her and read one-on-one.

I am tempted to stew right here in this blog post and list for you all of the things that I want to have in our schedule, that I wish were in our schedule that aren't even waiting in the wings right now.  They are downstairs in prop storage somewhere gathering dust.  But I am going to hold off on that for the moment.  In another half an hour Part 2 of the Focus and Align Master Class on the Read Aloud Revival is starting.  Last week (even in the midst of flu) it was such a balm.  Such a welcome relief.  So, trying not to despair as help might be right around the corner.

Why No Textbooks?

(Note: What follows is a discussion of why I am experimenting with not using textbooks, not an argument for why anyone should not use textbooks.  See here also.)

I once read an article in Reader's Digest about how to decide whether to do a task yourself or pay someone to do it.  For example, is it a more economical use of your time to mow the lawn yourself, or to hire someone else to do it?  Part of the calculation had to do with your own income level and/or hourly wage.  If you divide your annual salary by the number of hours you work per year and that figure is larger than the cost per hour to hire someone to mow your lawn, hire out the job because your time is more valuably spent elsewhere.

But, thankfully, that was only a part of the equation.  Another part (I wish I could find the article, because I'm sure there was more) was to consider what you enjoy.  In other words, the personal "perk" you get from performing a task yourself is also a factor in the "value" equation.  If mowing the lawn is something you really enjoy, or you prefer doing it yourself because you are particular about how it is done, or the satisfaction you get from doing it yourself and saving the money is a "plus" in your energy category, then this may outweigh the basic dollars per hour calculation above.

The same is true with mom-energy, even if we don't have an actual paycheck calculation.  Matt has a degree in economics and he is always reminding me of "implicit cost".  In other words, I may be able to find kids' jeans cheaper at a thrift store ... if I don't mind making several trips, if I don't mind weeding through rows of clothes, if can find the sizes I need and if I check them thoroughly for stains.  But if I walk into Kohl's and grab the pairs I need in the sizes I need and walk out ten minutes later, that may be worth the extra (and it might not be that much extra) cost, because time is money.  And stress is costly!

This applies to hundreds of areas of life.  Why do you choose to ... breastfeed or not, use cloth diapers or not, make your own bread or not, paint rooms yourself or not, even (yes, I'm saying it) homeschool or not?  At the end of the day, it isn't a simple right/wrong decision.  And it isn't only a money decision.  It's a broader cost-benefit analysis.  You may not think of it that way consciously, but it is.

One person uses cloth diapers because the things on the "plus" side (whichever things those might be fore her) outweigh the things on the "minus" side.  Reusing something for multiple children gives such a feeling of satisfaction that it outweighs the not-so-bad (to her) job of rinsing dirty diapers.  For another, the the cost of disposables is small (with relation to her household income) and is well worth it compared to the fact that cloth diapers make mommy the only person in the household who is qualified to change and dispose of diapers.

So when I consider going without textbooks, it isn't really a consideration of "right" and "wrong".  It's not even about "good", "better" and "best" (more about that in another post).  It's really about the cost-benefit analysis for our family and, more specifically, for me personally.

Here's a sketch of the "cost" of going without textbooks ...

• No ready-made material on hand (more time and brainpower needed to make things by hand)
• Missing out on the colorful, professional layouts
• More responsibility rests on me to choose (i.e. research and decide on) the scope and sequence (not just within the year, but from one year to another)

But here are (on my balance sheet) are the benefits of dropping textbooks ...

• I'm not constrained to a particular scope and sequence (order of topics) and can order them based on learning opportunities, whole-family instruction and the developmental abilities of each child.
• I can school without the restraints of grade level and (related) comparing my children to other children around the same age.
• I can school without the parameters of a "school year" or a "work week".
• I get to create the lessons and activities myself.
• I'm not bound up by a need to "finish" a purchased curriculum,  or "get  my money's worth"; no need to weed through and pick out which parts of a lesson to do.
• A LOT less time spent explaining work and correcting (and re-correcting) work.
• I have a better handle on the actual, individual progress of each child and I can individualize practice not only to the specific topics each child needs to review, but to the frequency with which each needs to review.
• I don't have to pay for textbooks.  But this almost doesn't count, because there is no doubt that I'll find other ways to spend the money on our homeschooling ... some of them probably made necessary by this approach.

