Category: Home Schooling

This morning as I slipped and slid my way to the chicken house over ice and snow, hurrying to get my morning chores done, I realized how cool it is that I was excited to get back to the house, back to my hot cup of black currant tea and my 9 year old and her ‘highest common factors’ math worksheets.

[Even if you don’t homeschool, you can imagine with me how it might be hard to be excited about math! *wink*]

But I was. It’s my dream job, one that I never would have taken on without God’s pressuring me to do so!  Sometimes I even marvel that in His perfect plan, our finances have never allowed for us to afford private school tuitions. I’m sure I would have caved and enrolled my firstborn at the first opportunity if so. And we would have missed out on this awesome family bonding adventure! And spent so much time on the road, carpooling. Ugh.

I know some of you might be saying “Ugh” to the homeschooling lifestyle, as you read this! Never fear, I’m not here to condemn, just to reason. Please be forewarned though, the following might require a little blindfolding of our cultural prejudices and misconceptions…here is a little of what led my husband and I to choose to home educate.

As a young Christian parent, Deuteronomy 6:5-9 was unsettling to me, when I thought about trying to raise godly children according to this kind of standard. How can you (paraphrasing here) “diligently teach your children to love God with all their heart, soul and might, when you sit and when you stand, when you walk along the way, when you lie down and when you rise up…” That’s a tall order no matter what your lifestyle!

Then, too, my husband and I were surrounded by homeschooling families with bright minds, genuinely loving relationships, and sincere hearts for God. What an advertisement, right there.  God spoke to us in many ways, nudging us in the home educating direction, and I’m so glad we listened! He used scripture, videos, Christian family radio, among other things. We were surrounded by good reasons!

Now, this many years later, when I think about all the religious lies being taught in public school, it breaks my heart. Evolution IS a religion, and it IS an unproved theory. In fact, more and more tenets of evolution have been proven wrong in the last fifty years, yet it is still taught as a fact in public schools, in museums, in zoos, etc.  Wasn’t it Hitler that said, “The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it?”

What bothers me the most about this, is that if you lined up the basic teachings of evolution with what is taught in God’s word, they are complete opposites. Satan at work, no doubt. It takes a lot more faith to believe that we all came from rocks than to believe that there’s a significantly intelligent engineer behind this universe. In fact, if you really want to be scientific about it, the proof is all over the place. Maybe I’ll go into that in another post.

Guess what God had to say about evolution and public schools, way back in the early church age?

“They did not like to retain God in their knowledge.” Romans 1:28

Well, in 1963, God was no longer welcome in public schools. And evolution moved right on in.  Interesting that as a result, in the 30 years following this switch off, there was a 500% increase in violent crimes, 400% increase in the divorce rate, 400% increase in illegitimate births, 300% increase in single parent homes, 200% increase in teenage suicides, and a 75% drop in SAT scores.  (Heritage Foundations 1993)

Even more scary, is that studies are now relaying the appalling news that75% of all children raised in Christian homes who attend public school will reject the Christian faith by their 1st year of college.

Excuse me? NOT on my watch! God forbid.

2 Thessalonians 2:11 says,

“God will send them strong delusion, that they shall believe a lie.”

[For instance, believing we came from a big bang, billions of years ago?]

Some more heart-sick things to consider…from opposite poles of humanity so to speak:

“I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth.” –Martin Luther

“Let me control the textbooks and I will control the state.” –Adolph Hitler

I know this is hard stuff, remember, I said you might have to shed some prejudices to get through this with me…

If you are still here…bless you, I hope you get where I’m coming from.

I know many people who say that they could never homeschool their children. That’s true for some, yes, but not true for the majority of Americans. Yes, it has to be a husband-wife-God decision, but even single moms have pulled it off. I even know of a single mom with cancer who kept homeschooling through it all. Homeschooling is a passionate movement, and yes, it takes dedication.

I haven’t always wanted to hurry inside and snuggle on the couch over math problems with my 9 year old. Every good thing is going to come under attack by the enemy. Nothing worth doing is  easy. Yes we’ve had our struggles, but God has been so faithful in all the ways that really matter.

If I can ever be of assistance to you on the subject of homeschooling, drop me a line!

Feel free to air your honest and respectful thoughts in comments. :O)

A situation with a dear loved one had me reviewing my blog for the series of posts I did on “Dying to Self”. I thought I’d repost the links for them here, in case anyone else is wanting a refresher.

