Nov. 22, 2006 - relationship
I am sitting at my desk and little Jasper is sleeping at my feet- well, actually ON my feet. I love when he does this! It seems like such a vulnerable, trusting thing to do. Of course, he plops down and sleeps ANYWHERE- soft, hard, lumpy, inclined, declined- he doesn't seem to mind! So maybe I am reading into this!
But it's times like these I feel like he understands that I really do love him and have his best interest at heart (even though I torture him with the brush! He hates being groomed!) Sometimes I just want to cuddle him because he's so irresistable and I want him to know how happy I am that he's in our lives, but he doesn't seem to understand. (He's afraid I'm taking him to the brush!)
For example, when he is playing, he thinks I am trying to steal his toy! I just want to hug him and he is scrambling away from me, hanging on to that toy with all his might! I tell him that I don't care about the toy, I want HIM, but he just runs away, toy in tow.
I wonder how many times we do this to our loving Heavenly Father, when He just wants to hug us, but we are afraid He is trying to take away something we hold dear! I wonder if He is saying as we run away, "I don't want the thing- I want YOU!"
Dear God, may we truely know You're Love!
• 5 Comments • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link
Nov. 21, 2006 - Unschooling really works! (even in math!)
OK! Now that I've been inspired to write in again, I must share with you a recent experience with my daughter. Let me first give a little background info.
I have homeschooled my daughter- now age 12- since Pre-school. She started learning to read at age 3- I give all the credit to Sesame Street! :) Our first few years were very informal and sporadic. Then for 2nd grade I really "buckled down." (Sara started hating school at this point in time.) We mushed through for 4 more years, switching curricula practially every quarter. Every year, sometimes more than once, we would have a melt-down time, when I would sit my poor sweet child down and say in a very stern voice- Do you want to continue homeschooling, or go to a "real" school (with no recesses)? She would tearfully decide that homeschooling was the better option of the two, and I would go one to lecture her on the necessity of following my schedule, etc., etc. [Please forgive me, Sara- I truely did not know!!!]
Then at the end of last year, because of outside circumstances, I felt I did not have the time, energy, or focus to continue homeschooling. I put Sara in part-time classes at a local private school. She was a trouper, but the early morning hours, the homework load [What are they thinking???? How can a child possibly LEARN anything when that much pointless information is being crammed into their little brains?], and staffing issues at the school broke us within 6 weeks. Now we were more convincd than ever that homeschooling was the best option. But there was still a nagging feeling that I wasn't gettin' it right.
Then the miracle! God intervened and had a discussion on unschooling surface on my local homeschool yahoo group. I was curious. I'd heard of unschooling, but never explored it. I began exploring! :) The real reason was personal, but that another subject for another post. So, for the first time since 2nd grade, we took the summer off and started our adventure in "unschooling." This semester I am putting together a portfolio of all the things Sara does that is dog related, since I have to report to the board of ed every semester. So far there is more than adequate "stuff" to stuff into the portfolio! Hopefully, the bored of ed (tee-hee!) will agree with me! I can let you know how it goes in the spring, if anyone cares.
SO....Last week, Sara was playing with her stuffed animals- a thing she would never be doing at this age if she was in a conventional school setting- much less at 10am in the morning! Let me tell you a tad about Sara's stuffed animal "family." She has too many characters to list here, and they all have very defined personalities, (and lots of accessories) and wonderful stories to tell about their many adventures. In fact, she just finished writing a six chapter book about Rags the white tiger who is a pirate cabin boy, and you can guess what kind of adventures he must have! I see so many amazing things come out of Sara in her stuffed animal play, and I love that she is beginning to write some of it down, so it can be saved in her memory long after she "outgrows" her little game- if she does. ;)
I was working in my room, and Sara was playing school with her stuffed animals, when she came to me and said- Mom, if so-and-so got so-many questions wrong on a so-many question assignment, what is his grade? (The idea of unschooling has not permiated her play yet- tee-hee!) I proceeded to show her how to use the calculator to figure out percentages and grades.
Several days later, my curiousity got the best of me, so I asked Sara if I could ask her a question. She said Yeeeeeeahs, like what did I do this time?!!! I said, if so-and-so gets 6 questions wrong on a 24 question test, what is his percentage grade. She reached for my calculator, turned it on, then said- I know this! It's 75%!!! I was delighted and so was she. Math concepts are really hard for her- she has never been able to transfer what she learns in the textbook (which she learns easily enough) to the real world. I did another sample question- a little harder this time, but still do-able mentally and she answered it correctly immediately. Give me another, she begged. (She typically HATES being drilled like this.) I gave one that was too hard to figure out mentally and she had to go back to the calculator. At this point, she had forgotten the formula for figuring out percentage on the calculator, so we reviewed and came up with the answer.
I was delighted to take the opportunity to share with Sara (and she in turn with her dad) that this is unschooling working. My one hesitation in unschooling had been- what about math??? Sara is a reader and a writer, and so I figured that all learning would naturally happen with her- but what about the math??? This incident proved to me that unschooling DOES work, even in your child's weakest subject areas, and teaches them better than any textbook! And what a great confirmation to my daughter who let's her "friends" who attend public school put her on guilt trip because she's not working hard like they are. YES! UNSCHOOLING REALLY WORKS!
[PS WHERE is the spell check in this program??? somebody help me!!!!]
• 1 Comments • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link
Nov. 21, 2006 - WOW!
I am so blown away that I got responses to my first post! :) Thanks for the warm welcome!!!
• 0 Comments • Post A Comment! • Permanent Link
Nov. 8, 2006 - Jasper
Jasper is the name of my daughter's puppy. We got him as an unschooling project. So one day my daughter looked up what Jasper's name means. A semi-precious stone, her source said. Well, I had to look in another source, because as I recalled, there is jasper in heaven and there is nothing semi-precious about that! So I ended up in Revelation 4, where the One seated on the Throne of heaven looks like a jasper stone, and Revelation 21, where verse 11 says the New Jerusalem was like "a very precious jewel, like a jasper." (NIV) Hmm...Just the opposite of the previous definition. And I said, you know, what the world calls semi-precious, God calls VERY precious and of eternal value and glory. May we always know the truely and eternally valuable, honorable and glorious!
