Somebody Explain...Because It Doesn't Make Sense

 I don't get it. 

When you leave something because you are unhappy with it, you are looking for something that makes sense, something that works for you, something that makes you happy-whatever the reason you left, you are clearly looking for a change.  You find that change, you like this new way....then you start to make subtle changes that is going to make the new thing like the thing you just left. 

I don't get it. 

If you liked the old that well, then stay there. 

You leave your  home country because the new government system has turned it to a mud hole (to say it nicely)... You go to a new country and expect to get handouts, expect a free ride.  Guess what? Nothing is free.  Not even freedom. 

You leave a church because you don't like the direction the church going-whichever direction, if not all, that may be... Then you find a new church and either complain because it's not like the old one, or try to change everything to make it like the old one.   

My current personal favorite....

You leave the public school system...  

Look, we get it. The public school system is broken. It's flailing and failing.  It's going so far into left field you've lost the ball. 

But do everyone who values homeschooling a favor. We homeschool for the flexibility it gives us for our kids and we don't want to make it look like a public school.  Actual schooling takes 3-4 hours TOPS.. And that depends on the level and how focused the kids are.  

You know you know how a child learns? How much they TALK  about it.  Take a kid to the zoo and they find a favorite animal then talk about it for months on end.  

You don't need somebody else's translation of what happened.  Find an autobiography. Gutenberg press has many of them-for free, Kindle versions, Nook versions, PDF versions you can print. 

Yes, I understand there are state requirements for tests because they are worried more about homeschoolers falling through the cracks than public schooled kids.  But you don't need tests to know they learned.  

I passed most of my tests in public school (except chemistry.... seriously.. why did I even need chemistry?  So I knew how to set the school lab on fire?....).. You know what I remember? Spanish... well, watching The Fast and Furious movies in Spanish Class... American History and Science Fiction Literature Class.. Because those were the only teachers who cared about their students to make sure they understood the lessons.  3 classes-out of 4 years. 3 classes.  Do I remember all the intricate details about how to speak the Spanish language? Nope... But I do remember the inappropriate words in the Fast and Furious Movies (here's a life tip-be careful of the music work crews you hire are listening to... especially if you are living in a parsonage).  

You don't need endless worksheets to drill it into your child. Most textbooks have the repetition worked in.  

YOU DON'T NEED A TEST TO KNOW YOUR CHILD LEARNED! 

Simple can be-and is-quite effective. 

It's even better than complicated. 

I don't need endless hours of worksheets for busy work.  

I certainly don't need "oh I was a public school teacher so my way is best".  

But it's so easy to get an email-"Homeschool Summit!!! Are you doing enough?!?!" and think-oh I'm not doing enough, I need to join-after all it's FREE-and learn what I'm not doing so I can put more on my plate and be more overwhelmed with all the extras that aren't needed. 

It's so easy to justify.. Well, the public school system has entire days of movie days, entire days of checking in and checking out books... Field Trips.. Shoot, in Kindergarten to fifth grade they take a walk around town, spend half the day and call it a school day..  It's so easy to set the bar so low to equate yourself to public school...... 

Teaching cursive, phonics and memorizing the math facts will already put you fields ahead of many in the public school system. Throw in the Bible, apologetics and REAL history. 

Tell me, WHAT was the Civil War about? WHY did we actually fight for freedom in the Revolutionary War? WHY did the founders come so willingly to a country they probably thought they would die in very quickly?  Why were we once known as the Promised Land to so many immigrants? 

Kids used to learn to read with McGuffey's.  Have you ever looked at the first few pages of McGuffey's primer?  It's got the upper case letters and the lower case letters.  That's it.  The end.  That was reading and copy work all in one. 

Kids used to learn maths by copying fact tables until they could say them without looking. That's it. Once they knew fact tables, all four functions up to 20, they sometimes moved on, more often than not they were done... Because that's ALL THEY NEEDED TO KNOW for most of the jobs. 

Anyone who needed more went on to university.  

Kids read the Bible once they could read.  History, math, science, character training all in one text.  

You want more complicated math-convert a recipe, then make it. 

If your child can read and understand Shakespeare, they can read and understand the Bible.  

Do you want to know my theory on why nobody reads blogs anymore? Everyone wants Vlogs? Because from my generation down, reading comprehension has gone out the window. 

I can't tell you how many times I was told IN HIGH SCHOOL "oh you can't understand that, then you get put in the SPED class for English."  

I was told once to pick a book to read to write a report on.  Preferably a classic-but she wasn't picky as long as it wasn't romance. I picked a book by Nathaniel Hawthorne off our shelves.. Now I'd already read and understood this book at least twice.  I took it in to be approved and quickly laughed at and told I was too stupid to understand the Old English in it. Do you know what happens when you tell a child or a teenager they are stupid? They start to believe it. You know what happens when they hear it enough? They DO believe it.  Do you know the ONE THING  I remember from my AP English courses in high school? That I was told repeatedly I was too stupid.  

