The bananas were piling up.
They were looking awfully black.
I finally had baking soda.
And flour.
And all the other ingredients at the same time!
All this adds up to the perfect opportunity to show the kids how to make banana bread.
With my handy assistant Dane (who has made his share of banana bread on his own), we showed the younger kids how to crack eggs and beat them, how to measure dry and liquid ingredients, how to mash the bananas, and the rest of the process.
5. The water was going out just before I made supper. This was filling up at the lowest point....in the garage. I was glad to be able to fill a few buckets and pitchers full before it went off completely.
These days we've been trying to turn this messy yard into something productive. Here we are trying to get all the big rocks out. Dane waiting, and waiting to plant seeds. (He helped get rocks out too)
Heidi..."I wanna help too"
Did I mention Dane is growing like a weed? er, tomato plant? :)
Arel was the photographer on that day, he's 9.
Liam (who is 5 1/2 now) was off with Dad on a field trip...really...to a field! But he came back from digging around in the field with a caterpillar sting on the finger. It hurt really bad but he's really brave and woke up the next morning feeling much better.
Homeschooling. That's right. This blog is also about homeschooling. :)
I was about to write that we are getting in the swing of things with school again...sort of. But then I realized that during this period of our life, for some reason, we just "do school" whenever God allows us. Like last week, we had so many people in our house that time in the books was almost non-existent. But that is what God had for us last week. (I am just now realizing that and ok with it) The boys were great sports about it too! Thanks boys!
So! When we aren't entertaining people or running off to help with this or go get that, in the mornings the boys and I have been mainly focusing on Science, History and Math with some reading and writing thrown in there. A couple weeks ago we finished the Apologia "Astronomy" book. Wow! It was so great and we ALL loved it. It looks like we are going to have to do something different until later this year when we are in the U.S. and can buy the rest of the Apologia grade school books. But we have enough books in our library about all kinds of animals and plants so that should keep us busy. Plus we are about to plant a garden so that will get us into Botany.
In the meantime we are trying to get through Story of the World Ancients history book. We are reading all about the Greeks right now. I'd like to finish it and get well into the second book before we head Stateside. We'll see what God has planned for us though. :)
Math is going well as usual for the boys. (Love that Math U See!)
Dane is into his second year using Easy Grammar and I am so pleased with it! Arel will be starting it soon too.
One of our other goals right now is to do a LOT more reading together and individually.
So there's our homeschool report.
I need to remember to take pictures as kids do assignments,etc.
Besides more school (hopefully) this week we are also needing to make a door for the bathroom, get the ground ready for planting a small garden and babysitting our partners' cat and dog.
I'm also wishing I were near some good will stores and ladies from church to gather some basic kitchen items together for a young Quechua couple. Right now they are living near their parents and cooking and eating with them. However they really want to get into their own place and set up their own kitchen as a start of being their own family. This week I need to track down the items they need since they have no money to get these themselves.
Well, Shane and boys just came home from town so I better go. Happy Monday everyone!
Two days ago Liam found this in our garage and wanted to keep it so we could watch the what would come out.
The following morning (yesterday) he woke up and went to check on it and there was the butterfly!
Thank you so much! I started blogging with a little fear and trepidation but have come to love blogging with HSB.com and have made some friends here and really enjoy the encouragement of reading along with other homeschool moms (some who are also missionaries!) and knowing I'm not the only one out there doing this homeschool thing!
It's really like that sometimes though isn't it? Satan likes us to believe that...that we are the only ones _____, you can fill in the blank. The only one teaching her kids at home, the only one learning another language, the only one cooking and cleaning and keeping the home, the only one following what God's led you and your husband to do, the only one...anything, you name it. If he can get you to believe you are alone then he's happy. But we aren't alone! And we ARE more than conquerors in Christ! Lately the Lord has been encouraging me with Truth from the Word and encouraging me to focus on Truth and ignore the lies. One thing that encourages that for me is places like HSB where I can read how God is working in other homeschool families' lives and read what God is teaching them from the Word as well.
I appreciate all you ladies! Keep on encouraging each other!
Philippians 4:8 - "...Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise."
Assignment: This would be a good week to tell about your worst struggles with a lifestyle of homeschooling. Tell about something you’ve struggled with and how God’s mercies gave us the strength to get past it. Also, share any curriculum/homeschool methods that have been a relief to you, i.e., a particular Teacher’s Manual or Homeschooling method that’s been easier for your family. Talk about how you felt when the burden was lifted and Oh, What a Relief it is!
Memory Verse: Psalms 55:22 - Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee; He shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.
I think the hardest thing has been homeschooling in a place where I have little support near me. My parents and other family members I know are supportive of us homeschooling and many friends back home from our church and other places are behind our decision to homeschool our kids on the mission field. Even our co-workers here are supportive but there is no one near us that actually homeschools. That is hard. I grew up with there being homeschool families all around us at our church, in our town or near us so that my parents and us kids were able to encourage each other in what we were doing.
I don’t have that here and that has been one of the worst struggles for me in homeschooling.
