For the last month or so, we have been travelling the world. What? You didn't realize my blog entries were remote? Now before you get too excited Crystal, we are actually travelling the world from home. So far we've explored the wild jungles of Madagascar, and the recovering diversity of South Africa. The boys are so cute! (I'm doing this with Stephen and AJ.)
Today we entered Kenya. I'm getting better at it, knowing more and more the order and way I want to do things. Today we traced on the world map where we had been, then "departed" from South Africa to head north to Kenya. The boys strapped themselves into a taxi bus, and bounced along in the heat and crowded conditions. Stephen had to hold a chicken on his lap for a while. Once we arrived in the mountainous region of Kenya, the boys had to present their passports for inspection.
Before we started I made them each a rather realistic looking passport, complete with their personal info, pages printed with a quarter grid for visa stamps, and I even used clear wide labels to create a unique passport stamp for each country we visit. As they entered, I asked them about South Africa, and stamped their passport. We look at the world map and color in the country we visit on a world and continent map, then we mark major landmarks, color the flag, listen to the national anthem, and read a brief summary of the country. Over the next week, we'll explore the wildlife, read about indiginous peoples, try traditional food, play traditional games, listen to music, and add national celebrations to our world calendar. We'll read folk stories and about missionaries, climate, resources, history and heroes. I've even found a wealth of DVD's through online rentals and the library. Hard to believe I can cover so much in a week! (Not that I really do all I want, I'm just reminding myself to let them have fun with it, and learn a little something in spite of it.)
The boys' favorite part is entering into a new country and getting their passport stamped. Mom's favorite part is how wildly in love with the world she is falling. My home page is the Operation World page of the day, and it is becoming more and more fascinating as I become more familiar with the countries. Josh is also doing geography through Florida Virtual Schools, but I'm sure he's not having near the fun we are. Too bad.
I'm off again, this time to bed. Travelling is hard work, and I'm feeling a little jet-lag!
For the last couple weeks we've been exploring South Africa. We have eaten South African food, played games, researched animals, located major landmarks on our maps, watched biographies and movies about Steven Biko ("Cry Freedom"--a really good film!) and Nelson Mandela, gone on safari, and lots more!
Some things we didn't know about South Africa:
The newly united country of South Africa appears to be very different than it was 15 years ago. After the end of apartheid, and the election of Nelson Mandela to the presidency, the country has come a long way. I'm astonished at how quickly it changed, and that the genocide of Rwanda was not repeated. I have questions yet unanswered about how the government is going about preventing retaliation for years of abuse and oppression.
South Africa has FIVE official languages.
The South African national anthem is generally sung in five different languages, and it has two different melodies that are merged together. About ten years ago, the traditional anthem was joined with the popular anthem to create one song, a symbol of a country that was becoming united into one. You can here it here.
South Africa is the primary exporter of gold and diamonds in the world . . . as in more than half come from South Africa!
I have been totally captivated by this country! Maybe the kids eyes are starting to glaze over as I get yet another documentary or biography on it, but I'm still full of questions! Nevertheless, tomorrow we're off to Kenya!
(Photo above is of our South African meal: Boboti, Mealie Bread, and Sweet Potato Fritters. You can see more photos of our explorations at our Flickr site.)
Gosh! It's been so long since I posted here I had to stop and think about my login name and password. I can't believe that I haven't posted anything in over two months! And we're even really doing school! (OK, maybe that's why I haven't posted.)
OK, so here's a list of what we've been up to:
Started school two weeks late. Couldn't help it. I wasn't ready, then we had kids with us, then, well, we just started late. But we're chugging along now.
AJ has "officially" been diagnosed ADHD. Wow. Big surprise. Anyone who spends two hours with him could figure that out. Besides, it's more or less a useless diagnosis, since in reading I've discovered about a billion things can cause the symptoms we call ADHD.
BUT . . . the P.A. at our doctor's office who screens for learning disabilities also detected "processing problems." Kind of overwhelming to me (the domino effect of all the evaluations and treatments he needs now), but I think in the long run it will be helpful to have found this out so early. It's also been AMAZING to watch God working on our behalf, bringing in the "experts" we need and reminding me that He will provide what we need.
Josh will be halfway done with his year of Geography through Florida Virtual School this week. Not sure what I'm going to do to keep him busy after that. I've signed him up for reading, but I want to take a look at the course first.
