Monthly Pictures Collages

It started with scrap-booking back in the early 2000s.  I was a mom of four girls in a newly blended family.  Our story was unique, although a blended family isn't a rare thing.  I wanted to beat the odds.  I wanted to create a family with a rich history.  I wanted my girls to not see themselves as simply children of divorce, but as loved members of a family that was brought together by God, not just blood.  I had two daughters and the man I married had one.  Step-parents, step-sisters... I just wanted us to be family.  We didn't use "step" or "half" when we talked about our family.  Yes, we had other parents that were a part of the equation.  But, as my husband and I added two more daughters to the blend, we knew that it was important to create a healthy home of love and acceptance as much as we could.

I have always been one that takes many photos. I love capturing that moment, from the extraordinary to the everyday.  Pictures tell the stories of our lives.  We can go back and see the faces of loved ones.  Pictures trigger memories; smells of childhood, the favorite jeans, the toddler learning to walk, first days of school, summers at Grandma's, the feeling of awe when we saw an Ocean or mountain for the first time.  

After my youngest child was born, scrap-booking stopped.  My time was spread thin.  Then, on her first birthday, I received my first digital camera.  From that moment, I could take all the pictures I wanted.  And...  I took and took.  

A couple years ago I began making collages of special occasions.  A throwback of my scrap-booking days when I would make collages of holidays and birthday parties for my children's scrapbooks, I began posting these collages online. 

Slowly, I added made other moments to remember into photo collages, such as the historic flooding that our town endured a couple years ago.

Our vacation to Georgia:

Homeschool memories:

It is the everyday moments that make a life.  The idea of creating a monthly collage came about because so much happens over a year!  Children grow so fast.  Time slips by, and one season of life becomes another.  The little things we do don't matter to many others, but they do matter to us.  The books we read as children, the sunset on the porch with our spouse, the puzzle that took so long to put together, the baby cooing on the floor, the trees in full color spectrum each autumn...  these are the moments to capture.  These are the fleeting glimpses that are there for a moment and then gone like a puff of smoke.

The monthly collage doesn't always happen.  There are busy times when I forget.  But I try to create them when I remember because it is a small way for me to relive moments, to cherish my blessings.  As time goes by, I never want to forget how blessed I truly am.

Incorporating more scrap booking ideas, I also have began using my children's artwork for occasional backgrounds.  The background in the picture below is from a painting done by my ten year old. 

(Painting for background)

Be creative!  Start recording your memories.  You don't have to post them online.  Simply take the photos!  Remember to include the everyday moments that most would not think we're important.  It is the everyday moments that add up to a life.

Don't Worry, Keep Juggling

It's a juggling act most days.  I added a couple pins to the routine with college classes, but the motions are the same.  There are just more of them. And, of course, a couple pins are lopsided and don't want to go where I toss them.

The math lab for college is so slow it takes me hours to complete one assignment.  "Be patient," My instructor emailed, as three other classes await my attention.  

My ten year old seems to have less of an attention span than ever in her life.  I spend a long time in the mornings dedicated to working with her, and it still took her until five p.m. today to finish her school work.  Why?  Because she procrastinates.  She works in slow-mode, not wanting to get going in the mornings, stopping often for any reason she can think of, and just not working very diligently.  I'm at a loss about what to do at this point.

But I press on, because God pointed me in this direction, and I know He has it handled.  I know that I may have less free time than a year ago.  I know that the laundry sometimes has to be rewashed because I forgot it overnight in the washer.  I know that my seventeen year old made an awesome chicken salad for dinner while I was fighting with the notorious math   lab.  I know that my ten year old took a long time for school, but she spent a long time making baskets out of clay and enjoying learning about art.

I know that life is hectic right now, but I wouldn't trade this journey for anything.  I know that I get the privilege of spending time in the Bible every morning with my two homeschooling daughters.  I know that I got to read parts of Galatians with my seventeen year old this morning as we delved into the teachings of Paul.  I know that I get to teach my ten year old about Creation as we read through Genesis.  

If nothing else got accomplished or will be remembered, those times with my girls have made homeschooling worth the struggle.  What God does with it is not up to me.  It's up to me to pray and to be obedient to Him.