One of the biggest ways God has encouraged me personally was to help me find Homeschool Blogger. Articles written by homeschool parents are encouraging but blogs tend to be much more open about what daily life is really like for us homeschool Moms. It is a relief to read that I am not the only one struggling with teaching their son to read or get another son interesting in doing penmanship. It’s a relief to find ideas and tips that don’t cost me a lot and help me as I plan our homeschool.
Even though there is nothing that can replace time spent face to face with another Mom who’s homeschooling to talk about and encourage each other, it has been so great to be able to do that to online. Reading and commenting back and forth with other Moms on their blogs, asking questions and sharing advise on forums like at The Homeschool Lounge, emailing with new friends…the Lord has really blessed me with that encouragement! I also makes me appreciate my friends more who I know back home that homeschool and take the time to email or call them to encourage each other. I have come to realize the importance of speaking up and sharing what’s really going on with our homeschooling so others can pray for me and for me to ask how they are doing and lend a listening ear when they need to share their struggles.
The Lord also blessed us this year with a missionary family that came to live here! They were here from Jan. to July and we loved it! They have kids close to the ages of our kids so it was a chance for them all to spend time with kids from their own culture who speak their language and are the same thing…missionary kids and homeschool kids. And of course we Moms just loved being able to talk homeschool! She encouraged me so much and shared her advise about curriculum they use and even left some of their books with us when they moved. It was just what we needed this year! I love how God knows that and brings along what we need just when we need it.
The other main area I have struggled with in homeschooling is curriculum. Having been homeschooled I thought I would just use the same books my Mom used. I really loved the way she taught with KONOS and Saxon Math especially. For younger grades I really felt that the Phonics program she used for my sister was great and the one method for teaching math to little kids was so great…but I was frustrated with some of them as I began to use them. I still think they are great curriculum but I was running into all kinds of problems. KONOS relies heavily on getting and reading books from the library. That worked at first when we were still in the United States but living in Peru that was just not going to be possible. I fought with it for a while trying to make it work, but without the access to all those books it just wasn’t working.
There were struggles and issues with the other books as well. Mainly because some of the things suggested or the number of books needed made them not very portable. As a missionary family first heading to the field we needed to think about space!
So I spent a lot of time looking into what other curriculum was out there and trying to figure out what might work for us.
That is when I found Math U See for math. I was wanting something that taught in a similar style as Saxon Math and yet had manipulatives for the early grades especially.
Math U See does and soon after we began using it they came out with DVDs. This has been so helpful for me since math is a subject I struggle with and was worried about teaching. It’s nice to have someone else do the explaining and then I can just help the kids follow the instructions given.
Alpha-Phonics was a book suggested by my Aunt and it has been great so far with my first two kids. It’s also just one book. We have also used this book many times in tutoring our Peruvian friends in English pronunciation. I highly recommend this book for that use! And really it is great for teaching any age of person to read.
The rest of our curriculum that we use now, we found through trial and error.When it came to penmanship my oldest was struggling so much. It was so much work to write and he just had no motivation for it. I did a LOT of reading online to find something that might work for us and we ordered “Italics Handwriting” to try. WHAT a relief! The kids love those books and they have nice italic style handwriting now.
History and Science were a struggle for me to find just what we wanted. Shane and I discovered after spending hours discussing how we wanted to teach that what we really wanted was something in the classical style. Teaching history chronologically and teaching science in somewhat the same way but with the main idea of studying a subject thoroughly. After more research I found Story of the World and we’ve been using that now for almost 2 years and love it! Then this year our new homeschooling friends who were here shared what they were using for Science….Apologia. Wow! That is just what we were looking for! So we are borrowing their books this year and will be buying them for ourselves next year when we are in the U.S. to bring back with us.
And while I am sharing about curriculum, we also have started using Writing Strands and find that it is very good for giving a bit of a plan for how to go with creative writing. Something we plan to focus more on this year.
So that is some of the way the Lord has encouraged me and helped me in my journey of homeschooling. I share it all not only to remind myself of all these things but to also encourage others who might struggle with some of these same things. I would also say that I spent a lot of time pouring out my heart to God about all of this and he answered me! And he did it in ways I least expected.
A verse that ties in with this and has been a huge encouragement to me lately is Ephesians 3:20 – “Now glory be to God! By his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope.”
I was cleaning out the cupboards where I've been hording cans when the kids decided they made great instruments when banged on with chopsticks.
Ideas came out for other uses as well.
Over at Tamara's blog: Training Hearts
I noticed last year they would sometimes do "Homeschool Pajama Day" on the last Friday of the month.
I have been wanting to do it but we've had things going on the past few months on that last Friday so this month we are just now getting to that.
Today was Homeschool Pajama Day at our house!
Here's the boys in their PJs!
First we ate our chocolate oatmeal. Then Arel finished his Pac-Man Maze while I read the boys more of "Johnny Texas" (This link I just found gives a quote from each chapter and a child's drawing for each chapter...this is a great book to read to boys!)
