Life is Like a Piano...

Life is like a piano.
What you get out of it depends on how you play it. –Tom Lehrer

I am fasting right now, so my energy level wanes during the day, but I needed to lose a good 15 pounds. (Actually more like 18, but I was giving myself some slack.) I did not work in a cleansing water fast in January as I normally try to do. That in part was due to the fact that as I have gotten older, I tend to get leg cramps at night in the winter, even though magnesium supplements help. I also tend to get leg cramps when I fast. The idea of doubling up this cramping challenge in January was not something I was excited about doing at the time.

I decided to do a milk fast, which means I drink about 2 ounces of raw whole milk with 2 ounces of water in the morning and in the evening. I also have been eating about 2 ounces of yogurt in the afternoon. So, while my digestive system is not complete closed down, the milk keeps my metabolism on a high level spurring my body to burn off fat stores faster. I am about half way to my weight goal.

The months that followed January were still too cold and just as I thought I might be able to give a fast a go, we were almost in April. The month of April...I can only describe it as Piano Month or maybe Crazy Piano Month! This year it turned out to be crazier than ever before.

The Princess, who was not particularly interested in going to college and did not know what she wanted to do even if she did, suddenly decided that she wanted to go to college for piano. This same girl that begged me for a few years to quit, yet in the past year has blossomed in her skills and likes to take on challenges.

First, the Princess had decided to do something new, to apply and submit an audition video for the Reinhardt Piano Festival. Despite she did everything as last minute as possible and it took 3 hours to load her 10 minute video to YouTube, which put it after the deadline, she was accepted.

Second, there was the AG Georgia District Fine Arts Festival in which the Princess won first place last year. This year she did not place, but her score was high enough to be invited to the Nationals in Houston, Texas at the end of July. There was more competitors possibly because Nationals are closer and will not be as expensive to attend.

Then she was to perform in the annual Spring Piano Recital that her piano teacher organizes. This year she played four pieces throughout the program and the final piano piece, which was a great grande finale kind of song. 

And my baby girl then turned 17 years old!  

So, after the birthdays, because my husband's follows hers, I decided to lose the extra weight I have been carrying for so long. It is amazing how a fast can also change my perspective about other things as well. I look around the house and think, this can go and that can go. 

I am in the process of selling off all our homeschool curriculum that has been sitting on shelves unused or that we finished (or quit) long ago. Time to streamline. This is her last year and I need to prepare for the next phase of her life and of mine.

My Lord, thank you for giving my daughter such a wonderful gift and now the desire to use it. May she do so to glorify You.

When Things Must Change

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another. ~Anatole France

Did you think I had forgotten my sanctuary? I have not. I just have been learning more about rabbits (and other animals) and I have come to realize that I tend to learn by complete immersion. I actually am reading message boards again, which I dropped many years ago because most people gave them up or the boards changed and then there was the drama...which happens just because people are people. However, when it comes to raising livestock of any kind, people still like to connect with people, pick brains, talk about their experiences, ask questions, etc. 

My online journey has been interesting. I went from a local message board that chatted on things happening in our area, including all the politics, to just homeschooling boards and then I began blogging. There met a few friends that are still friends today, but the lives of many of my homeschool friends have changed. Some are not homeschooling because their children grew up. Some are not homeschooling the same because they have their children in schools, some are private homeschool hybrids and others placed their children in public high schools to get the necessary credits for college. Most of these friends now have jobs outside of the home, businesses they run from their home, or a combination of both. In other words, most have moved on with their lives and I felt a little left behind...and a little lost.

The last few years I could not just call a friend as I use to during the day when I needed to feel in touch with adults or just get a reality check after dealing with a moody and reluctant student most of the day. I came here and wrote about things, but these days I only have one reader, who is a very busy person as she has moved on to a ministry and has home businesses. I do not stay in touch with anyone as much as I used to do.

My daughter has another year in homeschooling then that season of my life ends also. After devoting so much of myself to educating the child, I wonder what she and I will be doing after it ends? I know what I would like to do...well, I have had this desire to homestead all my life, but I wonder if I am holding on to that just because I have always thought about doing it or if it is something I really do still want to do.

I feel as uncertain about what I want to do after homeschooling as my daughter does, but we are looking for land. Actually, I stopped looking because I felt my Lord tell me to not to look as the land would come to my husband, so I am to focus on my house which is a mess, stuffed with stuff from homeschooling, my mother-in-law's stuff, and just stuff that accumulated over the 20 years we have lived here. I will take it one drawer, one shelf, one corner, at a time. Monday, I tackled my sock drawer. Yesterday, the refrigerator. Today...hmm, not sure yet.

So, my sanctuary may be changing, along with me (and my house).

My Lord, guide us through these transitions. Make the path we are to take well lit and welcoming.

Home Education Fit for a Princess

We can get too easily bogged down in the academic part of homeschooling, a relatively minor part of the whole, which is to raise competent, caring, literate, happy people. -Diane Flynn Keith

I think all homeschooling parents start out with big dreams that their children with be absolutely beyond brilliant academically. We all look for the best of the best curricula and have a basic plan. Then comes maybe it all worked for the children, maybe some struggled a bit, and maybe what was working so well for one, or two, or three just did not work for others. It is then that parents realize that their plans, ideas, and dreams are not meshing with reality. I have only one child so I really need to get it right.

We had a serious set back two years ago when we felt we had no recourse but to pull the Princess out of the Learning Center within three months into her third year there due to situations going completely out of control. For one, she was not sleeping, had terrible anxiety, and was depressed. In part, that was because she became overwhelmed with her assignments and anxious about everything being on transcripts starting that year. Her science and math teachers did not tell us that she only handing in about half her assignments. Then to complicate an already concerning emotional state in the Princess, a very shy boy came into the picture, who had his own disturbing issues and was convinced he was in love with her, but took that to a very unhealthy level...with his mother enabling the whole thing. Even after we pulled her out of the school, where she was only taking two subjects, it took another six more months and a police report about him stalking her before the boy and his family finally stopped, though we had made repeated requests prior to that.

Although the Princess was improving with the pressure off from the school, I think it took another six months before she really relaxed and even longer for me. I felt it was far more important to have devotions and let her talk some things out than to keep to a strict assignment schedule most of last year. I began seeing more of those attributes I loved, that she had when she was younger, coming out. Last summer we switched from her from the Prentice Hall Algebra 1 textbook (made for schools), which she was over halfway through from the Learning Center, to Life of Fred Geometry. I did this because she always responded better to geometry and she learns math so randomly, so she has learned about algebra better from the geometry (insane to me, but works for her). I also have to say here that I really tried not to like Life of Fred, as the name just sounds idiotic to me and the story line is of a six year old math mega genius being a professor of KITTENS University...I mean, it just sounded too silly to be a serious math book. However, it is presented in story form to give a reason for the math. It is also a self teaching book and the Princess has been doing quite well with it.

Just as things were going in a better direction with the Princess, the Queen Mother fell last year...twice. The first time in June and the second time in December. Everything in our lives seem to take a back seat to working through the process of how much she would recover and where she would be living after rehabilitation and then trying to get her qualified for Medicaid. We homeschooled but not with the focus I was hoping we could have. I mean, we only bred our rabbits once last fall because everything in our lives was so up in the air. I am thankful to my Lord for the Florida house being sold so easily and quickly. That took so much off of us.

I went through all that to say that the last two years feels like we made very slow and halting progress in our homeschool. I had these plans, long ago, that the Princess would be taking a few college courses this year, her junior year, but now I feel that was not meant to be. So, I had some long talks with my Lord and my daughter and my husband and then myself. I needed to let go of some expectations and hopes to do what was best for the Princess, according to her desires and attributes. Even though she went to a STEM school for a couple of years and enjoyed it, she is not really a STEM type. She still knocks the sock off in language arts though!

One thing that is very different in her life than most kids her age is that she has been writing for a bi-monthly newsletter published by a local co-op health store about health related issues since she was fourteen. At first I helped her to understand how to write an article, as I have been doing that myself for about eighteen years for the same newsletter, but she now often submits her articles without giving me a chance to look them over and some are still being published, much depending on space and the worthiness of all the submitted articles from other writers.

