Well, I think this is the first year I've ever "done" anything for Valentine's day!! Seriously! And Ryan is eleven years old!

A few weeks ago, I was all stressed out about school and "fitting it all in" and God led me to read a few articles from someone in the homeschool world that I respect, etc., and it all just "hit home"... I need those reminders.

I mean... yes, we need to do the academic part of school. But that's not the BLESSING of homeschooling. The blessing of homeschooling comes when I cultivate our relationships with one another. And if I'm all stressed out and irritated and barking orders at them to "hurry up and get their school done" then what kind of relationships am I building? What kind of example am I being? ugh.

I was thinking about all of this during the weekend that I was supposed to go to a mom's conference a couple weeks ago, and instead I stayed home because my daughter had to have stitches. Anyway, I prayed about it and I wrote down what was on my heart about what I felt we SHOULD be doing everyday in our school. What are the bottom line basics?

What ALWAYS happens when I start getting us all on curriculum overload is our Bible time falls by the wayside. And that is SUCH a bad example to my kids. If I do anything, it should be Bible!

So, I sat down and wrote down the following: Bible, read literature aloud to my kids, math, basic language arts. That's it. Everything else is extra. It's fun, and most days we do fit in science, geography/history, and the likes. But, I was reminded that I don't have to teach EVERYTHING this year. So much of school is repetitive. As I looked through the kids' English curriculum, even though they are three different grade levels, they are basically teaching the same thing! Nouns, pronouns, verbs... over and over and over... just maybe have longer sentences, etc. It's so repetitive! I don't have to stress over them not learning it all this year. If they don't learn something this year, they will have the material again next year! And what in the world will they remember if they are crying about all of the busy work that they are doing? They certainly aren't going to remember the academic part of it.

Anyway!!!! I'm on a roll, huh? LOL So, I scratched just about everything that I had planned for the month of February... all of the busy work (seatwork) and decided to do something else at least for the remainder of February. First of all, I am setting all of our alarms for 8am instead of 7am. And everyone has been sleeping in that late. I think that the kids are tired, which lends to crankiness and whining and lack of focus during school time. Between the three of them, they are busy every night of the week with baseball, basketball, softball, CYT. So getting up later has been a good thing.

I'm telling myself to SLOW DOWN.. to enjoy our day... so we have breakfast, do music practice, chores... then we all sit down on the couch together and we do a bible lesson and then I read to them FIRST. And I'm not timing it! If it takes us an hour to do bible and reading, then so be it! Those are the most important things anyway! Then we do math and just a little bit of language arts... it takes about an hour to get the math and LA done. I purchased "The Shelter" copywork book that is made by Jeannie Fulbright, and that is what we are all using for language arts right now. So simple... and yet so full of teaching and learning possibilities. Best of all, they will be memorizing God's precious Word.

And then this week we've been doing the Valentine's study, and we are having so much fun. Learning the history of Valentine's day, learning about what the Bible says about love (eros, phileo, and agape), how we should love one another, making candy to give out to our neighbors and family, and creating our own poems of friendship to attach to the candies we've made. We were in the kitchen today making these candies and we made such a HUGE mess, but we were all laughing and just having the best time. THIS is the blessing of homeschooling, and much too often I lose sight of that.

The Scripture in Mark 8:36 says, "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?" Yes, academics are important. But we must remember that it is also part of this world. When we stand before God, He isn't going to ask us what our SAT scores are or how many A+ papers we got or what a pronoun is. He's going to ask us what we did with His word in our lives... how did we show His love to others...

So, if you're feeling discouraged and overwhelmed in your homeschool journey today, take a few steps back and ask the Lord to show you how to simplify a bit... and remember the blessing of homeschooling.