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When I invisioned homeschooling, I thought it would be a day of fun, exploring and playing and my children would become virtual geniuses over night! Ha ha ha ha ha! Yes, it is fun and yes we explore and play and they are learning...in some areas way ahead of their public school peers (Austin is after all attending a History of Western Medicine class at college with me) but it is not going exactly that way I had planned...kind of like raising kids :) Our first year, just last year mind you, I saw many, many days of tears, temper tantrums and infinte frustration...not to mention the problems the kids were having. I began to wonder what on earth I had done. My son missed recess, and nothing else, and hated grammar! My child hate grammar??? What on earth? I am a rhetoric major for heaven's sake! Despite what you read here, I tend to be the grammar police! Heck, I even correct books and newspapers! I LOVE writing and reading and writing some more! How could he hate grammar? Grammar drills? Pure joy! Yet, every day when we touched the grammar workbook, it would induce in both of us an explosion that could rival Mt. St. Helens (we are from the NW after all)! A child that once loved reading, now loathed it. I HAD RUINED HIM! It was time for a change in plans... Now, I am a planner. I always have to know what the next step is. No, I am not organized in the conventional sense, but I am the person with goals and plans for the next 10 years. No deviating from the plan, please. This was deviating. The curriculum I just knew would be fun and would be loved dearly and fondly remembered, brought forth feelings of absolute hatred and revolsion. Oh, what was I going to do? Dear hubby wanted us to finish and get our money's worth. Of course, he did not have to teach it nor witness the meltdowns. So, I took the workbook and dissected it. I took what were tedious grammar lessons and turned them in to games. We diagrammed sentences and learned parts of speech by playing adlibs. We labeled all things in the house, including the dog, and learned capitalization. We planned paragraphs by making parfaits and guess what? He didn't hate grammar. He hated tedious lessons about things that were irrelevant. This year we are reading the books he wants to and using study guides that include activities such as milking cows at the neighbors and making pancakes and telling mom, as we are cleaning stalls, all about caring for horses. We are doing grammar by working for a newspaper...doing all jobs including being an editor and occassionally we diagram sentences...just for fun for mom. Now, I planned on proving the doctors and experts wrong about me daughter. Due to the treatment she endured for her leukemia, she has lots of holes (think swiss cheese) in her learning abilities. They vowed she would not read until age 9 and I vowed she would read on time with her peers...hmmm...see a problem here. I had to prove them WRONG! Well, God has His own time tables. She is still not reading. She is still mixing up letters and sounds. She is still at beginning kindergarten level. Oh, woe is me, I am a failure! Nope, it just means a change in plans. Perhaps a different approach. Now, she has no idea she is behind. She thinks she is moving right along because she IS learning. She has no peers to compare herself with so each overcome hurdle is cause for rejoicing! She could care less what the experts say. She is learning so much, she gets to go to Mrs. Darling's house to do more reading (because she is starting to wonder if she is surpassing my abilities :). We have changed plans. In addition to mom working with her, a tutor gets to come at it with another approach. A new set of eyes and a new set of skills and it is helping. Lucky us! God has a plan. In Jeremiah 29:11 He tells us that it is one that gives us a hope and a future. He also tells us numerous times not to light our own paths or lean on our own understanding. Guess I should read more on that one. And as the song says, "If you want to hear God laugh tell Him your plans." A change of plans is a good thing, especially when after much prayer, His plan is revealed and you align yours with His. |
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Posted by Tracy