Another thing is that while few, and by that I mean none of the friends she has, are working, not even one boy who is waiting to go to a trade school because he got his GED too late for the first semester. The schools are laying on homework so heavily that even all the piano teachers complaining how they are losing students because of it and not getting new ones. Highschoolers cannot really have a job and pass to the next grade these days. However, the Princess is playing piano usually two to three weekends a month and she has added taking on two young piano students, although the mother of one (also aunt to the other) has been sick so they have not yet started. The Princess has the benefit of using her talent to earn some money, improve her skills with the piano, and learn about being more self sufficient...and was that not my real goal in homeschooling all along?

With all things being considered, I also felt led to make a big change in science. I found a curriculum that integrates physics and chemistry without all the math. It will earn her two credits, but it is not as intense as the Bob Jones science book she was using at the Learning Center for nine grade. That usually had about 30 vocabulary words and six (usually more) major theorems per chapter that she was supposed to remember. I thought it was rather advanced and she was not moving through it very well. This new curriculum is lacking in labs, but I purchased extensive kits for chemistry and physics that was suggested when I called to inquire about the curriculum a bit more. We plan to do one of the labs each week. This curriculum is also written in more of a story form giving history about the discoverers and properties of the topics in a less textbook manner. She loves it!

What I have is a Classical literary child strong in languages and language arts, as she tests very high in grammar, reading comprehension, and writing structures. Heavily relying on living books, story-form books, was the method I began her teaching, so I am not surprised, but it was a bit challenging coming into high school level subjects to find curricula in the STEM world that would work well with her. At this point, it seems everyone is supposed to just get dry textbooks, as if the colors they can add now will make it more interesting rather than just being busy looking.

I updated my homeschool list of materials here on my blog and I added some of her activities and accomplishments because her piano and writing have not just stayed in the home. The little lady has been stepping out with her talents and that is really important to all of us. While she may not be the academic super star devouring and excelling in all subjects as I hoped she would, I have to remind myself one of the top reasons I was drawn to homeschooling and that to teach the child, not the subject, using the interests of the child and preparing her to be a self-disciplining, self-sufficient, responsible adult.

I have not been excited myself about homeschooling for over a year, until now. I feel that this direction is so very right for her and my Lord has told me this too.

Thank you, my Lord, for leading me to curricula that will work so well for my daughter and give her the time she needs to pursue her talents and interests.

Still, Still Pleased Homeschool Mama

The idea is to educate, not follow anyone’s schedule about when something should be studied. –Ray Drouillard

As required by my state every three years, the Princess did her standardized test. It was the California Achievement Test (CAT) from Academic Excellence. This time I chose the untimed online version. Last time my daughter was in tears because she was unable to finish math portions of the timed online version, even though she still score above average in math. I wanted her to have opportunity to build her confidence with this test and I hope to to the timed test next year to challenge her.

She did very well. I ranked this from highest to lowest scores like I did in Still Pleased Homeschooling Mama. The Language Usage & Structure portion did not get recorded the first time she took it and she rushed through it the second time, making more errors than she might have the first time, so I think her score reflected that. I was also pleasantly surprised with her score in Mathematics Concepts & Problems, but not really because I have always thought that she is strongest in that area of math.

Remember that a percentile rank of 50 means that 50 percent of all the tests scored in that range. The raw scores are finite, but the percentile scores fluctuate year to year. However, in this test it does not because it is based on 1970 percentiles, which I am sad to say are still higher than our present day scores because the raw scores are lower now.

Subject	Raw Score	Grade Equivalent	Percentile Rank	Stanine
Language Mechanics	77/80	13.6	99	9
Reading Comprehension	37/45	13.6	95	8
Language Spelling	28/32	13.6	93	8
Reading Vocabulary	31/40	13.0	82	7
Mathematics Concepts & Problems	36/50	13.6	79	7
Language Usage & Structure	28/54	10.7	58	5
Mathematics Computation	35/48	10.3	52	5

The grade equivalent score do not mean that she knows as much as someone at the 13.6 level, but that if a person at the 13.6 level took this same test, he would be in the same range of right and wrong answers for the raw scores.

The Stanine is a bit different. It is based on 100% broken down in set percentiles for each rank of 1 - 9. For instance, the 9 rating would only be received by 4% and on the other end the 1 rating would only be received by 4%. 7% is set for 8 or 2, 12% for 7 or 3, 17% for 6 and 4, and 20% for 5.

I am writing this not just as a brag but for any homeschooling parent to understand something. This year of homeschooling for us...well, my state requires the equivalent 180 days with 4.5 hours. I do not even think we did even half  of that, because of many emotional issues that were going on within our family and yet my daughter still learned. She loves to write and read, so she still learned. I provided her with a strong foundation for all the years previously and I see how that pays off.

My goal in homeschooling was to have a child that loves to learn, be challenged, and finds what she loves to do using her talents. I have to remind myself of that often because I get caught up in what we might be missing too much.

My Lord, thank you for guiding us through a very tough year and seeing that it was not really a set back for my daughter gave us both confidence. Bless our homeschool efforts this year.

Some Expectations are Necessary

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises. ~William Shakespeare (All's Well That Ends Well)

Friends who know me well, know that I have a philosophy that expectations are what allow us to be hurt by other people so I usually have no or, at least, very low expectations of other people. That being said, before I had devised the new homeschool plan described in my last post, my daughter and I were still hashing it out over trying to fit into the old one. At one point, she screamed that my expectations of her were too high. It was during this time that I was beginning to accept what we had been doing was not working well for either of us. Her perception was not entirely accurate, but it also had some truth.

We sat down and talked about those expectations during one of our morning devotions, because the reality was that she was not meeting mine, but she also was mistaken in what my expectations were. She also knows my philosophy, so this was her teenage gotcha-now way of finding fault in practicing my own ideology on expectations, spurring our discussion about reasonable vs. unreasonable expectations.

People we trust the most are the ones on which we have the most expectations and most are reasonable. This is practically inescapable in human nature. As parents, we expect our children to obey us. When children disobey, there is a consequence, a punishment, to remind them and help train them to comply with the rules that are set for their protection and to train them to behave. You cannot explain to a toddler why he should not run out into the street, because he will not fully understand that he will be in harm's way, that he could be injured or killed by a car, but he will remember the spanking of a repeat offense. (For those against spanking, I feel it is better than letting them learn this one by experience.)

Unreasonable expectations are the ones that we have not communicated to the other person, like I might expect my husband to call me if he is going to be home late, but his idea of late maybe 9:00 pm and mine might be 6:30 pm. It is unreasonable to think he just knows what I have in mind without talking with him and coming to an agreement on the time.

Another unreasonable expectation is to want someone to be different than they are. This is something that cannot be agreed upon and cannot be changed by the person who has the expectation. Imposing an expectation, even one that you have communicated to the other person, is not going to change him and is only going to hurt you because it is continually unmet. I had such a relationship with my mother; she just never was and never was going to be the mother I needed her to be, but once I identified that expectation and let go of it, I was finally free to love and enjoy her for the person she was. We were never close, but I was no longer hurt by her casual remarks; in fact, I often laughed about the things she said that used to feel like stabbing into old wounds and upset me for days afterwards.

I explain to my daughter that with education, there will always be some expectations, that is why there are test scores. Her father must at least meet most of the expectations of his employer to keep his job and exceed them to be considered for promotion. This is just how the world works. Likewise, I, as both her mother and her teacher, have some expectations of her when it comes to homeschooling. I cannot hug her and and comfort her because she felt the teacher was mean to her at school as her mother, because I am also the teacher. I cannot be detached about the quality of the work she hands in and I grade as her teacher, because I am also her mother, who can be disappointed.

So, I am not lowering the bar on my expectations of my daughter because I do believe I should have some, but not unreasonable ones. I do not see her as an "A" student in math, but I still want her to strive to do her best and she has earned some A's. I do see her as an off-the-charts student in Language Arts because she is and I do expect very few grades lower than A's there. Mostly, I expect her to learn, really learn, the material she is assigned. I also expect her to be a teenager, who one minute wants her independence and the next the security of her parents. Now that we have a chart and daily communication about assignments so that there are no unspoken expectations, things are much better...and probably as good as they can be between a teen and a homeschooling mama. 

