Path of Life Christian Academy
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Posted in My Ramblings
JESUS IS COMING SOON! MARANATHA LORD!
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When the TV went digital in June, I thought it wouldn't matter to me because I had a digital tuner and digital antenna, I also had two converter boxes in case I ever needed them for an older TV set. Once the switch happened though, I was disappointed that where I live, I can only pick up one station on the digital broadcast! I had been watching the NASCAR season all year previously, and really didn't want to stop, I had gone from being mildly interested in racing to being one of the biggest NASCAR fans around. So for the first time ever in my life, I decided to pay for TV. I called Direct TV.
Now previous to this, I hadn't really needed to control my children's TV watching, because there really wasn't much on that they wanted to watch. They had lots of DVDs and VHS videos, but since they had seen them all, they really didn't watch them that often. Since getting Direct TV, they have been turning into little couch potatoes. The sit mesmerized for hours if I don't stop them. They don't play outside, they don't play the Wii Fit, they just sit and watch TV. Occasionally they turn the TV off and play on the computer, not much better!
So I have decided that we need to reign this in before it gets any worse. I told them this morning that we were going to be changing things. And I've set up a system to do that.
My main goal, besides getting them to watch less TV, is to get them to pick up a book once in while without me assigning it to them. So they now can earn TV and computer play time by reading. If they read for 15 minutes, they earn 15 minutes of TV or computer play time. I also wanted them to be more physically active, so they can earn up to 1/2 hour a day by playing on the Wii Fit or by playing outside. They can't earn more than 1/2 hour that way though, because I do want them to read as well. They can earn as much time as they want with reading, but they will have to be spending an equal amount of time reading first, so I don't expect that it will be too much, and if it is, at least they are also reading that much! Also, just to be nice, I give them one 15 minute block automatically when they finish their homeschool for the day.
It seems to working well so far, but this only the first day. Right now I am keeping track on paper, but once I find our bag of poker chips they'll each get a jar to keep poker chips in, and each chip will be worth 15 minutes, when they earn time, they get a chip, when they watch TV or play on the computer, they give me a chip.
Hopefully, as they spend more time reading and playing, they will begin to enjoy those activities enough that they won't have to bribed or forced into them.
Oct. 11, 2009
Plans for this Week.
Posted in My Ramblings
JESUS IS COMING SOON! MARANATHA LORD!
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I am so glad I only have to work one or two days this week! Even though the money I would make working 3-5 days would be nice, it is so hard to give the kids my best in their schooling when I'm working so much outside the home.
So this week, my plan is as follows:
Monday:
Always an easy day, we will have our quiet time and do Phonics only as far homeschool. Then I am meeting someone to lend them some curricula, after that my hubby and I have a "date" which will probably consist of taking a walk, going to the library, or both, because we really can't do anything that costs money. Call the client that I *might* be working for on Friday to try to figure out the plans for sure. Blog, go to bed.
Tuesday:
Quiet time before work, then work from around 9:30-1:30, go to the bank to deposit the money so I'm not tempted to spend any of it. Go home and check to make sure hubby finished the day's homeschooling, if he hasn't then I need to finish it up, Tuesday's phonics lesson was done Monday, so we don't do that today. Then its dinner, and time for me to study the Penn Foster course I'm taking, blog before bed.
Wednesday,
Quiet time and then homeschool the kiddos myself! I love to do that, I miss the days when I was able to do that almost every day. Go to the Post Office to return some curricula that I won't be using, the company will charge me a restocking fee, but at least I'll get more back than if I try to sell the curriculum on craigslist or something. Go to the potluck and Bible Study at our church, try to blog if there's time before bed.
Thursday,
Co-op is all consuming. Very little time will be left for anything else. If I can I'll blog.
Friday, maybe work... if not just work on the homeschooling and my own studying, and I really need to go shopping for some new clothes, I'm washing the same ones over and over because I only have a few wearable outfits, and of course I want to try to blog sometime on Friday.
