i want to learn... please?

My Mother's Day gifts this year spoke volumes to me. I was floored and delighted and almost in tears.

John took the kids out to shop and after he convinced the Girl that her present did not have to be the very best and most amazing gift in the entire world they were able to move on. They purchased their gifts and wrapped them for me and presented them to me during the afternoon.

I opened my Mother's Day gifts with absolutely no idea of what I would get. They each bought me one item and then they bought me one thing together.


My boy bought me a sweet hummingbird feeder. He has shared my love of attracting birds to our yard and this is something that he has wanted for sometime. He also knew that I would LOVE it. I do love it! It is currently hanging in our tree in the back yard and we are awaiting our little humming friends.My daughter gave me a very nice gardening book and this is ALWAYS a welcome sight in my home especially since I am a bit of a gardening addict. I have already read through much of the book and have learned quite a bit. I am excited about what else I will learn from my book.

The gift from both of them was large and rectangular and heavy. It felt obviously like a book and since I lurve books I opened it eagerly!

When I pulled back the paper I saw this massive history book.


This book is very large and is filled with maps and articles of what has happened in our world in the past.

I opened it up and my husband said, "Now you need to hear why they wanted to get this particular book for you." He had this funny grin on his face.

BOTH of my children were sitting on the floor at my feet and at this moment they both chimed in together, "We bought it for you so that you can use it to teach us more history!" They looked up at me with beaming faces, full of anticipation. My eyes grew wide and I realized that I was just given one of the biggest compliments of my entire life.

I have a great love of learning and I love learning more about history. I homeschool our children and I love bringing history alive for them. We use Sonlight history and they think that the history portion of our day is one of the best parts of each day. They often talk me into doing more then one day of history at a time.

I have succeeded in one of my goals in homeschooling. I have instilled in my children a love of learning. I know that I do not do everything right. There are many times when I question myself and what we are doing here in our little corner of the great homeschooling world, but on Mother's Day I got one of the best gifts. I got a great progress report as a homeschool teacher. Now... let's see if we can work on my progress report for organizing a house...

things that make me pause and take note

I have honestly been coming up at a loss for what to put on this blog. Sad. The problem is that my life is wrapped up in my kids really and I won't post pictures of them online. So many of the time I just start writing a post and it ends up getting too long and then I don't have time to finish it and when I go back to read it and write more I have lost the main thought and I don't finish it.

This post will be fairly short.

I hope.

I read online probably too much, but I read and I can't help myself. I used to get my news fix in magazines and the TV but most of my news fix now comes from online sources. One of my favorite online sources is NPR. I used to listen to NPR all the time and I loved the mix that the NPR channel in Springfield MO gave me. They would have the classical music on interspersed with the awesome news shows and jazz piano and Car Talk and Prairie Home Companion... etc. Unfortunately here where we are now (sorry about my annoying vagueness) closer to a larger city we have multiple "NPR" stations but they are all specific. One is only talk, all news, all talk type stuff. Another is all classical music, but it has ads? And this station is still on the NPR website, but never advertises itself as NPR. Weird. Another station is all Jazz. I miss my all in one station. SO... I mainly just listen to the classical station because much of the news found, well... anywhere isn't appropriate for children to hear and the local news personalities annoyed me.

So, as I continue on writing my, ahem... short post... what I was trying to say in the above paragraph is that I no longer listen to NPR for news, I read it online at their site. Sometimes I also listen to it online it just depends on the story and what is going on in my world. Tonight what caught my attention was a story on pinhole cameras.

I vaguely remember studying the overall concept of pinhole cameras in school, but I don't think we actually made one. I am really interested in making one of these in the future with my kids.

The image has such a great look to it and honestly the picture is much better to my poor eyeballs then the cheap type kid safe digital cameras that they make. Those pictures make my eyes want to bleed. The fuzziness... the painfulness the annoyingness. I lose patience for those cameras very fast.

Perhaps we will try this during the summer months here. I have a feeling that we need some nice crisp light to get this to work well and summer sounds like the best time for us to experiment and play with light.

shaving spelling words write off the list

On a recent post, one of my great blog friends, Sneaky Momma, commented that when she taught school they would write their spelling words in shaving cream. Now, I will admit that I have had the kids write their words in many, many ways and I have heard of the shaving cream deal more then once, but I had yet to try it. That was all the inspiration I needed. The shaving cream was coming up soon!