My Lord, help my daughter to understand that expectations are a part of life, but how she deals with them is very important. Let her not be crushed by the weight of expectations place on her by others, let her set her own reasonable expectations on herself, keeping ones on others very low.

Our New Homeschool Plan

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.
~Corrie Ten Boom

I have not been writing on my blog for a number of reasons, most are excuses, but a few are quite valid. One is that I needed to focus on getting our homeschool structured. I wrote about this in Homeschooling Mama Still Learning the Hard Way nearly two months ago. After much seeking my Lord on the issue, I began to give in on my ideas of working towards the perfect college-prep transcript and come back to the things I loved about homeschooling; teaching to the child and encouraging her gifts and talents.

I think that going to the Home Learning Center encouraged a sense of conforming to the conventional academic expectations and with this being my daughter's first high school year...well, we both got caught up in everything counting with far more importance than the previous years. For instance, when the Princess began taking a science class it was to supplement our homeschool, although it was quite demanding. The next year she took the full STEM program, which it seem to take the position of priority in our homeschool. Knowing that this year everything would go on transcripts for colleges to look over, we both put far much importance on that.

I had to come back to placing my trust about our homeschool to my Lord... completely.

My daughter is a writer and an artist. She tries to sneak in writing one of her fictional stories whenever I am not watching over her and she knows how access her stories with every technical device with Wi-Fi access because she saves them online in Google Docs. We have some new rules about her tech now. She cannot have any tech in her room at night, because she will write when she should be sleeping and she was also having issues with her sleeping patterns that have been corrected for the most part after working on this for a few months. We believed that her abnormal sleeping patterns were contributing to her anxiety and depression, and she is doing far better now. We allowed her to have an extra 30 minutes for her bedtime curfew, but she has to be off all screens an hour before. Now she falls asleep more easily and stays asleep through the night most nights. She also cannot have any tech in her room until all her assignments are completed or I have given her permission for an assignment she wants to do in her room or listen to music. Permission depends on attitude, what she plans to do with the tech to help her with an assignment, and how responsible she has been at getting her assignments done.

My daughter takes a clipboard, pencil, and paper with her everywhere when we go out so she can draw whenever she can. She is also great with anything to do with dramas and, even though right now it is not something she loves, she is a pianist. We are in the perfect church for her. The people heading up the dramas actually teach acting. More recently couple of the youth have decided to start their own praise and worship band asking her to be on the keyboard and I am again seeing her spend extra time on the piano playing things for her own enjoyment once in a while.

This is what I felt led to do with her home education:

In the morning, we begin with devotions. We were skipping them when she got up late, which was more often than not. (I know, I know, and it was meant to be the most important thing of the day, but unfortunately, we made the schedule a higher priority.) To emphasize its importance and give the Spirit time needed to speak to us, we just do not have a schedule about how long to take with devotions. Sometimes they are quite long, because we still have some challenges to work out.

After devotions, we talk about the assignments for the day. On Monday, we look over scheduled appointments and such to plan the entire week assignments. I made a check-off chart so that we both could see everything that she is expected to do. Last week we went to the science museum for the Lunch & Learn on Rocket Science, so I had to cross off a few assignments for the week. Part of her problem was she could not see what I expected from her each day, each week. I remember she used to say that the more work she did the more I would give her, while I was thinking that she was under achieving what I wanted from her most of the time and I was trying not to overwhelm her with giving it to her all at once. We are communicating better now.

My chart has two columns, the first is the daily assignments and the second is the assignments that need to be done during the week at any time she wants, with the only condition that I have to check each assignment done before she starts the second one in the same subject. We also continue to have talks about time management and that she might have to rethink her expectation that no matter what she did or did not get done, she feels she should not work on any assignments after 4:00 pm. The first week we started this was rough, partially because she was ill for two days. The second week was a bit better. The third week, I was seeing her take more initiative—I actually found her working on her grammar in the evening after dinner!—but she came down with a cold so it fizzled out understandably.

The daily assignments are mostly morning ones, but we are flexible so if I have something I must do in the morning, we can flip them to the afternoon. All this is discussed after devotions each day, so we both have a clear understanding of the expectations of each other for the day.

Daily Assignments

The first assignment is piano practice for at least 45 minutes, which is usually always the first thing done.

Algebra is timed to one hour a day and the Princess also has to sit at the dining room table to do it, so that I am right there to help her should she need it. This is because she gets distracted when doing math. I cannot tell you how many times she was doing math in her bedroom that took hours because she actually was writing a story.

Latin or Greek may be before or after math, but we both take together because I am learning it also. Ideally, we should do two lessons of each one during the 4-day week. (We have only four days because Wednesday is our errand day.)

Vocabulary, based on Vocabulary from Classical Roots, is also mostly done at the dining room table because I have most of her studies on Quizlet, so she needs tech to do it. However, for each lesson, I require a writing test: I give the word and she must use it in a sentence that is graded on spelling, use, and identifying the root from Latin or Greek, which is indicated by underlining. She can earn extra points with five more words from the challenge words and variations lists. This overlaps Greek and Latin as well.

Weekly Assignments

Grammar is two assignments per week. When we finish with Analytical Grammar with all the parsing, sentence diagramming, grammar rules, she will be completely done with Grammar and we will move on to more writing and reading assignments.

Literature is something that got pushed to the wayside for too long now, but we have added it to our weekly assignments.

World History is one assignment per week. These are done in units of my own design. Each unit requires reading at least three chapters from various resources and then journaling at least one paragraph and drawing a picture of her choice associated with the time for each chapter. Her writing is checked before she prints out the paper and draws the pictures. So, this also is also a grammar and writing lesson.

Civics is one assignment per week, which is one chapter of Uncle Sam and You. Although it is intended for middle school students, I think it is more in depth than most get in high school. The tests are a little light, but the chapter review questions are quite good. It reminds me of my tough 8th grade social studies text and teacher, who expected every one of those review questions answered in full sentences.

Science was the one subject I was dreading, mostly because I have not taught it in two years. However, I obviously had my Lord's leading when I bought the Bob Jones Physical Science textbooks she was required to have for the school because I bought the entire set! Teacher's manual, lab manuals, everything! When I finally got the courage to look into the books, I fell in love. Right now the Princess is just doing reviews of the chapters she covered when in the school, because she did not do all the assignments and could not recall many things. She can get most things from the book without me, but we will be looking into doing lab work when we do our weekly plans.

French is still being worked on, but she decided that she likes the Duolingo app on her Kindle better for now and she is supposed to do two 30-minute sessions.


I feel this is how my Lord wishes it to be for now. The Princess is so much happier and far more engaged with both her father and me than she was. She seems willing to take more responsibly in her own education, even though the stories in her head are practically screaming to get typed out. I keep telling my Princess that college may not be where she is to go; she could be a published author making money while most of her peers are sinking into their student loan debt. She rolls her eyes, but then as soon as she can she sneaks away to smile at her computer screen as the words stream out of her.

My Lord, it has been a difficult time for my daughter. I see her gifts, gifts You gave her, but I hear the world and its demands for her education loudly. Quiet the world. I only want to hear you, my Lord, what You want for her. Thank you for guiding us and making things better for us.

Homeschooling Mom Still Learning the Hard Way

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing. ~C. S. Lewis

I am trying to work out what has been frustrating me the most about homeschooling. I thought mostly it is the time that it takes my daughter to do it, but...is it that or something else?

On Tuesday, she worked through just one of her make-up algebra assignments and it took two hours, with a significant number of the graphs done wrong, so another 20 minutes to correct them.

The Princess finished an incomplete grammar lesson on sentence diagramming with adjective clauses that I estimated would take her 20 to 30 minutes but it took twice that with good reason though, as she was looking things up to remember how to do them. I have yet to check over the work, but I am hopeful as in sentence sparsing and diagramming she tends to do very well. I remember how much she used to hate doing it and now she actually likes it, I think because it has become easy for her. It has done what was so important for it to do, which was to fine tune her grammar skills in her writings.

The Princess also worked on vocabulary which also took twice as long as I thought it should.

