Lately I’ve wrestled with my assumptions about how homeschooling ought to be experienced–both by me and my children. There’s this tension between the “freedom” that we have as homeschoolers along with the “delight” that we want to nurture … and the painfully hard job of holding the line while a child has to do the work of growing into maturity. You can’t do it for them. You can’t soften the blow. You can’t lift the weight.
Well, you can try. But might not be good for them. Despite not measuring up to the Instagram ideal, the daily grind–with all of its bumps, boredom, and blunders–is good for kids.
We’re beginning to wrestle with these things now that our oldest is ten and carrying more responsibilities. And it’s hard. It’s really hard. Not because he’s rebellious or anything. Just because it means he has to grow up a bit, this child who’s still bummed that he aged-out of child care at our homeschool support meetings two years ago. He’d rather be in there with the 7-and-under crowd just like he’d rather continue doing all of his math and language lessons with me.
But he has to grow up.
And I have to let him.
I think of all the ways I could have prepared us better for this transition to greater responsibility and greater independence. There’s much room for improvement and repentance, and I just get to mourn the gap because my baby, my youngest, just turned eight–it’s not like I have kindergartners that I can “do better” with.
But then my husband tells me that I’ve done great. That this transition is hard. Period. (He would know. He was homeschooled.) You could have done some things better, but here we are–and he’s going to get stronger from this trial precisely because it’s hard, precisely because it’ll teach him to pray–as long as we hold the line.
My husband is right, of course. For all the failings, we’ve done well. And are doing well. I don’t measure up to my ideals and neither do my children. No surprise there, really, if I’m honest with myself.
This reminds me of that ideal that is not idealistic. That we’re raising children to become adults. Adults who have to work hard. Adults that will make mistakes and have to correct them–whether in math or driving or work or relationships.
Turns out in bringing up my boys I’m being brought up, too. The higher ideal–for all of us–is growth in maturity, ultimately in Christ.
Praise God I haven’t gotten it all right! I’d be an arrogant sourpuss if He’d allowed me to get it all right! No. There is no perfect ideal in parenting or education. The only Perfect Ideal is Jesus Christ Himself. So the best we can do is look to Christ and hold on. Hold the line of faith as we hold the practical standards for our kids, standing firm as they learn to stand firm themselves, dependent more and more upon the Lord–and less and less upon us.
This. Is. Good.
Hard but good.
True growth, and thus the ability to experience greater “freedom” and “delight,” comes when we submit to the work set before us, choosing to bear up under the weight God has assigned rather than to shirk it or complain. Our children grow the same way we do–if we let them.
How about you? What hurdles or struggles are you and your children facing this year? Can you recognize the “hard but good” in it? How has it forced you to rely more upon the Lord? I’d love to hear from you.
We know our well-laid plans will inevitably meet up with real life sooner rather than later. But sometimes real life hits while you’re in the middle of laying those plans. And you end up not dealing well with either.
Last Monday I was slated to read 1 Corinthians 13-16 in my Bible reading plan. But I went to the gym that morning, and when I got home I jumped right into what I knew would be a crazy-busy first day of a crazy-busy week, in which I hoped to “do all the things”.
I was most excited to get a good start on planning for school since our start date was just one week away. So there I was, reviewing where we’d been and making wonderful plans for where we were headed.
Idealism was running high.
But I had been running on less sleep, so I was a bit irritable. Maybe the gym wasn’t what I needed that morning.
The boys were super hyper. They need school in their lives, I kept telling myself. Stop fighting! Calm down! I kept telling them.
The library couldn’t recheck my books over the phone–I’d be adding a trip to town today.
Our dinner guests for that night had to cancel, but only after much deliberation trying to make it work. It was somewhat of a relief, except for the amount of time it took.
I had to make a complicated decision about another social event that day, too.
The interruptions drew me away from my planning. The boys bickered and bugged and bombarded. And I lost my temper more times than I care to report.
Our “break week” was off to a very stressful start.
Before heading into town (library books, remember?) I took a peak at my Bible plan.
*Insert deep sigh.*
1 Corinthians 13? Yes, I definitely should have started the day there.
My husband gave the ok for me to spend a little extra time in town to process away from all the hubbub at home. I ran straight to 1 Corinthians. I was not disappointed.
Well, except that I was disappointed that I hadn’t run there much, much earlier.
