Homeschool Top Ten!

This blog post is for an ah-may-zing woman by the name of Jill, who recently told me that she plans to homeschool next year. This gets me GIDDY for several reasons. One simply has to do with the fact that it is nice to have company. I don't have many friends who ride the Homeschoolin' Wagon. YET. 

The main reason though, is that I can just FEEL how wonderfully blessed she and her little girls will be. Jill has the kindest, sweetest disposition EVER. She is overflowing with creativity, loves her daughters to the moon and back, and I'm pretty sure she never even yells. When I imagine school at her house I can see lots of crafts, hear little giggles, and smell yummy, home-baked goodies. Her girls are going to have the best time learning to be courageous, kind, smart, Godly women, and our world needs as many of those as we can get. 

She asked me to pass on some tips, so I started thinking of the things that have helped me the most on this 3-year journey I have been on. I'd like to call myself a Veteran, but since I only teach one child, I'm not sure I qualify to have that description. But, most Mommies will totally understand when I say that, while the years go by so quickly, the days last FOREVER. So I feel like a Veteran!

Without further ado, here is my Top Ten:

(Yes, I noticed that most of these have nothing to do with actual school. Apparently homeschooling is more of a journey than an actual task.) ;)

1. Start every day with a prayer. You never know what will happen, or what you will need to get through the day. Thankfully, God DOES know, and He's got you covered. Some of our best at-home days were started with a prayer that went a little like this: "Lord, please help me. And thank you. Amen"

2. Take it one day at a time. You can never tell where your kidlets will be from one year to the next. We'd like Bria to mainstream into school around 9th grade, but she loves homeschool, so who knows, maybe it will last all the way through high school. Some families do it for one year only. What matters is that you are doing what works for your family. Trying to plan that far into the future is ridiculous when you are talking about these little growing, ever-changing human beings, so plan to be in the here-and-now, and let tomorrow reveal itself when it comes around.

3. Treat yourself with the same kindness as you do your friends. This little gem came from my mom years ago. I have a tendency to be horribly perfectionistic hard on myself. Remind yourself that you are human, and that teachers in the classroom are not perfect either, and that is ok. Nothing wrong with our children learning that mistakes do not define who we are.

4. Look at your kids as individuals, not extensions of yourself. (Still working daily hourly on this one.) Bria may not like reading, and her handwriting may not be very neat, and she may daydream more than study, but that does not mean I am a bad Mom/ teacher/ role-model. She is who she is. She makes her own choices. NO-ONE is perfect at everything, and my kid is no different. She is allowed to have her very own sets of strengths and weaknesses, and as her Momma, I am allowed to let her have responsibility for being herself.

5. Have a rainy-day friend. There will come a day when you cry on the phone to your mom/ sister/ best friend. You will question your choice to homeschool. You will wonder if you are ruining your kids. You will envy moms who drop their kids off at school and get several hours to shop/ clean/ cook/ whatever alone. You will hear words/ phrases coming out of your mouth that you never dreamed you might say. You need a friend who will understand that bad days come to us all, and, even though you question yourself on this day, you still know deep in your heart that you are making the right choice for your family.

6. Have a support system. Since we do an online academy, this was built-in for us. Bria has a teacher that I can keep in touch with, and she even takes her tests in person with her teacher 2 times a year. Another homeschoolin' Momma I know, the lovely Jen, kept in touch with the local Principal. Being able to reach out to someone who knows, (curriculum, statewide tests, age-appropriate behavior) will help you on those days that you question your child's reading level or math comprehension.

7. Don't forget to look at the little children in front of you. Yes, watching your child read their first story to you can bring tears to your eyes. So can the hours and hours of listening to them stumble over the word "the". (And not the good kind of tears.-True story by the way.) We take for granted how easy it is for us to read the word "the" because we have been for years. No doubt we made some poor teacher tear her hair out while our young brains struggled over and over with something new. Patience, patience, and more patience. 

8. Make a list of goals for yourself, and review it every now and then. We want Bria to have a great relationship with God, and so I try to never forget to incorporate prayer into our everyday lives. Our kids will grow into adults before we know it, and being intellectual is only one aspect of their personalities. Don't lose sight of the generosity/ humbleness/ Godliness/ strength that you want to instill in your kids. A Homeschoolin'  Momma has a beautiful opportunity to shape whatever she wants into her kidlets. Ha. (Well, it is a good thought.) Anyway, we will never get such a good opportunity to TRY and instill all those awesome traits into our kids. Luckily God has a plan, and those kids already come with some awesomeness all their own.

9. Don't miss out on the little moments. Having a long list of lessons to start each day makes this so hard. Don't look at yourself as a teacher and nothing more. There are still lots of times during the day where you won't want to miss the silly giggles, tiny hands, and "kid moments". They are so special, and they happen whether our kids are taught by us or someone else. Let those moments play out, even if you have to put off Math for a few minutes. Math memories will eventually fade into nothingness, but a child "training" the dog to nod and belly-laughing with you will be a blessed memory to hang onto.