So, if everything takes twice as long as I think it should how will I ever fit in science? There is history, Latin, Greek, civics, and probably some others I am not recalling at the moment. Oh, and with two practice times at the piano each day totaling 75 minutes.

I seriously need a new schedule plan! Actually, I do not really have one yet because I had to see and be realistic about how long it takes my daughter to complete her lessons. It just seems impossible to me at this point. Do I stick to times allotted as is done in classrooms or do we complete an entire lesson each day and rotate subjects accordingly? We have done it both ways at different times and I can only say that I still have not found what works best. I used to have my daughter break up math into two sessions, one after piano practice in the morning and the other after piano in the afternoon. it seemed to help her get her math assignment for the day done faster, but now she is determined to do in all in one sitting.

My daughter thinks she should be completely done with her lessons by 4:00 and we take an hour for lunch, which can change. She is supposed to be practicing piano at 8:00 in the morning, but that does not always happen.

Much, much prayer needed. I mean, there is the world's standards for education of the masses, and there is God's desires for this one, His daughter, my child. I feel like sometimes I am trying to do what the world expects, having all the right subjects and such, and tossing God's plan aside if it does not fit, instead of the other way around. Not only does this cause anxiety for me, but obviously it is for my daughter as well, as I have seen since the beginning of this school year.

This picture of the classical model is on point for illustrating my problem, I think. If I have all the right stuff without God's truth shining on it, the tree of education will not thrive. Though I may have His truth in our education, I am clouding His radiance on that tree, filtering it to the point that it has become sickly, because I did not stay open to hearing His Spirit and following His desires in the education process itself.

This morning in the first few moments of waking when my mind is quiet, before I have begun planning my day or even making one simple decision based on my own thoughts like getting out of the bed, God slipped in this thought: two Analytical Grammar assignments a week. Still without a full functioning mind, I thought: Yeah, that would work so well. Do you know what I did then? I began to awake up and I began to think of how I wanted to finish that course this year and how two assignments a week would not meet that goal...and then I began thinking in reality, on the best of weeks she has done four, which is ideal and what I would prefer, but our average is probably between two and three...and then I started thinking of squeezing in at least half more of a lesson per week...and then I thought, if God is telling me two a week, then that is what is going to work the best and who am I to argue with my Lord.

After the disaster of the first few months, I am so unsure of homeschooling this year. Why have I not been not taking those cues from my Lord on her entire education? Why let Him shine only where I have allowed it? He is right here wanting to guide me in this, obviously! Had I sought His guidance about the Home Learning Center for this year in the spring, my daughter would not have been enrolled and all that happened from September to November would not have been. Yet, I still have not learned; I want to plan it all out and then as an afterthought I will pray for God to bless it, because I am doing it the way I think it best—of course, I know how wrong that is, but still that is what I want to do. It is so wrong to think I know better about educating my child than God does!

So, now I am going to have a little sit and talk with my Lord. We are going to talk about every subject, whether or not to use a prepared curriculum and how to use each, how long to spend on each for the day or the week or the month. That will be for the general plan, but I need to get back to working with Him at the beginning of each day. My expectations have to change to be reliant and willing to serve my Lord, Whom I love, as He educates His child, my daughter.

My Lord, forgive my arrogant disobedience. I has cost my family, my daughter mostly. It has made me fearful and unsure, which is good because it makes me want to rely on You more, as I always should be.

Happy New Homeschooling Year?

We can get too easily bogged down in the academic part of homeschooling, a relatively minor part of the whole, which is to raise competent, caring, literate, happy people. ~Diane Flynn Keith

The long break is over and now the work must begin again...and when I write work, in this case, I mean homeschooling. I have been dreading it so severely for the last few weeks that I could not even bring myself to pick up any of the books just to move them!

What I have learned is that I prefer organization, but teaching my 14yo is messy, particularly so this year, having we pulled her out of the Home Study Center. I really have not reconciled with her algebra. Do I stick with the textbook the school picked or do I revert back to the one I had picked? What do we need: to review, do the make up assignments, or just start clean in the middle? We discussed it and she wants to make up the work she was originally assigned and, perhaps, this is the best way because it will give her a sense of accomplishment in correcting something where she went wrong. She will learn the math eventually, but this life lesson may more important.

I also have to consider changing my record keeping for homeschooling. I have used Homeschool Tracker Plus for years. It has been the best for me and their customer support has always been wonderful. Although at times I would much rather just jot things down on paper, there is the convenience aspect of it compiling records that make it so much easier in the long run. However, Homeschool Tracker Plus is no longer being updated and although it works except for the ISBN feature, I am getting a bit nervous about not being able to access my records with each Windows update...so I will be going to their online version, HSTOnline. My husband is not keen about that either, because he is concerned the records could be lost, but for each subject, we have a logs in the binders of each subject of what was done on each day, from which I type in the info so I have that much on hand. Using the HSTOnline will be easier for me to access with other devices, but it also lacks a few features I like with the Plus version. I probably should buy the license this week and just get it done.

Science is the one thing that I have not even begun to consider other than getting a membership at a science museum about an hour away. I have the full set of books with lab and teacher's edition of the textbook the Home Study Center required, but I have not had to do anything much with science for the last two years, so.... Well, I just have not even looked at that book yet to make any decision, but I was thinking that it would be good to do more experiments, most simple ones. I have a number of homeschool books with simple science experiments with common items that we could do and then next year she could take a science class. There is another school for homeschoolers not far from the one we have been going to that will be half the cost, because there is no science retreats, and we can choose any classes as long as they do not conflict in time. This one has lots of electives from which to choose and only has classes on Tuesdays, so that is what we are looking into for next year...maybe.

Four years more to homeschool. Well, less than that as we are in one of those four now. It seems such a very short time to prepare my daughter and it seems such a long time to get through.

My Lord, remind me daily what if most important about educating my daughter.

It Was One of Those Weeks

Adults are always so busy with the dull and dusty affairs of life which have nothing to do with grass, trees, and running streams.
-The Little Grey Men by BB (Denys Watkins-Pitchford), 1942

Officially, the first school day at the Home Study Center is Monday, August 31. However, I realized about three weeks ago that there are a few high school classes that were scheduled this week. I thought my daughter had to be in the Algebra 1 classes scheduled in the mornings on Monday and Wednesday, but some of my stress was alleviated when I found out that those classes were for the Algebra Honors class, not the Algebra 1 Year 2 class in which my daughter is enrolled. Now that does not mean it is a more advanced Algebra class but rather a class that covers all of Algebra 1 in one year. The school does not offer Pre-Algebra, but instead breaks Algebra 1 into two years, which was the same track I was on with my homeschool before we decided to do the full STEM program at LS last year.

Still, I knew that this week was going to be just one of those weeks when formal homeschooling was really not going to happen.

Monday
I would not have to make the over one hour trip to the school on Monday because she had not classes as I had thought she would, except that I did: not to the school but to my daughter's piano lesson, which is just about four miles away from the school. For this week, I decided to keep her piano lesson on the new day, Monday, where it needs to be from this point on with her school schedule, because we had so much we had to do on Tuesday, the following day. So, we did the grocery shopping and the piano lesson, arriving home early to put groceries away.

Tuesday
Early in the morning, we had a routine dentist appointment for the Princess. From there we went headed back the way we came for a few miles to drop off clothing and books for the third and last of the consignment sales trying to sell off things no longer being used. (And I have to say here that the consignment sales for the last couple of years have not been doing all that well for us; I have not even sold half the items in the first two, when usually I would not have had enough left to be in the third one. Sad.)

Then the Princess and I had time to eat a leisurely lunch with time left over to stop in at Walmart to get a red binder she needed for Algebra class before her Physical Science class started at 1:00. This extra class would have conflicted with her piano lesson, if we had not changed it to Monday anyway. I spent some time at Goodwill while she was in class until 3:00 and then we went to Life Grocery for the board meeting, while my daughter sat in the cafe reading over her Physical Science assignment, which she found to be boring. We finally made it home as the sun was setting.

