Lazy Creek Homeschool

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Facing Burnout

10:02 PM - Feb. 6, 2009 - Wild Thoughts {0} - Add to the Wildness

I was going through some family videos from last year, from our cross-country travels. It was a really neat stop, but I wondered why I'd picked such a dark, introspective song as background for the clips.

Then I remembered how I'd been feeling just before we left. I also remember feeling the same way the year before. It's not the kids, they're great. It's everything else. We've been living in a renovation for nine years, and this winter's been the worst. We are literally without half our house right now, all crammed into the north end as we do major repair to the south end.

It's the church. That's nothing short of a travesty. I feel lost. We made it our home and our heart, and it's become a black hole that just keeps sucking more and more out of us. When it got to the point where the children were showing signs of hurting from it, that was it for me. But I don't know where to turn to go forward. It was very much my tie to other Christians and to my small-town community.

It's the job. We never know for sure whether Dave's going to be home or not, whether he'll still be working in the same part of the plant from one day to the next. They're deliberately and chronically understaffed, and they treat their human resources worse than the machinery. After all, the machines cost money. But they can always hire another person at no extra cost to them.

I'm constantly restless and irritable. I often find myself feeling trapped by the place where I live--the remote location, the house and yard, the people.

I'm just waiting for March. At that time, David and I will be done with our full-time church commitments. After that, maybe I can begin to breathe again. We made plans. We want to take the family around to different towns, doing gospel music. We want to start a non-church, Bible-based project that focuses on the Word and feeds the starving, sick congregations we keep encountering. We want to get back to encouraging and uplifting. As it stands, the people we have loved won't accept it from us.

I think the best cure for a broken heart is to seek God's wholeness.

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© Copyright Cathi-Lyn Dyck 2005-2009

Schooling Online - A New Experiment For Us

2:16 PM - Jan. 16, 2009 - Wild Thoughts {0} - Add to the Wildness

Fact #1: I hate mornings. My younger kids love them. My older kids have to be dragged out of bed.
Fact #2: We have an underused family website that pretty much functions as our unschooling portfolio.

I'm going to combine the two and see if we can generate a positive effect. The plan is to use the main blog as an assignment launchpad. We can then continue "scrapbooking" online at our homeschool journal.

My (possibly naive) hope is that if I make the main blog our browser's homepage, the kids can pull it up in the morning while my brain is still mud and have some fun doing indirectly-directed activities together. As Bill Jack would say, "Buy time. Sell rope." (No, wait, that's out of context. Anyway....)

The assignment completion "prizes" will be YouTube videos or the like--maybe some "stealth" education through humour--that the kids can watch on the main blog. We've used YouTube as a successful bribe in the past. (You can see the "Engineer's Guide To" videos have made their way to our webhome.) I'd like to use the Internet more, but I want to know my kids are on sites that are totally safe for them, if I'm too fuzzy or busy to supervise. And, hey, look at that: I have a site I can customize to our schooling style.

The desired results: (A) Younger kids' time and energy occupied until mine catches up. (B) Older kids more motivated to get out of bed. (C) Mom (maybe?? sometimes???) gets to wait for the coffee to kick in before having to open the Complaints Bureau, deploy Law Enforcement, call out Animal Rescue, engage the Sanitation Department, deploy Correctional Services for transfer of inmates from the Horizontally Snoring Block to the Vertically Whining Block, etc., etc.

If anyone wants to try the activities for themselves and give me feedback on how I can do it better or easier, it would be much appreciated and highly motivating. I'm sure my first few assignment descriptions will need tweaking until I get better at designing the directions. And, hey, if you get good results with the project ideas, post a pic and let me know.

I'll let y'all know how it goes.

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© Copyright Cathi-Lyn Dyck 2005-2009

Travel Photos from Across Canada

11:46 AM - Dec. 27, 2008 - Wild Thoughts {0} - Add to the Wildness

In 2006 and 2007, we opened our fall school sessions by traveling across Canada. First west, then east.

We *finally* have our photo album and clickable travel map up and running. My only frustration is that I haven’t been able to get the comments to show up for the pictures as yet. It might be nice to know what they’re *of.*

We’ll get there. In the meantime, here’s the new travel page.

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© Copyright Cathi-Lyn Dyck 2005-2008

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