Meditation Monday: What Drives You?

The kids were watching a Veggie Tales movie yesterday and I remembered - vaguely - seeing an interview done with the creator some time back. So I looked up the interview, out of curiosity, and found some things in the interview that resonated with me with regard to my business and the way I run things. It also resonates with how I live my life, and why we do things in our home the way we do.

These quotes come from the linked article if you want to read the whole thing.

... the question I ignored was, "How did God wire me?" Because He didn't necessarily call me to see how big an organization I could build.

Schoolhouse Review Crew: Apologia's What On Earth Can I Do?

As we've neared the end of the school year, and it is beginning to warm up outside, the kids have been itching to get out and about. The problem is that we weren't done with our work yet and the odd, on-again, off-again winter weather had them going stir crazy in the house! There was a lot of bickering, arguing, and "me first" attitudes cropping up. Around the same time that all this began, the opportunity popped up to review the Apologia Education Ministries Program called What on Earth Can I Do? 

What we received in the mail

This program is part of the What We Believe series and helps kids gain a Christian worldview in a way that covers all the different learning types, and many different age groups. The ability to adapt this program across multiple levels is huge for a family spanning several ages, abilities and learning styles and makes it an excellent homeschooling resource to keep on hand. In all, we received the book linked above, plus What On Earth Can I Do Notebooking Journal, Junior Notebooking Journal, and Coloring Book.

Schoolhouse Review Crew: Science 4 Us Online

It is a heavy "review" kind of week! So today I am reviewing the Science4Us.com online subscription for the Schoolhouse Review Crew. The Square-in-the-Middles (Bruiser and Buttercup mainly) have really gotten a lot out of kids shows that are geared towards teaching science. I don't have a simple science program for them to work on so really appreciated having the chance to review Science4Us when it came around! This program is geared towards kids in Kindergarten through second grade, and can also be used as an early science review by kids in third through fifth. We used it with Buttercup (K/1) and Bruiser (3rd). The older kids didn't look at it; Mr. Magoo (2 years old) looked on while they worked. And they love this program!!

Several Aspects to Young Living

This is a tiny bit long (when am I not long-winded about something I'm excited over??) but please read and bear with me!

I got thrown into a bit of a cold-water bath the other day. I had a friend call me up to tell me that a woman I had only recently met (and that my friend had met only once or twice as well), had said something about me. This woman was someone I had spent several hours talking to about a wide variety of topics, including Essential Oils. She had even come to my most recent Essential Oil 101 class, and that is where her comments stemmed from.

Schoolhouse Review Crew: The Presidential Game

Chef loves board games with strategy games being the all-time favorite. When Schoolhouse Review Crew came out with a chance to review a new board game - The Presidential Game - I thought it could be a fun one to try, especially since Chef often has trouble finding people to play some of his strategy games with (Risk, etc.) Though I didn't know much about the game just from the website, it also looked like it could be a fun way to help the kids understand so much of the political goings-on when elections come up. 

Homeschool Review Crew: Brainfood Learning, Fascinating World of Mammals

Like so many other brick-and-mortar raised schoolchildren, I have fond memories of entering the classroom to see the old movie projector set up, to get to sit back in my seat in a dark classroom and hear the soft whir of tape moving through the big metal machine as the screen lit up in front of me... Movie days in class were special - and changed as I got older, of course - by high school, we watched the increasingly rare images move across a television screen instead of one that pulled down; the whirring tape was replaced by the clicks and hums of a VCR machine. The experience remained an enjoyable one. 

When I saw that I could provide a similar experience for my homeschooled kids, I had no thought of turning it down! Our first video was provided by Brainfood Learning, and was the title The Fascinating World of Mammals, which retails for $14.99. 

Kids being kids, they settled in eagerly for some screen time (not as rare in our house lately as it should be perhaps, but they are eager even when it's educational at least), and requested pop corn or a snack to go with it. (Hmmm... I don't recall popcorn being part of my own childhood movie day experiences... but I digress.) The Fascinating World of Mammals is not a full-on documentary, but is a series of ten shorter clips. The video was split into ten animals: beaver, kangaroo, moose, dolphin, lion, giraffe, elephant, bat, chimpanzee, and bear. 

Schoolhouse Review Crew: Beyond the Page

 Ahhh... Summer.... A time of swimming pools, picnics, playtime, and school review time. Wait, what? "School" anything and "summer" shouldn't go together, right?? Not in a homeschooling house! (And increasingly "regular"-schooling families who don't want their kids to forget everything over the course of three months' break. In our house and many homeschool families, we're taking the time to look at what we did last year, where are the gaps, and what can we improve on.