Wednesday
I was planning not to have to go anywhere. We did some lessons, but my husband texted late in the afternoon saying he would not be home after all to take the Princess and her friend to Youth Group. That is when I realized that not only was I not going to have those precious couple of hours alone that I appreciatively anticipate on Wednesday nights, but that I also needed to get gas for the van and water. (We filter our city water for the house but we prefer water that is even purer for drinking so we have to go out for it.) So we went out to get those things, came back, fed the pets, and then left to pick up her friend and drop them off. Meanwhile I looked around Douglasville as it has changed since I used to go there so often when my daughter was a toddler. We arrived home around 9:00.

Thursday
We went to the consignment sale to look for clothes early and got just a few things. Then we stopped at Walmart looking for markdowns on school items and notebook paper. Afterward, we went to Target for the same and that is when I remembered that I forgot the main reason we stopped at Walmart was for underwear. My modest daughter hates shopping for such things, but when I folded her clothes this week, which she usually does herself, I insisted when such things are unraveling it is time to get some new. When she realized she could get the more modest boy short cuts, she was a much happier child.

We went home for a late lunch and a getting ready along with feeding the pets before the drive to the Princess' piano teacher. We had her staying there while my husband and I endured the 3½ hour LS Mandatory Parent Meeting beginning at 6:00, so we had to leave at 4:30 to make the meeting—I really don't know when these people think most of us eat dinner, I mean for us this one meeting would be about 6½ hours of our time with driving there and back! Normally, the meeting is 2½ hours but there is an extra hour before the main meeting for the parents of high schoolers because it is about the Senior Retreat in November. This is our first year with the retreat, but it very similar to the Science Expedition for the middle schoolers in the spring, except it is more intense, more educational, and instead of 200+ children there is under 100. Again they needed more men for chaperones having enough women and again my husband signed up. How could he not? Two teachers told him when they asked the boys in their class about what was the most memorial part of the expedition last spring, the ones who were rotated into husband's van said it was the conversations they had with him. What can I say, my husband has a gift and that is why we were good youth group leaders, back in the day.

As we were picking up the Princess a few minutes after the meeting ended, Trudy told me that she had acted out the entire play, all the parts, for her and a friend of hers who was visiting with her—the child is a such performer. We stopped to pick up some food at Arby's and ate on the way home. We got in before 11:00 PM but everyone was beat. Even the Princess, who has difficulty with sleeping most of the time, was completely out within fifteen minutes.

Friday
Finally, a day that I do not have to go anywhere! The late night before made for a late start for all of us this morning, but the Princess and I muddled through Greek and Latin, after I printed out the next Latin chapter because I was again not prepared ahead of time. Since lunch she has been off on her own, supposedly doing history. I am not going to worry about what is and is not getting done much today. Next week the Home Study Center starts officially, so she will have classes on Monday and we begin our new routine.

Thank you, my Lord, for getting us through this week. Help us both to get into the routine next week.

Homeschooling My New High Schooler

Behind every great kid is a mom who's pretty sure she's messing it up. ~Unknown

For the last year, I have felt stuck while many people around us were having positive changes in their lives...and this was going on while I was dealing with feeling older by the month, obviously due to my old cat, Jamie. I felt frustrated and stuck in many ways, but the physical tiredness and aching also worked against me in taking on anything of much significance. Since April, homeschooling was even too much effort. I was gearing up for May, but then...well, that is a story for another post.

Homeschooling, to my daughter's joy, just was not happening, although I was working on homeschool preparation on some mornings. Because we usually homeschool year around with no defined start and stop school periods going at whatever pace that works for each subject, most of the prepared curricula we use, like for Latin, Koine Greek and vocabulary, is staggered. So, we may be starting a new book in Greek, be in the middle of the one in Latin, and just started a new one in vocabulary. Each of these subjects needs planning and has preparation items I make: I print out flash cards for the languages and now also make the vocabulary flash cards ones online at Quizlet because it is such a versatile program and it creates quizzes too.

Since I abhor dry, boring textbooks for the most part, especially for history, I have been creating our curriculum using various resources. I usually do it in chunks of time periods and I have to say that it is quite an undertaking, but when I have it together it is really great, tailored well for my daughter. So, history has well-planned assignments when I finally have them done. We are trying to squeeze in a wonderful civics program also, a textbook but written by homeschoolers for homeschoolers and interesting. Although it is targeted for middle school, I can tell you that it is more in depth than what public school high school students are learning.

I explained all this so you would understand what happened in April. When subjects are loosely staggered and not well planned, it apparently is possible that many of them can end within three weeks of each other. Eek! History, Latin, Greek, and vocabulary ended and I had nothing prepared! Some was started but not finished. Also, I have my plans in a program called Homeschool Tracker as well as the records of work done and grading for all the subjects, except when I get behind with my record keeping and--yes, I am also behind...again.

After much prayer, we will be continuing with the Home Study Center for just two 9th grade classes: Physical Science and Algebra 1 Part 2. She made all A's on her report card except for Technology in the first semester, she was one point shy of the A, but her average was an A for Engineering and Technology. However, this year the only other class that would fit in our schedule would be Engineering and even though she scored quite high in it last year--a surprise to her--she did not enjoy it so much that she really wanted to take the class this year.

The Home Study Center loses a number of students going into the high school years. Most of the boys in my daughter's class last year will not be returning, probably in favor of accredited private or public schools. Sad because the program at the Home Study Center is excellent. In some ways too excellent: it is very time consuming and makes it difficult for us to get my homeschooling in. Also, my daughter and I both wrestle with priorities between their assignments and mine weekly. I looked into some other homeschool schools, but some only allow full time students taking all their core classes and most are two days a week, deal breakers for me.

There is one that is on Tuesdays not far from her current school called Timothy Ministries. They have no requirements about number of classes or what kind. It is a bit more affordable, especially the science class because they do not have the cost of an expedition tagged on it. They also have a wide variety of classes, core subjects, of course, but mostly electives, including violin. The downside is every class for all grades is on Tuesday, which means many of the classes overlap each other.

My current dilemma with the Home Study Center is not the classes--we have everything set as to schedules with her piano lesson in between her algebra and science classes on Monday--it is with a program that they call Serving Leaders. This year, the Princess was invited to be a Training Serving Leader (TSL). This is really an amazing program! Servant Leaders do many things like help in the classes and take notes for students that are absent, because being homeschoolers our schedules need flexibility and many of the families travel. TSL's meeting on Monday nights from 5:30 to 7:30 and then they are required to also help with the elementary classes and/or clubs, which means we have to go a second day. It is a big commitment in other ways for the parents also.

The Serving Leader program earns up to six high school credits on its own if the child is in the program all four years. It also teaches the teenagers to pray aloud over other students, give encouraging words in their critique of a student's presentation performance, and look for ways to be helpful with a servant's heart. There is no church program I have ever seen that instills this in teenagers as well as their program. They also create their own plays and have their own praise and worship band for performances on the science expeditions.

If we lived within 15 minutes of the school, there would be no question...even 35 minutes could work, but being over an hour away.... Another family, whose daughter has the same name as my daughter and the Princess called the girl her twin the first day of school two year ago when they met, because they both are artistic, love the same things, and have long brunette hair, live half way between us and the school on the route I take. They offered to help me out so I would not have to drive the whole way in on a second day, or pick her up after the TSL meeting, if I have to go home to take care of the dog when my husband is working out of town (which is most of the time). She understands because her husband has the same type of job. However, they also are not sure that they can work in the TSL requirements within their own schedule and they have a younger daughter (with the same Biblical name as our dog) that is a student there on Fridays being homeschooled also. It would not work for them well, unless her oldest is there on Fridays the same time as their younger one.

They have been praying about the situation for themselves because the younger one did not get as far in her studies as they hoped this year because of the commitments required to the Home Study Center just for the classes and her older daughter only took the science class last year. The mother is just terribly torn over the matter...as I have been. If we do it, homeschooling will really only take place three days a week and even then it will be a squeeze, because Tuesday mornings are going to be a drag for the both of us, particularly if my husband is away. On the day she would be helping with a class for at least an hour an a half which we cannot pick...well, that is three hours with unproductive travel time alone because my daughter can get motion sickness when trying to read; we listen to CDs on history and audio books but she would rather read the book. So besides the mileage and gas, we are talking 4½ hours for that alone and not much time between that and daily piano practice to homeschool. It really would put a serious hole in my lesson planning. Besides the other family and I need our daughters be be coordinated to assist with the the same class or the same times for us to help each other out and the policy is we do not get to choose the classes.