God’s word is good and true. It brings conviction, but it also brings comfort. Reading it in the morning isn’t some magic pill that zaps us into holiness, but it is a tool in God’s hand to soften and mold our hearts–whenever we humbly approach it.
The Lord just happened to use all of last Monday to humble me before I got there.
Tuesday morning I made a point of writing out 1 Corinthians 13 in terms that were immediately applicable to my circumstances.
It’s tempting to put confidence in our accomplishments, knowledge, or sacrifices. The Corinthians thought they were spiritual for such things.
But love is greater than all of these.
And my confidence is in the accomplishments, knowledge, and sacrifice of Another. And He leads with love.
Fast forward to today. The boys’ alarm clock will blare its rousing tones in precisely nine minutes. And our first day back to school will officially begin.
My plans are (mostly) laid now. Most everything is in place. Best of all, as I now move into putting my plans into practice, I have this reminder of what is most important.
The two greatest commandments are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength” and “to love your neighbor as yourself.” Including the little “neighbors” that are about to come tumbling down the stairs asking for breakfasst.
Lord willing, I’ll greet them with a smile, pray over them earnestly, and readily give a back rub or a tickle instead of a lecture when stress begins to mount in our days.
The Lord knows I need His word and His grace to follow through. But that’s my prayer for our homeschool this year.
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It’s time for another homeschool review post in which I give you a peak into what homeschooling looks like in our very real day-to-day life.
Springing into Summer
Summer is officially here now, though we’ve been relishing summertime activities for a good month-and-a-half already. You might as well when you live in the south, right?
This is our third year of gardening, and it’s our best yet. We decided not to start seedlings indoors this year, since we neither have room for this nor success in hardening plants. That’s made for a much easier time just planting cucumber, lettuce, spinach, carrot, and green bean seeds directly in the soil.
We’ve also put in tomato plants and sweet potato slips. The boys helped with the process and we’ve all enjoyed harvesting the lettuce and spinach before it died off or got eaten by deer.
We now have cucumbers and tomatoes aplenty and anticipate we’ll be learning to can this summer!
Along with regular work outside and chores inside we kept at schooling consistently through all of April and half of May. Activities always tend to pick up in the late spring, and this year has been no exception. We attended the Red Fern Festival in Tahlequah, OK;
the kids and I started attending a once-a-month Archaeology and Plant-Use History class an hour from home;
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our Schole Sisters group continued meeting once a month—twice at a park and once for swimming this quarter; there was our homeschool group’s curriculum share, where I got to take a peak at other people’s favorite curriculum and win a few items to use next year; I helped coach a group of little girls at a local running clinic, which culminated with a 5K in mid-May; and Nathaniel and I were once again in charge of our homeschool group’s Field Day event, which also took place in mid-May, meaning the time leading up to it (basically this whole period I’m reflecting on) had its fair share of planning and delegating going on.
After Field Day, I needed a break!
I tried crunching numbers to see what kind of break I could justify while at the same time wondering about scheduling and planning for the coming year. After working over several ideas I’d seen on interval planning, my husband suggested we start counting out weeks from January (to keep things simple), and then I can take off a certain amount of time every eight-week period. Doing the math that way, I could see that we’d been pretty faithful through the beginning of 2018, despite quite a bit of sickness. Based on the paradigm we came up with I had 14 days to play around with!
I immediately took ten days off at the end of May. 😊
We kicked off schooling again in June with a morning of blueberry picking and an afternoon of easing back into our regular lessons. The next day we decided to throw Vacation Bible School in the mix! It is summer, after all. 😉
Along with the paradigm shift my husband and I came to, we also firmly decided that we would now school year-round. The schedule we’re working from will give ample time off on a regular basis, and the eight-week terms are fixed on the calendar, so that I can plan material for us to cover in that definite chunk of time. Having had a very unpredictable schedule in the past, this is such a relief to me! I’ll share more about how we’ve got this set up in another post…soon!
For now we’re continuing on in Right Start Math Levels B and C, First Language Lessons 1 and 2, McGuffey readers, Story of the World volume 2, and lots of good books. I have also introduced a new way to narrate—the boys have been retelling what they’ve read with their Lego minifigures. Suffice it to say, this is a big hit.
Christopher Robin (the astronaut) is up in a tree looking down at Pooh and saying, “Silly old bear!”
