Getting it Together

When life throws you some curve balls, it can be hard to get back on track. Having challenges is part of life. We all have them at various times, some more than others it seems. With educating our children at home, we often find that difficult circumstances greatly alter our ability to stay with our education plan. We find ourselves detoured as we meet the challenges we face. Sometimes we are detoured far longer than we expected and it is easy to feel guilty, depressed, frustrated, or all of these things combined. If our trials have been of a very severe nature, like death, loss of job, new baby, etc. then we may find ourselves so discouraged that we may give up completely.

How do we overcome challenges that slow down our education?

1. First, realizing that everyone will face challenges in life at some point makes it a bit easier. We need not feel alone or that we are the only one. Yes, other people's challenges will be different than ours, the focus is on that everyone HAS challenges that derail their education at some point, even though they may be very different in nature.
2. Next, we need to not beat ourselves up over lost education time, passion for education, and loss in attitude towards education. When we face difficult trials in our lives, we turn to what is often called "survival mode". We cut back on things that are non-essential and turn towards getting through the day. This is a built in coping mechanism that is given to us by our creator to protect life first. We shouldn't feel guilty about doing this during the most difficult parts of our trials. Over time we can add more of the non-essentials back in. I know, how can education be non-essential? In terms of survival, education is not on the level of essentials, it takes back seat to food, shelter, safety, and personal relationships.
3. The first two steps are mental preparation and giving ourselves permission to cut back. The third step is to look forward to a return to our educational plan in a timely manner. Depending on the trial, it could be months before you can return to a full educational path. Trials that derail us completely like death, severe health problems, and a new baby will take the longest to recover from. Trials of a financial nature, discipline problems, moving, etc. will often take a change in attitude and a few weeks to get back on track. You are the only one that can determine when you are ready to return. Your children may even be very happy to be off-track! That will discourage any mother and make you wonder why you do it all. But, you will find that one day you will feel inspired to return to the schedule and you will feel the pull to bring the family back to the way of education that you need.
4. Once you feel that pull to return your family back to education, take some time to write notes or make a plan to ease back into the schedule. One of the most damaging things I've done in returning to our education plan was to "jump in with both feet". My children were suddenly told that the next day we were starting back to a full education schedule. It was a difficult day and I've learned since to add things in week by week rather than all at once. Usually it is the guilt that drives us to suddenly return to our education schedule in full force.

As we are getting it together after a month of trials, it feels good to get things back into action one step at a time. Our approach is to:

1. Pick a date we will begin returning to our education schedule. For us, that will be after our oldest goes back to college. We decided to extend our annual break a few more weeks to allow us to have more quality family time together. Normally I would start to feel guilty about this, but with so many deaths and health issues in the family, I think we need this extra time.
2. Decide what parts of our schedule are the most important to start first. One area that has crept in is a lot more entertainment than I normally allow. The first thing to change will be a reduction in our entertainment and to make the hours it is allowed to be firm again.
3. Make a plan for which week to add in schedule/rules to the plan. Our next schedule changes will be adding in devotional, kid school, and classes outside the home. These will have various start dates and will be added into the schedule with a plan in place, knowing that our schedule will steadily increase in demands.
4. Follow through with the plan to return to full education schedule. Knowing the plan helps everyone have an understanding of what is expected and when it will be expected. We typically discuss the schedule and the "step-up" plan a few weeks before we start it. Having the plan laid out helps everyone transition with a good attitude and makes the transition much less painful.

There will always be hiccups to any great plan. Learning to roll with it and adjust and tweak the plan as needed is important to remember. I'm feeling much better about our return to home education and hope to have a smooth transition.

Please share your tips and experience on getting back to home education after life's trials.

Mistake #4 - Give Them Too Little Non-Academic Work

Reference: Leadership Education by Oliver and Rachel DeMille, Pages 214-224

In Mistake #1 I wrote about responsibility and how giving youth real responsibility helps them become young adults rather than teenagers. This post is along those same lines. Real responsibility is more than just doing chores, it is giving them complete responsibility for something - animals, areas of the house, mowing the lawn, laundry, getting a younger sibling dressed, etc.

"Part of a young person's education should be training to be an effective, contributing adult. When you treat them like a teenager you just delay this vitally important experience. A good guideline for what responsibilities to give is: How much would he have to do if he were a roommate away at college?" - Leadership Education, page 217

My friend Rachel wrote a fabulous post on teaching children practical skills. My mother-in-law is another quality example of a mother teaching her children to be contributing adults. She raised one daughter and seven sons, all of whom she taught the value of family work and responsibility. Before her children (including all her boys) left her home they knew how to do laundry, cook, iron, sew small items, mow the lawn, dust, clean windows, and every other household cleaning chore imaginable. I was so impressed with one of her middle sons that I decided to marry him. ;-) He could make a better house manager than me any day! I learned a lot from him after we married.