The idea is to make writing a fun thing and honestly that isn't always easy. One of the problems is that when you make something fun it takes longer. That is just Murphy's law. I think nearly every time I make spelling fun it takes longer, BUT does it really? My kids learn the words better. There is no whining. It is an adventure. They LOVE it. So is it worth it? Yes. BUT... anytime you do something that really makes school downright squealing-out-loud-fun, you had better think ahead and change your normal schedule and do that squealing last. Trust me.

The shaving cream brought squeals from my kids just like I knew it would. It was super distracting for anyone else in the room trying to learn and they just loved it!

I put down the fabric cutting mat on the table. By the way, if you happen to do most of your homeschooling on the kitchen table like I do, these little puppies will save your table and your sanity. They take the beating and my wood table top doesn't have to. Lovely little guys. You can pick them up at your local sewing shop. We then propped up the spelling list and got the cookie sheet that we use for magnets out and covered it with the good stuff.


This was our poison of choice. It is what John uses every morning to shave his face and because of this the kids were worried that he would not be happy that we were using it. I told them that I would just get Daddy more.


This is what it looked like early on. My kids are not at all afriad to get dirty or messy or anything, but this did confuse my son momentarily and he actually wrote one word in the shaving cream and then washed it off his hands to start the second one. I told him to get over it. He did.


What a beautiful clean slate for writing on! Wahoo! Like fresh snow!


What this looks like with a word written in it. Much fun!


Of course, stuff like this was inevitable and you gotta roll with the punches. At least he wasn't flinging it on the walls!

On a side note, would you look at those teeth coming in?! Yikes! He is growing up.


Then things like this started happening. At least it washes out right? And really it is just like soap. He covered his arms in it and got it on his shirt and pants.


Most of my pictures of The Girl using this have her face in the picture, so I decided to just show The Boy, but here she is having a blast with it too. Like her mountains? She was trying to figure out if these were mountains which side she would want to slide down. The Boy helped her figure it out. Majorly important stuff here.

They had such fun and so did I. This was simple clean fun.

Try it out yourself!

(Oh, and if you are one of my many OCD friends then you can wait until summer comes and do this outside. They will love it and then you can hose them down before they come inside, just take some deep breathes and you can do it! )

spelling in egypt

Sometimes when you work with creative kids (btw, I believe all kids are innately creative) you need to think like a creative kid.

Everyday I have my kids spell out the spelling words for the week. They can do this in many, many ways and I will be highlighting those here as we work through our wide variety of ways.

Today, I will show you how we incorporate ancient history into spelling.

My kids LOVE ancient Egypt. We have studied it quite a bit and they know more then most adults when it comes to this culture in particular.



They were not wanting to do their spelling words today at all until I gave them the job of apprentice scribe. They had to use manila paper and only their black water colors with small brushes to do their words. I constantly called them, "Young Scribe." and they played along quite well.

One Saturday a Month

Just one Saturday a month as I wake up and lay in bed trying to eek the last bit of sleep out of the night before I am forced to deal with feeding two kids and a dog and a cat and a husband, just this one Saturday a month I realize something. It is the Saturday for Gab and Nibble!!! This actually gets me out of bed quite quickly and as I hop up and do all my morning preparations, getting dressed and doing my hair and all of these things that usually get done on Saturdays MUCH MORE SLOWLY I think about what kind of coffee I will have. Ahhh... now that is something to think about when brushing your teeth!

I skip downstairs, check out what Ike did in the night and check my email and let my family know that this is the Saturday morning that they are on their own. John just grins slightly and completely understands. I drive over to the chosen location, this week it is St. Louis Bread Company, sometimes it is at more personal places that serve full omelets and other such yummy things. I walk in and feel like I was just welcomed at Cheers where everyone knows my name! Ten ladies sit around a table with their mugs of coffee and their bagels and their ready smiles and the ready chatter. We talk of homeschooling our kids and we talk about Bible Studies and we talk about our gardens and our homes and our issues with weird neighbors and our issues with strange family members.

The time passes so quickly as we sit and eat pumpkin muffins and sip coffee and tea. Laptops are pulled out and blogs are figured out and pictures are shared and tales are told. Finally someone's cell phone rings. The dad's have broken the mom solitude of the now afternoon. We all scoop up cell phones and say our good byes. We will see each other in the coming week, but it will be with kids and our conversations will be vastly different. They will be interspersed with calls to children, "Don't pick that up! Please don't touch that. What did your sister do? Can you stop crying long enough to tell me what happened? Please don't run in here."