Saturday, a full homeschool day, the time to study, then time to blog.
Okay, so those are my plans for the week, but you know the saying, "We Plan, God Laughs!" 
Oct. 8, 2009
Okay, I'm a Mother Bear
Posted in My Ramblings
JESUS IS COMING SOON! MARANATHA LORD!
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Okay, perhaps my attitude is wrong. Perhaps I am being over sensitive and touchy. Perhaps my concerns about my son's educational difficulties and delays have left me defensive when I hear people criticize him. Perhaps I am suffering from the "mother bear" syndrome. I don't know, if I am than I guess need to work on that.
Last night at Church, while we worshiped in song before Bible Study, I was rather pleased that for most of the singing, my son and daughter were sitting quietly, not fighting, not making noise, not poking at me incessantly.
After Bible Study a woman approached me. She didn't use a lot of tact when she said, "Vicki, you know your son is so distracting." I asked what he was doing and she said that he kept looking over his shoulder at her and making faces. My son has facial tics that he has no control over, so I wanted to find out if that had been what was going on, or if he had been doing things like sticking his tongue out at her or something like that. I asked her what kind of faces he was making, and she seemed irritated by the question. I persisted and said, what I mean is, was he making real silly faces or was he doing something like this? (I imitated his tic). She said, "Oh like that." I informed her he had a facial tic.
Now last night when this happened, I wasn't too upset. I was too busy thinking about another problem in my life that I wanted to talk to the pastor about. But later on the conversation came back into my thoughts... and I started to wonder what HER problem was. Okay, now I realize she had no way of knowing that my son had a tic, but the question that went through my head was, "So what even if he had been doing that on purpose? It wasn't a rude gesture, it didn't harm her in any way. And besides, he is a CHILD... children often do things silly, not to be rude, but just because they are kids. Couldn't she have just looked at the lyrics on the overhead and ignored him?"
Knowing my son, I can imagine what happened, he looked over his shoulder once, and the tic happened. The woman returned a disapproving look, then my son, wondering what he did wrong, continued to look back at her on and off, trying to figure out what he did wrong. She, wondering why he was looking at her still and making faces, continued with the looks of disapproval, and the cycle ensued for the rest of the worship time. Maybe she just doesn't have much experience with kids, because even if my son HAD been doing this on purpose, most of the time if adults just ignore something like that, the child stops.
As I type this I realize that she was not trying to offend in any way. And I am not as angry as before. It just gets frustrating. When my son still wasn't potty trained or speaking at almost four years old, there wasn't an appropriate place for him at church. The teachers of the toddler class said he was too big, and the teachers of the preschool class said he couldn't be in their class unless he was potty trained. The pastor we had at that time frowned on children in the adult portion of the service. I explained that my son had dyspraxia, and that because of that he wasn't able to be potty trained yet, and that was also the cause of his speech delay. I was still met with the same scenario, the toddler teacher saying he was too big, and the other one saying kids had to be potty trained to be in that class. So I was left to wonder what to do with my son. I stopped going to church regularly, and when I came back I brought my son to the preschool class and told the teacher (again) that he had a physically handicapping condition and that this was the class he belonged in. I told her he had a pull-up on, and that if he needed changing she didn't need to do it, she could come and get me. Then, without waiting for a response I walked away, leaving him in her class. No one ever brought it up again, and shortly after that my son finally figured out the potty training thing.
Later, when my son finally started talking, I fielded constant comments about how difficult he was to understand, but he was doing his best and so was I. I had him in speech therapy, I had him in special needs preschool. I was doing everything I could, and he was trying so hard for every little bit of progress.
Even now, my son faces humiliation in Sunday School class because he struggles to read, but the Sunday School teacher he has when I am not teaching insists that every child take a turn reading out loud. Between his auditory processing disorder and the fact that his eyes don't work together, but insist on focusing on two different points in space, my son always reads slowly and laboriously. I don't understand why Sunday School should become a time for his differences to be highlighted. I've told the teacher in question about his disabilities, and yet he still keeps his "every child takes a turn reading" policy. What would he do if my son were blind? Or mute? Why is so hard for him to understand that auditory processing disorder, dyspraxia, and dyslexia are every bit as much of a disability as those other conditions?
