New Year: New Goals

As each year draws to a close, I take the time to ponder it, reflect upon what went well, and what didn't, what I can change, and what I cannot.  I am starting this new year with some new goals.  I am choosing to focus on what didn't work and what I can change to make it better.  I am starting my days with exercise, and taking the kids to the gym for P.E. first thing on school days.  It is my prayer that school will go better after we burn off some extra energy, and fitness is important.  I feel better when I'm active.  I have been avoiding the gym because there is a guy there who gives me the creeps, but I realized that we are spending way too much money each month on a FAMILY membership for one person in our family to use the facility!  My solution, work out some at home, and then exercise there with the kids.  If they are with me, the creepy guy might say hi, but that's the extent of it.  He's also a dad, so he's careful of what he says in front of the kids.  Included in my fitness goals are to run a total of 500 miles total this year.  BruCrewDad's running friends are aiming for 1000, and BruCrewDad himself is aiming for 1500, but that goal is too lofty for me.  If I run 10 miles a week, I will still have 2 weeks to be on vacation, sick, or have a headache.  (I can't run with a headache.)  Added to my fitness goal are my health goals of limiting my sugar intake and having a more set schedule (go to sleep/wake up at the same time).

I have house goals too.  I am working harder with the kids to put things away instead of "down."  I have been throwing things away.  (Little Man had a full 13 gallon garbage bag taken from his room last night!)

One thing that I can't claim as a goal that I have prayerfully set, and I don't know how long it will continue, but God has removed my desire to "read for fun."  Reading has always been my escape.  House stressing me out?  I find a quiet spot to read.  Kids making me crazy?  Go in the bathroom, lock the door and read.  If my mind was lost in the pages of a story, it didn't matter what else was going on.  God has changed the desire to escape it through books.  Now, when the house is stressing me out, we put on praise music and clean.  When the kids are making me crazy with their bickering, we sit down and the table and do a craft, or go to the gym and blow off some steam by running or throwing tennis balls at the wall as hard as we can.  Only God can do that in me!!!!  (This does not mean that I am not reading anything at all, just not reading much fiction right now.)

Lastly, and most importantly, I have set some goals for my relationship with the Lord.  I read my Bible regularly, but have never read the entire Bible cover to cover.  (To be honest, Leviticus bogs me down!)  I am reading a One Year Bible in the evenings before bed.  My goal this year is to read the whole Bible.  I am also reading a devotion with a verse with my morning OJ, and studying the names and attributes of God with my morning coffee.  I might also read another devotion book that I love the author of with my afternoon coffee.  I want Him to consume me!!!!

Have you reflected on last year?  Have you prayed over this year?  What is God wanting to do in you?  What is God wanting to do through you?  What is God wanting you to change?  Psalm 37:4 says "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." (NIV)  For a long time, I misunderstood that verse.  I thought if I just focused on God, He'd give me whatever I wanted.  God is not a genie in a bottle!  God has taught me that if I delight in Him, His desires will become my desires.  The desires of my heart will be the desires of His heart, and what I ask for, He will delight to give me, because they will reflect His nature, His purposes, and His glory.  That is my biggest goal for this year-to delight myself in Him.  What about you?  Do you delight in Him?

Candy School Day 1

In this time of year, when candy abounds, what could be better than finding a way to incorporate it into your school work?  Today, after we finished some of our "regular" school, I busted out the candy.  We copied a stanza of the poem "If Peas Could Taste Like Candy" by Crystal Bowman for our copywork, and then we did experiments with our candy.  Did you know that the white S on Skittles and the white m on M&M's do not dissolve in hot water?  If they remain together, they float to the top!

Notice the "m" floating at the surface of the water.  There are two of them.

We also separated out the colors from the M&M's and Skittles.   Here are our strips from our Chromatography experiment.  Notice that the purple Skittle on the far right and the brown M&M on the far left show more colors than just one.  We also did some math with candy, like count Reese's PB cups by twos (because there are two in a package) and multiplication because 4 small tootsie rolls equal a big one, so how many is __?  I have more experiments and literature up my sleeves.  We'll see how many days of candy 

 school we end up having!

