November 9, 2009
Perhaps you have a moment of devotions in your home, prayer or meditation. At some point last year, I realized our days were kick starting and flying by without our quiet time. So I set “10:00 Stop”.
At 10 each morning no matter what we were doing, we’d stop & gather around our Bible & catechism.
This year we’re continuing with 10:00 stop, and it typically kicks off our school day.
Here are some of the devotion books (and or Bibles) we’ve used during our quiet time:
The Child’s Story Bible
The Gospel in Disney
Conduct for the Crayon Crowd
Arch Books (some from my childhood collection!)
Let Go by Fenelon
Is there a list of your favorite family devotional books? What does your quiet time look like?
October 24, 2009
1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers. Psalm 1:1-3
One of the most influential people in my life was Pastor Bob Brown. I remember him as a completely jovial man, extremely talented, honest and a bit blunt. He ministered at our church during my high school years (God bless him) and throughout my early 20s. He counseled me as a teen when I questioned faith, scripture, religion… he counseled again when it came time for our wedding, and he counsels me still when I remember his words that we are to be strong like a mighty oak.. I can still hear him playing his ukulele-banjo (more uke love) and singing “I shall not be moved Lord, I shall not be moved”.
I’m sharing here my current work-in-progress.. an interpretation of being strong like a mighty oak…. of being a solid person of prayer, showing delight & meditating day and night on His word.
October 20, 2009
Another update from the nudge I received after this post!
~ the Ukulele has been ordered! I’m super excited 
~ alas, I only have 2/5 new recipes (still looking for three more!!!!)
~ the Nero Wolfe dvds *might* be a Christmas gift for hubby, at least the first season..
So how bout y’all?
October 12, 2009
yesterday checked off number 9, baked loads of cookies (even sent a pack home with my dad today)
last night the creativity unblocked itself and this began to take shape on paper…
today, school went well & I even got a pumpkin spice latte. bonus!
October 10, 2009
Holly posted “Time: What I would do with more of it” yesterday and Tammy has a great quote from Seneca about being “stuck”.
Truthfully, I’ve not been a good steward of my time lately…uninspired…lazy….creatively blocked…whatever excuse I can use.
So I’m gonna dip into my imagination and see what I can come up with…
My 10 things ~
1. write…I have stories, fairy tales, fables.. all in my mind, none on anything but some scraps of paper.
2. buy all the Nero Wolfe dvds (I’m going to imagine I have enough money), order chinese and have my own marathon.
3. pester everyone I know until I have five *new* delightful recipes that my children will beg me to make for dinner every week. ( feel free to fill the comments…)
4. ukulele, still.
5. make something out of these
6. excercise
7. clean Lucy’s room for her and tear down the bunk beds. She has a beautiful room that is ridiculously full of wood and bedding.
8. read
one of the 45 titles I have on my “to-read” list at goodreads.com would probably be a good place to start.
9. bake loads of chocolate chip cookies, whilst listening to a great podcast & sipping some hot tea..no apron or pumps.
10. Grab the family and head out on an adventure
one down, nine to go… today we hopped in the car and walked the labyrinth in New Harmony… it was great!
and you?
October 3, 2009
I believe in God like I believe in the sun, not because I can see it, but because of it all things are seen.
— C.S. Lewis
September 29, 2009
Today’s lesson for me ~ it still takes time, patience, understanding…no matter how old I am. No matter how much time I have taken off, no matter what my expectations are ~ it still takes time.
got it.
~Thank you for your encouraging and loving words ~
September 21, 2009
So there are a couple of more things to share about our journey, and they are brutally honest.
The easiest first:
Grace wants to go to college. For years she wanted to be a governess, then an animal behavior specialist, a director of Christian education and now maybe a teacher. All very exciting options! I can’t wait to see what her future holds, what direction ends up being the best fit for her! I’m sure there are plenty of unschooling families who are completely comfortable and confident that unschooling will provide access to the collage path. We are not comfortable or confident in that choice for our family. In our state and for the schools she has expressed interest, we will need to record hours, credits, and have proper transcripts. And I’m not willing to take the chance that unschooling might be enough for what she wants to do with her life.
