The Good News

My oldest son, Matthew, wrote his first song, The Good News.  Our fantastic music minister, Steve, wrote the music to the song and brought it to us yesterday.  Here are the words:

1.  The gospel is the good news that Christ became a man to die for us on the cross.
2.  The gospel is Jesus, who bore my sin and pain and died for me on the tree.
3.  The gospel is the good news that, though they buried Him, He rose up from the grave.
4.  Christ Jesus came and will come to take His children home.  He rose, so we're raised with Him.
5.  The gospel is the good news, that Christ became a man to die for us on the cross.

Refrain: Jesus is the Savior; Jesus is the Lord; the good news of the world.


Also, if anyone knows how to add a song from an I-tunes file please share so that I can share the tune to this song.

Home Schooling And Housekeeping

A few years ago, I was all classical education minded and nothing else.  I was convinced that if I was to educate our children at home then we needed to use the classical approach because in my mind that was the best.  Years went by and more children came into our lives.  Life suddenly got busier and schooling was taking the majority of my day.  By the time it was time for housework, I was tired.  I was also either pregnant or nursing a baby during this time.  Let's just say, I started looking at other options and reading all the different styles of homeschooling and was impressed with the Charlotte Mason learning style.  My children loved to read and I loved reading to them.  We were all about living books.  During this time of questioning our philosophy of education, the Lord humbled me and taught me that it wasn't really about what style a person used to teach their children at home.  It was about attitude and creating a love for learning.  I was trying to impress and create a smart child with lots of rigorous work and ended up creating a dislike for most of our schooling.  So, I tried several different things and finally ended up landing on Sunlight.  It has been the best thing for our family.  We all love reading and some days it hardly feels as if we are really doing school.  The flexibility of the schedules is also what persuaded us.  We had the option of choosing either a four day schedule or a five day schedule.  We chose the four day schedule and love every minute of it.  This also makes it easier to balance housekeeping.  Our reading time usually takes no more than about 2 hours.  Most of the rest of their schooling is independent work with the exception of spelling and grammar.  For those two subjects we use Sequential Spelling and First Language Lessons and these both are so very easy.

Today, we were able to finish our schooling by lunch time for the most part and then make bagels, granola bars, practice sewing, and clean house, and cook dinner.  Not all days are like today.  Some days are still a struggle, but for the most part there is now a routine that we are satisfied with.  If you are unhappy with your curriculum, I suggest that you look around and find one that will best fit your schedule and your families likes.  One thing that I have learned is that it is not always about what learning style you chose or what curriculum you land with.  You have to go with what works for your family.

Gods and Generals, Liberty's Kids, and Ken Burns Civil War

This year in school, the oldest is learning about American History and the other children are learning about Ancient History.  In lieu of studying American History, we chose to watch a movie about the civil war today, Gods and Generals,  and ALL the kids sat glued to the television with lots of discussion afterwards.  Don loves anything about the civil war and has also been watching a great documentary called, Ken Burns on the Civil War.  If you get a chance to watch either of these, I highly recommend them.  Another great television resource on American History has been Liberty's Kids.  Do you have any favorite books or movies that you have been able to enjoy as a family that are about American History?

Home For A Muskrat

This school year we have been reading through the Little House series and today we started book #6, The Long Winter.  We read about muskrats and how they build their homes very thick if the winter is going to be long and hard.  The kids were thrilled that it was a warm day and that when they went outside they would get to make a muskrat home.  I told them that all they needed was mud, water, and pine needles.  It got me to thinking that it would be great to take them out sometime just before winter next year and look for muskrat homes and see how thick they are.

How Home Schooling Can Be Simple

Yesterday, the kids and I had the wonderful opportunity to travel with him and stay a few hours at a friend's home while he made a hospital visit.  We had a great visit.  The children got to play with another home school family out in the woods in the snow on a rather warm day and see maple taps on the trees.  I had an encouraging visit from two other moms, one who had already completed her home schooling journey and one who was in the thick of it with her 6 children.  It is rare that I get to sit down and visit with other home schooling moms.  We shared what was happening in our families and some journals of what home schooling looked like when another mom was teaching her children.  Getting to see the journals was very helpful to me because sometimes I get discouraged when I want to spend lots of time in the kitchen baking and cooking with the children and not working on our "lessons" for the day or spending time on other homemaking skills such as meal planning, laundry, or sewing.  She taught me that homemaking is schooling.  She taught me that going to see maple taps is schooling.

Just recently we finished our grammar book with our oldest child and was not planning on starting another for a little while, but in the mean time feeling as if he still needed to do some grammar (just because that is what we do).  While looking through my friend's journals I saw that she made grammar very easy by having the kids diagram sentences, write summaries, write out vocabulary words with their definitions, and copy Bible verses.  That all got me to thinking, "I could continue to teach Grammar without an "official textbook" especially since the curriculum I had been using had been teaching him how to diagram sentences.  So, my husband and I talked on our long drive home and decided that we were going to have our son keep a notebook of his diagramming and that we would start by diagramming the book of Romans.  Then we would have our daughter, who just finished her handwriting book, copy Bible verses from Proverbs.  What better way to teach your children than to use the Bible as your "textbook"!  I was so excited that I had to share.

