Baruch haShem Adonai - Homeschool Blogger

We are back.

Mon, 8 Oct 2007 04:46:00 -0500

The past year has brought about many changes. In August of 2005, my beloved mother-in-law passed away and my then-husband began a downhill slide. In October he walked out of his job of 13 years, stayed unemployed for four months (depleting our savings) and distancing himself from his family. We thought he'd be okay when he finished therapy and started to do freelance work for a toy company, making production films and other works for a group of ministers who owned and ran the company.

Then he found a steady job in Gothenburg, 200 miles away. But the job turned out to be editing film for a large Swedish pornography distributor and the toy company dismissed him. How could they not? He moved to Gothenburg and "visited" us on the weekend, promising that this job was just a steppingstone (because he knew I was against it), that he would move us out to be with him as soon as we could afford it and everything would be "fine".

What I didn't know was that during the week, he was living as a single man while I was struggling alone to raise the girls and battling the local officials for the right to home school. After three months, we followed him to Gothenburg to find out that he had no intention of leaving his job. His single, 37yo supervisor had become his new best friend and he began working long hours and becoming secretive about "his" life.

In September, he called me from work to tell me he wanted a divorce. He stated that he didn't want to have the "burden and responsibility of a family" anymore and that he wanted to "go on with [his] life while [he] was still young enough to enjoy it". He told me he never wanted any more than his two eldest children (from his first marriage) and that he felt no responsibility toward us. He left us with no money, no job, living in a new and strange place with no one to turn to.

I had a meeting with a lawyer, who explained that in Sweden divorce is a no-fault action and even though he is legally required to pay maintenance until we are divorced, if he chooses not to there is no sense in going to court because it will cost me more in legal fees than I would get to live on. At that time, I also found out that he was receiving nearly twice as much salary as he told me he was getting and had been getting raises of clothing, money and a new laptop ($3000) disguised as "personal gifts" (which legally, I couldn't touch).

He chose not to provide for us, but God in His mercy worked the situation so that he HAD to pay the rent. A friend from the States offered to loan us the money to buy tickets to visit my family while the divorce was pending and he signed over custody of the girls to me. God has been with me and the girls through it all.

I don't know where we go from here - whether we'll settle in the States or go back to Europe to live (it's the only life the girls have known and the culture shock of being in the USA is incredible) - but I do know that God will continue to be with us no matter what. In the meantime, I am looking for work on both continents and we will go where I find a job. The girls are enjoying homeschooling without a hassel and getting to know their American family. Baruch haShem.

Local Edibles - Part 1

Sat, 24 Jun 2006 06:43:00 -0500

As a part of our nature studies, the girls and I are gathering photos and information about plants and herbs that grow naturally in our area. Quite frankly, it got big. As a Native American interested in alternative medicine, I knew the uses of some of these plants, but we stumbled onto a wealth of info of which I had no idea! It was going to be just one post, but I've decided to make this an

ongoing thing.

Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica) -

Stinging Nettles are perennials (they live for several years). They grow in practically any weight of soil, in semi-shade (light woodland) or no shade, but the soil must be moist. They grow best in moist forests and prefer shady disturbed areas where they grow in patches.

Nettles are one of the first plants to appear in the Spring. Each of its leaves are about 10 cm (4 inches) long, roughly heart-shaped and have large teeth around the leaf edge. They also have tiny hollow hairs on the main stem, leaf stems and on veins on both upper and lower sides of the leaves.

When a human brushes by the plant, the tiny hollowhairs break off and release formic acid (the same acid ants have in their saliva glands), which irritates the skin and causes small itchy spots to appear. The degree and length of itchiness varies from person to person. Applying a paste of baking soda made with a little water soothes the sting for most people if applied to the site immediately. Human spit rubbed into the itchy area will help if baking soda is not handy.

Uses.
Only use young leaves and wear stout gloves when harvesting them to prevent being stung. For medicinal purposes, the plant is best harvested in May or June as it is coming into flower and dried for later use.

Leaves are cooked as a potherb and added to soups.
They can also be dried for winter use (usually as a tea).
Old leaves should not be eaten, as they can irritate the kidneys.
Extracted chlorophyll is used as a colouring agent in foods and medicines.
Leaf juice can be used as a rennet substitute for cheese making.
Nettle beer is brewed from the young shoots.

Medicinal uses.

Once cooked or dried, nettles are easily digested.
High in minerals (especially iron) and vitamins (especially A and C).
Used in the home as a herbal remedy and nutritious addition to the diet.
Leaf tea traditionally used as a cleansing tonic and blood purifier.
Often used in the treatment of hay fever and arthritis.
An infusion is very valuable in stemming internal bleeding.
Used to treat anaemia, excessive menstruation and haemorrhoids.
Externally used to treat skin complaints, especially eczema.
The fresh leaves can be rubbed onto the skin to treat rheumatism.
An infusion of fresh leaves is healing and soothing as a lotion for burns.
It is used externally in the treatment of chickenpox and bruises.
The root has a beneficial effect upon enlarged prostate glands.