So, TSL may not be feasible at all for us. I would be fine with that. My daughter said she would be fine with it either way. I am just not so sure she will feel the same when school starts and the TSL students talk about what they are doing and she is not included. On the other hand, having more freedom with our schedule, she could spend more time with her "twin" who already seems to have a servant leader's heart.

Sometimes I wish God would give a shout rather than use His quiet voice when I have a dilemma like this.

~ My Lord, I am seeking your guidance. Please make it known clearly to me. ~

Finally Normal, er Well....

Illness is the most heeded of doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey. ~Marcel Proust

I am taking this back-to-good-health thing one slice at a time!

This morning is the first morning I have felt normal...as normal as I ever feel, that is. Although I was on the mend, I still had energy issues as the infected gland drained all week, but it seems that yesterday was the last of it. I finally can stand, walk, and sit up in a regular chair without any pain—well, you just do not really appreciate a simple thing as sitting until it is too painful to do for two weeks.

Today will be the first normal day I have had in nearly three weeks...as normal as any of my days are. The Princess and I will be doing our homeschool lessons in full swing, much to her displeasure. While I was laying around (literally), on most week days she did do the very basics: the three R's: reading, writing, and arithmetic—algebra actually. (The girl actually sometimes admits she likes algebra and she gets the concepts easily even straight from the textbook without me, as I knew she would.)

This week may be the first normal week I have had...again as normal as any of my weeks are. My husband, who has thankfully been working locally for the past couple of months is away this week until Friday, so he says, so I am doing all the chores he normally does plus trying to get back into doing my own.

I have much to catch up on, like my blog—so much to share—and homeschool records to which I look forward to doing with almost as much enthusiasm as my daughter has doing the lessons. I also need to restructure the language arts and history portions of my plan for the rest of the year. Then there is the upcoming consignment sales just two weeks away—the child has grown into the woman-child stage and not many jeans are fitting her now. So many normal things to do...and I am thankful that I can do them.

~ My Lord, thank you for Your timing. That my husband was home to take care of the things I could not and that my daughter was so helpful when I needed their help. You and I both knew I needed a break mentally, but I would not take one had I not had this painful condition developed and had taken away my ability to keep pushing. I praise You even in my illness; help me remember to praise more You when I am well. ~

Gearing Up for the Spring Expedition

We don’t think there’s something wrong with one-year-old children because they can’t walk perfectly. They fall down frequently, but we pick them up, love them, bandage them if necessary, and keep working with them. Surely our heavenly Father can do even more for us than we do for our children. ~Joyce Meyer

Tuesday this week my husband and I had to attend the mandatory parent meeting for Living Science. We dropped off the Princess at her piano teacher's home on the way. We were hoping she would squeeze her in some time that evening as she needs an extra lesson with her judging coming up in just a couple weeks. Usually she is farther along than she is and I am getting concern. The Princess, however, was complaining about her head aching, so it seemed unlikely that she would be in any shape for a lesson.

The main subject of the evening meeting was the 5-day expedition in April. It is the biggest event for middle schoolers. High school servant leaders also go to help out as well as chaperones. My husband insisted that we both sign up to chaperone, but I most likely will not be able to go. For one it is $250 per chaperone plus the cost of gas, although we will be given $100 for that this year. They need more men than women, because everyone travels by gender. The men drive boys and the women drive girls. As with most homeschooling families, the men are the bread winners and the women are the stay at home parent with more flexibility in schedules. I am still wondering if my husband will be able to get the time off also.

The other reason one of us probably needs to stay home is that we cannot kennel our dog, because we do not believe in giving her shots and up-to-date shot records are required by law for kennels. If it were just two days, our dog does well with the lady across the street caring for her while she is alone at home. Even though she has four rescued dogs of her own to handle and she works at night as a 911 operator, she is very good about coming over several times during the day to let our dog out and feed her during the day. I just do not feel our dog will do well for five days like that, she is too family needy and has gotten destructive with a dog bed when she was kenneled for a week once before. (I would like my couch to be in the same condition as it is now.)

At the meeting, they went over the rules for packing gear and the clothes allowed. They suggested that we all make some homemade treats to send along and they would be handed out by the leaders. Everything has to be marked due to many of the children having allergies. There was a great deal more, but they seem to have this trip organized well. There are three stops where the students are to switch cars so that they all get to know different students on the way. There also will be devotion and prayer times together. It will be very memorable for the Princess.

That night we were also given the report card for the first semester and the Princess received 97, an A. Also, I had a chance to talk to the people I needed to about our concerns. I had written an email and they had cleared some misunderstandings up, so I ended up apologizing for some of my concerns because they were based on the perceptions of my daughter, like the time she said she had a math teacher for a substitute. Actually, it was a science teacher and the math they were given was DNA related, which was the topic they were to cover that week, but she hates maths so much all she focused on was having math homework to do. I also picked up her T-shirts that night. So, I left feeling much better about the whole school thing.

After the meeting we went to pick up the Princess who had been sleeping the entire time on Trudy's couch; quite unlike her. She had told Trudy not to put on the TV or to get her anything, she just wanted to lie down and be left alone--so unlike my Princess. Trudy, who was supposed to be downstairs in her piano studio giving lessons, ended up having all of that evening's students cancel due to illness...that started with a migraine and then their throats swelled. She had plenty of time to work with the Princess on her pieces but the Princess seemed to have a migraine herself. She did not want to move to just put on her shoes so we could take her home and she said she was very nauseated.

I was hoping the news about her grade would cheer her up some, but she was just too ill at the time to be cheered up. We finally got the Princess in the van and began the drive home. About half way, she finally did throw up, which was not much as there was not much in her stomach and thankfully we had a thick blanket doubled over that we had used to take our dog to the vet a few days ago still in the van so that is were it went. Immediately, she felt so much better. She said, "I had forgotten what that tasted like." We tried not to laugh, as I told her we all try to forget what that tastes like as I offered her some water. 

It was 10:30 PM by the time we got home with our errand and classes day following, while we are still fasting. The Princess was feeling so much better that she did not need any help preparing for bed and the next morning she was dancing around like normal. I was not quite as energetic, but then I am fasting all food and she is only fasting her evening meal, although she has been drinking one to two glasses of milk at night! Well, she is a going about-to-be-teenager in just three months--Yikes!

~ My Lord, thank you this upcoming amazing opportunity for my daughter and for her illness to be so short. Please make it possible for my husband to have the time off to chaperone so he can be there with our daughter. ~

Rescheduling in Reverse

The truth is that schools don't really teach anything except how to obey orders. ~John Taylor Gatto

I will concede that I, perhaps, just have an aversion to schools. Schools, even ones that are hand-picked, home-like meeting in a remodeled ranch house, highly inspirational and encouraging, and wonderfully honoring of God, are still schools. They have rules, schedules, classrooms, grading, tests, homework, and inflexible project deadlines. Well, inflexible for us, but not necessarily for them.

I understand the need to change schedules. Our homeschool has to have a higher degree of flexibility with my husband traveling so much, but both my husband and I have deadlines in our lives, so I think it is good for the Princess to experience them from outside sources as well. She has done this for many years with piano recitals and judging, but most of these deadlines get moved back if they are moved at all, which is rare.

The syllabus had the science presentations scheduled for the two weeks between the Thanksgiving break and the Christmas break, but there was also the warning that the schedules could change at the bottom of the page in finer print. About a month ago, the teacher flipped two weeks of planned lessons due to a planned trip that obviously was move to the week before. It is understandable that such things happen, however...

This week on Tuesday afternoon, my husband and I received an email to "clear up the confusion" that the science presentations for my daughter's class would be on...(Are you ready for this?)...the following day, Wednesday. Clearing it up? Ha! That is when the real confusion began in my house!

Now the Princess probably had been warned in class, but we parents were not and our thoughts were why not revise the syllabus or send out emails about this change a few weeks ago? I have been trying to let the child take on this responsibility fully for herself in regards to her science class, but still, the presentations are such a major project and high percentage of their grades...AND since the parents are invited, one would expect the school to be sure the announcement of the schedule change was given a few weeks in advance with greater priority than all the other emails about donations, upcoming events, like yard sales and a silent auction, and the food pantry collections! (This may be one of the reasons I have aversions toward schools.)

