This blog has been lost in cyberspace for a while. It has been a challenging school year for us, and besides forgetting the passwords to get into my blogs, I guess I haven't felt like I had much to write that people would want to read. The year has been full of upheavals and interruptions to our routine - more sicknesses in succession than we have ever experienced before, more traveling, and more stress in general. Since my 5th child was born I still have never completely gotten back on top of the laundry or the housework or the routine I want to have in our homeschool. The past month was especially hard as we went throught the loss of my younger brother in a car accident. Now that we are finally healthy physically we have emotional exhaustion and sadness to work through and a sense of not being quite all here or being able to concentrate on anything well. I certainly haven't felt like I have much to offer other homeschoolers in the way of encouragement or ideas when my own household needs to be put in order in a major way.
We have continued to try and fight to keep our routines going that are important to our family - devotionals, scripture study, reading aloud, one on one time helping the kids with their goals and interests, family councils together, etc. It often seems like it is not worth continuing to fight the tidal wave trying to sweep us off course. But we keep trying and hope that our efforts will make a difference. I have been surprised to see that they do make more of a difference than I would expect. Even when I feel like I am doing a terrible job, I am pleasantly surprised to find that my kids have learned much more than I taught them. Often I don't even know where they picked it up! The other day my oldest volunteered to teach everyone about atoms. I hadn't taught him about atoms, but I guess he was learning about them in a science game he had played on the computer. He drew a model of an atom and explained each part. My 7 yr old has also surprised me with things he has read about that I didn't realize he had read. Also, life itself offers an education, and we have had many impromptu conversations not planned in any curriculum, because of our experiences recently. Granted, things are still not the way I want them to be - I want to be a better, more active participant in the process of learning with them, and I want to have clearer routines that we follow. While haphazard learning is still learning, I would like things a little more organized for my own sake.
The one thing that I feel like has really helped me through this year is Record keeping. My oldest had the idea of starting a school newspaper for our homeschool this year, and this has been a real blessing. Not only does it give the kids a chance to practice typing, writing, editing, spelling, and word processing, it gives us a place to keep records of all the things they are learning, and share them with others. It also helps me to see that we are learning and progressing. As I look back through the pages of our newspapers I can remember things I had forgotten that we did, and the kids and I both can feel a sense of accomplishment. The paper also gives an extra incentive for them to complete a book report or project so they can include it in the paper to be seen by friends and family.
I have also been spending more time writing in my own journals. Not necessarily about homeschooling, but about whatever I am studying in my own life. In my art of womanhood classes, I am learning how to capture passages from books I read and journal about them, making notes of how they affect my life, my questions and thoughts about them, and what I plan to do because of them. I am doing this with my scriptures and it has made my study so much more valuable to me. I am also keeping a binder full of the things that I am thinking about and my notes on them - things I want to do in my house, gardening ideas, parenting ideas and goals, books I want to read, etc. I am writing down my feelings and trying to learn more from my own thoughts and inspiration. It is hard to find the time and free hands to do this with many kids to care for. But it has become a treasured time for me that I am even willing to get up early to do (and that is saying a lot - I am not a morning person!). Looking back through these binders and journals helps me remember the lessons I learned before and sometimes need relearning, and reminds me that I have made some progress when it feels like I am slipping backward. And those pages help me remember my hopes and dreams and all the other things that come to me that are too important to forget, so that I can make more of the present and plan for the future. Keeping a record keeps me grounded as well as giving me guidance for what I want to do next. I think of the importance of the records the ancient people in the scriptures kept - what a loss if we didn't have those to read. The records I keep may not be of great importance to others outside my family like the scriptures are, but they are of great value to me.
Most of my entries have been pretty personal to me lately, but I will try to bring more of my record keeping here to this blog and share something valuable to others sometimes too. It is a fortunate thing that we do have so many ways to keep records and share them in this day of technological advances. I find that I like every one of those ways for different purposes. I still prefer pen and paper for my most tender and personal thoughts, but for sharing ideas across the miles, the internet is such a blessing.
Posts
