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A Typical Day in Our Homeschool, Part 1

Aug15

We intend to get up early. Our last name is Early, for heaven’s sake. The parents who are ostensibly running this homeschool believe “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Wait, we believe half of that maxim. Engineer Husband is great with the “early to rise” part, and I used to be good at “early to bed.” But now it seems that this homeschool/home is open twenty-four hours a day. The four teenagers/young adults don’t believe in bedtimes at all; they just fall into bed as the Spirit moves them. And Engineer Husband usually puts the four younger urchins to bed after one more drink of water, one more snack, a second toothbrushing, one more story, a prayer for each urchin, and “play-me-a-tape-please.” And that’s all before they get into bed the first time.

I can hear the comments already: “You were going to blog about a typical day in your homeschool, and you’re already writing about bedtime.” But I have learned that our typical day starts the night before. If none of us makes it to bed before midnight, then we can’t very well rise with the chickens. And typically, we don’t. We also don’t have any chickens. So a typical day in our homeschool starts around 8:30 or 9:00 A.M. –or later sometimes.

1. Morning jobs: Each of my eight children, including Eldest Daughter who is home from college this summer, has a morning job which is supposed to be completed satisfactorily before breakfast. Dancer Daughter’s job is to make breakfast, so she at least must finish her job before breakfast. This morning we had muffins (from a mix), fruit, and milk.
2. Breakfast is rather informal, but I do try to keep the food in the kitchen or the dining area and out of the living room. Everybody finishes their jobs, eats, and generally tries to wake up before
3. Bible reading and prayer. We’re reading Proverbs, a chapter a day, right now. Last year we read Psalms, the year before we used Greenleaf’s Guide to the Old Testament. I’m planning when we finish Proverbs to start through a harmony of the Gospels. Each of the eight urchins, except for the youngest, has his own day to pray aloud for all of us. Then, in theory, we start the day’s schoolwork.

With Great Power . . .

Aug11

puppetspuppetpower

Anybody recognize these guys? This is what Brown Bear Daughter and Karate Kid do when they’re supposed to be doing math! Can I just call it “unschooling”? What do your children do when they’re supposed to be doing school? What do you do when they are being productive or creative, but they’re NOT doing what they’re supposed to be doing? Yesterday my six year old, Betsy Bee, wanted to mop the floors instead of reading her reader. How can I say no to such a helpful request?

Quiver Full Revisited, Part 2

Aug4

Next reading assignment: Molly at My Three Pennies Worth writes Quiverfull Schmiverfull. Good stuff to continue our discussion. Summation quotation:

“There are some good reasons why limiting family size can be godly, and I have friends who have had to make that difficult decision due to life-threatening issues. They are the minority, though. For many, the decision to “have 1.7 children” is not birthed (pardon the pun) from prayer, but from a nonchalant acceptance of what our godless society says is Normal.”

So to review from Quiver Full Revisited, Part 1, my first point was: Our culture is becoming anti-child, and this attitude is bad for our society and wrong for Christians.

My second point is easy to state and understand, too. The anti-child attitude and the lack of prayer and careful thought about the issue of contraception among Christians is a problem—not the number of children a couple chooses to have or not to have.

I consider myself “quiverfull.” We have eight children, and we don’t use contraceptives (anymore). We came to this place slowly after several years of the same prayerlessness and lack of careful thought that I decry in the above statement. I’m glad to see Christian women (and men) thinking about the issue of contraception and asking what the One who is supposed to be Lord of our entire lives would have them do in this area of decision.

A few years ago a leader of women’s ministry in my (Baptist) church told me, laughingly, in front of the younger of her two children, that she and her husband should have only had one child. The second one was a mistake. They were really only able to handle one child, and after the second one was born, they got that “fixed” right away so that there wouldn’t be any more mistakes. I couldn’t believe she was telling me this, and I was literally speechless. I have since thought of many responses, both good and bad, but the main question I would like to ask that lady if I were able to do so is this: “Do you really believe God made a mistake in giving you a second child?”

For Christians, children are never mistakes; children are blessings.

Job Interview, Psychological Assessment or Kindergarten?

Jul16

One of my teenagers went in for a job interview a few days ago. This interview was a “group interview” for a large chain retail establishment. Ten or twelve people sat around a table. Most of the people being interviewed were full grown adults, not teenagers. (This age note will become important later.) At the head of the table was the interviewer, and at the other end sat two people with pen and paper, taking notes.