Okay, so I'm a mother bear who is fed up with her "cub" being teased by other kids, and criticized by adults. Who is fed up with a world that can't seem to accept him as he is, and appreciate the immense amount effort he extends for every developmental step he takes. He tries four or five times harder than everyone else, just to produce average results. It would just be nice for once, to see someone besides mom recognize his efforts and his sweet, gentle personality.
May. 30, 2009
I'm Such a BAD BLOGGER!!!
Posted in My Ramblings
JESUS IS COMING SOON! MARANATHA LORD!
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When I first got this blog, made an entry at least 3 times a week, often more. Now I go months between entries! I am not completely without excuse, it has been a busy time for my family and tumultuous for my marriage. We have survived as a family and a couple, and we have grown through the things that have happened. We still have a lot of ground to cover, but I have faith in God that we will cover this ground.
I don't want to go into a lot of detail about the issues we faced, I just praise God that we are moving forward.
I realized today that the year is almost over, and I never even made an entry about the curriculum we were using!
Well, with my younger children this year I started out using Galloping the Globe which is a unit study that covers Geography, science, literature, art, cooking, some history, and some Bible. However, it didn't take long for me to get bogged down with all there was to do, especially considering the stuff going on in our family. So we cut it down to the basics for the younger kids, we worked on Phonics, Math, and Bible... and that was all we did at home. The kids went to co-op once a week, and there they did Nature Study, Geography, and drawing, so the other subject areas were not completely neglected.
We are still not done with the school year, partly because we had such a crazy year, and partly because we usually homeschool year round, taking extra time during holidays and my husbands vacation days, rather than following the set schedule of the school system.
For Bible we have been going through Jesus My Shepherd, which is a continuation of what we used last year: And It Was Good. I like the series, it is a good introduction to the major stories and flow of the Bible.
For phonics we have been using The PHONICS Road to Spelling and Reading, level 1 I must say that I like this approach! My son has always struggled with reading, and while he still struggles some, going back to the beginning and re-laying the foundation has helped a lot. My son (who was in 3rd grade this school year) and my daughter (who was in 1st grade this school year) both worked on level 1 together. The seem to enjoy making the readers, which have the text only, the kids illustrate the story as they read.
I will upload photos of some of those readers later, right now all of my belongings are packed in boxes because we had to move out of our house while some remodeling was being done.
For math the younger kids have been using Horizons Math my son in the 3rd grade level and my daughter in the 1st grade level. Both are doing very well in math as far as grades, but my son took FOREVER to complete lessons, even though I let him do every other problem in the book. My daughter completed her lessons faster, but complained the whole time. So for next year I am considering other options, which I will get into in a minute.
Geography, My older daughter did Teaching Textbooks Geometry, Write Source English, Apologia Biology, A BekaA beka World History, Online French lessons, Western Literature at the co-op, and PE.
I am still making plans for next year, here is what I've decided on for sure:
My son needs to develop some independence in his work. This is an absolute necessity because I am going to have to work more hours outside the home. His reading skills are still below grade level, and this in turn prevents him from being able to work alone on subjects such as History or science. So he needs more practice in reading throughout the day. Next year he will be getting two science classes at the co-op, on is a life science class and the other involves chemistry experiments. So the hands on part of science is taken care of at an appropriate level for him, my daughter will also be getting the chemistry experiments class. At home we will do co-op homework, which is not supposed to take more than an hour a week. Beyond that, I am wanting to cover Social Studies and Science at my sons reading level, not so much for the Social studies and Science content, but as a tool to train him to work independently. So my son, even though he will be in 4th grade next year, will be doing 2nd grade science and social studies along with his younger sister. We will use LIFEPACS for these two subjects since they are designed to encourage independent work. Again, I know that the content of these courses is far below what he is capable of understanding, but he cannot read the ones that are at his level in content. The main point in doing this that he learn to work on his own, and that he practice reading and answering questions at a level that is appropriate for his skills. I believe the LIFEPACS will help to meet both goals.