Other uses.

Fibre from the stems is used for making string, cloth, and good quality paper.
Pulp is used in the manufacture of sugar, starch, protein and ethyl alcohol.
An oil obtained from the seeds can be used as lamp oil.
Leaves are also an excellent addition to the compost heap.
Soaked for 7 - 21 days in water, leaves make a very nutritious liquid feed for plants.
This feed is both insect repellent and a good foliar feed.
The growing plant increases the essential oil content of other nearby plants, making them more resistant to insect pests. Works best with fruit trees.
Flies are repelled by the plant.
A bunch of freshly cut stems is useful as a repellent in food cupboards.
If plant juice is rubbed into small cracks of leaky wooden tubs, the tub becomes watertight again.
A hair wash made from infused leaves is used as a tonic and antidandruff treatment.
A yellow dye is obtained from the root when boiled with alum.

I thought of this plant mainly as a pest, deterring the gathering of berries and keeping us from walking freely in the woods. I plant to gather a good deal of it this year and not waste such a precious consumable resource!

On Parenthood

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 02:56:00 -0500

I love reading Dad's Corner; Steve Walden's blog never fails to touch my heart. His last post tells of a weekly fishing trip he's taken with his 7 year old son and his father. It encompasses blessings of loving generations, a real father's heart and the best way to teach a child. It brought tears to my eyes.

I love my husband. However, he comes from a culture where children are separated from their parents at age one and families are little more than room mates. I am American and come from a culture where family is second only to God. We have a 14 year old daughter just stepping out into womanhood, a 12 year old daughter on the verge and a 4 year old daughter who is autistic and requires so much attention. It breaks my heart to have to stand by and watch the gap between him and our daughters grow day by day.

The eldest is at an age where she needs a hero-dad more than ever; someone who will listen to what she has to say but offer protection from things that are still scary to a young girl. They are so alike, and perhaps that is why they seem to argue all the time. She's becoming resentful.

PreTeen Girl is Papa's little computer nerd. They both love music and computer games and messing around with graphics in Photoshop (yes, my 12 yo can "do" Photoshop). And yet I can't get the two of them together.

He has spent so little time with the Amazing Danibear , her level of tolerance for him is that she will allow him to take her to the store, because she knows he will buy her candy and she adores riding in the car. Last night, I was working on some text and she wanted me to read her favorite book, "Baby Koala Finds A Home". He offered to read it and she screamed; I handed him the book, hoping to coax her into it but she grabbed it from him and ran!

Please don't get me wrong; Gunnar is a good provider, a decent man with a gentle heart. He blesses each one on Shabbat (and you should see their eyes light up when he does). He tries to give them material things that he thinks is their hearts' desires. I know that if I dishonor my husband, I dishonor myself. But what I'm wanting to stress here is that daughters need daddys too; I can only give him gentle prodding and pray much in silence that he will one day be the father God created him to be. In the meantime, I see the loneliness and hurt in our daughter's eyes ...

Please, Dads, be involved with your daughters. They don't need your gifts so much as they need the gift of YOU.

Back again.

Wed, 19 Jul 2006 01:59:00 -0500

We've been so busy with tending the garden, foraging and life in general that I have a lot of entries begun and very few finished! The time passes so quickly...

FIVE WEEKS left until school "begins"! I know; school is a year-round thing. What I mean is that we have five weeks to go until the public school year begins in Sweden, which puts us on a certain timetable since payday here is only once a month. Also, whether or not we are allowed to homeschool is greatly affected by how much our school is similar to public school.

I'm not kidding. More than one family with whom I've had contact since moving to the west coast of Sweden at the end of the last school year has told me they were approved and not harassed since they followed the public school calendar and bought and used the same school texts. You can actually purchase the real texts here. It's not cheap, but providing the funds is not my "worry", but His.

We've decided to take other parents' advice -- mostly. DH contacted local schools and found a Christian school that not only gave us the name of their text publishers, they provided us with which classes, what hours and schedule our daughters would have if they were going to the school! Baruch haShem!

The requirements for "ground school" in Sweden:

Nine years of education (instead of 12, as in the States)
185 days per year/4 hours per day minimum
2/3 of classes MUST be held indoors
Six categories of subjects:
- Basic skills (English, Swedish, Maths)
- Practical/aesthetic skills (Home Ec, Crafts, Economy)
- Social Science (History, Geography, Civics)
- Natural Science (Biology, Physics)
- Second Language (French, German or Spanish)
- Elective. (Art, Music, etc.)