The interviewer began by describing how this store was a wonderful place to work, how the employees were not really employees, but rather “partners.” After this spiel was over, the interviewer pulled out a basket of crayons and a stack of construction paper. She intructed my child and the others to draw a picture of how they imagined themselves working at this store. (OK, at this point I would have lost the job because my hysterical laughter would have convinced the interviewer that I was not partner material.) After they drew their pictures, each person at the interview shared his picture with the others, telling about what he had drawn and why. Then, the interviewer pulled out a basket of exotic fruits and vegetables. She gave one piece of fruit or one veggie to each person and asked them to sell the food item to the rest of the group. They were to tell the group what they thought was good or attractive about this particular food item. All the time the people at the end of the table were taking notes.

I haven’t interviewed for a job in a long while. Is this a typical interview nowadays, or am I justified in wondering whether or not I want my young adult to work at such a nutty place?

Born June 19th

Jun19

Blaise Pascal, b. 1623 In 1656, while he was still in his early thirties, Pascal began collecting material for a book, Apology for the Christian Religion. H wrote down his thoughts “upon the first scrap paper that came to hand . . . a few words and very often parts of words only.” These fragments of thought became, after his death at age 39, the Pensees, edited by a group of monks who shared his Catholic faith. Some pensees:

“Jesus Christ is a God whom we approach without pride and before whom we humble ourselves without despair.”

“There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who believe themselves sinners; the rest, sinners, who believe themselves righteous.”

“Misery induces despair, pride induces presumption. The Incarnation shows man the greatness of his misery by the greatness of the remedy which he required.”

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Prince of Preachers, b. 1834.

Every Sunday evening Mrs. Spurgeon was accustomed to gather the children around the table, and as they read the Scripture, she would explain it to them verse by verse. Then she prayed, and her son declares that some of the words of her prayers her children never forgot. Once she said, “Now, Lord, if my children go on in their sins, it will not be from ignorance they perish, and my soul must bear swift witness against them at the day of judgement if they lay not hold of Christ.” That was not at all in the modern vein, but it was the arrow that reached the boy’s soul. “The thought of a mother bearing swift witness against me pierced my conscience and stirred my heart.” There was enough in him to cause his mother anxiety. His father recalled that his wife once said to him, speaking of their eldest son, “What a mercy that boy was converted when he was young.” Charles Haddon Spurgeon: A Biography by W.Y. Fullerton

I would that my children had a mother like Susannah Wesley or Elizabeth Spurgeon, but God has given them me, and my prayers, poor and inconsistent as they are, must be enough. Finally, of course, it is God’s mercy and grace that must suffice.

Johnstown Flood

May31

On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam, which held back Lake Connemaugh on a mountain above Johnstown, Pennsylvania, burst. Twenty million tons of water came crashing down into the valley where the town of 30,000 lay. Over 2200 people died in the flood and in fires that followed that night.

We own the children’s book, The Terrible Wave by Marden Dahlstedt, which tells the fictional story of Megan Maxwell, a teenage girl who survives the flood. Mrs. Dahlstedt says in the author’s note in the back of the book: “My interest in the Johnstown Flood stems from the fact that my grandparents survived it. . . I grew up with family stories of the flood, some of which have been incorporated in The Terrible Wave.”

I, too, grew up hearing family stories of a flood–in dry West Texas of all places. On September 17, 1936 my dad’s home near the Concho River in San Angelo, Texas was flooded. My grandmother said she put a baby picture of my dad up in the rafters before she left her house with my dad who was about five years old. That picture is the only surviving photograph of my dad as a baby. My mom, on the other hand, remembers another natural disaster, a 1953 tornado that destroyed much of the Lake View area of San Angelo. According to the San Angelo Standard Times, the tornado killed eleven people.

What natural, or man made, disasters has your family experienced or survived? Do your grandparents or parents tell stories like these? Have you written the stories down for your children to read someday? I wish my parents would write down stories from their childhood and young adult days for my children to have. I’m afraid that even with the simple stories I told in the preceeding paragraph that I may get some of the details wrong. It just seems to me that the way people behave in a crisis tells so much about their character and their ability to cope with everyday life.