Lastly, my sweet friend whom I went to visit, knew of my journey in making things from scratch and also knew that my husband was picking up a few of our bulk baking supplies (50 lb of white flour and 50 lb of wheat flour) and lent me a copy of King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking.  She also recommended and let me look at More With Less.  I LOVE cook books!!!  When I got home, I immediately opened the book and started reading it.  I am very excited to share with you in future posts my journeys through Whole Grain Baking.

The day ended by my husband and I sitting down and watching Julie and Julia.  If you have not gotten the opportunity to watch this movie I highly recommend it!  It is about Julie taking on the challenge of blogging about cooking for a year through Julia Child's cook book, The Joy of Cooking in a small 900 square foot apartment and about the story of Julia writing her cookbook in American while living in France.  It is two stories in one that is based on two true stories.

Later in the day, I will be posting of my journey in cooking from Scratch.  I would love to hear from you, too.  How was your week?  Did you venture out and try making something from scratch (it does not have to be food)?

What Came In The Mail And Why We Were Excited

The day our mail arrived it was like receiving Christmas presents when Dad walked in the door with this letter and 2 small packages.

A year ago, our oldest son wrote a letter to the President of the United States about why they let the bomber of the U.S.S. Cole go free.  This letter made his day!

My husband, being a pastor, loves to read books.  He recently has been preaching through Titus and has covered the roles of deacons and elders.  Hence, the thought these two books would be helpful to him in his studies.  His favorite company to order through is Reformation Heritage Books.

I have been looking at Sonlight curriculum for a while and could never justify ordering it because of the price.  We are a family who loves to read.  In my journey to find a supplemental curriculum, I have discovered a blog http://blogshewrote.blogspot.com/ in which she uses Five In A Row and highly recommends it.   After much examination, I decided to take the plunge and order this curriculum.  It was only $35, so I figured I could be happy with that.  Most of the books are available through the library and I can also purchase them through used book sellers.  I also found a book crossing site that enables me to basically swap books like paperback swap with just the cost of postage.  The basic concept behind FIAR is to use a book a week and to teach through literature, art, science, social studies, and math while reading the same book every day for the entire week.  Heather over at http://blogshewrote.blogspot.com/ says that the main difference between the two curriculums (she has used both) is that Sonlight devours through books (creating a love for many books with quick reading), while FIAR savors the books the children read (creating a love for great books and teaching them how to deeply read a book).  Needless to say, I am very excited to get started in FIAR with my 5 year old.  If there are any other FIAR mommies, I would love to hear your feedback as I am brand new to FIAR.

AVKO Educational Research Foundation, Audio, Visual, Kinesthetic, & Oral a multi-sensory approach.

AVKO Educational Research Foundation, Audio, Visual, Kinesthetic, & Oral
a multi-sensory approach.

I wrote this to be connected to my previous post but could not figure out how to combine the two posts.  Sorry for the confusion!

Do You Have A Child Who Struggles With Dyslexia?

If you are like many parents who have children who struggle with dyslexia, many subjects will give you fits.  I have found spelling to be the biggest problem for us.  We have tried many different spelling curricula  all to no avail.  One day we stumbled upon something that finally made sense.  The approach it took was through using a multi-sensory approach, teaching students to recognize patterns of spelling based on the rules of the English language, but without all the complicated explanations.  It is called Sequential Spelling and is available through a very helpful website www.avko.org.  This organization was developed by a man named Don McCabe.  He also sends out helpful newsletters.

I like this approach because it is level based.  Not long ago, we made the change in our teaching to level based and not grade based.  I feel that this is important because if you have a child who is not making much progress, he or she does not feel bad when they see that their level is based upon mastery of the subject and not upon grade level advancement.  There are seven progressive levels of difficulty.  The students take tests daily and as they recognize more and more patterns and begin to spell words correctly they become more and more confident- all without studying- and their confidence and spelling skills soar like never before.

I highly recommend this website and this curriculum!  One last thing, to those of you who love Sonlight curriculum, this is a spelling core.

curriculum changes

Life has been busy with homeschooling, nursing, cleaning, cooking, and hospitality. When I finally got a chance to sit down today and review our new spelling curriculum I fell asleep (for a mere 20 minutes).

With the newest change in our lives (sweet baby Emily) we decided it was time to re-evaluate the time consuming curriculum that we were using. I love to read to our children and was struggling to find the time to even read one book. My wonderful husband helped me to come up with a plan so that I would have more time, get to read to the little ones, and have fun doing it all. Isn't is school suppose to be enjoyable anyway?

Our plan of action: read books to the children while nursing, change the math curriculum, change the grammar curriculum, and change the spelling curriculum. Results: Beautiful! Everyone is enjoying school and I get to read to the children once again (every time I nurse).

If you care to know we switched from Saxon Math to Math-u-see, from Shurley Grammar to First Language Lessons, and from Spelling Workout to Spelling Power. All of these tend to be written for and by homeschoolers therefore making them more user friendly for the whole family. We are homeschooling using the classical approach and thought that we had to stick to one particular curriculum and that school had to be intense and rigorous. That is not true! It is okay to vary your curriculum and to make school enjoyable. The other thing that we learned was to teach for mastery. If your child is not understanding something, the beauty of homeschooling is that you have plenty of time to slow down and re-teach until mastery has occurred.