Graph paper is the standard notebook paper in Peru (I think in most Latin American countries) instead of college rule like we are used to in the U.S. They sell notebooks of all shapes and sizes and all in graph paper! It's one of Arel's favorite papers to use for drawing because it makes it easy to draw things more exactly and in the case of making a Pac-Man Maze it's perfect. Notice the yellow dots...those are the "Pac Dots" that Pac-Man has to eat before the ghosts get him. Arel is BIG into Pac-Man video games and after he plays he loves to draw the mazes or "adventures" as he remembers them onto paper.
After reading we worked on Math. Mainly Dane worked on Math since he has a goal to finish his Math book by the end of April. He actually has it all planned out that doing two pages a day including tests he'll finish on April 10th. :) So we he did his Math and Arel and I worked on one or two problems but mainly Arel kept drawing while I downloaded pictures onto the computer. :)
Then we pulled out Dane's Monopoly game! Dane, Arel, Liam and I played with Heidi watching and playing with the left over playing pieces: the dog and the shoe. We didn't play to finish but just went several rounds until we all started getting tired of it. Dane and I counted up everyone's assets in order to determine the winner. Results: Arel: $1, 505
Mom: $1,729
Dane: $1,866
and the winner.....(doo, doo, da, doo!)
LIAM: $2,094!!!!
Liam loves games like this and he just bought up property every chance he got and never seemed to land anywhere where he had to pay much.
Afterwards Dane decided to count up all the Monopoly money to see how much this game had. Total was: $16,410!
Then it was lunchtime and time for chores and such. The boys are mostly still running around in PJs. It was fun and we may try doing this every month.
The longer we homeschool the more I get comfortable with what is normal for our family. So what's normal for us? Variety is the first word that comes to mind. Change would be another word. Doing what we need to do at the time.
A new missionary friend is lending me "Teaching the Trivium" by Harvey and Laurie Bluedorn to read and as I browsed through some of the beginning yesterday I was so encouraged by this comment:
"If you try to do homeschool like a classroom school - using their course of study, their scope and sequence, their curricula, their class format, their teaching methods -then you will probably buckle under the burden and give up. And you will be right - that kind of schooling does not fit in a homeschool. Rare is the pair of parents who have the time and talents to bear such burdens. It will truly test your commitment to homeschooling. The great advantage of tutoring your own children at home is that much of what goes on in classroom schooling is rendered completely unnecessary."
I relate to that comment! While I realize there are homeschool parents out there who love to do things more structured or more like a classroom school and do really well with it and their kids love it and thrive I am not one of those parents and my kids do NOT thrive on something like that. But that's the great thing about homeschooling your own children! You don't have to fit in any certain mold, unless that works for you. And thanks to a lot of great curriculum out there I can find what works for each kid and go with that!
So for the homeschool update today I'd like to say, for the record, that both Dane and Arel are loving Math U See and thriving on that method. It's a real relief for me and it keeps them going. It's also nice to have a subject that comes easier for them so we can spend more time focusing on things that are hard. I have discovered something about my boys though.... Dane likes the structure and order of doing his workbook pages for Math but he likes to do it at his own pace. Now his pace is pretty fast but were I to give him a time limit on it for some reason (even if I say "In 1/2 hour see how much of this page you can get done") it really stresses him out and he most likely will put it away because he is so worried about the time or something that he can't focus and do the work. So when it's time for Math he just goes to it and gets it done.
Arel is my boy who does everything at a slower pace which is totally fine and I am happy to let him take all the time he needs to do his Math. However, he does not do well being left to just do his workbook page like Dane is. He could easily sit there all morning and not finish the page if left by himself. Not because he doesn't understand it...oh no! I've checked into that and do regularly but he usually has the idea down and knows what to do. The problem is more that he is bored or something and needs encouragement in different ways. It needs to be interesting. Sometimes it is to sit beside him and talk him through it. Sometimes it is to have him do the problems orally. We also use a timer. I had been having him set the timer for 15 minutes and do as much as he can in that time, stop when the timer goes off and take a 5 minute break and go again for 15 more minutes until the page is done. It sort of worked but he was again finding it to be not stimulating enough or he was thinking up some amazing thing to draw!
So this week we've been trying something else with the timer. I told him to do the first line of problems (5 double or triple digit subtraction problems) and see if he could get them done in 5 minutes. At 4 minutes he hollered out that he had done two lines (10 problems)! So I told him to take a 1 minute break and then go for 5 minutes more and see if he could finish the next 10 problems. Sure enough at 4 minutes he finished them. This left just two word problems which took him maybe 5 minutes to do and there he was DONE in 15 minutes with Math for the day! We were both celebrating!!
Now if I could just figure out something like that to help him with reading and writing. Hmmmm...
I'll keep ya posted.
Apart from Math which we do almost every day, the boys and I have been focusing more on English Grammar. They are both a bit behind for their age (but really who's worried at this age!) so we're working through "Easy Grammar Grade 4" with Dane and "Language Lessons for the Well-Trained Mind" with Arel. Because they are slightly older and maybe going through something that's slightly under them they are grasping the concepts and memorizing things quickly. So really maybe these books are just the right ones for right now! I think so!