I added literature studies to his work load. At least Mom is enjoying The Witch of Blackbird Pond.
We're travelling the world. So far Stephen, AJ, and I have seen Madagascar and South Africa (which I have fallen in love with), and tomorrow we depart for Kenya. More on that in my next post.
As of today we've changed spelling programs. What worked last year just wasn't cutting it this year. The two younger boys will be doing Sequential Spelling by AKVO (or is it AVKO?). Finally! The spelling program I've been looking around for!
I feel like I'm drowning already. I can't keep up with planning and records, hate the pace of life (and I keep it pretty simple!), can't stay on top of my house . . . can I please just go back to bed? Of course the straight week of Florida rain didn't help me much last week. It gets pretty buggy in a house full of boys when they don't have access to the outdoors!
God keeps wooing me, calling me to come sit by Him and let Him lighten my load. I just keep forging ahead, trying to make things work my way. When will I learn?
Last year I felt like God was moving me to change directions in our scope and sequence. Thought I had it all planned out--history continuing from year to year where we left off, science in whatever the younger ones were interested in doing--but God had a different plan. I'm not sure I heart Him right though. I felt like we were to head in the direction of a large-scale geography unit. So this year we are using A Child's Geography, which will mostly cover our science, and we are supplementing with Galloping the Globe and LOTS of other things. I have also subscribed to Enchanted Learning, which I love love love!!!
So I'm taking on the world. I already feel overwhelmed. What was I thinking? Typical of me I am turning something simple into a massive project. We'll be burned out by November (and the second continent!). Guess I need to slow down and ask God what His purpose is in all this. It will be good this week that the boys are gone and I can spend some time alone seeking direction before we start this week.
I am SO ready for summer. And of course the boys are . . . of course, they've been ready for summer since . . . well, last summer ended! The cool spring weather has been extended here in Florida, which has made outside irresistible, so I'm having trouble keeping children at their desks or at the table. I keep finding them playing outside in the hole to China. Not to mention that we now have a puppy who needs to go out a lot. So basically, I am simplifying to the max so we can at least get it done. I'm also remembering that kids in school are taking lots of field trips right now, having end-of-the-year parties, doing lots of other non-educational educational things. (Yes, I KNOW I just wrote an oxymoron, what better to describe public school?)
Anyway, schools almost done. Although I'm planning on doing some of it during the summer . . . don't sue me if I take the summer off.
Hmmm . . . that's the first time I've actually said that out loud!
I'm trying to work through The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Reading with my 1st grader. He is a wiggly, active boy, probably with some mild form of ADHD. He is SOOO easily distracted! Teaching him can drive me crazy because it is so hard to keep him on track.
But recently I've found a method that works for us.
We learn in small chunks. Most days I can get a whole lesson done, but for lessons usually longer than a page, I have to cover it in two.
Review, review, review. I determine what he is struggling with and we review it daily for a while. If he's got it though . . . I don't review. We can use that time for new stuff.
Keep him contained. I have an old school desk with the attached desk. He works best in this, since he can't lay down, fall over, stand up, scoot away, etc. I suppose you could also belt them loosely in a chair.
Give him help wiggling. This summer I bought this Fit Ball seat cusion through Heads Up Now! It has been a great way of keeping my son in his seat, but allowing him movement.
Use aids. Heads Up Now! also has colored translucent frames available so he can keep his place on the page without distractions from the words above or below. They also have some really neat timers and eductional materials and tips on working with ADHD students.
Pay attention. He accomplishes very little if I'm trying to do other things. Every interruption distracts him. So I've learned to really focus attention on him so we can get it all done in an hour rather than it taking him five hours where I have to keep coming to help him.
Remove distractions. My older boys have been told not to inturrupt when I'm working with him on lesson stuff. It also helps if I turn the phone off. We haven't yet figured out how to keep the baby from being a distraction, but I guess you can't manage it all.
Rewards and Consequences. I promise a reward if he accomplished things within a certain time limit. There is also a consequence for complaining, or just refusing to cooperate (he has to start back at the beginning of the lesson and do it all over again). These are things he can control.
Lots and lots of praise. When he does it right, I make a big deal of it. I also brag on him often to his brothers who both already read well. They just don't remember how hard it was to learn, so I remind them and encourage them to praise my younger son.
