Snow!

2011 Begins...

Going forward into 2011, home-schoolers marching right along. I think the banner under which we will march this year is...."if you don't write it down, it probably wont happen". We probably dissipated a little too much on field trips last year and were therefore scrambling to get caught up, whatever that means. Home-school provides an amazing amount of liberty but also comes a sometimes daunting amount of responsibility. As a homeschooling parent, one of the options we do not have is failure. The stakes are too high and sometimes too many people looming all over the place waiting for you to stumble and best of all, no remedial classes. One pretty much makes the rules and changes the rules just as often as one goes. There is no particular road-map or bureaucracy to define what you do and when and so we innovate as we go. I like to say we are the moms who live on the cutting edge of the cutting edge. With our eclectic curriculum choices, field trips galore, public libraries, plac cards, Interlibrary loan connoisseurs, you-tube, Google, Wikipedia, YMCA, homeschooling co-ops, whoa! We juggle and give multitasking a whole other life.

Then also etching into stone things like weekly hiking and the YMCA for swimming and nap time and a clear cut focus on the children's passions as we discover them along the way. I think as a parents, we have a real opportunity to direct our children to follow their passion and hence be truly happy. You are happy if you do what you love and it amazes me how easy it is to see what my children are passionate about before money comes into the equation. That is, before they follow a career simply because that's where the money is, they are so transparent as to what they are naturally good at and what they truly love to do. So far I have a librarian, a nature enthusiast/farmer, a mathematician, a singer, a poet, a naturalist, a photographer, an author, a pianist and an up and coming violinist, a bird expert, and most importantly lovers of God.

Ecclesiastes 2:24...a man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too I see is from the hand of God...

I am a believer in the idea that learning happens during the quantity of time and not particularly in the quality of time as we perceive it. Both kinds of time are equally important. If you hang around your children long enough, they are an open book and so-

Psalm 127:3

³ Children are a heritage from the LORD,

offspring a reward from him.
⁴ Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are children born in one’s youth.
⁵ Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
when they contend with their opponents in court.

If you have an arrow you shoot it straight directed to a target. You don't just shoot it and hope it lands somewhere and holds on to something, whatever it is.

Also,

Proverbs 22:6

⁶Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

The training up a child bit has been proven beyond the shadow of a shadow in my own life, a testament of my mother's training, and so far I like what I see in my own children.

And so on this note we embark on 2011 Jesus, to have you lifted up in our homeschooling experience and adventure and to go further in all things based not on our limitations, but on the amazing possibilities in your word ready to become realities through faith.

Bigger than my insecurities.

To the God that is bigger than all my fears and insecurities, bigger than my past and looming large into my future, to the only wise God be glory both now and forever!