I like what we have been using for phonics, so next year we will be going on to level two of PHONICS ROAD. This is one thing that my kids will NOT be able to do independently, but I feel it is worth it because of the progress my son is making.
For math, I know that my son is going to do Grade 4 of TEACHING TEXTBOOKS, I think he will do better with the computerized format, and it will be one more way to teach him independence. However, for my daughter I am not sure what to use. She will be in 2nd grade math, teaching textbooks doesn't have 2nd
For Bible both of my younger kids are going to be enrolled in Awanas and will work through their books at home, plus I will have them read "The Beginners Bible" for more reading practice.
My older daughter will be doing Teaching Textbooks Algebra 2, Apologia Chemistry, A Beka U.S. History, Online French, Write @ Home classes plus reading classic literature for English. She will follow their recommendations for students starting in 11th Grade, which are Composition 1, Research Paper Workshop, Essay I Workshop, except she will take Essay 2 instead of Essay 1, because she already took the first one. For PE she will continue to keep doing activities such as Wii Fit, bicycling, etc. In addition, at the co-op she will take Guitar, and Foundations in Personal Finance. If we can we will complete U.S. History in 1 semester, and then get a jump start on U.S. government so we won't have to worry about it the next year, or we'll take both simultaneously. I am trying to get as much completed as possible so she can begin Running Start in fall of 2010 and I won't feel like she is missing anything that we should have studied at home.
So that is what we have done so far this year, and our plans for next year. I will try to do better about blogging, I have lots of photos waiting to be uploaded, lots of ideas to share, but precious little time to do any of it! grade. I've tried Saxon and wasn't thrilled. I have the teachers guides for HORIZONS... so all I would need is the student books, and she DOES do very well in them, even if she isn't terribly thrilled to do it. So I might stay with Horizons with her. Just not sure.
Feb. 18, 2009
Wow... I don't know what to say... "sorry" perhaps?
Posted in My Ramblings
JESUS IS COMING SOON! MARANATHA LORD!
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Hi friends, if you need to silence the music just hit the play/pause button on the player in the right sidebar, just below the black horse and the copyright notice.
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I have NOT been good about keeping up this blog. So far, I haven't even posted what curriculum we are using for this year! And the project 365 thing.... ummm.... the last time I put a picture up for that was July 31, 2008!!!
The problem has been that I have been spending all my time on Facebook, instead of posting photos here, I post them on Facebook. Instead of blogging, I write notes on Facebook!
Concern over Facebook's terms of service is what caused me to realize that Facebook had replaced my blogs, but that is not the only concern, the concern is that I love blogging, and taking pictures, and I don't want to give it up. I can't believe I have been neglecting my blog for so long.
Well, this is going to change! I am going to start blogging again! I am going to start participating in project 365 again!!!
Beginning tomorrow, I will start trying to post a minimum of once a week, and will try to upload at least 5 Project 365 photos each week.
Aug. 12, 2008
Want to get to know me better?
Posted in My Ramblings
JESUS IS COMING SOON! MARANATHA LORD!
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Hi friends, if you need to silence the music just hit the play/pause button on the player in the right sidebar, just below the black horse and the copyright notice.
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Well, I don't know how many of you read my blog, but if you do you might be interested to hear that I have other pages around. One is on MY SPACE, one is on YAHOO 360, one is on MY HOMESCHOOL PLACE, one is on LAPBOOK LESSONS.
I try to post on all of them on occasion, but honestly I keep up this blog at homeschoolblogger much more regularly, and when I do update those others, its often something I've already posted here. Still, if you are curious, go ahead and click on those links above.
May. 16, 2008
Entry #101! This needs no explanation.
