Observer Or Activie Paticipant?

In today's quiet time reading for me this was the verse I read,

Romans 3:20
Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

That is when I realized that 1. God wants to be a part of my life (after all He did create me!) and 2 He wants me to be an active participant in His. Not an observer! There are to many people watching and waiting and not many actively participating. So we have to make up our minds; are we going to sit at the edge of the pool dipping our feet in the water, maybe thinking about how much fun all the other  people are having? Or are we going to jump in and actively join in? We don't have to be loud and obnoxious. I am a more quite person myself. So how do I join in? I teach Sunday School and volunteer to help, there never seems to be enough volunteers. Help out a neighbor and something you can do in your own home or anywhere really, PRAY!

Galatians 6:9
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

Homeschool Books that have helped me along the way

My List of Homeschooling books

1. So You're Thinking About Homeschooling , By Lisa Whelchel
This book was great because it showed me how different families homeschool. It also showed me that there was lots of ways to homeschool.


2. The Homeschooling Handbook, By Mary Griffith
This was a good book for me, it showed different ways to homeschool, legal stuff, it answers questions you may have.

These two were great beginning Homeschool books.

3. The Spiritual Power of A Mother, By Michael P. Farris 
I loved this book. It really build up my confidence and reaffirmed that I am doing what is right for my children and how important my role in their life is.

4. A Biblical Home Education, By Ruth Beechick
This helped so much, especially this year. It showed me how important it is to implement the bible in our homeschool and how important it is to watch what we are teaching our children.

5.A Charlotte Mason Education , By Catherine Levison  
I love Charlotte Mason's Methods, we use some of them. This is a great overview of her methods and how the author uses them.

6.  101 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum, Cathy Duffy
Gives you lots of information on lots of different curriculum. A good starter book on homeschool curriculum.

I also love the books the Duggar family has put out. I use them as inspiration, I figure if a mom of 19 can do this mom of 3 can :)

I am not getting paid by any of these authors or anyone associated with them. I simply found these books helpful and enjoyed reading them.

Today's tip: Reading and researching are important and helpful, but prayer is vital in your journey.

I will add to this list as I go, and if you have some suggestions please leave them in the comments. I am working on a list of websites I have found helpful so stay tuned! 

Just A Little Life Interruption

Ok I was trying to post pretty regular, but 2 thing have happened to take up my time and attention.

1. My middle son Jag, has came home on leave from the Army. We have been trying to spend time with him before he goes back.

 2. My little guy Gamer broke is leg this past weekend on July 5th trying to rollerblade, and this has taken up all of my time.

Right now I have him resting in his bed and am taking a little "rest" myself. He is doing well just trying to control his pain and keep him comfy at the same time making him do his physical therapy and being the mean mommy. I never realized how hard it is to do thing with something broken. This is our first experience with any kind of a broken bone. Yes I am the mom of three boys an this is our first real injury. Anyway seeing my poor guy in so much pain has been awful! Helping him do everything has been hard but of course I wouldn't have it any other way. This is after all my normal crazy life!

We will see the Ortho Doctor next week to get more X-rays and rewrap the cast. They had to make a slit in it because of the swelling. But so far everything has went well and he is doing good :) Thank You sweet Jesus!

My little guy in his full leg cast.

 

 

Tip for today: Breathe momma just breathe!

 

Today I am thankful that it was not worse then what it was, because it sure could have been! Today I thank the Lord for his sweet presence in all of this. And I want to thank Him because I know he will continue to be with us. 

 

Yes we are still homeschooling

In my last post I explained why we started homeschooling, now I will let you in on why we still homeschool and why we pulled our other two out of public school.

With Trucker we pulled him out the last half of his Senior year. What! You must be thinking. I don't know why, but Trucker decided to stop doing his schoolwork. And the school said he would have to go across town to take night classes. Well I was not having that, so we pulled him out and had him finish his schoolwork at home and he graduated in September of 2011.

With Gamer he was doing awesome in school on honor roll all year, he went to kn. and first in public school. He had great teachers. It was a good school. But I knew I could do more for him at home. I wanted him to learn and grow and enjoy doing it. Most of all I wanted him to grow through the Lord. At school he was learning everything but about the Lord. He would come home upset over stuff that his friends were putting in his head. And yes we were going to church and he was attending Sunday school, but 5 days a week his mind, heart and soul was getting feed by people I didn't even know!

I missed him and I knew I wanted to bring him home. So I went to the Lord and prayed. And so we started 2nd grade with Gamer. He loved it! So that year I was homeschooling Jag a Junior, Trucker a Senior and Gamer a 2nd grader. I wont lie to you it was rough, but I wouldn't trade it for the world!