I believe that there are other forms of non-academic work besides those in the home. We downsized after our last move. We do not have as many animals (down to one dog now) and the lawn is even mowed for us. We do not have foster children either at this time. All of the things I used to assign my children for non-academic work have disappeared. I realized that we need to make some changes...fast!

We are now turning our focus to service. I've asked my children to think of things they can do to serve in the community. Some things we are looking into is the animal shelter, community garden, food banks, etc. If you have any other ideas for us, please post them!

August '09 - Week 2

Devotional - "Let Him Ask of God" daily inspirational readings.

Government - "The 5,000 Year Leap" - Part I - We went over the Ruler's Law vs. People's law and the balance of power between Ruler's Law and People's Law. It is very interesting to see how much they love this subject. Maybe it has something to do with becoming aware of problems in the current government and wanting to know why it is that way and how we can change it that has sparked so much interest.

Math - Dice games: "Which Number Wins?" (Probability) - Individual Math-U-See books

History - "Stories of Beowulf Told to Children" - How the Water Witch Warred With the Dane Folk, How Beowulf Overcame the Water Witch, How Beowulf Returned to His Own Land.

English Language - Winston Grammar - Review: Nouns, Pronouns, Verbs, Adverbs, Adjectives, and Articles.

Science - "Concepts and Challenges in Physical Science" and "Chemistry for Every Kid" - Subject: Force. (I am not liking the textbook listed above very much, but it does give some decent explanations...I may be ditching this one as soon as I find what else I should do.) We'll keep "Chemistry for Every Kid". I'm still waiting for the money to buy the BIG chemistry set that we want.

Family Projects - Splitting firewood, building chicken laying boxes, and building tire swings.

Individual Phases and Studies

Marlayna (Project Scholar) - Projects: Chickens and Rabbits, Chain Mail making. - Reading: "Storytellers", "May Bird", "The Adventure's of Sherlock Holmes", "Touching Spirit Bear" - Math: Math-U-See "Epsilon" Fractions - Mind Benders A4-B1

Christian (Love of Learner) - Projects: Chickens and Rabbits, Chain Mail making, Building a Rope Bridge - Reading: "Diamond of Darkhold"

Samantha (Practice Scholar) - Started her Senior year of high school.

Mom (Ready to be a Mentored Scholar - but, still looking for a Mentor) - Projects: Fixing my sewing machine, then when that didn't work, stitching an apron by hand. - Reading: "Little Men" - Math: Math-U-See Algebra - Reviewing what I have forgotten.

Mom Notes: I love the website Living Math. I also found several dice games for practicing addition, multiplication, division, place value, and fractions. See this post for more details. I purchased a large bag of dice from a dollar store...sweet deal!

Overwhelmed?

Have you ever felt overwhelmed? Well, I think that feeling looks something like this...

where I am the donkey and the burdensome cart is my life.

What do you do when you are in this situation?
Anybody who reads my blog knows we are a TJED family (homeschooling family using the Leadership Education model). There are so many principles in Leadership Education that can be used by anybody, in any situation, public schooled or homeschooled, kids or no kids. One is the Six Month "No". This is where I sit down and make a list of everything I have on my plate - kids, husband, household, work, church, myself, etc. I list every teeny, tiny thing - grocery shopping, hair cuts, washing the car, things I've been asked to do, cleaning, kids sports, etc. Then I ask myself the following questions:

• Do I absolutely HAVE to do this?
• Can someone else do it? (delegate to...)
  
• What are the ramifications if I don't do it?
• How will it affect my family if I don't do it?

After truly taking time to ponder each item on the list based on these questions, I find that I can mark off several things that are really NOT necessary, freeing up my schedule for the stuff that IS important. Each time I implement the Six Month "No", I find new ways to balance my life...which allows me to stop being the donkey!

Detox

One of the mistakes I made when I first brought my children home was to push them. I have found that they need some time to "detox". It takes a good six months, which scares most people away from doing it, yet it is one of the MOST IMPORTANT things you can do to switch gears from public education to home education. During detox, we had the following rules:

1. No TV, video games, or computers during school hours - 9am-1pm at our house - 30 minutes break for lunch.
2. During school hours they were to keep busy with - books, educational games (board games, card games, etc.), educational toys, and educational videos that were on the approved list (included many classic movies).
3. I encouraged them to start projects - like building models, learning to crochet, painting, coloring, etc. These projects were also considered "school".
4. The only required participation was to Mom School - which is when I teach what is mine. Mom School includes our read-a-loud book and whatever else I decide to teach that day.

During this "detox" time, I spent my "school hours" working on my own education, for myself and as an example to my children. How do you know when detox is over? Easy! They start choosing to learn on their own, they ask questions and want your feedback, and they start coming up with their own goals. You find a child with a book they can't put down or a project they HAVE to finish.

I hope this all makes sense. It is so easy to do what we did as children and so hard to change and do something else.