Posted in My Ramblings
JESUS IS COMING SOON! MARANATHA LORD!
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Hi friends, if you need to silence the music just hit the play/pause button on the player in the right sidebar, just below the black horse and the copyright notice.
If you don't see a video here, give it a few minutes to load.
May. 6, 2008
The Seven Wonders of Present World
Posted in My Ramblings
JESUS IS COMING SOON! MARANATHA LORD!
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Hi friends, if you need to silence the music just hit the play/pause button on the player in the right sidebar, just below the black horse and the copyright notice.
Okay, someone told me this was an empty window, but when I view it its not empty, it has a You Tube video on it. So, if you don't see the video, wait to give it time to load, if you still don't see it, try reloading the page. Its short and its worth seeing.
Apr. 21, 2008
The Well DRAINED Mind.
Posted in My Ramblings
JESUS IS COMING SOON! MARANATHA LORD!
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Hi friends, if you need to silence the music just hit the play/pause button on the player in the right sidebar, just below the black horse and the copyright notice.
Do this! Do that! Check this item off the list and move on to that one! Make the child sit at the table until ALL of those math problems are finished! Make him read this because it is the next thing in the book! We do not have time for the art project today, because Math, Phonics, Grammar, Spelling, and the like took too long!
What a horrible task master we have been under!
How did I get here? What is going on? Is this what want out of homeschooling? I am so tired. Frankly, I am fed up with this. Where are the leisurely nature walks? Where is the laughter? Where is the love of learning? Is my purpose in homeschooling just to get the work finished?
You can probably tell that I am that I need to make some changes in the way I home school my kids. I have been feeling burned out lately, and it seems like the joy of homeschooling is escaping all of us. To answer the questions I posed above, I will need to give a little background information.
I strongly prefer the classical model of education, so I am loosely following the course of study outlined in The Well Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer. Now, I knew we could not follow EVERY suggestion made in the book, but still I wanted to sort of stick to the outline, studying Ancient History and Life Science in year one, Middle Ages and Earth/Space in year two, then moving on to early modern History and Chemistry in year three, and finally finishing up with late modern History and Physical Science in Year four. Then I planned to switch to a five-year plan, using the Mystery of History series, and spreading the science out a little more to cover it in more depth. It sounded like such a wonderful plan!
Unfortunately, my two youngest kids did not master reading in preschool like Susan Wise did back in the early 1970’s when her mom Jessie was teaching her. No, my kids actually spent their preschool years doing preschool stuff… playing outside, picking flowers, running in the sprinkler, learning colors, shapes, numbers and letters, playing with play dough and doing puzzles. Even if I had wanted to teach them to read, my son’s speech was so delayed that it would not have been possible. So he started Kindergarten actually needing to do Kindergarten level work! Therefore, we had to spend a good portion of our day covering phonics and reading; this is something the schedule in the Well Trained Mind does not take into account, just as it does not take into account that your family actually has to do more than JUST homeschool. There is laundry to be done, meals to cooked, and dishes to be washed. There is church to attend and co-op classes to plan. In my home there is a High School student who needs teaching too, and there is a part time job to work at on top of all of it.
So here we were, fully half of our day being taken up just trying to master reading and math. Then we would find ourselves squeezing in History and Science when we could. It did not bother me much, and we were having fun. We did something for History each day, sometimes it was reading followed by a narration, and other times it was a History related art project, or map work, or even a cooking activity. The first year worked out pretty good, except that half way through the year we had to pick up the pace to finish our History book before summer, so we skipped extra activities on many lessons. Then the second year started, now in addition to teaching my son, my youngest daughter was ready to start Kindergarten. We moved along enjoying ourselves for the most part. Then about a month ago, I sat down and looked at where we were in our History book. We were so far behind! If we did not pick up the pace we would NEVER finish in time for summer break, in fact, we would be lucky to finish before October! So we doubled our efforts, we would read, do our narration, and then do our map work in the same day. The only “projects” we did was the coloring pages, never the more fun activities. We stopped reading the additional books on the chapter topics. We even gave up taking a couple of days here and there to review the history memory cards, and instead just pushed ahead to the next lesson.
