Oh, I love this! The music, the spoofy-ness! The ability to laugh at yourself is so vital in life, even more so when you live life different than most. And we home schoolers are fabulous at doing things… different. Enjoy, friends, and relish being “weird”.
HT: Homeschool Hacks
What part do you identify with the most? The digs at classical education and never leaving the house – ha! That is so me.
Today is September 1. If you teach your children at home, many of you are back to the books, and if not yet, you’re getting ready to start again after the summer break. The school room (if you have one – I don’t) is clean and organized, book shelves (we’ve lots of them) are tidy, pens and pencils new and sharp, notebooks fresh (yup, lots of paper and scribbling tools too).
It’s the start of the new year. And you are energized to get started.
Today I want to encourage you, home schooling mom.
The day will come when all is not shiny and new. That school room neat today will be a wreck. Those pens and pencils and crisp paper? Lost in sofa cushions or broken or squirreled away by the toddler when you weren’t looking. (Sigh. I definitely have one of those).
Not only that – your house will be a wreck, dinner forgotten, still frozen in the freezer and the kids are driving you to lock yourself in the bathroom – the only place in the house sometimes where we can find privacy (me again).
I’ve been at this home schooling for awhile, and if you have too, you know it’s true.
This is hard work.
This post is for you, teacher mama. I want you to bookmark it; print it out if you must.
When you are wondering why you do this, when it would be so much easier not to home school.
Take heart, home schooling mom. You can do this. You’re their mommy. Maybe you don’t want to admit it publicly at times (ahem). But trust me on this, friends.
You can do it. I know as I get back to teaching my children – this will be my cry:
I can do all things…
Come on, finish it with me.
… through Christ who strengthens me.
A verse for every Christ-following home educator.
Now go stare at that beautiful organization, because it won’t last long.
© 2008 Monica Brand | Paper Bridges
I’m not kidding. A ten year old boy preached his school to me.
It happened as I drove my car full, plus one more, home from Vacation Bible School. One of Peter’s friends from church invited for an afternoon of Lego’s and computer games. Out of the blue, this boy’s voice came from the back seat.
“You should send Peter to public school, then he would get to play with me at recess.”
Uh. I didn’t know what to say. Amazing, I know, but I was surprised he would be brazen enough to tell a grown-up what to do.
He continued on about the things he likes about his school, and of course it’s all those silly things a ten-year-old boy loves. Like seeing your buddies in the hall and eating in the lunch room. Finally he gave one last effort to convince me, to win me over to the converted.
“School is so much better than home schooling.”
Oh, really?
I know from past experiences that if I turn my head away from watching the road I tend to crash into things (remind me to share those two stories sometime), so I didn’t turn around to give the kid a dirty look.
And how I wanted to do just that.
Evil Monica really wanted to say some not-so-nice things. Evil Monica likes to defend herself, even against a little boy who doesn’t know any different than what he’s been taught. Good Monica decided that wouldn’t be very Christ-like, and since the boy is the pastor’s grandson, and he might possibly repeat the conversation, I kept my obnoxious reply to myself.
See? I am definitely improving at biting my tongue.
As a result of that conversation with School Preacher Kid, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our church and it’s lack of other home schooling families. The only other home school family at our church has two teen boys, and the other family, also with older kids, are going to Christian school next month.
So as it stands right now, we are the only home schooling family with young children in our fellowship.
Any nice home school families with kids aged 10 to 3 out there willing to uproot and move to Jersey? We’re a super easy state when it comes to home schooling, I promise.
I love my church, our pastor and his wife are like family, but if I could change one thing about it, this would be my wish – more home schoolers. More kids for my kids to relate to and be friends with, know what I mean?
Yeah, I think you do.