Love Abounds and Abounds and Abounds

During our Seminary journey, we have been blessed in many ways. Some of them have been surprising, and others down right shocking. The lengths to which humans will go to show their love to one another often amazes and humbles me.
Gift giving is NOT my love language; in fact it is probably lowest on my list. Gift giving is always uncomfortable for me. I always feel like I'm not appreciative enough when I receive gifts and I always feel like I haven't done enough when I give a gift. It is always awkward and so I avoid it whenever possible. Christmas stresses me out, especially because my husband's love language IS gift giving and so he spends months shopping and researching and planning to get just the right gift for everyone. It makes me crazy!

But, sometimes, someone gives so deeply of themselves that is more than a gift... it is literally a piece of their soul laid before me and I am in awe of the glimpse of God's love that I see through human generosity. This is one of those times.
The family of believers from Faith Lutheran Church in Mesick, MI, a small church - 23 members - 'adopted' our family. This means that they have made a commitment to support our family, through prayer and financially during this time at Seminary. They do not know us, and we have no other connection to the people there, except that we happen to also be from Michigan.

They decided to send their Pastor and his family to visit us and give us gifts for Christmas. It was a nice surprise and we were very grateful, but this in no way was 'shocking'

They couldn't stay long and so left the presents with us. We didn't open them until later in the evening. We received clothing and toys and very nice gifts. But, in this, we were given something very special as well.

This airplane was made by a couple at Faith, from a tree in their yard, by hand, and Noah's name is burned into the side. It is a replica of a WWII fighter plane. Jacob received one as well, with his name on it.

I don't know how to make much of anything, so I can't really appreciate the amount of work that goes into a project like this, but I do know that it isn't something that you just throw together. It takes time and patience and dedication. It isn't something that you just do, it is an act of love.

An act that SO humbles me...

As I watch the boys play with their planes and fly them around the house, I am in awe. There are no words to truly express what an incredible gift this is. I thank God for the family at Faith, Mesick.

Loving My Little Learners

I've now been homeschooling long enough that I'm beginning to plan the graduation of my oldest child. One of the things that I have struggled with over the years is accepting each child for who they are.

It is phenomenal to me that my children, all originating from the same DNA, are so extremely different. Some of them are math geniuses, while others pick up languages easily. Some of them have talents that are obvious while others struggle to see where their gifts lie. Some of them LOVE social interaction and are always making plans to leave the house and gather with their friends while others would prefer to never leave their own book shelf. ALL different, all unique...

I know this. I appreciate this about them, and yet, I still struggle to really accept it. But, I keep trying.

Recently, I posted a bit about Teaching my six year old engineer to read.  He can't seem to sit still for twenty minutes to finish a reading lesson and I wonder how I'll ever teach him anything.
But, I learned something today. There is nothing wrong with his attention span.

I know this because he spent ten straight hours building this "Ninja Training School"

 It has all sorts of details and moving pieces...

These guys actually fight on a platform that works like a foosball table. This set has 518 pieces. It took all day to build and every one of the 70 (Yes, seventy!) steps was intensely complicated and involved. But, he worked on it all day, with only a couple of breaks to get a snack and have dinner.

There are numerous other examples of times that my children have exceeded my expectations, and shown me that my way of teaching doesn't always fit their way of learning. But, that's one of the greatest things about homeschooling... I'm learning just as much as they are.

Teaching a Six Year Old Engineer to Read

Teach your child to READ in 100 Easy Lessons. That's the name of one of my favorite books. I've taught 3 of my children to read using this method with great success - they are all very good readers.

But, now I'm trying to teach Jacob. He's six and not reading yet. He understands the concepts, knows the sounds and will sound out words when coerced. He can even read whole sentences and complete stories when properly motivated.

Therein lies my problem. We are on Lesson 70, and I have yet to figure out how to properly motivate this child. 

He is an engineer, a builder, a scientist... he is also a secret ninja who regularly travels to China to train at ninja school via the time and space traveling device that is in his lab that has a secret trap door with recognition software that detects if anyone other than him tries to enter and will detonate and blow us all to pieces if we try to access it. AND, on these trips to China, he also visits Julia; the love of his life, the prettiest girl in the world, and the girl he plans to marry.

Yes, this is the world that Jacob lives in, and I try to understand it.