As I read over these, I realize that each one could use some explaining.  Actually, each one could probably use its own blog post.  So for now I'll leave it as it is and come back and retro-link each one as I have a chance to write on it elsewhere. [done!]  As you read over this list, you may realize that some things in the "cost" category would be huge costs for you.  And maybe some of the things in the "benefits" category don't seem like much of a benefit (or would even qualify as a "cost" for you).  This would be one of those areas where knowing yourself and making decisions accordingly will be of great benefit to you and to your family!

Snag a Deal?

If you've been thinking about reading Teaching from Rest, may I kindly suggest the audio files?  No shipping charges and they are read by Sarah Mackenzie herself.  (Yes, she is cheerful and perky, but in a fun, friendly, chatting-at-the-kitchen-table kind of way.)  Also, Classical Academic Press is currently offering a 20% off discount (on all of their materials, actually, including this one).  It's only $8 to begin with.  Calculate in the savings and you could be listening to some really encouraging stuff in moments for less than six and a half bucks.

(Use code CAPTY20 when you check out.  It's only valid through March 31, 2016.)

The Teaching from Rest Companion Files are also no-shipping/downloadable files and also eligible for the 20% discount.

I'm not an affiliate.  I don't get any kickbacks.  CAP didn't ask me to say this.

Textbooks and Training Wheels

I wrote the very first post for this blog (with the same graphic) early one Monday morning before the kids were up.  I had a crazy plan.  I had been talking to my dad and my brother some about it.  And I wanted to start documenting it from the beginning.  So I started the blog.  I meant to talk about the training wheels analogy at some point.  And I meant to talk about why I would think about going without textbooks.  And then life kinda happened.  And this whole journey churned up a lot of other thoughts to process that ended up as blog posts.  So, here I am again, back to the start to finish what I began.  What does this blog have to do with training wheels?

We had our first homebirth with the birth of our fourth baby.  While part of me thought "I wish I had done it this way all along!" another part of me wondered if I really would have been up for that.  Perhaps, in God's providence, it was the right thing for me to have a few babies in the hospital before coming across the idea of homebirth.  I feel the same way about going without textbooks.  I haven't even finally decided if this will work for us.  But I feel pretty sure that it wouldn't have worked for me from the beginning (though I am sure that there are plenty of moms out there who take off sans-textbook from the word go).  I needed time to get my balance, so to speak, and, honestly, to mature a little bit.  That is why I use the analogy of training wheels.  I'm glad I learned to homeschool with textbooks.  Now I'd like to try without and see if we can enjoy and manage the freedom (and risk!).

However, I want to be very clear that I didn't choose that analogy because I wanted to set no-textbooks as superior to or more sophisticated than using textbooks.  I don't even see it as something that all homeschooling moms are or should be working towards.  It was just that on that Monday morning, our new experiment felt to me like taking the training wheels of my bike for the first time.  Exhilarating ... yet terrifying!

So many times as I read through Teaching from Rest, I felt like Sarah Mackenzie had reached into my own brain, scooped out my half-formed thoughts and composed them into eloquent, coherent sentences.  Here's one example that applies to this discussion:

Whether or not you purchase open-and-go curriculum doesn't really matter.  You can pretty much forget all the heated discussions about whether you are caving in to school-at-home if you use traditional workbooks or a straight-from-the-box curriculum.  I know successful homeschooling families who use textbooks and successful homeschooling families who eschew them.  I don't think that's a relevant debate to be having if you want to teach from rest and become happy, content, peaceful and effective homeschooling moms.

If I have one point to argue about using textbooks, it isn't that you should or shouldn't.  It's just that you don't have to.  I don't yet  know which camp I will land in.  As this point, I think it likely we'll use textbooks for some subjects and not for others.  But either way, this experiment has been worth it, because I now know that I can decide based on what works best for us!