10. Trust yourself. Let insensitive/ ignorant comments roll off your back. YOU are your kids' Mom. YOU know what works for your family. God gave you the wisdom, strength, and talents to do this, even though you don't always feel wise, strong, or talented. Follow the path that God puts before you. You won't have perfect days, or perfect happiness, or a perfect house, or perfect kids. 

However, you WILL be perfectly blessed.

Oh, PS- Buy lots and lots of pencils. They like to disappear with the socks!

Kids' Room Re-Do!

This is a little ridiculous that I'm posting this now, when it is months after I finished this project, but as a Homeschoolin' Momma I find it hard to go to the bathroom alone, much less actually sit at the computer for a few minutes of peace. I think I'll mostly just post pictures and a few explanations about this subject, because I actually can't remember much about the process don't have the time. ;)

Damek has shared a room with Luke and I his whole life, for several reasons. The main one involves his poor sleep habits, which have been (hopefully) pinned down to rapid-growth-which-causes-growing-pains-and-very-tight-muscle-cramping. We just call it the Jimmy-Legs. Whatever it is called, it causes him to wake up between 3 and 10 times a night, depending on growth spurts. (The guy is still in the 95% percentile for height and weight...he is one big Bubba.)

So, putting him in a room with Bria was just not an option. Even though she sleeps like the dead and probably wouldn't wake up when he cried, I did not fancy the idea of strolling through the house so many times a night.

Now that Damek is on a special leg regime, which includes trip to the chiropractor and a boost of magnesium and iron in his diet, he is beginning to love sleep in a way that we'd never dreamed of him doing. It was time to move him into the "kids'" room with his big sissy.

The room was pretty girly.

Also, my husband decided he wanted to build beds for the kids, so most of the money that I could spend on new decorations was taken up by that. I literally ended up with 20 dollars and a prayer. (This might sound sad, but there is nothing I LOVE more than a big challenge like this. I was in Heaven!)

So while my husband bought the wood, made a few mistakes, took some back, got different wood, called from the parking lot of Home Depot asking if we'd better not just buy beds online, measured once, cut once, cut wrong, got more wood, measured twice, cut once, got it right, and got to work.......I had to use my creativity to turn all this "old" stuff into "new", cute for a-boy-and-a-girl decor!

I started with a trip to Hobby Lobby to get fabric for 2 new quilts. Thank goodness for their coupons! I got 8 kinds of fabric for each quilt, 1/2 yard each, in different themes that fit their unique little personalities. I thought about doing lots of tiny little squares or a fancy design, but I wised up and admitted that there was no way on this Earth I'd have enough time. Plus, the pictures on the fabric were easier to see when the squares were big. So, I got to sewing!

I had lots and lots of paint, and I was so excited to use it to change up some of Bria's sweet little white furniture. I decided the whole room would just have lots of color, rather than a specific color theme. A few things, like the dresser and rocking chair, got a pop of color. Just a little bit went a long way, and it looked so cute!

 Then I cut apart Bria's hot pink lamp shade, and recovered the metal frame with tiny scraps of fabric. (I always KNEW those scraps would come in handy!) I love, love, love the end result. It gets tons of compliments!

                                                                                 

I found a wall sticker that I just ADORED, of a cute tree that had a few sweet, brightly colored birds living in it. Too bad it was 40 dollars. Oh well, I got out an empty canvas from my Bob Ross Painting Kit that I despair of ever being able to use, and re-created the image from the computer. The little birdies helped to tie in some color from Damek's beloved Owlies.

 I also slapped a light coat of paint onto an old birdhouse that was given to Bria by a neighbor. I wanted it to look weathered, so it was pretty simple to not pay too much attention to detail. Voila! Old-looking! 

Then I painted a piece of wood with the words, "You are my sun shine". I also wanted this to look old, but had never tried antiquing anything. It was lots of fun. After getting the words right, I took a hammer to it, sanded it, and slammed it onto a concrete step a few times. Then all it needed was a coat of Mod Podge to make it smooth. This little sign truly sums up how I feel about my kids, and I think the color looks so great in their room.

I also covered Bria's little tea table, which had flowers on top, with some waterproof red fabric that my mom got for me. It was my first time to use a staple gun, and I was hooked! Adding some paint to a few old picture frames and the kids' names, (wooden letters that they already had, but with the more primary colors painted on), and some pennant flags out of scrapbook paper gave the walls a new look.

 (Yes, after I took this picture I DID fix the crooked "R". It is just right now!)

Now we added white paint onto both beds. The toybox also got a new coat of bright red paint, thanks to a borrowed can of paint. :) Thanks to some Birthday money and a trip to IKEA, I was able to get Damek a bug wall lamp to match Bria's flower lamp, and an adorable floor rug with a little town on it. Add the new quilts to the mix and you've got a whole new room!

 (An added note: the bins in the bookshelf were give to me before Damek was born. Since they were pretty masculine, I added some red, yellow, and green dots to the blue-spotted ones. Not very easy to see in this picture, but it was a simple way to recycle those so they'd fit both kids. Now I just need to figure out how to get them to put the right toys in the right bins.)

 

 We all love the way it turned out, and I completely enjoyed my "Summer Challenge".