Update on Homeschooling

Well, we are back into the swing of life! Big changes in the way we School this year has taken place, or one –  we have a dedicated School room now, yeah!!!!! I LOVE this space. I feel that it allows the kids space to learn and be creative. I made my own bulletin boards for each of the kids complete with some “tips” to help them out as well as reward charts! I am all about the positive affirmations! In this post I will go into more detail as to how the reward charts work and what our homeschooling day typically looks like. One thing I would suggest and have found it to be invaluable is finding someone you can bounce ideas off of and to have some time to have a hang out, with the kids. For me I have formed a new friendship with someone whom we have some similar friends but never really hung out together. Well I am SO THANKFUL for this friendship!!! She is very creative, seems to know all the cool programs and websites and is so fun to hang out with! We both started around the same time homeschooling so we are both figuring this out together, it is also awesome to note that our husbands get along so even double dates have happened, well one double date has happened – but we had so much fun I know many more will happen! We have made it a priority to meet up once a week and go to the library. This is much for us as it is the kids. They get out and get to get new books and continue to learn and well, we get to sit and have a tea, or try to amidst many interruptions by our sweet babies.

Our typical day is pretty straight forward to be honest. We start our day by praying for whatever needs we find to be of importance, right now we are praying for our church’s second campus and a permit we need to get to open our doors! Then our family devotional and journaling. This book is new to our personal library, “Sheila Walsh’s Family Devotions”. Then we switch which one goes first doing their flash cards.  We switch between spelling for Kennedy and math and for Cole sight words and math. Then into the books they go. This year we switched from a computer based program curriculum to books. For Cole I made up a binder for the first 4 weeks which was all review of what we have done last year to make sure that his skills where sharp. Starting next week he is back to his grade 1 Complete Canadian Curriculum book as well as reading 9 pages from a level 1 reader, and 5 pages from a level 2 reader. Spelling is his area of opportunity so his day is heavy in reading. Kennedy is doing a grade 5 Complete math and English smart books as well as a grade 6 Complete Canadian Curriculum book for extra English, spelling, science and socials. She also has a Canadian geography book that gets done 2 times a week. Next month we are going to introduce French. We also signed up for Letters from Afar, I would recommend looking them up on Instagram! Monthly we get a letter from “Isabelle” who is an explorer and it tells of her adventures. We then go and do some research on where she is, some of the local things that are common and then do a small presentation with our friends. It’s a great way to teach them about the world, what other cultures do and also gives them public speaking experience. We have a giant wall map and when we get a new letter we move the arrow to show where Isabelle is for the month we are studying her. We also on the map have an arrow for a friend of ours who travels for Ministry, so the kids can also see how far he travels, where he travels too and gives them a visual of where in the world he is. The kids came up with the idea and I love it.

The reward charts are super fun! The kids each have 2 of them. Kennedy’s 2 are for good behavior/80% on tests and the other is for being patient with her Brother as he reads to her. I felt this was important to teach her patience, to show her that not everyone learns the same as you and to have pride in teaching her Brother how to read. Some days as I watch them, I am so happy I did this and other days I want to call it off! Cole’s 2 are for good behavior and his 2nd one is for reading to Kennedy with a good attitude. Lets be real, siblings don’t really like to work together a whole lot so this has been good for him to learn that his Sister wants to help him and for her to learn how to be gentle and kind in a leadership role while getting your point across. It also for both of them, I feel prepares them for marriage one day, not to each other let me clarify, lol. I often say “listen one day you will be married and that person won’t always make you very happy or might do things to anger you BUT your partners so you have to learn to work through it, speak to each other with kindness and respect so this is a training ground for your future marriages, WORK IT OUT”!! I figure it’s never too young to teach them lessons that will hopefully propel them into the future full of successes, time will tell.

Here are some pictures of what the school room looks like, before it gets messed up in a day.

 

 

 

 

Until next time, keep exploring life.