I have scheduled and done my best.  I have switched things up more than once.  I have felt the frustration as my carefully laid plans seem to backfire.  I have melted down as the pressure to do it all overwhelmed me. I promised myself I wouldn't stress myself out, I wouldn't rush in a panic, and then had to fight those very urges down when things began to fall apart once again.

He is in control.  Not me... for even my best laid plans will never be as vital as what He is trying to teach me. 

His will...  to let go when the day has overwhelmed me and to pick it all up the next day; to pray when those feelings of urgency and frustration began to knot up in my stomach; to trust when I am tired.

I have a class in a few hours.  Tomorrow is another day.  I found some amazing notebooking printables for my daughter's science...  if my printer will work! If not, oh well, I'll let it go for now.  I want that quiet confidence that says, even as life sometimes feels as if it is falling apart, "It will all work out.  Don't worry."

Artistic Pursuits

I planned a lot of art this year.  My children are always doing something "artsy-fartsy," as my husband says.  They draw and color and paint.  So much of the time I don't place a lot of emphasis.  I am not naturally artistic.  My husband has artistic talent, however, and our children seem to have inherited the ability.

Both girls are officially studying art this year.  Plus, I have left opportunities to be artistic in other subjects with notebooking.  We haven't avoided art, it just wasn't a priority unless scheduled as part of whatever curriculum we were using.

As I was trying to plan this year, I kept watching my daughters naturally drift toward art.  It is common for ten year olds to be creative, but even my seventeen year old was drawing.  I felt, looking back, as if I had shortchanged my children in something they naturally loved for math lessons and sentence diagramming and more reading.

Nothing is wrong with any of those things, but I overlooked the natural creativity inside my daughters.  I didn't nurture it.  

When I open their world to more creativity, more art, they do not disappoint.

Here is some paintings from my ten year old.  She is splatter painting and creating a masterpiece of our dog.  

She is girlie and loves painting hearts and rainbows.

My seventeen year old is playing with shading and shadows.

She draws flowers, like any girl, especially the enchanted one from Beauty and the Beast.

But her favorite is faces.

I love the art my children create.  I take pictures of it all because I know I won't be able to keep it all.  (This is especially true for my ten year old.)

Lesson learned.  Let the children be creative and artistic, even if it takes the place of some "academic" time.

Is Cursive Dead?

I began this new blog a couple months ago, but I have been looking over my homeschool blog at Home Mission Field.  While none of my posts were life-changing for anyone besides me, I did have a couple very popular blog posts that I believe are still very relevant.

 Here is one originally posted on August 4, 2011 about whether cursive is important in this modern age.

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Is cursive writing a skill that is necessary in this digital age?  Recently the State of Indiana has stopped requiring students to learn how to write in cursive.  Whether it is up to the individual schools or not, the trend seems to be moving in the direction of teaching children typing skills at an earlier age, and not teaching how to write in cursive.

"Neuroimaging scans of children who wrote versus those who looked at text showed brain activity in the writing group akin to an adult's. The writing group also showed better memory and letter recognition."

I am not surprised at the new move of public schools.  I have read where some homeschoolers feel the same way.  In fact, I am sure that I am quite old fashioned in my belief that learning cursive has a lot of merit.  I believe it is important... even if it is old-fashioned or unpopular.

I haven't told my daughter that the public schools aren't requiring her to write in cursive.  In our home, we plan to learn and continue to practice the skill.  Laura does dictation.  She will be learning to type, as that is also a necessary skill, but I don't believe that typing has the same power in the brain as writing something out by hand.  This has been proven to me in our schooling through the use of dictation.  In dictation, Laura studies a few sentences or a paragraph from a piece of quality literature.  Then, it is dictated to her.  She must write the piece perfectly or redo it.  In a few short months I have watched her writing, spelling, vocabulary, and memory recall all improve drastically.  I don't think I would have seen the improvement if Laura had been typing the same material.

In these modern times children will be required to learn how to use a computer and maintain the necessary skills to do their work efficiently on that computer.  Typing is much faster and legible than handwriting.  When a person types, they can keep up with their thoughts much quicker than if they were writing.  I wonder, though, if what we are losing is as beneficial as what we are gaining.

