Cold Coffee

If you are a homeschool mom and a coffee aficionado, I’m sure you understand what I’m implying.  You pour yourself a nice, hot cup of coffee before you get started on your day.  In a perfect world, you would have time to sit and enjoy this moment of tranquility.  But reality says that even if you have a brief moment, it’s rarely tranquil because your thoughts are on what you are pulling together today for your lesson!  You consult your Day-By-Day or other form of agenda, read over your bible study, spend “just a few minutes” on the internet finding just the right information for your lessons and checking email; then, before you know it, your abandoned red-with-gold-polka-dots-from-Starbucks coffee mug has gone cold and it’s contents are uninviting.  It’s sad, but you take a drink anyway and mourn its passing.  Sigh. 

So, on with the show!  I am Patty and I have been a homeschool mom going on four years now.  I have six children, who range from 20 to 6.  Two are step-children, the other four natural.  But in my mind, they’re all mine!  I am only homeschooling my two youngest daughters, who are eight and six, 3^rd and 1^st grades.  I used a conglomeration of materials for our first year of Kindergarten and began Abeka for first grade.  However, the glitter of Abeka quickly wore on me.  By the end of that year, though my daughter was reading successfully and writing in beautiful penmanship, I really felt it was lacking some important substance.  I couldn’t put my finger on it but I knew something was missing.  The first idea that began to catch my interest was the concept of notebooking that another homeschool mom shared with me.  After some research I thought it might be the key to stepping up the fun and interaction in our school day.  Then, after some input from my sisters-in-law, I decided to look into Weaver and I was sold! 

We are weaving into our second year now, though it hasn’t been without some doubts.  By last February, I was ready to get a job at a private Christian school and sign the girls up!  God has been so faithful in this whole calling, though.  Just as I was ready to give up, another friend called me for encouragement.  She, too, was re-thinking her dry curriculum and looking into unit studies.  It completely refreshed my mind of where I had been just a year prior, “looking for substance”.  And she, through the counsel of another veteran homeschool mom, was reminded to PRAY, PRAY, PRAY!  This was certainly my turning point.  I realized that it wasn’t exactly the curriculum that I was having trouble with.  I thought I needed more structure when I had complained about too much structure the year before.  Basically I just needed to PRAY!  Of course, I pray on a daily basis, for our school day and all but there’s something different when you are at your wit’s end and are crying out for God to bless your homeschooling experience, to bless your children despite your faults, for it to be ALL Him and none of you.  Needless to say, our school caught fire as I began to document in our personal homeschool blog (www.graceandemilyschool.blogspot.com).  We entered Chapter 6 of Unit 5 in Volume One.  It was the most exciting school experience ever, for us!  From that point, I have not looked back.  Even if we’re in a lull, I know there’s something around the corner.  I have given our school over to the Master, the fully equipped Teacher, the Principal of principles, the most creative Creator, the Mathematician of the stars and sand and hair, the Scientist of existence, the Great I AM of grammar, the — well, you get the point.  It’s all His and I need to consult Him as I serve Him in His ministry.  That all seems so elementary to a seasoned Christian but sometimes us seasoned Christians can overlook the simplest of things.   

I look forward to sharing what we do at school and hope to encourage the “doubters”.   I don’t know what I can offer the veterans, as I am still learning the ropes, but hopefully there will be something here for you, too! 

Blessings,Patty 

This entry was posted on November 29, 2007 at 3:35 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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