That brings us to now I only have Gamer left. He is going into 5th grade this year and we are very excited.

Tip #4: You know your children, you know your family. Do what is right for your family.

2 Timothy 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.

Jag our first homeschooler

Now that you know a little about us I thought I would tell you why we stated homeschooling.

Desperation really is how it all started. Jag (middle child) was my first child I pulled out of school to homeschool.

He was a sweet, smart, loving little guy. He did get distracted easily and would become bored quickly in school. So every year at parent teacher conferences we would hear "Jag is a very good boy, but he is easily distracted we think he may be ADHD and probably would do better on medication" every year we hear the same thing. Now his grades were great, he had all kinds of friends and generally behaved himself (he was a little boy). His grades were great like I said, but he would always have extra homework because he never finished his work at school. So all through elementary he went to school, came home and did homework until bedtime ( rinse and repeat) all through elementary. We took him to his doctor at the time and she said he my have it so lets put him on meds and see what happens (um, NO!!!). Then we switched doctors and they sent us to a office that was for ADHD kids they tested him and said no he did not have ADHD he had anxiety issues that were not bad and that he could learn to work through. No meds for Jag. The teachers didn't like it but if my child didn't need medicine, then I was not going to give it to him.

 Honestly I think he was bored. He was more of a hands on/ visual learner. Not a sit down shut up and listen kind of kid. Which was exactly what the teachers wanted. Fast forward to middle school and he totally lost his focus. Peer pressure was high. He wanted to make his friends laugh and wasn't worried about his work or classes and the bad thing about it was nobody let us know. Nobody called to say hey Jag is not turning in his homework (that he was spending all evening doing) or that he was goofing off and being sent to the principal's office. We had to find out through the online site that you can look at the grades on, that the teachers never updated. We didn't find out till almost the end of the year about his behavior and every time we called about his grades the guidance councilor would say the teachers would call us back and they never did. He ended up passing middle school with very poor grades. During his 9th grade year I started praying hard about what to do about Jag. We were failing him!

Prayer that is how we decided to homeschool. The lord laid it on my heart and of course I fought it at first. I was scared and didn't think I could do it. I keep praying and the lord keep putting on my heart. So I started researching it and reading about it and reading my bible. I talked to my husband about it and he thought it was a great idea! He was on board. So we took him out off school after his freshman year and started homeschooling him that summer to get him caught up (he had fail a lot of his 9th grade courses) and by that fall he was on track. Jag started 10th grade right on time.


That is how we started homeschooling out of desperation and through prayer with God's guidance.

Jag's first year of homeschool, he choose to work in my room.

Tip for today: Pray and read your bible, let God guide you.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 All scripture is God- breathed and is useful for teaching,
 rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may
be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Our Fur Babies

I almost forgot to introduce our Fur Babies. We love our pets they are a part of our family. And we have six (YIKES)! They are also a big part of our homeschool, they join us everyday in our school room. Well not all of them, we have 3 water turtles that stay in their aquarium in Gamer's room.

This is Fred, Sam, and Bob last Christmas and yes they had their own tree to enjoy.

This is our dog Edward he is a Australian Shepard/Beagle mix. And the biggest sweetheart!

This is the Princess of the house Tabitha Better know as Tabbie. She rules the house.

And last but not least is our baby Mia, she is the newest member of our family. And is a pure joy.

All our fur babies are rescue animals Ed and Mia came from a shelter and Tabbie was found at my husbands warehouse. The Turtles were found in puddles and in our garage. Gamer has asked for more animals (a hamster, rabbit another puppy and of course every kitten we see) But I think we are quite full at the moment.  

Planning for next year

Its summer here and we have been enjoying our break. We school August-June with lots of breaks in-between. We have played with friends, went swimming , went to the movies, and went on vacation. And I have also been busy deciding what we will be doing next school year. So I have been reading and searching the net. These are some of the books I have been reading.

These were all great books and helped me out. The Spiritual Power of a Mother and the Duggar books were great for inspiration and reaffirming that I am doing great on my journey and how important it is. The other three helped me have a direction for our upcoming year. I am actually excited and confident in our schedule for next year. We will be having shorter lessons and also not trying to fit every subject in everyday. I will share my schedule in an upcoming blog.  

Tip for today: Take time for yourself, to read, drink a cup of coffee or tea and soak in God's word daily bible time is definitely a must for me.

There have been many times when I have skipped the bible because I didn't think I had enough time to fit it in. Well I found out that when I skipped it my days did not go so smoothly. But when I did have my bible time I always had that nugget of truth, Gods word to help me though hard times.

Isaiah 41:10 So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.