Hands-on work is so helpful to many students.  When I am studying, I love to take notes.  I do this by writing down what I want to remember and the thoughts I have about the subject.  The act and process of writing, whether it is copying or even my own material, stays with me much longer than if I was typing the material.

There was a time where possessing beautiful handwriting was a sign of a quality education.  Does that mean that someone who has not so neat handwriting is less educated or less intelligent?  Well... not if the cliche about doctors' handwriting has any truth to it.  Beautiful handwriting is just that... a skill.  However, it also plays such an important part in learning that it shouldn't be easily cast aside for typing.  Yes, it is a skill that is harder for some than for others.  As a mother of two left-handed children, I have seen their left hands covered with pencil or pen as they struggle to learn this skill.  Even now, my 18 year old leftie has an odd mixture of cursive and print as her writing.  However, she did learn both and can type quite successfully.

There was a time when cursive was taught even before printing.  Some homeschool curricula even still leave that option open.  ABeka Book offers a print and cursive selection for 4 year olds.  In an article on the ABeka website concerning learning cursive in Kindergarten, the following reasoning was offered:

"Before the 1940s, schools across the nation took this approach and, as a result, most American school children developed beautiful handwriting. Ball-and-stick manuscript came about as part of progressive education reforms in the 1940s. The change was made primarily to help children recognize the letters in the “Dick and Jane” look-say readers. By starting with cursive writing rather than manuscript printing, we help the child develop good writing habits from the very beginning. This means that habits acquired from manuscript printing do not need to be unlearned."   - A Beka Book Cursive Writing in Kindergarten

The argument against cursive is that is just isn't used as much today.  Schools have tough curriculum choices to make with limited time and budgets.  Learning cursive takes a lot of time.  Typing uses a different sort of motor skills.  Teaching a child typing instead of typing and cursive saves a lot of time.  Typing can be taught with less one on one instruction, using computer programs.  Cursive writing takes a lot more individual attention to a child.

I think we are replacing foundational skills for easier ones.  After all, we don't need to teach children to write because they can just type.  But, if we take that further, we can find that this could lead to other areas of compromise.  We don't need to teach children how to spell because computers have spell check.  We don't need to teach children how to read because we have computers and machines that will read stories to them.  We don't need to teach children math skills, we only need to teach them how to use computers and calculators.  We don't need to teach children how to think for themselves, we can tell them what to believe.

I am exaggerating in an effort to make a point.  I love to write in cursive.  A couple of my daughters would rather print.  However, they know how to do both.  They also type quickly.  They can also read the original Declaration of Independence, in the original cursive.  The 11 year old might not understand every concept, but she can read it and look up the meanings.  Without cursive, she would have to read a copy that was typed out.  Doesn't that mean the allure of the time is gone?

I have read some of the writings of those from as little as 100 years ago.  Much of their correspondence and writings were done by hand... in cursive.  Not only is it beautiful, but I read the words of those that went through a whole different time in their original writing, and I feel connected to them somehow.  A type-written version may be more legible, but the idea of knowing someone's hand put those words to paper during a time in the past brings about a connection to that person and time.  Like a picture, I can see that person a little more clearly.  Handwriting is personal.  It isn't cold like type.  It is full of personality, like a person.  It is a part of them, a legacy.

I don't want that lost for my children.  Not only do I want them to have the ability to read the past, but also to have their own legacy.  In the scrapbooks I have for my children are yearly samples of their writing.  I can see how they grew and changed by their writing just as much as by their pictures.  I can see the rough scrawl of Kindergarten, so uncertain and uneven, as it matures into the beautiful, individual writing of a young adult.  I can tell you which of my children have similar writing to me or their father, and which ones have their own style.  To see that lost for typewritten pages or only block lettering means losing something that my child could have possessed and passed down.

Our First Week

We made it through week one of homeschooling.  

My classes begin next Monday, so this is where the challenges will begin.  I will have my own classes to complete while working with my girls.

So far, I haven't changed much from what I have planned out.   I was tempted to...

My fifth grader seemed to unfocused.  Yes, she would be classified as ADHD in school.  At home, the symptoms are apparent some days.  I wanted her to be able to study her own interests for social studies/history and science. Unfortunately, this needs a bit more structure.  At first she was using a Fun Schooling journal.  She doesn't like it, which surprised me.  Then, I assigned a notebooking page every couple of days.  That wasn't working well either. 