You get the picture. This morning is almost as sacred as church and I do treasure it and can I just tell you how GOOD that pumpkin muffin tasted! MAN!

This reminds me of how important these times are for us moms. The times taken to be without children and it doesn't need to be that long. These mornings often drag onto the afternoons slightly, but they are certainly not weekend retreats!

Once again, I Thank-God for the amazing Homeschool group we have and what a stupendous blessing it has been to our family.

The Post That Was Meant to be Short

I know I haven't updated in forever. What can I say. As a good friend told me once when I was struggling with a canoe in Canada, "Excuses are like feet, Anna, we all have them and they all stink." My femininity was not happy with that statement but eh, it is true.

We started school this last week and it has gone quite well. The kids seem to be getting so much more out of school and the whole process seems to be much easier. Maybe we are all just getting better at this.

I did have a moderately sad story to tell on my sweet boy. I have hesitated to discuss things like this on my blog because of my children's privacy but I do think that sometimes in NOT talking about things like this, others think that our lives are all perfect and they end up feeling alone in their struggles. So, I have decided to share a few things that I have not shared here before.

My Boy has had a slower time with reading. I honestly do not think he has true reading problems, I really do think that this area of his brain is just developing a little bit slower then other areas and for him, that is perfectly normal. The language area of his brain always developed slower. As we have been homeschooling I have felt all the standard pressures that moms feel, but in the homeschooling world, sometimes those pressures are on steroids (not that the pressures are intended, I want to make that clear). We feel that since we are doing everything one on one and we are able to customize our children's school work that they should be the most brilliant intelligent children on this earth. The fact of the matter is that not all kids are created the same. I did everything I was supposed to do with my son. I read to him from the time he came home from the hospital. I now have more children's books then anything else in this house and they are VERY well read. The problem arose when I decided that we should start Kindergarten. He was by age ready, but he was not really ready.

I bought curriculum. I watched homeschooling friends buy advanced curriculum and I quivered. I saw amazing papers by children who were homeschooling and were so advanced. I grew determined. I organized and plopped books in front of him and planned and then grew frustrated at his lack of interest. He didn't want to write his name. He didn't want to learn to write numbers. He didn't want to sound things out. He didn't want to do any of it but have me read to him. That is all he was truly comfortable with. Half way through Kindergarten I tossed half the curriculum out the window. I ditched the Math entirely. I continued to struggle through the Language Arts. I was determined that MY SON would not have problems with this. I had read to him since he was one week old. I had read TONS to him in these years of his life. He knew his letter sounds. I was sure that he would get reading. I was sure that it would all click.

The next year I bought the next level of curriculum. I now know that what I should have done was redo the previous year and not think a thing of it, but I persevered. I continued. I bought the next level of Language Arts, I bought a totally different Math. I continued reading and reading and reading. I decided that the particular Language Arts wasn't working for us and so I decided to buy Hooked on Phonics for grade one. I ordered it and opened it all up and stared in dismay. It had them already reading blends. He was no where near ready to read blends, he was not really able to read simple three letter words like hat and cat and mat. I put it back in the box and ordered the K level and wanted to cry. The K level came and the lists of letter sounds he had to do were redundant and boring for him. He was losing interest faster then I could finish a simple K level lesson. I packed that box up and put it on the shelf also. I stopped doing Language Arts. I stopped doing Phonics with him. He was burnt out. I was burnt out. His little sister was sitting down and doing all the K level language arts. It was time for a season of rest in this field.

We all took the rest. We continued with the History and Science that he loved. We continued with the Math that he worked through. We continued reading aloud to him.

A good friend of mine has a son that she still struggles with in reading and in many areas of school and she would encourage me and tell me that if you do nothing else continue to read to him. Just read, read, read. Well, thankfully the curriculum that we use is very read aloud heavy and that was working great. She tells me that even though her son still struggles with reading his vocabulary is absolutely wonderful and it is because of all the reading they did with him.