The biggest takeaway I had from public school? I was too stupid. The teachers didn't care because my family didn't have money. The teachers didn't care because I wasn't a cheerleader or an athlete.  I didn't have the best voice-because there was kids who were being trained in opera so of course they had to get the solos, no one else need not try because no one else was good enough. 

PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN

At all costs, know what is going into their heads.  No human loves your children as you, their parent.  No matter how much they care, you are the parent.  

Now, off my soap box...

I was always worried about teaching English, because I know (or think....) I am not strong in English. 

English, they will learn by reading language-rich books.  Don't know a word? GREAT! Here's a dictionary. 

I am now more scared that they are not learning true history.  

Because now, even the best homeschool curriculums have changed history...

and that-should terrify anyone who knows the real reason why wars were fought. 

~Tabitha

Sometimes..Simple IS Better

 Why do we have to make things so complicated? 

Books can open up a whole world to the reader.  

The Three Musketeers, while fictional, does open the reader up to a little bit of life as a king's guard in the Middle Ages. 

Little Women (and the rest of the series-did you know it's a 4 book series? I didn't...) can show you what life was like for the family left behind during the Civil War and Reconstruction period in the Northeast United States. 

Little House on the Prairie  series shows you what life was like for those brave souls who ventured into Indian territory and unsettled lands to find a new life on the Plains. 

Shakespeare. Just any Shakespeare.  You can use it to help pronounce, to be goofy and act out some scenes.  There's even history, geography and myths thrown in by the Bard of Avon.

The Bible.  A timeless book.  Read it for the literature, for the history, for the poetry at the very least, but as God-given scripture, it is truly an amazing work of God to teach you how to live, and how not live, of the coming days, the days of Christ, and the hope we have if we are God's child. 

I could go on. So many books.  Classic literature was so rich not only in the words used, but also in morals, stories, history, grammar, language... 

Modern-post 1960-"literature" changed that.  No longer are the books rich in grammar or morals or much else.  In fact, it could be argued they are the opposite.  And then we wonder why it's so hard to teach our children basic grammar and sentence structure.  Science fiction authors thought they were coming up with crazy stories, 40 years later how many of our inventions have come about from science fictions (AI, robots, cell phones, video calling to name a few).  Spoiler alert-it never ended well in the books, it won't end well in the real world.

And a question-why in the world do we need to learn to deconstruct sentences and identify every part of the sentence. Ah yes, the "books" we now read. 

Maths. 

First off-yes, that's how you say it-Maths. or Arithmetic.

Math shouldn't change. 

1+1 should always equal 2.

55-20 will always be a simple 35.  Not the whole Base 10 math where you tick off the 10s until you manipulate it enough to find the answer. 

Math used to be basic accounting principles.  How many bushes of apples at $0.05 a bushel do you need to sell if you need $10 to pay the bills?  Because that's the kind of math kids needed to be able to survive as adults. 

When was the last time you used Calculus? And the high school class doesn't count.  For the most part-calculus isn't used after high school. Now if you can prove me wrong, please do.. But take your average Jo Schmo, working a blue collar job.  Geometry, yeah I can see that.  I could even see some Trigonometry being used.  But it's mostly filler classes.  Because Heaven forbid you let those perfectly capable teenagers get out of a building with their brain being crammed full of things to pass tests and encourage them to work at a job to gain them true life skills.  

Do I personally see the point of higher maths? No I don't.  Will I end up teaching my kids the higher maths?  Probably, because it's expected to go so high in math to succeed. It's expected to fill your head with useless knowledge... Especially after I know they understand and know-without my help-how to budget, how to balance a checkbook, how to make something and then figure out how much to charge to make a profit, how to convert a recipe to bigger or smaller.  How to plan a quilt based on how big you want it versus the size of squares you want to want.  How to take a patch of land and plan out a garden for optimal growth for the plants (tomatoes don't like onion, potatoes don't like peppers but corn and squash are best friends).  

History.

History shouldn't change.  It gets added to, yes.  But you shouldn't look up the same thing in four different resources and get four different answers.  

HISTORY SHOULDN'T CHANGE.  

But it does.  I have spent 7 years trying to find a good history that didn't change *much*.  Just when we thought we had it, we found we were wrong.  

So back to the basics. The best possible way to teach true history is to find autobiographies of the people who lived it.  Project Gutenberg is an awesome resource for that.  I say that as I'm also editing a history course for my kids from 1776-1900.   Why?  Right now, I have no idea why.  Right now, I just want to find the important people presidents, generals, inventors, the founding fathers, the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist papers and read the books with my kids.  Teach them why we came to this new land in the first place and learn how we got so far from the ideals we set out to have.  