In the end, I scheduled a rotating schedule of Social Studies and Science, using some workbooks I have.  I'll also give her a half-hour a day as free read.  This way she can still delve into what she wants, but also be getting a light load of a structured curriculum.  With her attention span, I think this will work for her.  If I see her totally getting engrossed in a topic, I can cut back on the workbooks.  And once they are completed, I have no desire to purchase more. This means using what I already have and coming up with my own plans.  

Other than that, the lesson plans seem to be going well.  I worried that I had overscheduled my high schooler, but she dived in and has not had major issues.  Well, she has been fighting a cold.  The illness and working a couple of days haven't seemed to hurt her schoolwork. 

I did let her spend the week exploring a different English and Literature.  She doesn't like it.  I already own one that we have used in the past.  In the end, I will let her decide which of the two she likes the best.  She has to use one of the two, however.  

I wasn't sure how my children would take to the McGuffey reading.  I have used McGuffey in the past, but it has been a couple of years, and the previous lessons weren't as in-depth.     They both seem to enjoy them. 

Over all, it was a good first week.  We got a bit back into a schedule.  My goal was to get one going before classes began for me.  In fact, the biggest issue this week was the fact that I dropped a class for college and added a different one.  That caused more stress than homeschooling in me!

World Geography

It is my daughter's senior year.  I have been planning her lessons, debating between books and programs. Geography has been my most time consuming class to plan this year.

When I thought about what I wanted a World Geography class to contain, I asked myself what I wanted my daughter to know about the world.  Most high schoolers take World Geography in their first year of high school.  Since I placed my daughter in the same classes as her older sister when she began high school, she is actually taking this class in her senior year.

Geography is about so much more than finding countries on a map. It's about people.  It's about cultures.  It's about learning about the great beauty and variety that God created.  

I took a long time to pick what I wanted this year to contain. I liked some selections other Geography programs held, and dismissed things that I thought were not valuable or were busy work.  That meant that the workbooks were out the door.  Instead, I scheduled in a computer-based program with a lot of pictures and videos of the countries being studied.

Adding in my own special touches was important to me.  I choose a selection of books, both physical and digital, to supplement the computer learning.  I wanted a mix of books, from biographies to spiritually encouraging works. 

One area that has come to mean a lot to me was the book, Material World.  With rampant materialism the norm in so much of society, I want my daughter to see that many people in the world live very differently. The glorification of "stuff" is not a value I want imparted in my children.  Material World is an older book, built it shows that so many in the world have few possessions.

A few years ago I had purchased the Jesus Freaks' Martyrs book. I was touched by the stories from around the world and throughout time of those that have loved Jesus and died for serving Him.  Then, last month, I found the book Sister Chicks.  Following a similar pattern of the Jesus Freaks' books, Sister Chicks follows Christians around the world at different times.  These aren't Christians that were martyred for their faith, but ones that lived for Him.  

I chose these books and some of the biographies, such as Kisses from Katie and Basher Five-Two because I wanted to show the work of God around the world, in hard times and good, in different eras.  I also included books like A Long Walk to Water because so many struggles in this world are ones that we don't hear about until years later. Like Material World, I hope to touch my daughter's heart to the world.

Geography should not be boring.  The world is a fascinating place.  Different cultures and landforms, languages and religions, landmarks and foods...  it's a world of wondrous variety.  I want my daughter to learn about this world, to be informed.  She is also reading the book But Don't All Religions Lead to God.   I want her to understand other religions, and to have a firm foundation in her own. 

This year is my last year with my daughter in our homeschool.  She is a young woman that is learning about the world.  She is working and driving and maturing.  I am praying for her to be the woman God wants her to be, to follow the path He wants her to follow. 

Our Homeschooling Adventures Are Drawing to a Close

From age 9 to age 17, 3rd grade to a senior!

I'll never forget my nervousness, writing the letter to the school to pull my third grader out.  Doubts assailed my mind, even as I wrote.  Was I crazy?  What did I know about teaching?  Was I going to screw up my child for the rest of her life?  Was this going to be the start of a long road that would be discussed endlessly in therapy years from now?