We recently finished reading Pilgrim’s Progress in Morning Time and have now moved on to Archimedes and the Door of Science. Admittedly, this is a bit beyond my kids, but they were interested, so we’re giving it a go. We’ve also started going through a Health text book that I snagged for free at a curriculum sale. It’s been a good springboard for discussing a topic that we haven’t directly addressed at all yet—and it’s been a good, simple refresher for me on the basics of healthy food and exercise habits.
Over the past few months of family bedtime read-alouds we finished both Swiss Family Robinson and The Phantom Tollbooth. The latter was definitely our favorite of the two. We just began reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, thus arriving at a major childhood milestone: entering into Narnia for the first time.
Our Prodigies Music lessons are back in the afternoon again, especially since this season we’re needing more time outside in the mornings given the heat we encounter later in the day. In addition to the progression of music lessons with singing and bells, we’re now also starting Recorder Prodigies!
Where we’ve sometimes struggled to get to these wonderful lessons (among other lovely things like art and nature study) after lunch, I recently set up afternoon activity checklists for my kids so that they don’t ask me 4 billion times a day if they can play with Legos yet. Now they have to make sure they’ve done several other activities first.
This has been a win on so many levels.
They still love their Legos, but they’re also enjoying a broader variety of fun things now that I don’t let them just automatically default to their favorite interlocking brick system when I can’t think of what else to tell them to do. I’ll post more on this little sanity-saving tweak again soon!
Some of the other activities we’ve enjoyed this quarter have been watching a variety of flowers come up in our wildflower patch, dog sitting, building swings, watching a string quartet concert and a magic show, canoeing and kayaking, keeping track of the different birds we see each season, attending several other live music events in our community, and most recently swimming lessons.
We also caught a luna moth caterpillar last week and it promptly hid itself away in a lettuce leaf and began spinning its silken sleeping bag. We’re eagerly awaiting the change.
Shadows in the Sun
While we’ve had many bright, fun outings and adventures in the past few months, there’s also been a shadow cast upon our days: a shadow of grief.
I wrote last time about how we gave our dog away to friends in February and dealt with sickness and an impending job change in March. Those were trying times in their own right, but things have gotten a bit heavier since. In April, my in-laws’ dog Freckles, regarded by all in the family as the best dog in the world, died. As we told the boys and all shared tears, they remarked that this was worse than giving Luther away. At least they knew there was a possibility of seeing Luther again. They understood that Freckles was gone.
Fast forward to the end of May, and we received news that my grandfather, my PopPop, died at home in his recliner. He was 95 years old and his heart just stopped. It was his time. The boys were precious as they tried to take this in, each in their own way. One burst into tears immediately, the other sat quietly as his lip began to quiver. They loved playing games with their Great PopPop. And they knew this was a bigger deal than a dog dying. They knew it would hurt for longer.
And it has. Partly due to the nature of losing a loved one, and partly due to the fact that the Celebration of Life and military burial were scheduled to occur three weeks later, in mid-June.
Grief is compounded when it is shared. Not in a bad way, it just is. Especially when you finally get to mourn with those who are most deeply affected by the loss. And so we grieved in our own way for three weeks as we waited for our trip down to Texas.
When we finally arrived it was a joy to be with so much of my family—it truly was a good time. But we also grieved together, and that was good, too, but hard. The boys got to pass out programs at the Celebration of Life, looking simultaneously like little gentlemen and silly boys. I know they prompted a lot of smiles as guests arrived.
What does any of this have to do with homeschooling?
Well, everything.
And no, I’m not referring to the “learning experience” of getting to see a National Cemetery and witnessing the giving of military honors, as though I’d try to reduce something so momentous to the level of a field trip.
If the goal of education is character formation and ordering the affections–learning to care about what is worthy of our care–these times of growing and grieving together are at the core of the curriculum. A curriculum we didn’t choose, mind you, but one we follow nonetheless.
I can see God’s hand in our lives preparing my boys for the new and difficult experiences they have faced so far in 2018. And I can see how He has been building us up as parents so that we can gently lead our children through hard times.
I marveled that the boys were wrestling with the loss of dogs in Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows prior to experiencing those same emotions in real life. And the loss of beloved animals paved the way for grasping and bearing the loss of a dearly-loved great-grandfather. All the while, Nathaniel and I have gotten lots of practice not only at grieving ourselves, but of walking with others through grief—and especially with our children. It’s new territory for us, as well.