 

Aspiring Novelist

I haven't figured out how to add Linkies to my blog, so here is my button!  Have you ever dreamed of writing a book, but can't find the time?  NaNoWriMo is the perfect solution....50,000 words in 30 days!   NaNoWriMo starts soon!  Preparations have already begun at our house.  We're getting excited!  The kids are participating too.  Their program is called the Young Writers Program.  The goal is to write a novel in a month.  The kids get to choose the number of their words (well, their teacher does, *cough, cough) and if they accomplish their word goals, they get a copy of their book, all published!  Additional copies can be purchased.  If you are participating in this, let me know.  We'll find each other on the forums to encourage each other!

Borrowed Ideas from the Blogosphere: Part 1

I find that when I wander into the blogosphere, I have to remain very conscious of my time.  It is SO easy to follow one blog to another blog to another blog.  Some days, I follow this strange rabbit trail, and I find all I've really done is waste time, but other times I find a tremendous jewel, and I'm glad I wandered.  It's almost like mining.  ;)

So, here is part 1 of the jewels that I recently discovered and plan to incorporate into my school year this year.  I will do my best to give credit where it is due, which isn't always easy in out in the blogosphere.  If you see that I made a mistake, please comment on this post and I will correct it to the best of my ability.  I do not want to claim credit for other people's idea's nor do I wish to give credit to the wrong blogger.

The first idea is a morning board.  My dear friend had done something similar, on a small scale on her partial wall in her kitchen where she teaches her children.  I too have a partial wall in my kitchen, but it's bigger and my stuff looked so small on it (except the paper Christmas tree, but we won't go there!), I couldn't make it fit what I saw in my head.  Then, I came across this post on a blog.  Her calendar and printables led me to this post.  These things got my gears turning!  This weekend, I made my own morning board. I bought a display board from Hobby Lobby...purple, of course, because that is my favorite color. 

In the upper left is a "Days in School" chart from Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations.  The coolest thing about this chart is that it is color coded to match the place values for Math-U-See!  I laminated her chart and added the color coded pockets.  I printed those from Homeschool Share, the small ones on colored paper, available here.  They print 2 to a page, so that was perfect.  One for the words and one for the numbers for each place value.

Under the "Days in School" chart is the "Make the Date" chart from Carisa at 1+1+1=1.  I printed it twice to have the box on colored paper.  This uses coins to make the date.  Today is the 11th, so there is a dime and a penny to make 11.  This is a fun way to teach the kids the values of each coin.  The pocket beside it holds the extra coins.

Under that is the temperature chart from Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations.  Again, I printed it twice.  I cut out the white thermometer and glued it to the colored paper so it would show up better.  Beside that is a ring of prayer cards from the International Mission Board.  We use these cards during our morning prayer time.  You can find them here.

Front and Center are the Months of the Year and Days of the Week Charts from Carisa at 1+1+1=1.  Days of the week and months of the year are things that Smiley has not gotten the hang of yet, and Little Man has not yet mastered them.

I found this calendar in the dollar bins at Target.  The month was $1.00 and the dates were $1.00.  They also had the month titles for a dollar and the "Today is..., Yesterday was..., Tomorrow will be..." charts, but I don't really need those and the ones from Carisa at 1+1+1=1.

This weather and season chart is from Carisa at 1+1+1=1.  Again this is something that Little Man and Smiley are mastering...knowing each season and what order they come in.  Next to these are two pockets of the extra dates for the calendar.

This is blank still, but in geography, we will study one country a month.  The top chart will have a small print out of the country we are studying and next to it will go the continent it is on.  I will probably just google the country image, but the continent printable will probably be the continents from Continent Hop available at Spell Outloud.  Under is the poster for our Artist and Composer of the semester.  We have always had great intentions regarding (and spent a decent amount of money purchasing supplies to teach) the fine arts.  If it is on the morning board, there is added accountability.  We will probably study Beethoven and Mary Cassatt this semester.