The first day.

But the pull was strong.  I had researched, though I would spend the next several years learning and researching about how children learn.  I had prayed, though the prayers were only a glimpse of the years I would spend begging God to see me through, to guide me.  I might have been fighting the swarm of butterflies in my stomach, but I knew God was telling me to do something that was WAY outside my comfort zone.  I told my husband, "We'll try it for a year."  I finished the letter and un-enrolled my nine year old from public school.

Playing Store

Our journey had begun.  That was nearly ten years ago.  And nothing has ever felt as right as that time.

Bean Math

She is entering her senior year this year.  Yes, I have just one year left of homeschooling my first student.  Since that warm day in October when I nervously brought my third-grade daughter home, I have graduated two of her older sisters and added her little sister to my little "one-room schoolhouse" at home. I wouldn't change a thing.'

Reading to Little Sis

Homeschooling hasn't made life perfect.  My daughter has faced hard times, despite being home for her education.  She has lost friends.  She has had to face new beginnings.  She has not been sheltered from hurt or struggle or doubts about faith and self.  She, like many teenage girls in the world, has struggled with self-esteem and self-image.  Homeschooling hasn't protected her from everything "bad" in the world.  Some think that homeschooling is not good for children because it keeps them from the "real world."  I am saying blatantly how foolish that thinking is.  She lives in the real world every day.  She is not immune to it simply because she doesn't go to a building with hundreds of others peers in her age group.  She has faced rejection by a couple people because she didn't fit their idea of what they thought she should be.  Would it have been healthy for her to have that pressure, times a hundred, from peers to conform to the image they see as "normal?"

Her History timeline in the Early Years

I have no issues with having had my daughter at home for the last nine years.  I know that she was spared unnecessary bullying and peer pressure.  That doesn't mean that she never faced any.  She lives in the world.  Bullies and peer pressure can be found at the park, on the ball field, in the local Girl Scout group, and at church.  At least, with homeschooling, she was spared some of the worst instances.

Learning about and drawing birds

 My daughter is a major introvert.  She has been allowed to be her, without feeling the pressure to conform to some extroverted, "normal" image.  She could dress in her black leggings and leather jacket and not be labeled "emo" or "goth," but instead be understood that she was experimenting with who she is and trying to figure herself out. She could read all about cats and volcanoes for several years in a row without being told that her interests were "less than" or " dumb."

Learning about Volcanoes... again

She could build entire worlds under the coffee table with toys during read-aloud time and not be told that she must be ADHD because she wasn't sitting still.  Instead, she was seen as creative and artistic.  She could learn about the world through a lens of the faith of her parents, but not be "indoctrinated."  Instead, she could be shown multiple viewpoints, and given sound arguments, and not be kept from one view simply because it doesn't line up with current political ideology running rampant in schools.  Her intelligence and worth hasn't been measured by standardized tests.  Her learning hasn't been decimated by texts full of dates and facts, but no personality or humanity.

When she struggled to grasp a concept, she wasn't labeled as learning disabled.  She was simply given more time, more practice.  Her brain easily grasped concepts very quickly when it was ready, compared to struggling when it wasn't ready.  And in areas where she had a natural bent, she was allowed to move more quickly, instead of being held back to an arbitrary level that someone stated every person of her age should be.

A Science Experiment

Here we are, going into ten years of homeschooling.  My daughter is a beautiful, talented, and a somewhat normal teenage girl.  She is questioning.  She is searching and seeking.  She is working.  She is quirky.  She has a quick, dry wit and a good sense of humor.  She is even-tempered most of the time, and reserved about her true feelings.  She surprises me with her sense of fun in moments that I don't expect.  Her grades are high, and she has a goal to graduate with a near perfect GPA.  She is my "list-checker" girl, with a love of classic rock music and drawing and the TV show, Supernatural.  She is naturally beautiful, but loves makeup and wears it nearly daily, even though I believe she doesn't need a drop.

math games with her older sis

She won't be this girl in five years.  The changes that happen between 17 and the early twenties are huge, as I have learned from my other daughters.  I am choosing to enjoy this girl, this time in her life, instead of worrying about the future.  She is an intelligent girl and a hard-worker.  I have placed her in God's capable hands.  I will enjoy this last year of being with my girl, having Bible time with her, and watching her grow from a teenager into a woman.  I am praying that I can pour into her life just a little more before she is off on her own in this world. 

