photo credit: Robb North

The opportunity to work in a Principle Approach school was such a blessing! I planned to work there for a long time, but towards the end of the year I realized how much missed teaching my kids. Then we bought a house south east of nowhere. Commuting would not be an option.

I determined to homeschool again implementing some ideas that I knew, but understood differently now that I observed a master teach multiple ages in one classroom.

Consistency counts

One of the most amazing things I witnessed was how much work my kids accomplished just because of consistency. My oldest son completed two years worth of math! The younger kids had notebooks full of work. We had never completed so much in a year.

Do the hard stuff first and keep it simple

I, also, realized that I usually attempted to do too much. By 10:00 a.m., my kids had completed Bible, math, English, and spelling. It sometimes took us two hours to get through Bible and math! After break, they finished up with spelling tests and read literature. The school day was completed at 11:30. They had homework, but I learned something about that, too.

Education really is about character

It is not my job to beg and bribe my kids to complete their work. If they didn’t use their school time wisely, they had more homework. My children learned to work diligently during class. It helped having accountability of a teacher that wasn’t Mom, but I used to wait for everyone to finish. Now I set a time frame for each subject. If the work isn’t completed, they come back to it later.

There is no perfect curriculum

In the one-room school, my younger children used Abeka workbooks for math. I never would have chosen workbooks. That was anti-Principle Approach to me. But, it worked fine. My idealistic view of education has often hindered me from just using what I have available and made lessons more complicated than they needed to be. One idea really is enough.

Modeling is important

My children do what I do. If I am consistent, they will learn to be consistent. If I work hard, they will learn to work hard. If I love learning, they will, too.

Freedom is still why I homeschool 

This school year, I borrowed a friend’s pre-packaged curriculum. My Father’s World, Exploring Countries and Cultures, has a sample schedule much like the schedule my children used last year. The lessons are planned, so I spend more time, actually, teaching and less time making detailed lessons that I can’t get through. I am free to alter the plans to fit our life.

I am free to enjoy this journey.

We worked for a month and in the end our house had gone from this:

To this:

We put it on the market with high hopes of selling quickly. Having two houses was a financial challenge we didn’t want to endure for long. In the past three years, we had been eliminating bills and now we had three credit cards maxed out!

In the weeks that followed, we managed to get our new house gutted, but making money took priority over remodeling. I tried to wait patiently for the offer that would ease the pressure, but I bothered our Realtor and paced way too much to call my trying a success. It took six weeks for an offer come, but that was okay. We would be out of debt again with money to spare!

The problem was that our new house still wasn’t inhabitable. We weren’t sure what to do. If we moved into the construction site it would only slow down progress, but we had to sleep somewhere.

The week of closing we found out that a neighbor had an old, camp trailer for sale. It was soon parked in the driveway and I began cleaning and moving our clothes into it. A friend stopped by and teased,

“Oh, I bet you’ll only have to live in that trailer for a year and a half.”

I didn’t think he was very funny, but I laughed anyway. I knew I had to keep my sense of humor in this transition. The situation was far from ideal, but it would be worth it.

Closing finally came and a train of trucks, cars, and a trailer pulled out of town. My dad was shocked that I was so calm when he left the rubble and mess of my new home. Mom assured him,

“She likes it out here.”

And I do. Even though it’s been cold and messy and annoying living in a construction zone, I like it.

When I shivered in the trailer at night, I told myself that it could’ve been worse.

When my husband and I moved inside the house to share a room with my daughters, I considered the blessing of owning our own home.

When I get frustrated because my kitchen is gutted and ugly, I just remember that this was my choice. I begged my husband to get me this house. I wanted the possibilities and the opportunities.

The opportunity to overcome the obstacles.
The opportunity to invest in my family.
The opportunity to make a profit from doing what I enjoy, taking a cast off, ugly place and making it beautiful.

I can’t wait to see the end result!

“You should just look at houses. I bet you would find something that would make you want to move.”

“Oh, I don’t know. We can’t get a mortgage, because we just started a business. Besides, if I sell my house, where will we live?”

My house was small, but I was content. However, browsing real estate ads is something I do for fun, so maybe my friend was onto something. When I saw a house on 2 acres listed for only $18,000, I begged Dylan to take me out to see it.

The house was scary, but the possibilities excited me. A view of the mountains…Two acres of land…Twice the amount of room in the house…I freaked out.

“Dylan, please buy me this house!!!”

We had been slowly getting out of debt. Our home was paid for, and now I was dreaming another one.

When I found out this cheap house had sold for four times the asking price just a few years ago, I wanted it even more. Could we figure out a way to jump on this opportunity? We had more than enough equity in our current home to cover this new place, but we didn’t have time to wait for it to sell.

I remembered the high credit limit on one of our credit cards. That wasn’t enough, but pawing through the bill drawer I pulled out as many statements as I could find. I had canceled a lot of credit cards over the years. How many did I have left?

And what kind of crazy thing were we even thinking? Buying a HOUSE on credit cards!? I am sure Dave Ramsey would not approve.

It was risky, but we decided it was worth it. We put in an offer and began the process of getting money from our credit cards to pay for a HOUSE! It worked! The whole house needed to be gutted, but we would have time to fix it up while we waited for our other house to sell. Or so we thought…

(to be continued)

I try to get him to sit, to focus, but I need to pull him gently.

photo credit: nattu

We’ve talked about creating a peaceful home, a place of learning.

He wants to be here.

He wants to play.

He wants to be loved. {Don’t we all?}

The challenge is before me and I willingly accept the burden, because the burden is a soul. This soul peers through big, brown eyes and walks with stinky feet. It’s an honor to teach him. To bring him into our family. To show him how a mother treats a son.

I review phonograms with him and let him jump to the answers. I call him in to worship and he requests “Our God is an Awesome God.”

And then in the quiet of the evening, I pray for this little boy as tears stream down my face. I’m burdened, and I’m in love.

And love is the foundation of everything I want to teach.

Life crowds out the non-essentials, and I’ve questioned my need for blogging. It is not essential, but writing does help me process the thoughts crashing around in my heart.

photo credit: www.CourtneyCarmody.com

I miss beating out words to discover truth amid the toil. I don’t have to write, but I do want to live fully awake. Writing just might enhance that.

I come back to this place and find a few thoughts recorded here and there. The posts in draft are just a few glimpses of my life over the past two years.

So much has changed.

So many of my own fears have been faced.

Much of what I’ve written, I don’t know how to share. Some of it is so entwined in the stories of others that I simply don’t know how to share it. Some of it is painful. Many of the ideas are still in the process.

But I still wonder if I should write again for this little place?

Jotting notes to capture the moments of wonder that come with family life. Sharing what I’m thinking through.

Writing to separate the cosmos from the chaos. Finding peace amid trials.

Giving hope to carry on…