One are that we've mentioned is science for our oncoming 8th grade Maestro, and reading comprehension and speed with Bruiser. When the information for Moving Beyond the Page listed that the review material would include a science program for older students and the possibility to use a reading/literature program for a younger student, it was the perfect fit for me to shore up both areas of study in our kids.

Schoolhouse Review Crew: Math Rider

For Maestro and Chef, the decision on which math program to use in their earliest years came easily. We used a program that fit in with how I wanted them to learn their facts. Bruiser has struggled a little bit more with the same program and I've been looking around for ways to help him reinforce the basics. 

It seems I am not the only parent out there who felt like her child needed a fun way to get the facts down cold - enter Math Rider, a computer-based math facts game that covers addition, subtraction, multiplication and division through a series of "Quests."

Schoolhouse Review Crew: Leadership Garden Legacy

When I first saw the notice go up about reviewing the Growing My Leadership Garden series, I was intrigued. In the course of homeschooling the kids, I have watched them as they tried their hands at leadership, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not so much, but always putting in the effort. They've made me proud to watch them, my kids have, but was I doing enough to help them learn skills that would help them be good and effective leaders? Maybe. But I'm always looking to learn something new to share with them, so I asked if I could be one of the Crew to try out Leadership Garden.

Schoolhouse Review Crew: Classical Academic Press - Discovery of Deduction

I was given the opportunity to review the course The Discovery of Deduction by Classical Academic Press. Though we've long joked about Maestro being our little "lawyer", the truth is that some of his arguments fall a little... flat. In taking this review, my hope is that he will learn how to better form his thoughts and come to a stronger expression of his position.

Words Have Meaning: Know Your Greek and Latin Roots

As a true "Language Geek", Jeff has often talked about how useful it has been to know something about the Greek and Latin root words when studying other Romance languages like French - and also in studying English! So when the opportunity arose for our family to review the Greek and Latin Root cards provided by the Lonestar Learning company, I jumped at it! 

Christianity in Orthodox Countries?

I  haven't written in a while. Sometimes life gets in the way, and it has lately, but I aim to fix that. But I am also jumping on here quickly to Rant for a brief moment. 

I receive posts-by-e-mail of probably a dozen different blogs on various subjects: several "organizing" blogs, a few home school blogs, Thomas Jefferson education blogs, and, of course, several that are put out there as "ministries" of various kinds by Protestant women. I like some of what they write; in spite of having never met these women, I can say that they seem to be good and decent folk and I appreciate some of the points they make. However, one of the blogs I follow (and have only been following for a few months) has included a comment that hits a hot-button point for me. It is this:

(Note from the translator: In the Ukraine, there are two kinds of Christian… the orthodox church which is essentially pagan and just Christian in name only. The other kind is typically called “Believer” instead. There are only 0.4% Believing Christians in the Ukraine. To the Ukrainian being Christian reflects something on the outside but a believer is one who believes in Christ. Very Different Concepts. That is why there are very few believers in her school, even though Marina says 40% of people are Christians. There is a difference in the Ukraine between believer and Christian.)

She had done an interview of a 16-year-old girl in the Ukraine on her daily life as a Christian there, and this was a comment, as you can see, by the translator. Here is why it sticks in my craw:

I have heard many western Christian people talk about a need to go to traditionally-Orthodox countries and "teach" them about Christianity and "convert" them from their pagan beliefs. I have heard missionary types talk about how they need to "reach out" to the folks in Orthodox countries because "many of them have never heard of Christ." I respectfully (though adamantly) disagree. So I've responded to the blog post above (the rest of the interview was not worthless, so here is the original post) and share my response below - and open myself up for comment, question or criticism, as your own beliefs lead you to respond. I also see there is a need for more of my own posts to introduce Orthodox faith and practices down the line!

Here is my response:

To start with the positive, I want to say that I look forward to reading more interviews and sharing parts of the answers with my home schooled children. However, I must confess to being somewhat irritated. As an Orthodox Christian in America, I get tired of hearing people say that people in Orthodox churches in other countries (or even in our own country) are “pagan”. I have heard MANY Protestant folks talk about a need to go to these countries and “convert” them to Christianity, when they are practicing the Christian faith as the earliest Christians practiced that Faith. We are *not* pagans, our faith and love for God is real and abiding – at least as much as one finds in churches populated by humans everywhere, whatever your professed Christian following (Baptist, Catholic, ‘Non-denominational’, etc.) The thing of it is, because so few people know about Orthodox Christianity, they assume that because we use icons that we “worship” those icons (we don’t), because we have liturgical services (instead of services that are ‘non-scripted) that our prayers are not real or genuine (they are – and our use of ‘scripted’ prayers gives us a *starting* point for our own prayers), and on and on. I am fairly new to your blog and have enjoyed it thus far, but this is a sticky point for me because we do not need to be “converted,” we are Christian already. In fact, my husband and I were both raised in the Baptist church and the Church of Christ, respectively, and converted to Orthodoxy as adults after much research and travel – when going to Israel, the oldest churches look VERY much like the churches in which we Orthodox worship today, it is similar when traveling to Ethiopia – again, an ancient bed of Christianity.

