What Could Be The Third Installation

It has been almost a year since I last mentioned the HS word (home school) on my blog.  But being that all my "friends" on facebook are posting their children's first day of school pictures I thought I should really be more intentional about my plans for the year.

Chirpee just had his fifth birthday (is it possible?) and he could technically enter kindergarten in the public school system this year.  As stated before in a few other posts, we plan on home schooling both of our boys.

So have we started?  Hmmm...I guess.  It looks a lot like the life we have been living though.  A lot like doing life together, reading books, answering endless questions, fostering that love of literature and nature that the Lord has already set upon his heart. 

The more I read about home schooling and parenting and home life;  the more I desire to set the tone of our home to be a place of comfort, love, learning, excitement, safety, growth and grace-filled training. 

The Lord has used this particular author to encourage and support the vision I believe that God has set upon my heart for our family.  In a book coauthored with her husband, Educating the Wholehearted Child, they describe a life of a family that just does life together.  In the process (all intentional), they learn and grow not only in knowledge, but in faith and relation to each other.

For this first "official" year at home, I have not purchased a formal curriculum, but have pieced together odds and ends on letters, numbers, phonics, building structures, inchimals and these books on character together and will be rearranging our mornings to focus on these things a little at a time.

It was my intention to make a series of posts following the progression of my heart and thoughts about home schooling, but I have failed in this.  I did get the first and second installment completed.  As to the third installment.  That is what I sat down here to do.

My first installment basically announced all the reasons I thought I'd never home school.  The second blog post concluded with me realizing that if the Lord called me to do it - His name is at stake and He will be faithful.  He will supply the need that I lack for each day.  Because that is just Him!

More specific to my vision is the absence of thinking of education as a separate part of a child.  Instead of the mindset "we do this, then this, school, this and that"; I have changed my thinking to nurturing the whole child.  All of who the Creator made him to be.  The behaviors, the passions, the mind, the heart, the difficulties - all of it.  I want learning to be so integrated into our household, it is a language all of us speak.

I desire that if there is something mommy doesn't have an answer to - we take a moment to find it together.  If mommy has to go grocery shopping, there will be moments to learn about money, budgets and self-denial as we traverse the aisles full of temptations.  Also a good time to talk of nutrition and how various chemicals are taken up in our systems.

These things said, there will be a time for sit down work that "I just don't want to" do.  But I am hoping that the overall experience of my children will be a love of learning and especially a love relationship with Jesus Christ.

I just read an excellent article in Homeschool Enrichment Magazine by Jonathan Lewis regarding the things that home schooling children can and CAN'T do for your children.  A good reminder that in spite of all the wonderful benefits to be had from home school, the Lord must capture our children's hearts and minds for himself.  We are responsible for making an environment in our homes where this can happen, but home schooling doesn't "save".  Jesus saves a sinner from eternal punishment.

I just realized that I am disappointed in this post already because I haven't been funny.  I am acting too serious and I always have my driest writing experiences this way.  So, as I don't foresee funny happening in the closing moments - congratulations on making it this far in reading!

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."  Deut. 6:5-9 (ESV)

So we shall call this his first day of school picture because I'm having a hard time drawing the line between our summer normal and school normal.  They just have blended into one another.  As Chirpee grows and learns, we will be doing more formal activities, but since he is newly five - book academics are in the future not too be rushed!

So we appreciate your thoughts and prayers for our family as we continue on the journey of faith.  An upward climb it has been and will continue to be.  We look forward to seeing what the Lord has for our family.  The picture that will be painted.  It is said with confidence, but I cannot betray the quivering of trepidation within me at the statement.  If there is to be any failure in our plans, it will be ours and not His.



 Thankful to the Lord and Maker and Creator Jesus who is writing our story.

 

Pictures by Anna Janzen Photography, Manitou, MB.