In the bottom right hand corner is another date chart from Carisa at 1+1+1=1.  I just used the bottom half of that printable since the top was similar to the days in school chart.  Under that is a skip counting flip chart from Jolanthe at Homeschool Creations.  I printed these two to a page, laminated, hole punched and put them on a ring.  We will go through one each day.  It goes all the way up to the 12's.  Skip counting helps them memorize multiplication facts.

Stay tuned...tomorrow I'll post another gem I found and have already incorporated from Jolanthe's blog at Homeschool Creations!

Catch Up Day!

I went on vacation last week.  It is rare that the Bru Crew goes on vacation other than to visit family somewhere, and this was no exception.  This vacation was a little bit different though because we went for Vacation Bible School.  I know, I know, the word vacation in there doesn't mean you have to go while you're on vacation, but the church of my youth is so special to me, and in years past (last year being the exception) my own church hasn't done VBS.  This year, with our building destroyed by the tornado, we're still figuring out what we're doing.  So, I went on vacation for Vacation Bible School.  Wait, it get's better...the theme was the beach, and I was at the beach!  How much more literal can you get?  It was a good week of VBS, but my time there was crazy busy, with my afternoons and weekends filled with shopping, swimming, the beach, a trip to Urgent Care for X-rays (Nothing was broken, praise God!), cooking, and lots of eating out.  It was non-stop.  The whole drive home on Monday, I planned this week-what I needed to do when, ha, ha, ha!  The plans of man are not the plans of God.  I was planning another non-stop week with a funeral, swimming lessons (cancelled), school preparation, cleaning, laundry, etc.  Tuesday morning, I was quite sick.  Some of my symptoms started Saturday, but Tuesday, I felt like I'd been run over by a truck and left for dead.  My tonsils hurt, my ear hurt, my head throbbed, I was dizzy, it hurt to breathe, and I couldn't keep food down.  So much for my plans.  I spent all day Tuesday and Wednesday sitting around (because it hurt worse to breathe when I lay) watching TV because my head hurt too badly to read.  By Thursday, I decided I needed to go to the doctor.  I was diagnosed with a viral URI and prescribed medication to treat my worse symptoms.  I still spent the day sitting around, but by late afternoon/evening I felt decent enough to unload and reload the dishwasher and cook dinner, even if I didn't feel well enough to eat it.  Sadly, even though I never ran a fever, I was contagious.  One of the kids got all my symptoms plus a fever, another was queasy and it hurt to breathe and ran a fever, a third had painful breathing and that was it, and the fourth threw up and that was it.  Thankfully, Bru Crew Dad didn't catch it since he's leaving the country on a business trip on Sunday.  Also, thankfully, today I feel almost human again.  It doesn't hurt to breathe!  My head hurts, but doesn't throb, and I successfully ate breakfast!  Looks like I'll be doing laundry today, and trying to play some catch up from what I wanted to get done this week.  Definitely not everything, I'll relapse for sure if I try to do a week's worth of work in one day, but at least enough laundry that Bru Crew Dad can pack for his trip.

Except for the funeral which I had to miss, all the work will wait.  I would really have liked to go to this funeral to be there for this sweet family who lost their son tragically, but I was too sick, and it sounds like there was not enough room for those who attended anyway.  Amazingly enough, despite my throbbing head and inability to read and comprehend words on the page the last couple of days, I could still read and comprehend my Bible.  I kept up with my devotions this week, and God gave me complete peace about resting and taking it easy and about my plans being rejected.  The kids were too sick to make much mess either, so we mostly all sat around watching movies or whatever, and the rest didn't matter.  It amazes me how God can make Himself known and glorified even in our illnesses.  What a mighty God we serve!  Now, I'm off to tackle a portion of that mountain of laundry waiting for me!

Lazy Days of Summer

Ms. Quality Time...the brains behind the whole thing.

Little Man and Tenderheart in the "bunk bed".