Learning about Different Rocks

The memories are strong of our homeschooling years.

Learning to make homemade butter and putting on our homemade bread.

We baked and read good books and watched movies and learned about the world.  We grew flowers and one poor potato plant that dad kept running over with the lawnmower.

Snowflake Bentley was a fun study into the magical world of snowflakes.  That led to a fascination with the weather, and my girl spent a few weeks watching the weather channel for fun!

Sometimes our learning was a bit crazy, such as when Laura completed a scavenger hunt for literature.

Baking became a skill where Laura excelled.  She is the "cookie" expert, but she can cook anything she sets her mind to make.

Box days, the days when the next year's curriculum would arrive, were often fun days of checking out what was next in our learning adventures.

While we were learning, we were living.  We had such a good time when our studies were over, hanging out together.  Laura became known for her love (obsession) of cats.

I have been privileged to homeschool my children.  It has meant we lived with less.  It has meant that we had times of struggle.  It has meant that each year held new challenges.  It has also meant that I have gotten to be a part of something pretty spectacular: life with my girl.

That life didn't have to rotate around the seven or more hours a day she would have been gone in public school.  Learning became part of that life.  We read books together for hours.  We played store to learn math.  We used beans as manipulatives.  We have boxes of used workbooks and artwork and projects.  We have spent years going through the Bible, studying it bit by bit.  We know the Bible memory songs that drove Dad crazy, and so we made sure he heard them often that year.  We still have the paintings from the year she brought Robert Frost poems to life with acrylic, watercolors, and paper.

 I wouldn't trade these past few years for anything. 

Homeschooling isn't easy.  It is, however, very worth it!

Plans and Wasted Money

After a summer of starts and stops in school planning, I feel I'm in a good place now.  I spent some time researching the Finnish model of education.  I reread some of the theories about the differences in Hebrew and Greek education. I took some time to pray.  I took some time to go through what I already had on my shelves and in my storage closet.  

Then, I got a little irritated with the plethora of "stuff " I have in boxes that I forgot I had.  I got more irritated with the amount of money I have spent over the last nine years of homeschooling.

Then, I prayed some more, because that irritation is not healthy.  Live and learn...   right?

Then...  as God tends to do, I was given a very basic plan. I was led to ideas and encouragement and guidance from a homeschooling mama that has walked the path much longer than me. I came across, once again, the words of wisdom from Sherry Hayes at Mom Delights. 

I figured it up.  Without including paper, pencils, pens, crayons, and other supplies, I have spent easily $8000-$9000 dollars homeschooling curricula over the last nine years. Granted, that was for four different children, but that figure still seems astronomical to me. Some years I only spent a few hundred.  Other years I blew a couple thousand.  Some years I used the library more often, and other years I bought boxes of books and workbooks and schedules and plans. 

Is it worth it?  It was, while I was learning how to homeschool and dealing with life's ups and downs.  When I was trying various methods, I enjoyed trying the various curricula that went along with the methods.  Then life would weigh me down and I would switch to things that weren't as teacher intensive, such as workbooks. 

I have crates full of materials in my storage closet, evidence of all my dabblings.  I own a lot of stuff for homeschooling.  I have just a few dollars to make it to payday, but I have CRATES overflowing with stuff I don't use and only tried or used for one child but not the others. 

This was the cause of the irritation.  Here I was, surrounded by piles of books and workbooks that costs me thousands of dollars, and I was struggling to plan this upcoming year.  I didn't want to do any of it!  The pressure to do the right thing, to use the perfect curriculum, to create this amazing education for my children had been overwhelming.  Too many times I had bought into the lie that I just needed to find the "perfect" curriculum. The result was a lot of stuff that didn't live up to its promises. 

And I no longer want to spend more money to try something else.   The thought makes me nauseous.  For awhile I considered the fact that maybe, since I have tried so many different things, the problem was me and couldn't be fixed with a curriculum.  And, to a degree, that was true.  The problem was I was never content, and always saw the grass as greener in someone else's curriculum yard. 