Sitting down for 20 minutes to sound out one letter at a time to make a word and doing this same task over and over again, to make another word and another word and another word... and when you look ahead in the book, it's ALL just MORE WORDS! This is not nearly as exciting as the rest of his life.

It's my goal to finish one lesson per day. Some days, I succeed, simply by being the most strong willed, and bugging him so that he can't concentrate on anything else until he does what I want. Other days, he is the more strong willed and I give up. Some days, I come up with creative ideas, like "You can have one M&M every time you read a sentence." (He was sick of them by the fifth one) Or "Reading Jacks" which I thought was a terrific idea and worked really well for one day.

Reading Jacks is a game where he reads a sentence, then counts the words in the sentence (something he loves to do anyway - he likes to know how many words he has read and how many are left to go), then he does that number of jumping jacks before reading the next sentence. This worked great for one lesson.

Now, when I suggest it, he says "I hate that game"

Every day it's a struggle, and I start off the day thinking that I will get it over with early in the morning and then we'll both feel better about it. But, then he gets deeply involved in building and imaginative play, so I keep putting it off and we end up in a battle by mid-afternoon because we allow media time (this is tv shows/video games, etc) from 3pm to 5pm, but only for children who have all of their schoolwork done. If Jacob hasn't finished his reading lesson then he doesn't get to play. This makes him angry, but does not motivate him to do the lessons.

If this was any other subject, I think I would just wait until he's a little older. But, this is learning to read. I feel like it is necessary and the longer we wait on this, the harder it will be for him to learn other subjects that require reading.

So, I'm curious. How did you teach your children to read? How old were they? How long would you wait if your child couldn't/wouldn't read? How far would you go to make it happen?

Ms. Cheap's Money Saving Tips

I'm still working my way through my first December book, but I tend to skip around from topic to topic and generally read more than one book at a time. The second book that I started this month is "Ms. Cheap's Guide to Getting More For Less"  by Mary Hance, 2001.

I pick up books with titles like this ALL the time; in free boxes, library book sales, yard sales, etc. It's like an obsession. Most of them read like the every month column in the grocery aisle magazines; with tips like "Don't go grocery shopping when you're hungry." or "Always go to the store with a list, you're less likely to make an impulse purchase."

My all time favorite books in this category are "The Complete Tightwad Gazette" because it's filled with real-life tested and specific, practical advice - loads of it! and "Your Money or Your Life" because these authors have a great way of bringing the concept of how and when we spend money and explaining it in a way that represents the amount of your life that you gave to earn that money and using that as the standard for deciding whether or not the purchase is worth it. In fact, I think that these two books are so fabulous that I pick them up whenever I see them just so I can give them to people.

I thought Ms. Cheap's would be more of the standard magazine article fare, but so far it has proven at least a little more interesting as that. It is more along the lines of the Tightwad Gazette with specific tips, many of them reader contributed. Below are a few of my favorites so far:

1. Buy formal gowns at thrift shops and use the expensive fabrics to make fancy pillows.

2. Newborn clothes are usually found like new at thrift stores and yard sales since babies grow so fast, they may not get to wear them even once. Pick these up and hold on to them for the next time you get invited to a baby shower.

3. Yard sale tip: Leave your name & number with a low ball offer for an item just in case the item is still sitting around at the end of the day and the seller decides they would rather take your money than haul the item back inside their house.

4. With all the different sizes and varieties of toilet paper, it is nearly impossible to compare them. But, here's a practical tip from a reader contributor on page 55; take the TP to the produce section and weigh it to see which one offers more for the money.

5. Oatmeal makes a great thickener for soups. This tip appears on page 60 and was passed along from a 1959 publication of 1003 Household Hints and Work Savers.

6. Another reader submitted suggestion from page 68, is to tape perfume samples to ceiling fans as an air freshener.

I'm only about half way through this book, and a lot of the tips are things that we already know and do, but it does have a few new ideas, even to me.

Writing High School Transcripts - YIKES!

National Novel Writing Month is over. So, I'm declaring December my Read-A-Lot month to balance out all the time I spent writing last month. Today, I started "Creating Standards-Based Integrated Curriculum"
by Susan M. Drake. I was attracted to the title because I feel like this is exactly what I've been doing for the past four years as our oldest prepares to graduate from high school and I have to write a transcript that accurately represents her academic and extracurricular experience.