 

Jen

Moms, love yourself like your kids do!

Dear Moms,

 

Love yourself like your kids love You. Unconditionally. Without reserve, without hesitation for how your hair looks, if You have last nights make up on or if You are still in your pjs because today is hard.  Love yourself from all angles too, not just the Instagram perfect angle with the filter but the naked in front of the mirror natural truth of how You look. It’s important to accept ourselves for how we look now, accept that there are somethings we just can’t change, our height, bone structure etc, but there are some things we can change. I believe a large part that needs to change is our attitude towards ourselves. I have a daughter who I want to grow up with a positive self esteem and that starts with me. What does she see when I’m getting ready, a mom who is critical of her body or a mom who is being complementary towards herself?

 

It may not be in actual words that she hears me but my actions. Do I often look like I don’t care how I look? Do I take time to do my hair, even if all I can do is wash it and brush it. Does she see me put on my make up not to hide flaws but to highlight the beauty that God created me to be? I have to be honest, body image issues has never really been “my thing”, weird I know! I grew up with a Mom who was confident in who she was.  I grew up to know my beauty wasn’t found in how I look, but how I treat others. This doesn’t mean that if You grew with the same type of atmosphere that you too wont have issues but for me, that’s how it was. I also grew up with a physical deformity, You can call it, where in my early 20s I had to have reconstructive surgery to fix the abnormality. So I’m sure that helped me to get over my body image issues.

Now, like I said body image issues havn’t been a big deal in my life until recently.  Why Now God?! I thought that as I got older I would become even more confident not go backwards. So much so, that I was getting ready for Church the other day, I texted a good friend. It wrote something like,  I have my 1st shift in a new ministry and I cant stand how my clothes look on me! She was so kind to say You’re stunning and I am sure You look amazing! If only that made all my yucky feels about myself go away.

 

I left the house feeling like I wanted to hide, that everything was way too tight and I looked awful. How can they be OK with me looking this way, to be a greeter as people come into Church, I mean have they seen how I look?! I choose to walk in the confidence of who God says I am, instead of how I was feeling. I am fearfully and wonderfully made, even though I wasn’t “feeling” like that. I just love how God brings people along in Your life to let You know He hears You. As I was getting ready and beating myself up mentally I thought…”Sarah” hasn’t said a thing to me lately about how I look but when I was loosing weight (I put on 10 lbs of the 30 I lost) it was weekly and now I haven’t heard a thing in months. Well doesn’t “Sarah” pass me, say Hi, and goes on her way. Only to circle back a few minutes later, hugs me as if she knew what I was thinking and says You look fantastic tonight! I wanted to cry!!! Not cause she made me feel amazing but because God cares even about my bad moment of body image issues. He loves to go above and beyond cause I had 3 other people complement me that night. That night highlighted a few things to me. (1) I depend on people’s complements to determine how I feel about myself more then I thought. (2) Clearly I have some self love that I need to work on. (3) Contentment needs to be found in the process, cause that’s what I am in, a process. A process of learning and unlearning things. A process of going from not caring to caring and a process of accepting my mistakes and loving myself like my kids do. My husband DAILY, many times a day, tells me how beautiful I am. I should be walking around with a big head lol. It shows that it goes deeper then just hearing it, You have to believe it about yourself first.

 

As moms we have enough coming at us where we can feel like we are not good enough, that our kids don’t behave well enough, that I’m not Martha Steward, or Jamie Oliver blah blah blah. We need to take a point of view from our kids who say Mama your beautiful, even from the angle of a 6 year old, not the Instagram “perfect” filter, angle, lighting, hair and make up world that we can get caught up in. So Mom’s today, love yourself a bit more like your kids do, and change how You talk to yourself cause You are fearfully and wonderfully made!

The view my 6 year old sees.  My 10 year old’s view and well, make up and filters and just the right light and angle.

 

Until next time,

 

Jen