Here’s a quote from my first one titled, Exploring Dying to Self:

“The path toward humility is death to self. When self is dead, humility has been perfected. Jesus humbled Himself unto death, and by His example the way is opened for us to follow. A dead man or woman does not react to an offense. The truth is, if we become offended by the words of others, then death to self has not been finished. When we humble ourselves despite injustice and there is perfect peace of heart, then death to self is complete. Death is the seed, while humility is the ripened fruit.” Alice Smith

In another one, Dying to Self in Marriage, I share a list of ways we all feel entitled. Taken from Nancy Leigh DeMoss’s book Lies Women Believe:

“Today it is assumed that,

• you have a right to be happy
• you have a right to be understood
• you have a right to be loved
• you have a right to a certain standard of living, to an equitable wage, and to decent benefits
• you have a right to a good marriage
• you have a right to companionship and romance
• you have a right to be treated with respect in the workplace
• you have a right to be valued by your husband and appreciated by your children
• you have a right to a good night’s sleep
• you have a right to have your husband pitch in with the household chores

And most important, if any of your rights are violated, you have the right to protest. You have a right to be angry. You have a right to be depressed. You have a right to take action. You have a right to insist on your rights!”

Lies, indeed. No freedom there.

In The Sting of Dying to Self, we are reminded at what great cost our sins and selfishnesses are to our relationships, and that it all adds up to DENYING God by our DEEDS, even when we profess Him from our lips…we see how important denying SELF is. It helps us proclaim Christ.

Titus 1:15-16,

“To the pure, all things are pure; but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled. They profess to know God but by their deeds they deny Him…”

In Are You Willing? we see through the Messianic prophecies in Isaiah 50:4-9 how the process works:

It’s a process. If you start applying it at the beginning (vs 4) by committing to reading God’s word, and from His word/prayer learning His will for your life (vs 5), practicing being obedient (vs 5 and 6), getting in the habit of bucking this world system in favor of doing right (vs 7), coming back to God to fill you up because suffering is part of Christianity (vs 8 ), and getting to the point that this process is second nature. All your priorities fall in line because of your continual desire to put God and His ways first (vs 9).

And finally, in Grace for the Weary, we see more Messianic prophecies, like this from Isaiah 42:3 and more,

“A bruised reed He (God the Son) will not break, and a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish.” Isaiah 42:3 (parentheses mine)

Have you ever felt like a dimly burning wick? This post takes the topic of callings, in particular, our family’s calling to homeschool. But I think it applies to whatever your particular “burn out” may be. Get your vision back and go for it!

Be sure to check out these older blog posts for the great scriptures alone. There’s a wealth of encouragement there for every problem known unto man.

Would love to hear your thoughts on dying to self. :O)

The old-fashioned way of doing things grabs me. Not that I don’t appreciate modern conveniences, but yeah, you just might catch me utilizing a washboard for kicks. And I’d absolutely adore an outdoor kitchen fitted with an enormous antique white stove like great-grandma’s.

I was thinking that about myself this morning–my tendency of appreciating the old and reliable things of my life–as I scrubbed my stove-top with comet. We’re one of the few families left still cooking on a stove with four detachable burners. I still have a phone with a cord on the wall. We don’t do TV, video games, etc. Obviously, we have internet, but even at that, it’s dial-up!

Is there something wrong with that? *Wink*

Maybe that’s why homeschooling brings me such joy. It’s the way things used to be, back when our country was a youngun’, before women went out for careers, before the government mandated preschool. (Okay so maybe it’s not mandated, but the age of compulsory school attendance is getting lower and lower.)

We’re getting our first full week under our belt and I’m increasingly thankful for the freedom I have in this country to choose how to educate my child. What a gift! It’s right up there with the best of God’s blessings. No material comforts we’ve sacrificed compares to what I’m getting back in terms of relationships with my girls.

Here’s a few things I’ve loved this first week back…

First Day’s Treasure Hunt

We ALWAYS do a treasure hunt to kick-off school. Here the girls are at 7 a.m. raring to go. This year’s hunt was complete with a total of 27 clues, split 3 ways for 3 girls. Each girl found treats along the “trail” of clues with their names attached…things ranging from mini-candy bars to alarm clocks and each girl’s hunt ended at the horse barn, in the tack room…at a big box of this year’s new school books. True treasure, we remind them every year, is what you keep stored in your heart and mind. And, yes, they do get excited to see what new books mom’s ordered for their learning enjoyment!

