I Have a Question

What do you think? Should kids share a room or have their own room?


Now, I know that question has a lot of factors to consider so let me give you some details. I have 2 girls and no boys. I have 2 bedrooms for them. Currently, they are sharing a bedroom and the other room is the playroom. In that past they have had their own rooms. We've gone back and forth.


What are the benefits you have found for sharing/not sharing a room? I have some thoughts of my own, but I want to hear from others.


Give me some parental wisdom here folks!

Ike Huffed and He Puffed...

It's not too bad. We got home Sunday morning with no traffic problems. I was really concerned everyone would be trying to come back and we would get stuck for hours on the road. Instead, we had roadway trouble. Lots of roads were impassable, either because of water or power lines and we had to do a bit of weaving around town to get home. There was no power most of the way home. That was obvious from all the dark businesses lining the road.

Here is what we found at home:

This is the area of our house formerly known as "fence." We normally like our fences to be vertical.

This is the area of our house formerly known as "gate." Ditto on how we normally like our gates.

This is an area of our house formerly known as "shingles." The neighbor across the street said he watched our shingles flying through the air all night.

Remember our playhouse?

Oops.

It's really not bad though. We spent the last 2 days cleaning up limbs and shingles and hauling our various house parts out to the curb. We know we are very fortunate.

Our power came back on Sunday afternoon. THAT is incredible! The water was declared fit to drink yesterday and a few stores in our city are open now. There are lines everywhere, for gas, food, ice, etc. Thankfully, we haven't needed anything yet. My parents are still out of town so we told them to go grocery shopping before they return home. They'll be bringing us milk, eggs, bread, etc.

There is still no power in so many places--including my husband's work. Our cell phone bill will be astronomical this month as texting was just about the only way to communicate and we don't have unlimited texting on our plan. (We are so low-tech!) We do have a phone now (thus, the internet...thus, this post) and are feeling very blessed.

Just wanted to share a few pictures with you all. Guess I will get back to regular blogging soon. Most schools around here are closed for the whole rest of this week and so far--our homeschool has been "closed" too. We picked up a lot of things before we left in case of flooding and so there is unlimited junk on our homeschool table. More work to do...

And I don't even want to look at my Google Reader. How will I ever catch up?

We Are Fine!

We are out of town, even though we weren't under mandatory evacuation orders. We made our own decision! :)

Now, we just have to decide when to go back. There is no power and it could be weeks (although I have trouble believing it will be weeks for our area.)

Thanks for the prayers and thoughts! See you when we get home and have power again!

The Expanse of Goals

There is one thing about homeschooling that a great many people who don't homeschool do not understand. At least I suspect they don't understand it by the fact that before I was a homeschooler this had never occurred to me. If I can be considered normal...then I believe this one thing to be very misunderstood. Or very under-considered.

As a homeschool parent, I have the opportunity to look at the WHOLE child. The whole student. For the whole expanse of their school career. Does that seem obvious? Let me tell you about public school--just in case you've never worked in one.

Sometime in the week before school starts (sometimes only a few days before), each teacher is given a list of students. (Remember, my experience is with elementary--secondary might not work like this) That teacher then goes about writing his or her student's names all over the place: name tags, folders, Popsicle sticks, the front door, bulletin boards, grade book, etc. Each classroom is given a roughly equal number of girls/boys, black/white/Hispanic/other, Gifted and Talented/Special Ed, and whatever other ways you can think of to divide children up. If the teacher is really on top of things, she may have time to wander down to the front office and take a peek inside her student's cumulative folders. If they are ready. Or, she may be given a card with comments from last year's teacher. These can say anything from, "He wears glasses to read--make sure he has them." to "Do NOT sit her next to Vanessa R." to "Takes Ritalin each day at lunch." You know, the important stuff. Rarely will a teacher have time to discover that Tommy's parents divorced last year in the spring or that Matthew is a foster child. She'll find out in the course of the first few weeks of school, but...

Can you see that there is NO WAY a school can set personal goals for each student? A teacher has those goals for her class figured out (for her) long before she ever knows who is walking through that door. That's not to say that teachers don't work with children who need it, of course they do. In the limited way that they are able.

But as a homeschool parent, I was able to sit down last month and write out my goals for my 9 year old daughter. I titled it "Responsibilities of a 9 Year Old" and shared it with her so she would know what we expect of her this year. There is a wide range of things in that paper, from "clean up after yourself in the bathroom" to "find ways to be a good big sister each day." Some are physical goals (keep your hair brushed). Some are homemaking goals (learn to cook X amount of new things). Some are relational (being a big sister).

We also have the choice to make spiritual goals for our daughters. Not every homeschooler is religious, but it is a freedom we have. And I'm not saying that if a parent does not homeschool, that there is no way they have goals for their children. Of course they can and probably do! I'm only meaning to point out the superiority of parents who love their children and spend tons of time with them being the ones who make goals for that child over the school doing it.

It's easy to get focused on the educational part of homeschooling. There's the curriculum and the lessons and the very cool craft projects and the field trips and the experiments and all the other stuff that goes with educating our children.

Don't forget, in all the sharing of knowledge, to look at your whole son or daughter. It's a blessing that we are able to do so and one we should take full advantage of.


Check out the rest of the Carnival of Homeschooling going on this week here. A big thank you to the Cates family for hosting this week!

Time for a Status Update

Physical: I just got inspired over at this blog. She's losing weight like a crazy person and some of our measurements match so I'm thinking I should join her on this quest. Hmmm. Trying to get really motivated on that one but I'm not sure it's working.

Spiritual: Frustrated with people who have gone to church for a sweet forever and still don't seem to know a whole lot (not mad at them, just frustrated, OK?). Frustrated to sit in class this morning at church and have not one person open their Bible.

Homemaking (homemakingtial?): Hmmm. I got the dishes washed tonight!

Not enough? OK, I washed a lot of clothes this weekend, ironed 5 shirts for my husband's work-week and decluttered that bedroom. I now need to get into the master bedroom closet, which is tiny by the way so it shouldn't take long. Obviously, people had fewer clothes back in 1967. And no need for air in the laundry room, but that's another topic. After the closet, I plan to start the toy room. This will require much prayer, I'm afraid which is why next time I do a status update, you can look for the topic of "toy room" under the heading of "spiritual."

Educational: Sweetheart is liking her 3rd grade curriculum so far, but misses doing "fun stuff." As usual when she says that, I probed further to find out what "fun stuff" she perceives herself to be missing. It turns out, she wants to make a lapbook. Fine. The horse unit study is up at Heart of the Matter--we will begin this week.
Little Bit is working on her Dora lapbook, which I am making up as I go along. This week we are going to twist the topic of 5 senses to be about Dora. Hey, it can be done!

Financial: Husband starts his new/old job tomorrow. We are very thankful and hope he will be so much happier back at his old digs. One thing is for sure, this will force us to get our little financial ducks in a row. Gotta be frugal. Gotta be frugal. Gotta be frugal. (I'm reminding myself.)

Wanna update your status?