Jan. 27, 2008 - Failure to Blog
Once again, I apologize for the lack of anything on my blog in recent days.
I love blogging. It calms my mind. It connects me to other humans - homeschoolers, moms and so much more! This is very important to me because I don't have a lot of that in real life. I don't have any homeschooling friends here in Mexico that I can connect with. No group field trips, homeschool co-ops, playdates or anything of the sort. The internet is my only connection to other homeschooling parents at this time and I find that extremely important. I need the community, the inspiration and the accountability that comes with knowing other homeschoolers.
So, why haven't I been blogging?? Well, there are a few excuses reasons that I can list.
The internet has been horrible here lately. At the moment I am not online - typing this offline and waiting for that brief moment when the computer pops online - hopefully for a long enough period of time to get this posted.
However, my husband purchased a new, and hopefully much better router this week which should be installed before the end of the weekend. I really hope it makes a difference!
We currently have 19 people staying here. Well, not HERE as in our little trailer, but Here as in our Mexico compound. There is 1 large 3 bedroom house which is occupied by my SIL and whoever happens to be here working with us at any given time. We are now staying in the back yard in our trailer. There is an elderly couple staying here in their trailer as well (until the end of March). And this week we had 6 young ladies join us. They are our leadership students here to help lead the teams that will be starting to flow in very shortly, and to take a social justice course as well as to learn about the culture here in Mexico and have an amazing, incredible experience living here for several months! 4 of C's coworkers have also come up for a few days to do some work, some touring, etc. So anyway, I have been doing a whole lot of cleaning (lots of prep for all of these guests!) and cooking (daily cooking for 19 people!) on top of the regular laundry and cleaning that I do for our family. Add homeschooling and then just trying to raise 3 incredibly active boys (while hubby is going through an extremely busy time - working from 5:30am daily until late at night most nights) and you can see how blogging would get pushed to the backburner a bit.
The week prior to this crazy one, my parents were here to visit which was so nice!! We all had a wonderful time showing them around, giving them the full Mexican experience, hanging out at the beach and spending time visiting and playing games with them. Then C managed to score us free tickets to Disneyland!!! It was a really great day. I think my parents were more excited about going than the boys were! It was a great "field trip" for all of us. :)
Anyway, I'm glad to be back. I hope to get my butt in gear and continue with blogging. I've missed it and I've missed all of you!
I've been struggling with homeschooling a bit since Christmas. I know you don't want to hear about that. I think we tend to prefer reading about people's successes than their failures, but I know I'm not the only one that struggles from time to time so I'm going to be honest and admit it. The boys' routine got so messed up over Christmas and I've had a really hard time getting back into it, as have they. Is anyone else going through this? Some days I really just don't want to do school. There I admitted it. I mean, I love homeschooling, but I don't enjoy it when my boys are dragging their feet and don't want to do anything and it's not fun anymore. So I spent a lot of time searching this week. Searching myself, my heart, my motives. Searching my kids, their interests, their desires. Searching online (when I can get online!). I think we're starting to make things work.
Being a Christian, the most important thing for me is that my children have a good relationship with their Creator - a God who loves them more than even I ever could! So I have decided to make this my start. We are now starting our days with prayer and Bible reading. We are starting right from the beginning of Genesis. The boys learned Genesis 1:1 last week and we started talking about creation one day at a time. So on the first day God created Light and separated it from darkness. He called the light Day and the darkness he called Night. We talked about what the world would have been like without light and so on. Then I have tried to teach most of their lessons based on what we talked about that day. For science we talked about different aspects of day and night. We read about earth and it's cycles - why it's light during the day and dark at night, why the moon looks like it's shining, and all kinds of related topics from solar eclipses to seasons. It's really incredible how much you can expand on just one verse of scripture! I could probably spend at least a week on each day of creation (or longer!). But I have decided to go with a few days each. We are also making a creation lapbook, which I can't wait to share with you! The boys Loved their first lapbooks they completed over the holidays (Caleb made a nativity lapbook and Christian made a numbers lapbook - I hope to share pictures very soon!).
We have been spending more time outdoors - learning while we play, planting (I will share more about that in another post soon), discovering, exercising and much more. The weather has been beautiful here. I can't even fathom that it's winter and much of Canada and the US are covered in snow right now. I really love this climate! It makes for easy outdoor schooling, which the boys are much happier at anyhow.
So in a nutshell, that's what we've been up to. I look forward to getting back into blogging and hope you will stick around! I promise I will be more interesting and share more pictures in my upcoming posts! Please feel free to sign up to receive my blog in your inbox by entering your email address in the appropriate place at the top right-hand corner of this page, or subscribe to my RSS feed by clicking the orange RSS symbol.
I apologize for the lack of creativity and excitement in this post as it is well past midnight and I am more than worn out from a long day!! Be sure to refresh yourself today. Rest, relax, meditate, pray, live, laugh, love and enjoy!! I will be doing the same. Take care.
Tee
Comments
Jan. 27, 2008 - Untitled Comment
Posted by 2boysmom
I enjoyed your post. I wanted to address your "not wanting to do school" - this is perfectly normal! I think many of us get the "slump" after Christmas. I've even heard ps teachers say that they feel the same way after the holidays. So don't sweat that! At least you have sun!! Here in south Texas it's rainy and cold and we're all having sun deprivation disease.
I don't know where you are in Mexico, but I have a good friend who homeschools and they are living there and drilling water wells. You can email me if you want more details on where they are.
I think what you did with Genesis and taking off from there is awesome! That's what homeschooling is all about - putting God in our studies and making learning fun. Great job!
Hope you have a blessed week!
Jan. 27, 2008 - Untitled Comment
Posted by BChsMamaof3
Good morning :) I really enjoyed reading your entry. Don't worry about being in a bit of a slump, we all get that from time to time *grin* I had my slump in November and it took me a bit to get going again! It's so true that when the kids don't want to do anything it's hard to get them going because if you don't feel motivated then you can't instill that motivation in them and I think that is a key point :) I had to stop doing our formal agenda and went to studying nature because I just love watching birds or going for walks among the trees. The kids enjoyed it, we got outdoors more and both they and I got excited about what we were doing again and at the same time we learned science, art by doing nature drawings, language arts by journaling our daily sightings or activities and so on. So don't be afraid to mix it up for a bit just to get the joy back :) Hope you have a wonderful day! Could you send me a bit of that warm weather? We're pretty cold and white here today *grin*
Blessings to you and your family,
BChsMamaof3