 As a kid, summer was far and away my favorite time of year...no school, staying up later, sleeping in, playing outside, Kool-aid and popsicles every day!  We do not live in a neighborhood like mine was growing up.  There are not kids on our street for my children to ride bikes with or go to the creek with (nor is there a creek to go to) or play kick ball with.  My children have each other, and that's it.  That doesn't stop there fun though.  They are staying up later (too much later for me!), sleeping later (I love waking up at 9:00!), playing outside, coming in only when it thunders or they need Kool-aid or popsicles.  I limit their sugary things most of the time, but I figure they're burning it all off outside in the summertime.  This past weekend, the kids decided they wanted to build a teepee.  It didn't work well, so they recruited Daddy for help.  It didn't make it to Monday.  They had taken scrap fabric outside to cover it on Monday after breakfast, only to discover that it had fallen since Saturday.  BruCrewDad and I had given them permission to take fabric out and cover it.  BruCrewDad said, "Take it and be creative!"  They decided to take his advice and make do.  Here's what they came up with. 

Smiley in the "swing".

God Still Owns Tomorrow

Procrastination and perfectionism go hand in hand.  They are the two sides of a dual-edged sword which frequently attacks me.  The perfectionist in me wants everything, and I mean everything to be just so, and since it rarely can be, because, let's be honest, I can only do a handful of things really well, I just put off doing what I can't do to my perfectionistic satisfaction.  What a miserable way to live!  My closest friends would be the first to tell you that I have a HUGE tendency to do things big or not at all.  They are helping me find middle ground. 

My perfectionism also causes me to plan, tremendously plan (not like my mom plans, much to her dismay).   As a homeschool mom, school has to be planned, but I started planning the 2011-2012 school year in March of 2011.  We weren't even done with the 2010-2011 school year yet!  I wasn't planning it "officially" on paper, but my gears were turning way back in March.  I tried to stop them, but it didn't work well for me.  Some days, I was so busy planning things in my head, and sometimes on paper when it got to be too much for my head to contain, that I missed a large portion of the day I was in...planning almost 6 months in advance!  I know the old saying, "Yesterday is history; tomorrow is a mystery; today is a gift; that's why it's called the present."  It's easy to say.  It even sounds cutesy, but it's so common that it means nothing to me.  I recently read it worded differently however, and this time, it made me think.

I am slowly reading Let Me Be Woman by Elisabeth Elliot.  It is a collection of letters she wrote to her daughter.  So far, all of the ones I've read have been while her daughter was engaged.  They may all be that way, I'm not sure because I haven't finished it yet.  (I'm reading several books right now, as usual.)  One of the things that she shares with her daughter is that today is all we are responsible for, God still owns tomorrow.  Now, that sounds similar to the above saying, but at the same time, it is profoundly different. The above statement is all about you, your choices, and your responsibility to yourself.  Her statement is about God and our responsibility to Him.  If I'm thinking about today as a gift, I'm thinking about myself.  When I receive a gift, I can do whatever I want with it.  The giver has no say in how the gift is used, or even if it's returned.  (Come on, I know you've done it too!  We've all received gifts we didn't want or need.)  However, if I'm thinking about God owning my tomorrow and I'm borrowing today from Him, the way I treat borrowed things is different.  I am more careful with other people's things than I am my own.

Also, she's not really talking about worrying about tomorrow.  Jesus told us not to, and we shouldn't.  That's easy for me to say, because worry isn't my struggle.  What Elisabeth Elliot is talking about is living.  Is planning a sin?  No, I don't believe it is in and of itself, but what if your planning tomorrow keeps you from living today?  What if you put something off, saying, "Oh, I'll just do it tomorrow."  That's okay sometimes, but what if it's a habit?  Hmmm...now it's getting interesting.  God still owns tomorrow.  What if He chooses not to give it to us?  Did we live today, or are we planning to live tomorrow?  Were we responsible with today?  Did we do what we should have?  We truly are living on borrowed time.  Are we acting like it?

Please don't think that I have arrived at this yet.  God is just beginning to plant the seeds of this truth in my heart, but I think it's important.  Will you travel this road with me?  Can we live together on our borrowed time being responsible with what doesn't truly belong to us?