I broke it down to this:

	Monday	Tuesday	We'n'sday	Thursday	Friday
9:00-9:25	Bible	Bible	Bible	Bible	Bible
9:25-9:50	Geography	Geography	Geography	Civics	Civics
9:50-10:15	Arithmetic	Arithmetic	Arithmetic	Arithmetic	Arithmetic
10:15-10:30	Break	Break	Break	Break	Break
10:30-11:00	Reading	Reading	Reading	Reading	Reading
11:00-11:25	Spelling	Science	Science	Science	Spelling
11:25-11:50	Grammar	Grammar	Grammar	Grammar	Grammar
11:50-12:15	Art/music	Art/music	Handicraft	Handicraft	Handicraft
12:15-13:15	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	Lunch
13:15-13:40	Lang. 2	Lang. 2	Lang. 2	Lang. 2	Lang. 2
13:40-14:05	Civics	History	History	History	Home Economics
14:05-14:30	Gym/health	Gym/health	Gym/health	Gym/health	Home Economics

Explanations:

Seatwork time is reduced from 6.5 to 4.5 hours.
Equal time will be spent on Swedish and English.
Gym is the last class so it can be done outside.
Handicrafts are useable lifetime skills: sewing, carpentry, etc.
Home economics used as part of preparation for Shabbat.
Study of local flora is a required part of Science.
Bible is increased from one day a week to every day.
"Hands-on" classes are alternated with "cerebral" ones.
We're using Ambleside's Art and Composer studies.
Classes are shorter and cover a wider range of subjects.

Unfortunately, unschooling is never approved in Sweden; otherwise, that's what we'd be doing. On the other hand, it will take a while to "de-school" the girls and they are more secure with a tentative schedule. It also reassures the BOE that we're doing some kind of organized schooling.

An explanation.

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 15:08:00 -0500

I'm sorry I haven't been online for such a long time. Last Autumn, my MIL died suddenly. She was the only parent DH knew and they were friends as well as family. We were all devastated but DH had an emotional breakdown and was out of work for three whole months. All of our savings were depleted and we lost our Internet until very recently.

However, the Lord used our circumstances for the good; we cannot move back to the States for a while, but He led Gunnar to a job on the west coast, near the rest of his family. We only saw him on the weekends February through April but now instead of a barren apartment we are living in a cozy house; instead of pavement to play on, the kids have a big yard and I have garden beds. Best of all, we are all together and healing; DH found a job with so much less stress. It is a part time job that pays as much as his previous full-time job did, which leaves him lots of opportunities to do the freelance work his creative soul craves.

Thank You, Father for all who commented in the interim. Thank you, everyone; we are back.

Boy, have I been busy!

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 16:48:00 -0600

I can't believe I haven't posted in a month! A lot of things have happened, including the decision to move out of Sweden and back to the United States. I will sit down and post the complete story as soon as I possibly can.

A Field Trip

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 05:02:00 -0500

Tomorrow we are taking a trip to Stockholm. It's not by choice; it is necessary to renew DD11's and DD13's passports and to obtain Ella's first. Today we had Ella's picture taken at a photography studio, because there is no way to get our almost 4yo autistic darling to have them taken in a photo booth (as the older girls will do in Stockholm). Gunnar and DD13 biked over and Ella's hair was sooooo flat, but it is a decent picture of her face, so I can live with it.

The trip tomorrow is going to be an interesting one. We are borrowing the car of a friend of Gunnar's (in exchange for some help with the man's sailboat recently) and driving 350 km ONE WAY. That's a 217.5 mile trip one way; at 105 kph (65mph) it should take us around 4.5 hours each way (that's including road breaks for the kids). But that's not the fun part; we have to be at the American Embassy around 10:00 AM -- which means we have to get the kids up at 4AM and leave by 5AM to make sure we're there on time. *BLEAH*

The girls and Gunnar are taking a nap, while I stay up with Ella. Ella and I can sleep more on the trip.

Today we watched a special on National Geographic (channel) about the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991.

From NASA's earth observatory website:

"The explosion of Mt. Pinatubo on June 15, 1991, just 60 miles northwest of Manila, was the world’s largest volcanic eruption in nearly 80 years. Due to active monitoring of the volcano by scientists and warnings of an impending eruption, only a few hundred people died during the main eruption. Most casualties were caused by the collapse of buildings under the weight of rain-soaked ash and the lahars spawned by the eruption.

But the hazards posed by Mt. Pinatubo continue to this day, even though the volcano has remained quiet since 1991. Volcanologists estimate that damaging lahar flows may continue for another 10 years. More than 5 cubic kilometers (1 cubic mile) of volcanic ash and debris were deposited on the slopes around Mt. Pinatubo. Entire river valleys were filled. Each year part of that new volcanic layer is sent churning downslope by the heavy monsoon rains and typhoons that hit central Luzon between June and October. Scientists estimate that as much as 60 percent of the rocky debris from the eruption will eventually erode into the lowlands around the volcano. That’s enough sediment to cover the state of Rhode Island in a layer 1 meter deep."