After a few weeks with no Language Arts and no Phonics at all, I started prepping the kids for this new thing I decided to call Box Work. I ordered the Language Arts from Sonlight, the company that we were doing everything else with (except Math). We had never tried their Language Arts and it was time for something new. I bought them plastic file boxes with the hinged lids. I bought them special clip boards and put their names on them. I had them decorate the file boxes and I had them decorate some little folders and told them that this is where their new work would be going. I set one up for each of them and when I ordered the curriculum I ordered two sets of the K level Language Arts consumables. I also ordered their K level readers. This worked much better. This level was easy for him and he found great success. It wasn't called phonics or language art or anything else. It was called box work and it was set up differently then anything he had done before. He did the activity sheets with little problem, but he didn't want to try to read the little books much at all. I would have him work through some of them but I didn't push it hard at all. He wasn't ready. Just like he wasn't ready to talk much at age two, he wasn't ready to read at age six. I did find some books that he loved and I have bought them all to slowly reward him with them. They are here. I will try to remember to talk about these at another time.

We finished the year weakly I felt. It was done. He wasn't reading. I was getting concerned about the fact that in classes at church and with other kids it was quickly going to become apparent that he wasn't reading. After VBS one day this last summer he let me know that he wasn't a good reader. My heart broke just a bit. I debated again whether I should have put him in the K level VBS for this reason. I hadn't done that, I had kept him in a class that I felt he would fit in well with and he did do alright, but apparently he also learned that he wasn't a good reader.

This summer, I spent my time slowly finding all of the books and Instructors Guides that I would need to do the work for the next level of school. In July I started wondering about my sanity. I started thinking seriously about redoing the whole last year of school. I do not call this holding him back and there are several reasons that I decided to do this. With the curriculum that we use and love, at the Core 3 level the readers that the kids read and the history starts to mesh. I wanted him to be able to take advantage of that and if we continued on the way we were there is no way he would be able to do that. Another reason that I started contemplating doing Core 1 again is that he loved it and he certainly would not mind one bit. I added in tons on my own as well. We would get extra videos from the library and we would get extra books from the library as well and so, I could easily continue this and we would be fine. Another reason that I started contemplating this is that The Girl was really ready to go straight to Core 1 and skip Core K. She was already reading more fluently then The Boy and if I put them both on Core 1 my life would be much simplier and they would have much more time to do other things and we would be able to share in so much more in our homeschooling.

So, after I had already bought nearly everything I would need for Core 2, I carefully packed it away and ordered the few things I would need to teach Core 1 to two children. I warned The Boy that The Girl would be doing much of school right along with us and I let him know that we were going to be redoing much of what we did before. He was perfectly fine with this. The history and Bible with this curriculum is really quite advanced and so I do not feel that I am holding back his education, actually I feel that this whole process is probably one of the most beneficial things I have done thus far in his education.

Now, the first day of school I sat with them at breakfast and I read them our Bible work and the verses and then I read them the History. Then we started with our word list for the week. These were all simple words. All the "at" words were present and both of the kids knew them all. The Girl did read them a bit easier then The Boy, but he didn't struggle with them. I left her to color in her new coloring book and I took The Boy into the living room to read a short story in his book. He refused. He sat on the sofa and refused to hold the book. He refused to point to the words with his finger. He refused to sound out one single letter on the page. He had reached the point where he honestly believed that he could not read. He felt that he was going to blow it again... once again and he refused to do that. His sweet little boy face crumpled up in a wrinkled mess as he struggled not to outright cry and I held him. I knew he could do it. The story had no new words on it then the word list. I talked him through it and tried to explain how he could do this. It was a process. Finally, I got him to agree to us taking turns reading lines. I read one line then he read one line and on we went through the short story. He did it. He faltered slightly, but he made it the entire way through and then we snuggled and cried together.

Then The Girl came into the room and The Boy left to color and she sat down and read the entire story without a glitch. I was so happy and proud of her, but it is honestly such a bittersweet moment because she is two years younger then her brother and though I am thrilled that she read that without a hitch, it does make life more interesting with my little faltering reading boy.

I never intended for this post to be so long and I have not posted on this at all ever because I really wanted to protect my little boy. I grew up with two sisters who struggled with reading. One who will always struggle with reading and I wanted to protect my little boy from everything I watched them endure. I do not think that I am opening him up to ridicule here and I do not think that I am protecting him less by sharing this, but I do think now that maybe someone can benefit from my story of growing.

Again we revisit this... again

I have seen again the horrors of people homeschooling. Another news article made it very evident that homeschooling is dangerous because of the lack of supervision from certified teachers. There is no one checking to make sure that these kids are not being abused. This revelation also brought about my attention to THIS article.

I mean really... summer should be illegal.

((I need to note since sarcasm doesn't translate well to written word that this is pure snark. The news article isn't, but the other blog article is as well as my little blurb above. ))