Now, perhaps she changes her mind and ends up being a lifeguard on a South Carolina beach. Okay! That’s not a problem, but just in case she ends up in Jamaica running her own Lutheran grade school… I want to have crossed all the T’s and dotted every I.
Now onto the second truth.
I have great support from a few close friends, support for our choices, our decisions, our family. They love us foibles and all. But what I find in the unschooling community (local as well as online) there is seemingly a lack of Christian Unschoolers. The day I sat on my porch with a person I thought was a great friend and she told me that she could “overlook” my Christianity, was the day I received a punch in the gut.
Overlooking is nowhere near accepting.
It was a real wake up call. Was I down-playing my faith? Were my kids expected to deny Christ for the sake of friends? Oh wow.
Suddenly I found myself in my own uncharted territory, and I had led all of us there.
Shortly after that day came another where we were all out of sync, and another, and still more, until I finally hit a wall. This was no longer working for us. I stopped then and there and redirected the kids. Gave them some structure, talked with my husband, and started again.
As I mentioned in the first post, seven years ago we were here… using Ambleside, a similar schedule. So what’s different? Well, I am a much calmer and more gentle mom. I understand exactly what it means to love my kids.
And I know that I want to be what God fully intends for me to be, not someone who is only partially accepted. And I want that for my kids as well.
September 16, 2009
Since I haven’t been blogging very much, our decision to turn away from unschooling seems a bit sudden. I haven’t shared my thought process here, which is funny because one would think that by unschooling I would have tons of time to blog! (I will say that my house was much tidier last year!!) .
Let me back up a bit.
First of all.. we really did love our year off! And please know that these are choices our family made, only reflective of us. I’m not anti-unschooling, or pro “school at home”…seriously ~ one size doesn’t fit all.
As I remember back to last year, during the autumn months we did a lot of exploring around our town. This is the riverfront in another little town nearby. The kids love to go “beach combing” here. There is also an old country store nearby with lots of candies and soda, perfect!
We started a little art group & visited each artist in the book, Artist to Artist We met every Tuesday afternoon, had a snack while I read from one of the books by the featured artist, and then I usually showed them one or two techniques used, and let them have a go.
My idea was to provide them with the tools & let them explore. It worked really well and we had some very talented kiddos in our group!
The group has changed a bit, and while I don’t think we will be meeting as regularly, we have some plans in the works!
Somethings that didn’t change last year were music lessons, and with all three kids in lessons that’s a chunk of time (as well as practice). But one thing I found during our unschooling year was that it was extremely hard to find practice time. More than once we had a lesson without having practiced before hand. Not the end of the world right? BUT when I was sitting there listening to my child struggle through their practice, I *knew* it was my fault for not setting that time aside. They were unprepared and going through a lot of frustration that could have been avoided.
This year the little guys start every morning with practice (Lu at 9, Park at 9:30), which works great. They have time to play when they first get up(downstairs, so Grace gets a chance to sleep in), as well as enough time to have breakfast and get ready for the day.
Grace practices while I’m making lunch at noon. We eat everyday, no meals missed here, so no missed practices either! And in turn, no anxiety riddled or teary lessons.
September 13, 2009
best reading spot!
School has resumed in our teeming metropolis, not only for the public school system but for our family’s school system too.
We took an entire year off last year, dove head first into unschooling and completely enjoyed it!
Yet, at the end of the traditional school year, I still found myself anxious, worried, unsure if it was enough to unschool.
In the end, after much discussion between my husband, Grace & I, we choose to go back to a regular schooling routine for this year. We’re back to Ambleside, back to a Charlotte Mason approach ~ which we began with at least seven years ago.
Thankfully, the kids never batted an eye. We had all the books for Lucy from when Grace was her age, and she is enjoying them. She really loves The Burgess Amimal Book for Children. Grace’s books we all ordered from Amazon, though you could we could find many of them at the library (I don’t want to mess with due dates, and fees…). We did get one from the library ~ The Royal Road to Romance by Richard Halliburton, and this is one we are reading together. It’s a fasinating read of his adventures! We should be tracking his journey on a map, but haven’t started that yet. Instead we are embracing his audacity!
Parker is once again along for the ride, sitting in on the read alouds, plowing through his own beginning reader, playing math games with us, keeping a copywork journal too, but yet plenty of playtime.
Just as it should be.