Drake supports the development of curriculum that is both relevant to the learner and accountable to required standards. This is basically the concept that we used in the creation of Vacation Education Epcot and Vacation Education Magic Kingdom, as we developed educational unit studies based on the exhibits in the parks (relevant) that included all the core subjects (standards).

Of course, as homeschoolers we do not have to meet the same hard and fast standards that are required of Drake's audience of teachers in traditional schools. We have the freedom and responsibility to establish our own standards based on the needs of our students.

The standards for classroom teachers are frequently changing, usually at the whim of an administrator who has had limited if any experience teaching children. As homeschoolers, our standards are ever changing as well, as we discover the gifts, talents and challenges of each individual child.

Drake promises a backwards approach - rather than creating a curriculum and then hoping it meets these ever-changing standards, she offers a method of analyzing the standards for their true meaning and applying them to any curriculum. I've just started to read this text in hopes that it will help me to accurately write course descriptions for the credits on my daughter's transcript.

When she started high school, we looked up the Indiana Core 40 and used this as a template. Filling in the basic academic credits were easy. It's the courses such as "Pregnancy, Childbirth and Newborn Care" that we did in place of Biology or "Personal Finance" that replaced a semester of Integrated Mathematics. And, I still have to come up with a creative name for the course where the student learns to do their own laundry...

So, I'm curious to hear from other homeschooling moms: How do you develop curriculum to meet your standards for education? And, how do you determine what those standards are?

Second Chance: November 30 The END

This is it! The final post, the end of the story. It has been a grand journey of literary abandon, and I've had fun sharing the story with you. I never made 50K words, in case you were counting along with me, but it's really all about the adventure. I hope you've enjoyed the story.

If you are just now joining in, the story starts here.

Karin was just about to pick up the phone and call Troy when the front door to her office opened. She held the receiver against her ear with her finger on the key pad as she looked at Jay standing there in front of her.

“I want to explain some things.” He said. Karin slowly set down the receiver.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“Can we go for a drive?”

“A romantic drive isn’t going to explain away everything that’s happened,” she said.

“I know.” He said. “But, there is something that I want to show you…” he looked around awkwardly for a moment, and then said, “but, only if you want to.” She had never seen Jay act sheepish before; he was always confident and certain, always the charmer. Suddenly, she saw a vulnerability she’d never seen before.

“Okay, I’ll go with you.” She said. She took a couple of minutes to lock up the office and then she was riding along beside him in his cherry red sports car, the wind whipping through her hair. She’d forgotten to grab a hair tie and so she rode with her hair cupped in her hands, holding it out of her face.

Jay didn’t speak as they rode down the Avenue and then onto North Lakeshore Drive, but with the top down, he would have had to nearly shout to be heard over the wind. He pulled into a circle driveway just north of the public beach. He got out of the car and opened the door for her.

“This is for you.” He said.

“What is?”

“All of this,” he said and he waved his hand around in the air. “This house, the land, the beachfront… all yours, even if you say no.”

“You can’t just give me a house.” Karin said. “And, you haven’t explained anything.” She turned around and started to get back in the car.

“No, just come and take a look. I promise I will explain everything.” Karin rolled her eyes and sighed, but she followed him.

“I’m not really fond of surprises.” She declared.

“Alright, I’ll make this short and to the point then. I retired from my job and I’m moving back to Duneville. I’m keeping the farm and I bought this house for you because I know how much you’ve always wanted to live on the beach. But, I was hoping…” at this he turned toward her and took her hand. He knelt down on one knee in front of her. “…that we could live in them together.”

Karin just started shaking her head. “No, I don’t understand. What about your parents? You can’t give up your inheritance for me. We’ve already talked about this.” She tried to pull her hand away, but he gripped it tight and he didn’t move. With his free hand, he took a small box from his pocket.

“There is no inheritance to give up.” He said. “I bought a majority share in the company, so I already own more than I would have inherited. I’ll still have to show up for an occasional board meeting, but I’m basically a silent partner now.” He let go of her hand and opened the box. He held out the ring to her.

“No more secrets, no more surprises. Karin, I promise that you can trust me. Just say yes.”

Karin’s eyes filled with tears of happiness. “Yes.”