31 Days of Creative Homeschooling: Inspiration

Yes, When You Rise Up ~ again. Because every time I need to remember why we are doing what we are doing this book brings me back to what’s important. Right away on page 17, “This is our goal- raising
God-glorifying children, rather than raising responsible citizens who can manage to get along with the world around them.”.
And on page 29, “I’m not arguing that it’s a bad thing for our children to be smart. Rather, I am suggesting that the issue of education is always the heart…. Our goal is not multigenerational personal peace & affluence. Neither are we simply trying to raise clean-cut children…”

(I realize that the verse doesn’t match 1 John 4:7 & 8. “We love” is from 1 John 4:19.. this journal page is about how our love is given out because The Lord loves us)

Peek in my journal

Grab a cup of coffee with me and I’ll let you peek into my journal.
I’ve mentioned my journal before.

I am still at it, recording important & meaningful thoughts from books I read or conversations I’ve had. I don’t like the thought of having an experience or reading something motivating and not be able to recall what struck me.
I want to grow & learn, I never want to be stagnate or simply live to be entertained. Therefore, I record to recall.

I also use my journal for school planning. Book lists, schedules, yearly goals, & the kids’ interests all get recorded .

Something new that I’ve been doing is Morning Pages. I try to get up before anyone else, find a quiet corner & write 3 pages. It’s an exercise developed by Julia Cameron. I have been doing this nearly every day for about a month and I love it. Some days my morning pages are a prayer, pearls of pleas strung together on the page. Other mornings the three pages are full of grouchiness & complaints. Ms Cameron says that morning pages are a means of clearing out the cobwebs,  similar to taking yourself out for a cup of coffee.

And of course my journal will always be full of doodles, just as my school papers from childhood always had them down the side. I’m sure my teachers loved that.

I’ll always be a doodler, have favorite paper textures, ink pens & words, and it’ll probably always be difficult to find a normal ball point pen in my home. That happened last week when a friend asked to borrow a pen. We found gel pens, felt tip pens, pens with every color ink except black…. it was rather humorous & I appreciated that she loved the search even if we never came up with a simple ballpoint pen.

Hello Monday

Hello quiet Monday, half day of school, lesson planning, warm breezes, time to reflect.

Hello lack of cereal and baking blueberry muffins and grocery list making.

Good-bye full weekend with friends. Running amok in autumn air and through falling leaves, in costume and not.

And hello to reflecting on this quote… such a good thought when those nagging “what ifs” tread on me.
Also good bye to attempting 31 straight days of blogging, it’s not my season to attempt such things!

What are you saying hello to this week?

31 days ~ grace

When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only man in the world. ~ CS Lewis

journaling, journaling, journaling, and more journaling…

This has been the year of journaling for me. Don’t get me wrong, I have always been a journaler. Yet with the nudge of reading & beginning to understand/live the message of “One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are” and also being a little more purposeful in my Charlotte Mason Education (read about keeping a book of mottoes) the occasional journaling has gone over the edge into a daily desire. I’m thankful.

So I currently have two journals. One is what I call my “big book of ideas” and the other is my “quotes journal”

Somehow I don’t have a picture of the cover, but this is the side. I use washi tape (which is pretty much my newest addiction) to bookmark all the different sections. The sections are: budgeting, meal planning, school planning & parenting, recording blessings & scripture studies, and lastly any art or doodles.

This is an example from my scripture studies, although it is simply a song by jj heller that I’ve written out. It is called “Back Home” and a sweet friend of mine sang it for me at my last retreat weekend. We have played it together & I love joining in with some harmonies. The lyrics pull at me when I am having a difficult day.

This is school planning entry that I wrote out after reading a post on bravewriter. In fact, it was this post that I reblogged from Handmade Homeschool back on July 11th. It certainly made an impression on me & I wanted to work through it for our upcoming school year.

This is actually a scripture study & an art page. The reference is from a book I’m reading called “Having a Mary Spirit”. She mentions that we, like Eustace in the CS Lewis story “Voyage of the Dawn Treader” all need de-dragoning. When I read that an image immediately popped into my mind. This is just a rough draft, but it needed to go in my journal!

This is the inside front cover. I love the photo booth strip! We did that at the City Museum in St Louis, which was a fantastic day.

So these next few pages are from my quotes journal. I have a page for each month. Of course, I am never orderly, so this starts in April. But there are 12 nice thick watercolor pages, which is perfect for a year project. It is full of quotes on every topic & scriptures.
This is April:

this one from about mid-June, unfinished:

July (lots of words last month!):

and a peek at August:

I had to doodle on my thumb to keep the ink flowing because this page was prepped with watercolor crayon & the wax makes it difficult to ink on at times.

So there are some peeks inside my messy, crazy, joyful journals. I actually love them very much & I am thankful for the time I spend in those pages!!