The Princess knew her facts and had everything ready except that she had not practiced her presentation in front of us, so we crammed that should have been done over the next couple of weeks into one night. I was impressed with how well she knew the information that she herself had researched. Unfortunately, she was a bit scattered in her delivery, so we gave her some pointers and tried to get her to hold up the dried starfish that I had shipped in for this presentation.

The Princess told me adamantly that she could not use notes during the presentation. However, my husband and I attended the presentations and of the nine presentations we watched, all but three, including the Princess, used (at least) outline notes, three read word for word either what they had typed out on paper or on their Power Point presentation. They all gave very interesting information on the various Fifth Day creatures they had chosen, but still the ones who read the entire time had boring deliveries.

The presentations were supposed to be a solid seven minutes to ten minutes and every student was to present twice to give the other students in the rotation the opportunity to see at least nine of the eleven presentations. The very first one we attended was done in under a minute--not kidding, we had just settled in our seats and it was over in four or five sentences. A couple students went well over ten minutes.

How did the Princess do? I think the Princess made it to between 4 to 6 minutes, because she dropped different facts between the two presentations and the second one was rushed due to her being the last one and we had to finish by a set time. She did fine for her very first presentation ever, but not knowing how she should have done would have improved any assessment. I tried to get her to practice her opening statement a little dramatically, for which she has a knack any other time: "The Crown of Thorns Starfish is the second largest starfish, the most destructive one and is poisonous!" Too bad she forgot to begin with this line the second time when her teacher was watching to assess the presentation, but her last line thrilled her teacher: "The thing I like most about the Crown of Thorns Starfish is that was named after the crown of thorn placed on Jesus' head."

The one thing that I think the teacher was hoping for is the thing that most of the students did not do, except for my daughter and one or maybe two others. That would be to relate some thing(s) to God with their creatures of choice, and it was obvious that she was thrilled when they did. I would have given my Princess a B grade, but this school seems to be easy on its grading, which bothers my husband as she has been getting all A's so far, and the focus seem to be on the students having the experience of giving a presentation, so we shall see.

~ My Lord, help me to stay the course with the reasons we had enrolled our daughter into this school. Help my husband and I both to see beyond the institution and its disorganized organization to its heart, which is to excite the children about the wonders of this world that You created for us and honor You in it all. Please continue to bless this school and all the students, teachers, and families. Be along side of my daughter in her class and interactions reminding her of Your presence in her life in all she does and open her ears to instructions, especially when there are changes in schedules. ~

Eye Am Fine

The eye sees a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination awake. ~Leonardo da Vinci

On Thursday, the Princess and I went to have our eyes checked. I know that I am somewhat nearsighted with a slight astigmatism, but I have not had glasses for over 25 years and I gave up on contacts 20 years ago because my eyes became so relaxed that my eyesight was worse than before I had them, but it improved again afterward. I rather my eyes not get that lazy about focusing on their own. Reading a book or working at my computer I do just fine, but really tiny print or cross-stitching now requires 1.25 reading glasses, so I could have gotten bifocals that I could wear all the time, but I really felt that I just wanted glasses for distances, mostly for reading signs when I drive, signs in a unfamiliar store, the occasion captions on a movie, or words of songs projected at our church. I just do not see me wearing them in my home, where I am most of the time.

The Princess has been telling me that she has a problem seeing things close up, but I think the range in which she means close up would be difficult for nearly everyone! I have always known she had good eyesight for distances and she has no problems reading at all, but now I have confirmation: the girl is 20/20. The optometrist said that she is very slightly farsighted, but not enough to bother with glasses; she looked so disappointed, as I was thanking God! I think she even tried to convince the doctor that she must need glasses, because he made a point to say that her complaints were probably due to eye fatigue. This is likely because she reads books and writes on her computer in her leisure time as well as the work she does for homeschooling.

I was also thanking God that both of us had very healthy eyes, because last year about this time I had incidents of flashes of light in my eyesight, which could have been an indication that the retina was detaching, but when I asked my Lord, He told me this was not the case. Flashes are also common as the fluid in the eye changes with age. So, in a little over a week I will be enjoying the fall colors in crystal clarity, if I choose to wear my glasses.

Our appointment was just after 8:00 AM, but because our eyes were dilated for most of the day, even well into the afternoon (instead of the two to three hours we were promised), we took the day off from former lessons. The Princess said everything was fuzzy and she even was seeing double. I told her that what she was complaining about is how I see all the time, except for the double vision. Because the doctor was so informative and because she had recently dissected an eye in her science class I decided that this would be considered a field trip. Everything is a learning opportunity! She spent part of the day working on her science project and cleaning her room, without being asked.

Some days are good days...but then I have not told you what happened the previous day, Wednesday, our errand day...and I just do not think I have the energy to go there right now.

~ Thank you, my Lord, for our healthy eyes and for the excellent eyesight you have given to my daughter. Protect her vision in that she sees only what You wish her to see. ~

Where was I? Oh, yes.

Sunrise, sunset.
Sunrise, sunset.
Swiftly flow the days.
Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers
Blossoming even as we gaze.
~Fiddler on the Roof

You may have been wondering where I have been. I am still in the crackdown-on-homeschool mode; the crackdown is mostly on myself, by the way. I finished planning the year as to how to fit all the curriculum in Language Arts, but I still have much work to do planning Social Studies. Currently, I am lost under piles of paper and trying to acclimate to our new schedule, so I am not yet using my time and resources as efficiently as I hope to do. If you ever tried educating your child at home you know that tasks of getting the child from one lesson or assignment to the other and of organizing paper in various forms, such as new ruled paper, art papers, worksheets, workbooks, books, index cards, flash cards, printed papers, etc., are the two main things a parent does over and over...and o-v-e-r.

Since I changed everything in my daughter's curriculum—yes, everything, but I just have to write, is working out so much better for both of us!—I now have old papers from our old curricula with which I am not quite sure what I will do and I need to place the new stuff into binders. Schools have the advantage of not having to save at least a sampling of the students' work to prove what and how they are teaching, as much as I do, as much as homeschooling families should do. So, temporarily everything is in piles on a table in the middle of my office/homeschool room, where there really is not enough room for a table, but better there than spread out on the floor so my cat and dog can make additional arrangements to the mess.

This year, although it is not required, I also decided that I will practice keeping records for high school transcripts, a skill I will need to have for the upcoming years anyway. Besides, she has been earning partial credits in some subjects like Greek and Latin. Also, the Princess wants to be graded, has been wanting that for the last few years, and even though I appeased her at times on this, I did not keep records of her grades. For those who do not homeschool, I was teaching to mastery without concerns about grading previously, however some children thrive on completing for that "A." My husband and I both were like that, but we thought it was due to the make-the-grade school influence in which we were raised; since this has not been the case with our daughter, I guess it is just in her genes to want a measuring stick of her abilities.

The science class is adding the measure of independent learning—independent of me, I mean. I think it was a very good investment into her education: The very first day of her school, they dissected an eye! The Princess did most of it as her lab partner thought it was very gross. The Princess is thriving in the classroom and laboratory environment, but then she has a teacher who truly loves teaching science. (I am thinking that it is easier to really love it when it is just one class a week, although I know she has other classes.) I give the Princess an hour on two separate days each week in our schedule so she can do her science homework as she must type out her summary of each class in addition to any lab reports and other things like take home tests. She has eagerly begun researching her chosen 5th day animal for the autumn presentation: the Crown of Thorns Starfish. She does not seem to mind that the science assignments take more time than I have set aside. She works on her science project in the evenings and on weekends also. Since she has observed good and bad 4H presentations, I am curious how she will put her project together for a seven to ten minute presentation.

Oh, my little Princess, a half-grown woman-child! Was it not just last summer when she was four years old protesting with a defiant look of determination after I had called her my child: "I am not a child. I am a woman!" From that point on, when people asked how she was, I would reply, "She is a formidable woman!" which would catch them off-guard until their giggles set in. Back then the Princess was only four, nearly always in pink, learning to play piano with only one hand at a time, and reading at a second grade level.

