Planting corn with Papa to discover whether corn planted with little fish grows faster than corn planted without them. The verdict is in, and Squanto had something going for him...
I am guilty of writing when I'm processing stress but not coming back to Ye Olde Blog when pulling out of the nosedive. :)
The first week of school was rough for all. BUT, we are getting into a good routine. I was too quick to throw my hands up in despair. (Ain't that the way it always goes when you're a recovering perfectionist?)
I'm often most in awe of the growth in my oldest child. After all, he's the first one to walk this far on this journey with me.
I reminded him today that I want a good part of his rest time to be reading time, and he told me excitedly that it definitely would be. "I have this AWESOME book called, "Two Bad Pilgrims," Mommy. I read it all yesterday, but it was so good that I want to read it again. They nearly blew up the Mayflower!"
I have been putting new books in his library book basket in his room... and he's READING THEM! :) No coaxing, no begging, no half-hearted mumbling about how he "looked at" them during rest time. He told me the whole story of a Graphic Library telling of Marco Polo the other day because he couldn't contain himself. He was leaning on my bed as I was sitting there with a sleepy Ben and talking fast because he couldn't wait to get it all out.
He's asking to re-do Spanish exercises from our Spanish book that he wants to understand better. He wants to build molecules from atoms. He's learning to take more ownership of his own work. "Can I come back and finish my school work? I've been on break for awhile now." I can even sit at the table and answer a question here or there from him and work with my kindergartener at the same time!
And my 6-year-old son? The one that I was setting a 10 minute timer on our reading work so that I wouldn't explode in frustration from his unwillingness to attempt to sound out the word "mad"? (Yes, I did see the irony at the time.) He's sounding out three letter words like a champ and giving me high fives. Today he discovered that he could use his math blocks to get the answer in more than one way. "Look, Mommy, it's not just 3 and 3 that make 6! I can make 6 with 5 and 1, too!"
I couldn't have imagined being where I am today when I had a kindergartener and 2 wild preschoolers.
I went to a workshop at the homeschool conference the spring we were wrapping up kindergarten, and the speaker said that if you had no students that could work independently, you were likely to suffer from burnout. A light bulb went off in my exhausted brain. "Hey, that's me. That is very much me." I felt guilty that I was suffering from burn out only one year in. How was I going to make it if I was suffering from burn out only one year in?
Well, now I know how. The secret is students who get older and more independent/responsible and actually excited about learning! Very few things are more wonderful to me than seeing their enthusiasm. (Good French chocolate and coffee with lots of half and half and vacation in the mountains, yes, but also their enthusiasm.)
Without a vision, the homeschooling mothers perish. My own vision on the hard days is sustained because of the beauty of my own homeschooled childhood. I keep it by reading encouraging blogs, and finding things to include in our morning basket that inspire me, and by asking those who are ahead of me on the trail to give me a sip from their water bottle of increased perspective. I find it again by running across books that I read as a child that I loved and want to read again with my children. I expand it in the library stacks when I see what new treasures there are to be explored.
I have learned to have affection for things that I didn't love because I knew they were things worth trying to love. I have learned to love lesson planning (at times) and gross science and even some things about teaching math because God has helped me learn to love them. I'm thankful that He has helped me not to give up and set my heart to appreciate beautiful and hard things that are serving us all well.
I wanted to share that. I am not who I was when I started homeschooling, and I'm not now who I hope to become. I was shaped by my homeschooled childhood, and I see that I will be changed again by the process of becoming a homeschooling mother.
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