Science was rushed along in a similar way, reading the lessons, doing the experiments, and leaving it at that. No notebook pages, no extra activities, nothing that was not absolutely necessary in order to be able to say we “did” the lesson.
We pushed along like this, and each day I felt less and less joy in what I was doing, and each day my frustration level increased. I did not blog about homeschool much during this time. Instead, I just posted photos and blogged about things like Easter egg hunts. I was so exhausted after DOING homeschool each day that I did not want to think about it afterward, let alone blog about it!
Then, last weekend I woke up, as if out of a bad dream,  and came to my senses. I looked at my children, and realized that they were as burnt out as I was. They were not having any fun, and they were not remembering much of what we were rushing so much to do. I asked myself, “Why is it so important to finish Middle Ages History this year?” Did I honestly think that my child would be asked when applying for college, “Why did it take you five years to finish the Story of World series instead of four?” Who was I trying to impress? Who decided that the grammar stage of the Trivium should last exactly four years? Who decided that learning should take place from the first week of September and stop the second week of June? From where did I get this arbitrary schedule? Would it not make more sense to take longer to cover the material, but to have my kids enjoy it and retain what they learned?
I realized that my thinking was all out of line. I had read that the last volume of Story of the World was not good for kids who were younger than 4th grade level, so I had even started making plans of other ways to cover history the 4th year. It did not occur to me that maybe I should just take more time on the first three volumes and then begin again with Ancient History in the Mystery of History series.
Therefore, I decided last weekend that I would stop this nonsense, stop being dictated to by some schedule invented by someone else in an entirely different situation than my own, and start doing what works for us.
We are still following a classical model, we LIKE that. The difference is that now we are not trying to push forward and keep to some silly schedule of when to finish with each step of that model. Instead, we are just doing what comes next. We are relaxing and enjoying our extra projects again. We are reading literature about each time period in History, just like we used to. We are doing our art projects.
We are also revamping our approach to science. Instead of boring lesson response sheets where all the kid does is answer questions, we are going to slow down on the interesting space units and slowly assemble a lap book, read library books, and try to visit our local observatory. We joined ENCHANTED LEARNING so that we would have access to lots of neat printable graphics and minibooks to put in our lapbooks.
I don’t know when we will finish the Middle ages study… we might finish it this summer, or we may finish it in November… but we WILL enjoy it!
I have many other thoughts swimming around in my brain, but I was intending to write a blog post, not a book, so I will stop now, and maybe write more some other time.
Posted in My Ramblings
JESUS IS COMING SOON! MARANATHA LORD!
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Hi friends, if you need to silence the music just hit the play/pause button on the player in the right sidebar, just below the copyright notice.
I woke up this early this morning, because I have decided I need to get serious about my exercise program if I am ever going to lose weight.
Any way, as I stepped outside I was instantly struck by two things... the first was the cold. It was about 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside... Brrr! My winter coat felt terribly thin! Now to some people back east 20 might not seem like a big deal, but around here that is considered COLD!
The second thing to strike me was the beauty. Everything was white and sparkly. I started my van so it could warm up (to take me to Curves), then I got my camera and attempted to capture some of the splendor. I am afraid my camera did not really do it justice though.
This first Picture is of my poor frozen snowball bush.
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A record of our homeschooling journey (and my random thoughts), as we look to the Lord to show us the Path Of Life. We are a homeschooling family with a strong leaning toward the Classical and Charlotte Mason styles, but since we blend the two philosophies, along with whatever other ideas we like, we classify our homeschool as eclectic.
Legislative Action!
Tell lawmakers that you own your car and can decide where to have it worked on!
Our School Mascot
As you can see, my kids adopted a school mascot, feel free to feed him an apple or brush him by clicking on the button that says "more".
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