Spy List

May8

Spy List by Spyriam aka Brown Bear Daughter (age 10)
1. A good spy never sulks.
2. A good spy never worries.
3. A good spy never panics.
4. A good spy is never desperate.
5. A good spy puts himself in the mind of his opponent.
6. A good spy never has to go to the bathroom in the middle of a mission.
7. A good spy reads all she can.
8. A good spy blends in; always wear black.
9. A good spy explores everything.
10. A good spy always completes his mission.
11. A good spy follows orders exactly.
12. A good spy is always ready.
13. A good spy is always prepared.
14. A good spy always has all the equipment he needs.
15. A good spy takes good care of his gear (never steps on his glasses).
16. A good spy is always sneaky.
17. Spies wear cool hats.
18. Spies are always serious besides when duty calls that they should be funny.
19. Spies do not think about the past; it distracts from the now.
20. Spies are always careful not to reveal their identity except to people they can trust.

SpyMom says that, except for #16, these sound like good rules for anyone. Even #16 can come in handy sometimes.
May is Get Caught Reading Month. Who will be next?

My Day in Books

May4

I feel as if I’ve been reading aloud all day, in between other tasks. Today I’ve read the following books to various and sundry urchins:

Danny and the Dinosaur by Syd Hoff
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
To Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street by Dr. Seuss
Thomas the Tank Engine’s Hidden Surprises
Blue’s Clues (board book)
The Magic Schoolbus Inside a Beehive by Joanna Cole
Dance at Grandpa’s by Laura Ingalls Wilder
One chapter (Sugar Snow) from Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
One chapter from Justin Morgan Had a Horse by Marguerite Henry

I also tried to read my book, The Sea of Trolls by Nancy Farmer, but I didn’t make much progress–too many interruptions. The forecast for tomorrow: prayer and more reading.

Where I Am From . . .

May3

I am from back-yard sheds and front porches, from Holsum bread, Imperial Pure Cane sugar (it’s quick dissolving) and Gandy’s milk.

I am from the edge of the Edwards Plateau, the two bedroom house on the unpaved block of Florence Street, dusty road dividing the widow ladies from the Methodist Church across the street on one corner and the Church of God on the other.

I am from pecans and apricots, mesquite and chinaberry, the tree I sat in to read my ten allowed library books every week and to watch the neighbor lady brush out her long grey hair that had never been cut.

I am from cranking homemade ice cream with ice and rock salt packed into the freezer and going to church every time the doors were open, from Mary Eugenia and Lula Mae, Joe Author and Monger Stacy.

I come from teachers and preachers and hard workers.

From don’t sing at the table and we only expect you to do your best.

I’m from cars with names like the Maroon Marauder and Old Bessie, from carports and driveways instead of garages, from swamp coolers instead of central air, from shade trees and pavement so hot it’d burn your bare feet.

I am from Lottie Moon and Annie Armstrong, Girls’ Auxiliary and Training Union, The Old Rugged Cross and It only takes a spark, from old ladies playing the autoharp in Sunbeams and young bearded men playing the guitar around the campfire. Kumbaya.

From the Heart of Texas, the Heartland, the center of the universe, the kind of town everybody wants to be from.

I come from Wales and Arkansas, Comanche, Sweetwater, Claude, and Brownwood, fried chicken, fried potatoes, steak fingers and fried okra.

I’m from y’all and pray for rain and fixin’togo.

From the grandmother who sewed and the Mema who taught music, the grandpa who could sell ice to an Eskimo, and the grandfather who worked on cars and died before I was born.

I am from a house full of memories and craft projects, some completed and hung on the walls, some never finished, waiting for younger hands and newer minds. I’m from dreams and places where doors were not locked and neighbors never let you pay them back when you borrowed an egg or a cup of milk.

I think the whole thing started with a poem by George Ella Lyons. You can write your own where-I-am-from, and if you write one, leave me a comment and I’ll link to your poem.

I think I could have done a better job if I had some uninterrupted time to think, but when am I ever going to be from the uninterrupted time place? Heaven only knows.

He Is Risen!

Mar27

cross on sunday

In addition to the Resurrection Sunday traditions I wrote about last year, we also:

Have our own Easter sunrise (sort of) worship. We eat breakfast outside, weather permitting, a breakfast made up of homemade cinnamon rolls, deviled eggs, and orange juice. This morning we had cranberry-orange juice inside because it was too wet and windy to eat outdoors.
We read the story of Jesus’s Resurrection from one of the gospels, and we usually sing a hymn. But we forgot to sing this morning.
We listen to Easter music, a motley collection of favorite CCM (Don Francisco, John Michael Talbot, 2nd Chapter of Acts) from the 70’s and Handel and whatever else seems appropriate and celebratory.
We hang our Easter flag out in front, and we enjoy worshipping the Risen Lord with our church family.
We’ll also have ham, green beans, and sweet potatoes for dinner.