Today I woke up to COLD!! (OK, you can read about that on my other blog.) Suddenly I had the desire to skip school and just stay in bed all day. After all, it's rainy, cold . . . who wants to do school today? Hmmm . . . how to get out of school today?
Then I remembered that when I was in school we had occasional days, like Field Day . . . or Sock Hop day . . . or days for holiday parties. We took days to do something different in school didn't we? Nobody felt guilty about that . . . especially the teachers! I also remembered a day several years ago, much like today, a day the boys and I spent the day playing educational games, reading, telling each other stories, and "learning" in very different but only fun ways. The boys LOVED it, and so did I. No papers to grade. No lesson plans to follow. Impulsiveness to fill my tank. But we were still "doing school."
I felt a few minutes of guilt. No, we have to do school today. We have to follow the plan. After all, we're finally clicking along, and it took us weeks to get moving. Back and forth my mind went between what I wanted to do, and what I thought the government and critical onlookers would say if they saw we were having yet another week without five full days of lesson plans and written work. Then I stopped myself, and asked, what is the point? As I educate the boys, what is my purpose? To learn of course. And I remembered that a day of learning games, reading, playing educational computer games IS learning. And it is also like a vitamin B shot to our educational program, putiing some life into our work.
So today we will:
only do lessons that HAVE to be done (for Josh that means co-op assignments to keep up with his assignments)
wipe the dust off of some of the fun educational games I have on my shelves (if we can get to my shelves . . . but that's another post.)
play at Starfall, check out some links from our Usborne Internet linked books, and maybe do some "surfing" on some of the subjects we are studying or just want to find out more about (so they can see that Internet searches--which they cannot do on my computers without me, incidently--are for more than writing papers)
read without feeling guilty for having to put the book down to do something else (we started a great book on Rembrandt yesterday that was longer than I had time to finish, and Mom was really learning something from it!)
play with the baby without guild (hmmm . . . maybe we'll do some Internet research on her . . . )
stay in our pajamas (don't you just love those days?)
work on our respective books or articles (each of the older boys is writing one, and I have an e-newsletter deadline next week)
start a new blog? Josh? maybe? (would love to hear opinions on letting a 12-year-old have a blog)
laugh (a little more than we do over math homework)
OK, we've done school now for two full weeks. It has had its challenges, but we've managed to get it done. This week we were back to a full schedule, and we managed to get most of it done. We've really hit math hard, since two of the boys are almost finished with a book, and that has been our biggest challenge. I really wanted them to work on mostly math these two weeks and get those books done, but the I underestimated the difficulty of the work they were doing (especially my oldest), and they have needed more time to work and correct problems than I expected. Ahhhh . . . but to have these books finished! I can't wait, because then it's back to simple stuff, and I'll really feel like we're making tracks for a while.
I have also realized my desperate need for a more disciplined schedule. Each of the boys needs to know when he is going to sit down with me and work, and I need to anticipate that each will have to spend some time with me. For the oldest, it is more about having a time to ask questions and express his frustrtaions over things he feels he isn't getting, and yet he does need that time. Early in our efforts to resume school, I was still trying to get other things done, and school wasn't getting completed as well. This week has been easier, since I threw my back out and have been down, forcing me to be a little more available. It has been easier this week to get it all done.
My final goal for the upcoming weeks is to leave the TV off a little more. We're still having a little trouble letting go of our media feast over Christmas break, and I need to reserve it for weekends when we finally gotten it all done, and maybe occasional afternoons when we get a certain goal completed on time. (We've been watching recordings of an old sitcom, a treat at lunch while we eat.) Yeah, I know. I really just need to starve that appetite and eliminate it. It's just so hard.
So there you have it. Our "progress report." And yes, I actually wrote about homeschooling on my homeschool blog! Imagine that!
This fall I started really enjoying read-alouds with my first grade son. One of the books we read was Charlotte's Web, and he loved it. So it was a real treat when we discovered that it was being made into a movie. Today I finally took him to see it. I had read reviews and knew it would be OK, but I was quite surprised with how very good it was. Although there was some license taken with the story to adapt it to film, the movie did a great job of keeping the integrity of the film. And I liked every character--even the rat Templeton. AJ thought he was very funny. One thing that came across a little more clearly to me in the movie were the themes of the book--humility, the miracle of sacrificial love, loving the lowly and outcasts.