Will write more tomorrow.

Update

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 10:11:00 -0500

I know it's been a long time since I posted; I am undergoing some heavy "artillery" from the enemy right now and I am exhausted pretty early these days.

October is a busy month, with Yom T'ruah, Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret (Biblical Feast days) all within a few weeks of each other. The girls and I have been spending the days on the histories of each individual feast, review work and lots and lots of reading.

I also spent some time writing out the girls' subject preferences. They tell me they are satisfied with how we do our school but I want them to be eager to do their studies, not just resigned to doing them. And so we are going to concentrate on the areas of greatest interest, with our regular Bible study, reading and math (the important basic stuff).

We also started our nature walks again, gathering leaves to paint and print and look up on the Internet. We love to walk and talk, trying to guess species of trees by their leaves, seeing how many species of birds we can identify and what kinds of clouds are in the sky (including the types of weather they usher in). We collect specimens, bring them home and write about them in our notebooks. At night we look at the stars and the planets. A great way to learn.

Today, of course, is Friday. Aside from the regular preparations, we are trying to find a recipe for the old fashioned cookies that come in tins during the Yul season -- the ones with anise/anisette flavoring. You know the kind? They are shortbread cookies, I think. Later on, I'll let you know how our project turned out and elaborate more about how I'm "tweaking" our curriculum.

For stargazers!

Sun, 9 Oct 2005 16:03:00 -0500

I just "discovered" this while doing my Sunday work -- preparing for next week's seatwork. If you don't live in Florida or aren't fortunate enough to have this program carried on your local PBS, you're still in luck. Jack Horkheimer's Stargazer shows are here to download to your RealPlayer.

The "shows" are little 1 or 5-minute presentations on what you will be able to witness in the skies (star-wise, anyway) for the coming week. No special equipment needed here; your naked eyeballs will do. Just to warn you, the man has a bad hairpiece and is, as my eldest remarked, "out there, Mom". But his pure enthusiasm will win you over.

If you and/or the kids love to look at the stars, this is a must-see.

Vetlanda - Pt. 1

Sat, 8 Oct 2005 06:54:00 -0500

When I moved to Sweden, homeschooling as we know it did not exist here (or not to my knowledge, at least). I was told that the schools were progressive and that religion was not a problem. With those assurances and the hopes that going to public school would help our daughters make a smoother adjustment to Swedish culture, I placed them in the Swedish school system. The first few years, they seemed to do well. There were a few small problems (mostly their treatment by other children) but that comes with immaturity and can be found anywhere.

Soon we moved to a house in the country and the girls had to change schools. The school in this town was everything short of wonderful; at one point, my elder daughter, who was nine at the time, was being bullied by a girl in her class. Mikaela pushed DD9 down in the playground, made fun of her, knocked her things into puddles, and with the help of her six siblings, even followed her and her sister home, taunting them and throwing things at them. Emboldened by their success at school, these children even entered our yard and tried to start fights or steal toys, but I promptly put a stop to it.

DD9 got little sympathy and no protection whatsoever from her teacher. The girls have been taught not to act against another person; that when there are problems instead of continuing the argument/fight, they should tell an adult in charge. DD9 did so, only to have the teacher brush her off. "Stop complaining." She was told. "All you American children are spoiled."

At the lowest point of the year, I told DD9 to stay away from Mikaela. The teacher demanded to know why DD9 wouldn't play with "all the children". When DD9 informed her that I had instructed her to stay out of the girl's reach, the teacher replied, "Your mother does NOT run my classroom." Not only was DD9 forced to play with the terrorist, to make a point, the teacher seated her WITH Mikaela in class and ordered them to do their schoolwork together. When I complained, no action was taken. If anything, the situation became worse.

My two happy little girls, who could not wait to "have school", became miserable and it was a daily struggle to get them to go. I began to look into homeschooling in Sweden and we met with some local couples who were doing it. I was encouraged. But then I began to have serious health problems and started going through a rather difficult pregnancy. Elle, our youngest, was born at that time. She had health problems and I was busy caring for her around the clock and healing from the surgery (c-section). I didn't want further trauma for the girls but to be honest I just couldn't handle teaching them at that point in time.

My husband was still working in town a few blocks away from their "old" school and we asked for special permission for the girls to be transferred back. The girls were happier and we decided to move back into town to cut down on expenses and to give the girls a more familiar and friendly environment. As Elle's needs became more manageable, I thought once again about homeschooling the girls.

To be continued...