But, the truth is that I have graduated two students.  I studied and researched and gained nine years' of experience in teaching my children. And I didn't threaten to send a child to public school more than a couple times last school year.  It used to be a weekly thing.  

Most homeschooling mamas spend a lot of money at first, and then spend less and less as they learn that they don't need to buy the expensive stuff.  For me, it has taken a bit longer. I have homeschooled all grades now up till college.  I have homeschooled during unemployment.  I have homeschooled while sick, while recovering from surgery, while dealing with personal and family crisis moments.  Sometimes I could spend a lot of time planning and, at other times, I was lucky to get out of bed.  Every family should do what works for them.  But what isn't working for me is spending big bucks any longer.  Even if I have the money, it seems crazy.

There are simpler, less expensive options that are just as solid and wonderful to use in homeschooling.  There are so many free options online.  There is a library five minutes away... and fifteen minutes away... and twenty minutes away.  Basically, there are libraries if I need them.  There is the wonderful world of Google Books, which allows me to print public domain books to use in my school. 

And then there is the world of notebooking, journaling, and all the enriching ideas of Charlotte Mason.  I looked through what I had, what I could easily obtain, and what was free online, such as Easy Peasy Homeschooling.  Did I really need to purchase a bunch more? 

On my bookshelves are the years of the curriculum that my older daughters completed.  It's nice...  and I might get back to it since I own it.  But this year, I wanted my daughter to have a year of working on math, Reading and writing, art, music, and her own interests.  Yes, I am going to let her dig into what she wants to study.  Hopefully it won't be a year of only cats and volcanoes, but if it is, she should be an expert by the time the school year is over. 

And so, off to the store I went to purchase composition notebooks while they are the back to school sale price.   I grabbed my McGuffey Readers off the shelf and began planning.  The planning is flowing now..  I am content with the direction my homeschool is headed.  Delight-directed studies, books from the library, morning time with devotions, McGuffey readers, some mixed math, Long's Language Lessons, some Easy Peasy; progress is being made. Finally!  And this is just for the fifth grader!

Ideas are flowing for my upcoming senior also.  She will be in her own McGuffey reader, learning from Hawthorne, Dickens, and more!  She is reading some great English literature with the McGuffey reader for her senior year.  And she will be jumping into a drawing class, forensics, and some accounting.   

I'm going to miss homeschooling her.  She was my first student.  She came home at age nine from third grade in public school.  I was crazy, and many told me so. Now, I can freely admit that I don't regret one moment and would do it all again!  Even the money spent on curriculum was worth it.  

Every article and post I ever came across about saving money on homeschooling always talks about using the internet, using public domain materials, taking advantage of the library...  but I always felt like the plans I could come up with weren't as good as the pre-planned ones. However, I would buy these excellent materials, and then tweak them.  I would take out the project that seemed to be busy work with no real learning.  I would add in more reading.  I would swap out the recommended math and English.  By the time I was done, it didn't really resemble the plans I paid for, so what was the point of spending all that money?

And then the doubts and stress would begin.  Was I doing enough?  Was the program "Christian" enough?  Was the child engaged?  Were they bored and losing their love of learning?  Was I failing?  Shouldn't I just stick to traditional materials?  Was I giving them the best?

Then, I would spend more money to "supplement" or to change nearly everything.  Insecurity is expensive.  And when that wasn't what I wanted, I would swap back or try something else.  

Luckily, the daughter that went through most of my "experiments" is smart, capable, and adaptable.  She has made it to her senior year and is doing well!  The classes she has taken where the computer does the grading have held high scores, just like her work that I grade.  

I am praying this year will be a bit more relaxed.  I have my own college classes I will be doing, and I need time to focus.  This year will have "Morning Time."  My Morning Time will give me the ability to complete read alouds, Bible time, and even help my girls with assignments before I jump into my own class work.  This, I pray, will help me to spend an hour or so every morning focusing on my girls and feeding into their hearts and spirits.  I'll be available anytime, but a dedicated time to ensure I am covering some things I want to do with my daughters seems vital with a busy schedule.

I am excited about this upcoming school year.  I wouldn't trade homeschooling.  And, I love that the path I have found seems to be more affordable and relaxed.  New school year, here we come!  (Well, in a couple more weeks😊.)