Did AJ see all of this? I doubt it, but he LOVED the movie. And I was glad we could share it together, and even more glad that he felt rewarded for reading the book. I'm impressed with the way that Walden Media is making good books into quality films. Hmmm . . . maybe there is some hope for Hollywood. Don't worry, I'm not holding my breath.
Well, as of tomorrow we will have completed yet another first week of school. It has been the worst first week I think I've ever had--definitely a reason to hope that the Lord will so be in this year that amazing things will happen. I don't feel near as prepared as I planned to be, or as I usually am. But we have gotten through it anyway, and I'm sure everything will work out.
My general goal for this year is to really work on spiritual development, character issues, and training in helping more around the house, but it seems those are always my main goals and always the first things to get dropped in favor of academic work. I also have specific goals for each boy.
Josh: Josh will be taking some FL Virtual School classes, in hopes that he will have to be a little more responsible for his work and less accountable to me. He has already started Keyboarding and has an A right now. He would love to drop it, but I won't let him. Next week he starts Language Arts. I will be supplementing that with some additional spelling, grammar, and reading work. He is trying to finish Math-U-See Fractions (sorry, I can't ever remember those Greek letters!), and will move on to decimals and percents this year. Maybe we'll even get to Pre-Algebra! He is starting Latin this year too. Yeah, he's real thrilled.
Stephen: Stephen is finishing up MUS Gamma (hey! I remember that one! It's multiplication), then he'll start Division. He's doing Dr. Aardsma's spelling and math drills for drill work, and English for the Thoughtful Child 2 for Grammar and writing. He is most thrilled that we will be studying Chemistry this year, since he's had a bug for it for over a year now. We will do this together with Josh, as well as finish Greenleaf's Reformation sketches and The Story or the World, Early Modern History.
Andrew: My goal for Andrew is to make lots of progress through The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading. I'm hoping to have him most of the way through it, but as we have started back to it, he seems to be having a hard time again, so I'm going to go slowly at first. Hopefully he will pick up speed like he did last year. Besides reading, I want him to get through MUS Primer and Alpha, and maybe get into Beta. His "fun" science and history will just be reading about things together. I'm not sure he's even ready for what we will be doing with the older boys--certainly not the Chemistry! I'm especially excited to go through Discovering Jesus in Genesis with him. I have wanted to read that with one of my kids since it first came out.
I'm not sure what other activities we will be doing this year. I'm pretty committed to Scouts, but PE and the co-op we did last year at our church are maybe's this year. I will just have to see. PE will require the kids to be in three different classes at three different hours, and I just don't know if we can handle that! Plus most of our closest friends from last year aren't returning this year. So, we'll just have to wait and see about it.
I'll post pictures from our first week on my Living Amidst Boys blog. Just use the sidebar to go to it--I'm too tired to mess with the html for connecting you tonight!
OK, it is time to get serious about planning school. (Are you shocked? Did you think I had forgotten that this is my homeschool blog?) Of course, the first objective for me is to find the floor in my schoolroom, but after nagging myself all summer, I am finally working on that one. (And not going to bed tonight until it is done!)
At the end of the year last school year, I was feeling a little overwhelmed and discouraged. It was probably mostly just exhaustion, but I asked some friends for suggestions on books to read for encouragement. Wouldn't you know it, most of them I already had on my shelf! (Imagine that! The trick was finding the right shelf!) So this summer I have been rereading Mary Hood's book The Joyful Homeschooler. It has reminded me of the need to put aside old wineskins (means, methods and requirements) of public education and to seek new wineskins, God's lesson plans for my children.
My plan before the planning is to sit down with my two oldest boys and ask them what they see themselves doing in ten or fifteen years, then together making a list of all the things they have to know to do those things. I can see lots of benefits to approaching them this way. I am hoping that this will impress upon them the need for disciplined education, and will eliminate some of the complaints that I am already getting. (Is this one of those, in an ideal world . . . ideas?) I am also hoping it will help me to weed out course ideas that they really don't need to focus on right now. They might see some of the planning involved in setting and working toward goals. And perhaps they will gain a little of the vision of where we are going and of what possiblities God has for their futures.
I thought yesterday about how different corporate education (public and private) is from homeschooling. In a class, you just do what the teacher tells you to do. Now while I understand that I know a little more about what my boys need to learn to make it in life than they do, I also want them to have some freedom to explore the things they are interested and to not have too many subjects to learn at once. So I think I'm going to try this, and I'll let you know how it works.