This has everything to do with homeschooling because our schooling has everything to do with living out this life together with our children until we launch them into whatever may come when they are grown. The literature they read isn’t just for practicing literacy. It’s helping their little hearts and minds prepare for real-world challenges. The time at home with us isn’t just so that we can shield them from harm or bad influences. It’s an opportunity for us to walk with them in these formative years, guiding them and encouraging them as they learn to navigate the sometimes turbulent waters of life.
It’s easy to get lost in the seemingly endless number of lessons we have scheduled. A man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. We get to spend our days in God’s classroom with the children He has given us and with the freedom to respond to the lessons He chooses.
Many of the public schools in our area started back yesterday, and so did we.
If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you might be a little confused since I posted about our “First Day” back in July.
That would be the first of my confessions.
I thought that in the middle of all of our remodeling craziness it would be a good idea to re-institute some order by starting back to school. We made it a whopping four days before a trip and life in general took over again.
So yesterday was technically something like day five (or six if we’re counting the immersive day of water color painting last week–hey, I’m counting it!).
I’m just thankful that my husband encouraged me not to worry about it. Now that the living room is, well, livable again, we can start to throw some school into the mix.
His support has been invaluable since we would, in theory, like to have our kids keep going with at least math and reading through the summer months. I planned to just take June off, and keep a bit of review going even on break, but it stretched into an extra month-and-a-half and our review became non-existent.
And it’s ok. Really, Lauren, it’s ok.
But those scheduled intentions are just surface-level. I’ve got some deeper issues to confess, as well.
This is our fourth year of officially homeschooling and yet I have felt less prepared than ever. I gave up on a traditional homeschool planner this year, opting to build my own system for planning and record keeping (a combination of Plan Your Year, a bullet journal, and clipboards for the kids). I hope to share some reviews, articles, and videos about it sometime soon once the dust clears and the wires are all rigged up in our remodeled office/studio. But the process has been like stepping out on an invisible floor, hoping there is something to stand on when you land.
Unlike Indiana Jones, however, on our first day of school yesterday, instead of finding a firm footing, I literally slipped on the slick, wet front steps, finding that gravity still works and that landing your rear on the corner of the step an entire foot lower than your feet began makes for a very purple derriere and quite a stiff and sore neck.
This didn’t exactly quell my fear of more figurative slips. Again I’m reminded of the only truly firm footing I have in the first place–and that gives me strength to press on.
I know that the end result will be a good one–having a completely customized system that meets our needs better than any pre-fab planner ever could. But with a new arrangement on paper comes a new arrangement of habits–both mental and physical–and building those habits takes time. I need to have patience with the process, trust that it will be worth it, and simply recognize the little adjustments that have to be made along the way as a part of what makes it better.
All of that said, our first day went wonderfully well! My well-laid plans did pay off!
At least, before lunch.
Our first day of school started well but ended woefully.
In my planning I took into consideration the longer-than-ever-time-off from which we would be recovering, and I tweaked our curriculum accordingly–especially math. My big boy would do only half of the worksheet. My youngest would copy numbers, do some basic math facts, and then we’d play a math game. The almost-six-year old finished his work in no time, blazing through math, reading, and copy work so he could go to town with his beloved watercolors the rest of the morning.
I was thrilled. This was easy.
The just-turned-eight-year-old, however, struggled to focus. His work certainly should have taken longer than his little brother’s, but it drug on and on and on needlessly. I told him time didn’t matter, that he didn’t need to set a timer, just work diligently. But he set the timer anyway and then stressed himself out with it. Long story short, he was anything but diligent, even when I gave him breaks to go outside or read and then come back to it with a fresh mind. His score in the end was near perfect, but it was well into the afternoon before he finished and then there was language arts to do.
I was patient for the morning. But eventually my patience ran out.
I had planned fun activities for our afternoon. A game, read-alouds over Afternoon Tea. Things my children LOVE.
But a dawdler was messing up my plans to do him good.
I escaped into my own projects and spent some time online to boot.
“I’ve tried to help you. You won’t be helped. I’m done.”
Signing off. Checking out. On day one.
Bravo, Lauren.
Over dinner my husband asked us each how our day had gone and how we felt about it. There was good, there was bad, and there was ugly. But it was good to get it out in front of us as a family.
He sweetly encouraged me not to base the success of my day on other people’s performance–especially little people. Control what I can control–my own responses.
That’s hard, isn’t it? But it’s exactly what I needed.