We had started using the Robinson Curriculum with our kids.  How I understand it, Dr. Robinson's entire theology behind homeschool was to teach the kids the basics-how to read, math facts-then let them go.  Give them a guideline until they learn enough self-discipline you are comfortable with.  Once they learn to teach themselves, the sky is the limit.  They can teach themselves whatever science they want.  

What in the world is the problem with teaching kids to THINK?!! 

Yes, we need life skills. Yes, we need maths, yes we need to learn to read... When was the last time I broke a sentence down into parts? (I didn't because my public school "teachers" told me I was too dumb to learn.)  But I was blessed with an awesome history teacher who made sure we learned the truth. Who let us ask questions.  Who guided us through civil discussion-even when 9/11 happened.

It's natural when you teach, to teach your ideals.  What ideals do you want your kids learning? 

God instructs us to teach our children his ways in Deuteronomy 11:19 and Proverbs 22:6-and many others.  

As you're planning your school year-no matter what your school year looks like.  Think about it.  Not just the spiritual, not just the morals, not just the academics. Every bit of it.  What do you WANT your children to learn? What ARE your children learning.  How can you change it if it doesn't match? 

As you can tell, I'm struggling right now.  I'm having a hard time reconciling teaching my kids useless dribble that they need to get a GED to show "they can study to pass a test".  While knowing Galileo invented the first flying machine is an awesome little factoid.. Unless you're a mechanic-why? What purpose has that served me other than being able to answer random trivia questions? No purpose. At All. None. 

~Tabitha 

Trying To Be Intentional

 My goodness, it's been a hot minute. 

Things got a little crazy...... and then a little more crazy.  

When we started our homeschool journey I always said I would love to have a chance to send the kids to Christian school.  

We started school with Abeka, moved to ACE... Couldn't really afford either because consumable products are EXPENSIVE... so I started writing what curriculum we were missing to make sure our kids were learning the truth, because Creation science at any level is either hard to find or extremely expensive... or all video lessons that aren't reusable.  The history... Don't even get me started on the history.. And Base 10 in math?? How in the world does that even work?   No longer can you just add say 33+23... You have to take away the ones places round up, round down. Add subtract, whozits and whatitz galore.

Then while cleaning up my home library I found a gem in the Robinson Curriculum.  Robinson very much uses a "Charlotte Mason" approach with Saxon as math.  Affordable for big families especially-the hardest part is finding first or second edition Saxon books.  

Then we had the opportunity to send our 4 oldest to our church's Christian School.  It's been a challenging year.  I miss my kids at home. I miss not having to worry about blizzards-and last winter was a doozy. 

Last summer was a doozy in itself.  Derecho and tornado in May... We lost two whole trees (40 year old evergreens).  Thankfully we were aided by a group who came to town to help clean up after the storm, though we still have a stump..

 Another set of tornadoes in July, we lost one whole tree-made a mess of itself we are still trying to clean up, and a few others are still sitting perilously because we don't have the money for cleanup ($10K for a tree?!!?). Three days after that storm the newest baby joined us.  :) I was stuck in the hospital.. 

It's been a whirlwind, but I know God is taking care of us.  

This summer is going crazy already... Trying to cut and burn the tree, I've learned how to use a chain saw (STAND BACK lol).  Trying to fix up what needs fixed for functionality INSIDE the house-that hasn't happened... maybe I'm dreaming too much?  Trying to teach kids life skills, take care of toddlers and a baby, learning life skills myself.... and just....surviving. 

Post-partum anxiety hit me hard this time... it's a huge struggle and I suspect it will be for awhile.  

So... Being intentional.  

We are counting pennies and cutting corners wherever we can.  

I hate meal planning... Oh with a passion do I hate it.  But here we are.  It's a necessity.

 I've been hearing about a method of meal planning and I finally dove in.  

You create your meal plan-breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks.  Then you go through this meal plan and write out your shopping list for the whole week.  

Then you put it all together and you have a shopping list, meal plan and recipes all in one place. 

Shop your pantry first, then go to the store and use sales whenever possible.

I started off with a 4 week rotation, with a pantry staple list (let's face it, Basic Sam's Club list) and a non-grocery list.  Now I'm sure I missed things, but we can tweak it here and there.  I laminated what I knew wouldn't change-mostly certain recipes I cook all the time.  The rest I put in page protectors so I can alter as needed.  Now all I have to do is get to town to be able to find affordable groceries. That's the trick. 

I'll add on more weeks as we go, but it's a start.  

Our basic rotation is tacos, salad, soup, Chinese-ish, something easy, Italian, pizza.   

We'll get through it.  We can do this-with God.

~Tabitha