One of the delights of my heart is seeing my children crave literature. Every month or so, we drive an hour to an out-of-town library. Yes, our town has it's own library, but the one we drive to has the most gigantic children's section I've ever seen! We were able to get cards for free, they have no late fees, and we get books for a month at a time. There is also no limit to the numbers of books we can check out, so we come home with a hundred (sometimes literally!).
Every now and then, life gets busy, and I don't have the chance to get down to Gainesville to return books. Two weeks ago, I got my overdue notice, so I knew it was high time to make the trip. We fit it in on Saturday. Usually I go with a list, but this time I didn't have time to prepare one, so we just wandered and checked out what we wanted. (OK, I did get some history supplements.) We came back with not only lots of books, but LOTS of books on tape. In only a few days, my boys have listened to two Hank the Cowdog books on CD each, and they are reading to themselves and each other ravenously! We are also listening to The Hobbit. Even Andrew, who is only just learning to read has been begging his brothers and I to read books to him, and he is enjoying the books on tape I got for him.
You know, it may cost me about $15 to go to the library each month, but I'm beginning to think it is money well spent. The funny thing is . . . we own TONS of books! But the library keeps us reading!
Today we took our monthly trip to the BIG library. It's about an hours drive away, but has the most fantastic borrowing policies I've ever encountered, so we go there. We can check out about a thousand books at once, so I usually let the boys pick out whatever they want to read. Andrew, who is five, and I usually pick out books together, but today I uncustomarily went without a list, and I was in a hurry, so I told him to pick out some books he liked. It wasn't long before I found him pulling off the shelf one of every book by Bill Peet that we haven't read yet. I laughed that he would pick that. He sure knows what he likes. And they must have been out of Curious George!
The kids never cease to leave me speechless. Now that he knows all the alphabet sounds, AJ has moved quickly on to reading. He is blending three letter words all over the place and want to try to read EVERYTHING! I haven't been able to convince him yet that he doesn't know enough rules yet to read it all, but I'm impressed at his trying. Fortunately, being the third kid has its benefits. I have lots of little easy-reader books around. And he is just tearing them up! I'm just wondering if he will be able to slow down for the reading lesson book!
OK, I must admit that whether it's shameless or not, I'm open to teaching with cheap thrills and entertaining methods. As I have mentioned in previous posts, my kindergartener has had a little difficulty learning the sounds and letters of the alphabet. The letter a week approach has worked very well for him, and now he is on such a roll that we are up to two letters a week with very little fluff. He's just in the mode now to learn them. He even started some blending this week--praise God! But tonight I opted for an easy method to add to the collection of tricks! A friend loaned me the Leap Frog Letter Factory video. He is down there watching it right now. And I even told him he can watch it anytime, anywhere, as many times as he wants! I just want to get him reading. So it may be lazy or the easy way out, or whatever, but if the Letter Factory gets him to where we can start learning to put the sounds together--I'm all for it!
I have been feeling lately like we need some changes in our home education program. I need to find time to do some other things, and need for the boys to be a little more self-directed. At the same time, I want to stay in touch enough to know they're getting it without using lots of tests or workbooks. What a dilemma! Any suggestions?
I am going to try to get back on a schedule this week. I don't do well with them, but at least trying to maintain one may give me some of the time I feel I need. I'm also looking at the boys subjects to see if I can make some changes there. I have thought of doing science and history with them only once a week, then having them just read about what we are studying the other days. Don't know what I'm worried about, they know more about history than most high school students, and probably science too! Anyway, I need to pray about this and see how the Lord will direct me.