I will not throw the baby out with the bath water; your interview here was an interesting one to read and I appreciate it, but had to address that one aspect and I hope you’ll forgive any offense if I have made any.

I'll make my own posts later about Orthodoxy, from my - still-being-educated - perspective.

Melissa 

 

Balancing Life Between Work and Home Schooling

Amateurs practice until they get it right. Professionals practice until they can't get it wrong.

I'm starting with the quote above largely because it motivates me to always strive for more. But now on to the rest of the post!

I recently visited a work-at-home-mom's blog that was new to me called The Work at Home Woman. She had a forum for many different WAHM topics, including one that asked, "Do you home school your kids?" The post was started by the site owner, who asked folks to post tips on balancing work life and home schooling life. The first respondent was someone who (clearly) was not a home schooling mom. Her answer was,

I dont like the whole concept of homeschooling because i (sic) deprives the kids from non-academic learning such as learning to share, accepting failure, team work, value of friendship etc. Homeschooling can be a great way of teaching but it does not help a kid grow up as a sensitive individual. I think that kids should attend traditional schools and homeschool only on the topics that interest them.

I do not understand how people can continue to think that socialization is the number one problem facing home school families. Not only that, but what was her real need in posting her opinion in a forum asking for tips on balancing it all out? Okay, rant over. That just steams me. That one individual opinion aside, here is how I responded to the real purpose of the forum.

No socialization going on here... Nope.

Checking In - 2 Weeks

It has been two weeks since I signed off of most of the more recreational things that I do on the Internet. Things like streaming TV shows via Netflix, FaceBook, FaceBook games, my blog... But some of the things I've noticed bear comment so I've decided to do a sort of "check in" post. I still want to leave my last post about Ray up for the duration of September so I am writing this on the 14th, but won't post it until October 1st.

One thing I had planned to "leave behind" more was e-mail. I meant only to check on my e-mail once a week but quickly discovered that it just is not that easy in our society today. I would like to let it all go for the whole time, but I've had requests for information to be sent that just couldn't wait (homeschooling stuff, church stuff, scheduling, etc.)

So much easier is the "do as I say not as I do" aspect. The kids have not watched a show or played a video game. Maestro has been online a few times to work on the Computer Science badge he started for Boy Scouts. He started the badge before we started out "fast" and I decided at the beginning of the school season that I wanted to try to incorporate his badges into his every-day school work so he's been allowed to keep up with his badge work.

The kids have started asking how much time is left in September - or how much time is left before they're not "grounded." But I really don't see it that way. I don't look at it as a grounding at all - more of a ... break. A fasting period. It's good for us as a family.

Creating an Atmosphere for Exploration *Edited*

Bruiser received a new kiddie-camera for his last birthday. All of the boys have long held interests in photography and drawing. I have tried to be as supportive as I can - and this has been made easier by the use of digital photography. Gone are the days of having to wait to develop the film to find that none of the pictures are worth keeping! While a part of me - the old-fashioned part - laments the loss of "real" film (the old 110 or 35mm film, you know), allowing them to use a digital camera has been a blessing as they explore new methods of seeing the world and new areas of interest. Increasingly, I am finding some pretty good shots, and almost always from an angle or perspective I would not have considered.

One of the best aspects of homeschooling is the freedom to allow our children to explore these new interests and try out new things while still "getting it all in" on the school front. This freedom comes from the fact that their interests are usually easily incorporated into their schoolwork.

Who's Your Mama?

An early effort at writing - this one was on his own

I am a huge fan of the opinion pages and blogs on the Wall Street Journal site. I haven't visited them much, but I tend to enjoy the articles I read there. A recent "Saturday Essay" in the Journal was entitled Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior. In the article, Amy Chua, a 2nd-generation Chinese-American, describes her parenting methods, and more briefly those of her own parents. She makes a distinction between "Chinese Mothers" and "Western Parents," the difference being not so much race-related as parenting-style related. I've put links to a few other thought-provoking articles at the end of this post.