Today, she prefers teals, mauves, and greens with blues and browns, has a purse faddish, will be starting algebra in a month, talks about going to college, and wears nearly the same size shoes as I do. She is particularly good playing Bach on the piano, but she is good with a wide variety of musical styles. She writes as much as she reads, which is considerable. She is rather good with comics and used to draw several pictures a day, but she never really like the fine finishing work (as I do). Now she often cannot wait to start writing a story she has in her head and this is why I placed so much emphasis on language arts for this year. She may think she wants to be an actress only, but I see the girl is also a writer, artist, and musician at heart.

Which brings me back to why my homeschool area is a mess. I wanted to change things so that we could encourage and support her talents and areas of interest more so than before. Those years of laying foundations have prepared her for this change of fine tuning her education.

Did you know that the Amish only formally school their children to 8th grade? Why? Because by that age, a child has learned everything that is absolutely necessary to learn in a school setting to get along in life. The rest they will learn as well, better actually, by living experience or by apprenticing. When I was eleven, my mother was in and out of the hospital for illnesses, surgery after falling for which she was in traction at home for about 4 months, and giving birth because she had apparently conceived just before the fall. I did the housework and made sure my siblings were fed as was expected of me being the oldest. I have this philosophy that education from age of twelve on is to specialize their education toward their talents, gifts, and potential as well as practicing those practical skills. I feel that the potential of the teenage years is not fully utilized when students are taking classes and trying to get good grades just to prepare for college. Why not start learning college courses while in their teens?

On that note, some things had to shift in our priorities for this year and my homeschool materials with it. The Princess no longer needs the math manipulatives that helped her understand 5-3=2 in her four-year-old hands. She is twelve and those years have passed. It is difficult to let go, selling or packing away materials that helped shaped her knowledge for today, but changes must be made to accommodate and encourage growth and exploration in preparation for the woman she will be.

I may not be ready for it, but I have to be sure that she is.

~ My Lord, guide us as You desire us to be. ~

No Do-Overs

If I had it all to do over again, I would do most all things differently. However, how would I know that if, I had not had the opportunity to do them the first time.
 ~Janice Markowitz

Googling for information about a certain homeschool product, I came across this intriguing blog post entitled "If I Were Starting Homeschooling Over From Scratch." As I scanned through it, I began thinking about how much the homeschool market has changed since I began and how much my daughter and I have changed as well. So many materials were not available at the time when we started that I might have liked to use or at least had considered before making a final choice. I am sure that there are some newer products that I might have preferred over what I decided on at the time, but the ones I picked were tried and true, still available today and I rarely ever find myself thinking "I wish this was available years ago."

I have this philosophy to purposely not look back at my life with regret, which is not to say that I do not have regrets or I never wished I had done some things differently or not at all, but I have always been one to believe that in the same circumstances with the same information and same emotions in play I had at the time, I would have done exactly what I did. It is very rare that I say or even think if I had it to do over again...

I simply do not believe in do-overs. They are the illusions for when we cannot face up to the worst we have done, but they are not reality. I don't believe in examining my past and thinking about how things would have turned out if I had done this or that differently. Those are empty wishes on which I simply do not spend time and effort. It is better to spend that time and effort in making good decisions right here and now. I believe in going on from where I am. I believe in the possibly of tomorrows. I even believe that all my history—the good, the bad, and the ugly—made me into the person I am today and what I do today will make me into the person I will be tomorrow. 

Some would argue with me that when we accepted Jesus, we became new persons in Christ. Yes, but this did not erase my history, it became part of it. Jesus did not give me a new past, but a new future. I do not believe in do-overs, just in new days, each being a beginning of the rest of my life as the cliché goes. This very moment is the first of the rest of my life, even though there have been 50-some years of moments before this one.

Homeschooling has tested these philosophical convictions of mine. There have been more than a few things I have questioned. There have been more than a few things I planned to do that we have not done, at least not the way I planned. I have, am, and will be holding myself responsible for the failures within my daughter's education. What I do, actually all that I have ever done because it makes me who I am today, has a direct influence on who she has been, is, and will be. All of it is her education.

There have been times I simply had to surrender and rely on God's guidance, even unschooling because of circumstances and being unable to control the Princess' education—as if such a thing can be controlled! (I think "control" is another illusion with which we delude ourselves.) There have been times I was more organize and strict with her lessons as reminded myself that there are no do-overs. Still, I learned this most wondrous secret: either way she learned. Yet, most of the time, I fluctuate between the two extremes at points in our lives and even differing between subjects, but it has had little bearing on how fast she learned whatever she learned with a few exceptions like Greek and Latin.

I was thinking about all these things this week after I reviewed the Elementary Greek curriculum that arrived a few days ago. It is very different from Greek 'n' Stuff - Hey, Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek! which is for what I hoped, but it is not quite what I was expecting either. It is good, probably just what we need at this point, but does not have as much practice as I would like to see. The lessons are short, but meant to be done daily. Hey, Andrew! lessons could be done daily, but they were very uneven in their time demands, and since it was the same with the Greek 'n' Stuff Latin, I chose to do two pages of Greek on one day alternating with two pages of Latin on the next day, which even out the time somewhat better. Some lessons were taking about an hour, but the organization of these programs was adding to our difficulty of really learning the material. From what I am seeing with the Elementary Greek, there is the possibility that I may need to supplement its lessons with some exercises from Hey, Andrew!

Elementary Greek was available when I was choosing our Greek curriculum, but I was right in my assessment at that time. Had we started with Elementary Greek when she was younger, it would move too fast for us to really process and grasp the information well. I think it would have been a hard cold start even for her at this age considering she is learning other languages also. My plan to "train her brain" to accept the concepts of other languages very early, while she was still learning our own language, did fulfill its purpose and she is rather good with this. I do not know why I feel this is so important at this time, nor even why it was to me then, although I had my reasoning, but I believe my plan must be working within God's plan.

With Elementary Greek, much of the first year will be review and because it lacks some of the things we have covered with Hey, Andrew!, I am assuming that those things will be covered in Year 2 or even 3. The benefit of Elementary Greek not aligning with Hey, Andrew!, is that we will have enough review to cover our weak areas and ease us into the new routine. In addition, there are some vocabulary words that will be new to us and some concepts also so it will not be boring. I also was a bit astonished to find that from Hey, Andrew! we learned a few wrong pronunciations in simple things like the alphabet letter names. Omicron is not /OM-i-cron/ but /om-EE-cron/ and pi is not /PIE/ but /PEE/—How well would that have gone over in my geometry class, I wonder?

Do I regret using Hey, Andrew! for all these years? Not at all. I used to think we could have moved along faster as we took more than a year for each level, which is why we are only in Level 4, but in reality what it was was as good as it could be with the lesson loads the Princess has had and our crazy schedules. I initially had hoped to switch to Elementary Greek after Level 3 or 4 of Hey, Andrew!, but as we used it, I changed my mind concerned about how the two would not align. Now, here I am implementing the original plan and seeing the change as beneficial. Actually, I am quite pleased with my choice: The timing is good as to her age and quickness to understanding. Hey, Andrew! did well for introducing us both to Greek, so that we could do well with the faster start pace of Elementary Greek and I will be keeping Hey, Andrew! on hand as it still may be a good supplement. 

This change in our Greek curriculum works so well it is almost as if it was planned for this particular time, and I do not mean by me. I have always asked my Lord to be the one in control of my daughter's education and that I would be guided by Him. If it is His plan then it cannot be wrong.

So, if I had it to do over again...I would do it exactly as I have. If I were starting homeschooling now, I probably would have used the same plan, at least for Greek, as I did because there are no other overly impressive Greek curricula for young children that I have seen so far.

Today we will work with what we have and move on with our sights set on the future. Whatever the Princess lacks in her education at this point, God will provide along the way. I have seen that happen many times, so I have faith that He will continue within or despite my plans and failures.

~ My Lord, keep us looking forward, learning from mistakes but not wishing we had done things differently, and making better choices today for our tomorrow. May all our chosen paths be the ones You have chosen for us. ~