Today the boys had a test on the locations of all the major bones. I have neglected a lot of rote memory work until recently, especially with my oldest son, so I was expecting a lot of protests. Instead they have studied like crazy for it! Why, you ask? Instead of giving them a paper test, I let them use notecards and tape, sticking the bone names all over each other! It was really fun (and funny!). Could you see a room full of kids sticking "humerous" and "phalanges" all over? I LOVE homeschooling! To see photos, go the this link: Living Amidst Boys
Educating my youngest son Andrew has proved a bit more challenging than working with the other two. They took to the letters like fish to water. I don't remember really having to work with either of them on ABC's; they just got it. Andrew has really struggled with the alphabet. I discovered he is VERY sequential, so anything done without a sequence requires a lot of effort, and I started teaching letters with his Handwriting Without Tears curriculum based on common letter shapes. I do remember with my older two discovering that there were "obvious" things that we hadn't learned when we began to have evaluations done--like writing their names, or the date, or even knowing their address. So I have nudged AJ a little on these. He was very proud of himself when he could write his name "AJ" on his own. Several days ago I casually said,"Hmm, now we need to work on your whole first name." I decided to keep it low key, so I wrote it on our really cool chalk board, up high, and then showed it to him and suggested he copy it if he wanted. So he copied . . . and copied . . . and copied. I keep finding it written on the board--ANDREW. Today I took him to a friends house to spend the night, and he sat down with a pad and from memory wrote his name! I was so surprised and impressed. I was also pleased at what a big deal my friend made over it. Isn't it great when you get a little glimpse of progress?
I've always hoped I would raise kids who love to read. Unfortunately, I have allowed too many things to compete for this love, things like television, Playstation, and such. It's not that I let them have unlimited time with the electronic things, but I have given them enough to feed an apetite for it, and to quench an apetite for reading. But lately something has changed. I first saw it in my son Stephen. He is now reading voraciously. There are days he keeps a book in his hands, and I've actually had to say "put the book down so you can . . . . " I cringe as I say it, because I really just want to tell him to read to his heart's content. Now my oldest is reading a great deal too. I started wondering what I've done right.
One of the things that I think has helped is using the reading baskets suggested by The Well Trained Mind. A friend uses this approach, so I adopted it as well. I keep a big plastic bin filled wth books relating to our history and science topics for the month. I try to include a good variety of biographies, non-fiction, fiction, and even picture books. Another thing I have done "right" is to read to them. A lot. I really worked on this habit at the end of the year last year, and it is starting to pay off. They really love to snuggle up with a good book. And recently I started selecting books for my oldest son that went along well with his interest. He has been fascinted for a couple of years now with the whole Narnia, Lord of the Rings, etc. kind of fantasy stories, so a couple of months ago I got him a book from Lloyd Alexander's Black Cauldron series. He has really enjoyed them. I just added the Book It goal setting, and I think that is part of the new interest as well. Hopefully they won't always have to read for pizza. I suppose it's like anything else, if I reinforce a habit for reading, and they discover they actually enjoy it, they'll keep doing it. At least I hope it works that way!
We are a family of four . . . plus a dog and a goldfish. We live just outside Jacksonville, Florida. I am divorced, something I never expected to be. Just after my husband left, I thought I would have to put my three boys in school and go back to work. But God quickly impressed upon my heart that He had called me to homeschool. Just because my husband had rejected God's call to lead our family didn't necessarily change His call on me. So I promised I would continue to homeschool as long as He provided for me to do so. Now, almost four years later, I am still staying home and juggling the challenges of being a single mom and training my children. In that time, God has taught me amazing things about what trusting Him means and what He will do if we believe Him and obey. I have also had the priveledge of serving others because I am at home.
As I mentioned, I have three boys. Josh, age 11, is the lion. He leads with determination, and sometimes force! He is very auditory and scares me with his ability to remember the things he has heard. I definitely have to watch what I say around him! Stephen is eight years old and is a beaver. He is very resourceful and creative, and is stronger than his size would indicate. Although he often loses focus, he probably does so because he is dreaming up something much more important than math or chores. My five-year-old, Andrew is an otter. He is always into something new, will probably create a mess to clean up, but in spite of that is fun to watch and be with. He's not much interested in school except that he thinks it is something big people do, and he wants to keep up with his brothers. Life would be quite boring without him.
We use a hodge podge of resources for our homeschool program. I tend to be spontaneous and impulsive, and I don't like to be bound to a schedule. I have learned over the years to use schedules and lesson plans to get where I want to be, but I still like to have some control over what we do. I have also found each child to be so different in learning style and strengths that I adapt what we use to the kid who needs it. I love the Charlotte Mason approach, but see value more and more in classical education as well. I have used unit studies a lot in the past, but am now finding that at times we need a text book or work book to help us with a rough area. So I just experiement and use what works for us at the time.
I love homescooling-most days anyway. I have actually been accused of clinging to homeschooling because it is what Lisa wants to do. My defense? Just because Lisa loves it and wants to do it doesn't mean God doesn't!