After further consideration and prayer last night, I realized that I had judged my childrenworthy of my time and patience during the morning hours–I had even decided this long in advance. It’s my job, after all, as their mom and teacher. But with one child dragging his half-sheet of math work beyond any reasonable time frame, and with the other testing my patience at lunch time, I came to judge my children as unworthy of my time and patience for the rest of the day.
Forget my God-given role as their mother and teacher, I measured them against my plans and expectations, found them wanting even after patient instruction and care, and since I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted, I decided they didn’t deserve my effort–I decided I needed a break.
There is wisdom, at times, in walking away from a situation so that both parties can get fresh air, deal with what’s in their hearts, and come back in much better spirits. But I can’t say that was what was going on this time. I was resentful. And it took ME “beyond a reasonable time frame” to get my heart right.
Math work or heart work, my son and I were both taking too long to learn our lessons.
I suppose I could steal a quote from my reflections on planning above since it seems to fit this character-growing, relationship-building process, as well:
“…building those habits takes time. I need to have patience with the process, trust that it will be worth it, and simply recognize the little adjustments that have to be made along the way as a part of what makes it better.”
The goal of education isn’t ultimately results or getting things done anyway.
As I wrestled with my own bad response–with my sin–the Lord kindly reminded me of His love and patience toward me as His child. I cowered at the thought of His great love and my great lack.
Father, You chose to love me while I was yet a sinner when You sent Jesus to die for me. And You choose to love me still even when it takes me years to learn a lesson, even when my attitude and actions are quite like a distracted and unruly child.
Because You have chosen to love me, because You have made me Your child, Your patience and Your love never wane…like mine so often do for my own children.
Forgive me, Father. I repent.
Thank You for being a GOOD Father. My need for Your love and patient correction is ongoing. And the work You’ve called me to do for my children is ongoing. Oh, please produce in me the same patient, diligent love with which You parent me.
I saw yesterday morning that I could choose to be patient with my children. But O how I need Your Spirit, Lord, to choose to be patient even beyond my good intentions! When my planned patience wears out, show me Your patient love, and please help me to then pass it on to them.
Amen.
For those of you who also started school recently, I hope your first day fared better than mine (and you should read that as “I hope that your patience lasted more than four hours”).
But it’s just the first day. And it’s now behind us. Sins repented of, mercies new this morning …and every morning hereafter. We’re in this for the long haul, aren’t we? Let’s do it with patient love, remembering the One who continues to lavish us with it.
This was intended to be a “Friday Five” post, but it just makes so much more sense on a Wednesday, doesn’t it?
It’s crunch time around here. We’re planting the last shoots and seeds in our garden, planning our homeschool group’s last big event for the year, watering the trees we planted in the fall, trying to keep up with the now-regular two-hours of mowing necessary to keep ticks at bay, and–somehow–we’re going to have the house clean at the end of the month for a much-anticipated visit from my parents–a tall order since houses just don’t stay clean during gardening season. Especially if you have two little dirt magnets helpers and no mud room.
Oh yeah, and then there’s my day job: we’re still finishing up school for the year. It’s only about two more weeks, but I must admit I wouldn’t mind fast forwarding to the pool side where I sip lemonade in the shade while the boys have their swimming lessons. At least that’s what I imagine June will look like.
But I digress.
Are you in the thick of it right now? As a student? A teacher? At work? At home? Do you wonder at times how you’ll have the strength to finish the final task (or twenty) for the season?
Maybe you’ll find these scriptures as encouraging as I have. There is Truth we can rest in even as we roll up our sleeves to get the job done.
Isaiah 40:28-31
Do you not know? Have you not heard?
The Everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth
Does not become weary or tired.
His understanding is inscrutable.
He gives strength to the weary,
And to him who lacks might He increases power.
Though youths grow weary and tired,
And vigorous young men stumble badly,
Yet those who wait for the LORD
Will gain new strength;
They will mount up with wings like eagles,
They will run and not get tired,
They will walk and not become weary.
Jesus in Matthew 11:28
Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
1 Corinthians 15:55-58
‘O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR VICTORY? O DEATH, WHERE IS YOUR STING?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.
Galatians 6:9
Let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.
Colossians 1:9-14
For this reason also, since the day we heard of it, we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for the attaining of all steadfastness and patience; joyously giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of the saints in Light. For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Let God’s word be your sweet lemonade in the midst of a busy season. Sip slowly. Be refreshed. And finish strong.
When you struggle to find the motivation and energy to see a project or season through to the end, what scriptures do you turn to? What truths do you savor?