Here is my oldest trying to find the yellow clue taped in the top right-most roosting box.

We had clues in the garden beneath a cherry tomato plant, beneath the stone walkway to the garden, under a shovel in the sandbox, in the “dog barn” on a pet’s gate, on a post by the horse pen, in the play house, down the hill in the barrel of chick feed, in one of the sheds on the seat of the four-wheeler, and so on.

Memorable note about this year’s hunt–we did it in pouring rain! Yup, soggy clues, wind-misplaced clues. What an adventure under blackening skies! And hot chocolate all around once we arrived back in the house for breakfast!

Making Bubble Snakes

FUN! While waiting at an orthodontic appointment last week, my oldest and I both read the same Family Fun magazine at different times, and don’t you know, we both zeroed in on the same fun activity to try at home later.  I’d determined to gather the things necessary w/o telling any of the girls, and my oldest daughter pulled it off before I could. We cracked up once we realized we’d both intended on doing the same activity without any consultation whatsoever. And that’s another fun thing about homeschooling. My older girls are all about putting fun things together for their sibs to enjoy.

Here’s what you need for some Bubble Snake fun of your own!

• recycled plastic water bottle with the bottom half cut off
• a square of toweling
• a rubber band
• blowing bubble solution, dishsoap or best of all, bubble bath

To assemble, rubber band the piece of towel to the bottom of the plastic bottle. Get the towel damp-to-wet. Put a thin layer of dishsoap or bubble bath in the bottom of a small bowl and dip the toweled end of the plastic bottle in it. Blow through the drinking hole and you get these lovely snakes! Magical fun for an hour at the very least! And then again when Dad gets home to see!

More of a recess activity, but we counted it as Kindergarten science because we experimented with all of the above soaps to see which worked best! Mr. Bubble!

Such fun catching the floating bubble snakes…you should have seen our lawn afterward…bubble snakes galore!

Other Highlights

For the first time ever, thanks to a generous homeschool-mom friend loaning me her FIAR books Vol. 1-3, I’m using Five In A Row with my Kindergartner, a wonderful many-faceted approach to all school subjects via the premise of reading the same classic literature for “five days in a row”.  This week, we’re reading The Story About Ping. Each day, after reading, we tackle a unit study about some theme in the book, whether it be ducks (Ping is a duckling that gets lost in the Yangtze River in China), China, the beautiful crayon and colored pencil drawings of Kurt Wiese, etc.

Yesterday we were discussing the copyright page, and what makes a book a classic. The Story About Ping was written and published in 1933. A classic is a book read by many generations, so I tried to home in on that fact by asking my 5 year old if she knew who was born in 1934, the year after Ping was written. (her grandpa)

She leaned forward, eyes huge and completely serious. “God?”

Obviously I’ve failed to impart the eternal aspect of God to this girl.

But giggles aside, we have been having so much fun with Ping. Found all sorts of neat helps at homeschoolshare.com for a lapbook on the study, and youngest and I were having such a great time that her older sisters had to come to the table and get involved as well.

Last but not least, my oldest and I are enjoying such a cool friendship. Yesterday after school was done, after we’d helped out at the CSA farm for a couple hours, when we were back home and I had a messy house to deal with for company coming the next day…my younger two vamoosed outside to escape me putting them to work, but my oldest volunteered herself for duty. Her only request? Christian music. Loud.

So while we were cleaning the DJ comes on and tells about how Maria Chapman’s “House of Hope” opened in China recently, and how 700 orphans are living there now…and of course, anyone who knows about the tragic death of little Maria (Steven Curtis Chapman’s little adopted girl from China) would be moved to tears to hear the story behind why this orphanage is called “Maria’s House of Hope”. My daughter and I paused with our dustcloths and bawled happy tears together.

Moral of this happy ramble…

If you love having fun and spending time with your kids, if you want to be there when they learn to read-when they lovingly and patiently help their younger siblings learn to read, if you want to impart what’s most important to you (God, morals, character, family), there’s no easier way to do it than homeschooling.

I pray we have many more years of freedom to parent our children the way we choose in America.

And long live homeschooling!