This 'N That

Want to know why I suddenly came back on the blog scene? It's because S needed some dates for something he was working on and we had no idea where we were going to be able to locate the proper paperwork to find those dates.

Then it hit me. My blog! I bet I blogged about the thing he was looking for. Sure enough, after some hunting Sunday morning, I found the dates he needed. And I REALLY enjoyed reading back through my old posts. It was old--Little Bit was 3 in those old posts and she just turned 10 this weekend.

And I was sad I haven't documented the last year (or so) very well. It's been near impossible to do so, but nevermore. It's just too important!

S had a doctor's appointment yesterday and I needed to go with him. We are still trying to get his diabetes under control. It was a good appointment. We learned a lot and the doctor said he really feels he can get S's labs looking perfect in about 9 months. So we have a renewed determination about his diet and a new pill that I really hope works. And a plan for the next month. Then we'll go back to the doctor.

But Mom and Dad had an appointment with my Dad's cancer doctor yesterday too, so I dropped the big girls off at Mrs. Carrie's house. (I paid her with a Sonic drink.  I'm generous like that.) When they got there, all the kids were sitting around the dining room table and there were chairs for Sweetheart and Little Bit. It was quiet, the plumbers were working in the kitchen (so you act really good when there are strangers in the house) and S said, "This is going to be good for them."

And it was. They got everything done that I sent in under 2 hours AND made caramel apples. At one point Carrie asked them if they missed Bee and did they want her to play a video from her phone of Bee saying, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy......" They said, no. They were good. I think they were shocked at how if feels to homeschool without the distraction of a 1 year old.

Oh look. I found a peaceful moment of school. 

Whew. She's quite a distraction. Many times I just close the book I'm trying to read. I can't possibly read over her and I stop every other sentence to say something to someone and AACCCKKK!!!! Sometimes it is chaos over here.

Baby Bee, Little Bit, and Sweetheart before Little Bit's birthday party. It was a bird theme.. 

Since we had Little Bit's birthday party this weekend, you would think the house would still be relatively clean, but you would be wrong. All that effort should last a few days but it didn't. Last school year Little Bit's chore was cleaning and picking up the homeschool room. Sweetheart's was the laundry and laundry room. This year they are both in the kitchen. Little Bit cleans the dining room table off (putting away all items on it and wiping it) and also helps keep the toys under control in the rest of the house. Sweetheart unloads the dishwasher, clears off the kitchen cabinets and sweeps the dining room and kitchen. I go sit down after supper. I'm supposed to get back up and load the dishwasher but sometimes that doesn't happen. Like last night. Anyway I was thinking about how my sisters and I always had to clean the kitchen after supper while my parents went and sat down in the living room. So unfair!!! Now, as a parent, I realize how many, many years I've been doing all that and I'm so thankful they are big enough and I can sit down!

**cue "Circle of Life" song**

Anyway, we had our first cold snap come through yesterday so it's 38 degrees today and I'm thankful we don't have to go anywhere. Planning to educate these young'uns and hopefully get the house back to decent should someone knock on the door.

That's kind of the plan every, day by the way.

Making It

(I remembered how to log on to my blog!) :)

This has been one rough pay period folks. Whew! Our annual camping trip was fun, but we didn't plan on all the money we ended up spending. Plus some unexepected expenses plus Little Bit's birthday and pretty soon we were staring down the end of the month in fear.

Well, concern I guess is the better word. We are about 2 days away from pay day now and I woke up this morning subtracting things in my head. I started to figure out we weren't going to make it--even with the amount we could transfer from savings. Yikes!

Anyway, I went to the kitchen to try to figure out what we could eat these next two days. And I was actually finding meals in all the hodge-podge of the pantry and freezer. In the midst of my hunting, I was looking through a cookbook my grandmother gave me a long time ago. Seeing her handwritten note inside just made me smile. Man, I loved that lady.

And then I thought about how many, many times my Nanny probably wondered what she was going to feed her 5 kids and husband and brother-in-law during the depression. I know their meals weren't very exciting. They ate what they had. It made me feel better. We certainly aren't as poor as they were back then, but it's neat to think "my Nanny felt this way once."

The Lord is so good. We managed to pull off a party for Little Bit for $32. We had enough for some presents for her. And I found enough meals in our kitchen just now that I only need to spend about $15 to get us through these next two days.

We're going to make it.

I could worry about a list of upcoming expenses, but I won't. The Lord has proven Himself so many times. Even when we don't make the best decisions, He is faithful. He loves us. We have enough. We are so blessed.

Per my husband's wishes, I haven't once said, "We don't have money for that" or "We're almost out of money" to the girls these last few weeks. He grew up feeling stressed about having no money and he doesn't want that for them. I'm pretty sure Little Bit thought her birthday was great and she never knew how hard Mama budgeted for it.

It's going to be a great end of the year as I get to watch the Lord provide for us! And some of that provision (I hope) will be wisdom for me as continue to figure out ways to spend money in the best way possible.

Have a great Tuesday everyone!

When You Have a Diagnosis

 Last week I talked about homeschooling with kids who struggle academically and may be 1 or more grade levels behind. I will probably say more about that in the future, but today I want to talk about another concern that can greatly affect our homeschooling and that is when one of your children in diagnosed with something.

It might be something physical. Perhaps a child has a physical handicap. Maybe it's medical. Maybe it's emotional. It could be any number of things.

Asthma
Cerebral Palsy
ADHD
Epilepsy
Tourette Syndrome (our personal diagnosis)

The list could go on and on and on and on. In fact, when you stop to think about it, it's kind of a wonder there are any "normal" children out there! If you are the parent of a child with a diagnosis of one kind or another (even if you are the one who did the diagnosing), it makes you more aware of how everyone has some kind of struggle.

And yet, we don't always see that. We might see another homeschooling family and be around them for 1/2 an hour and somehow in our mind we convince ourselves that they don't struggle. That their kids are smart and healthy and wow how easy they must have it!

But let's talk about how the rest of us live. (And I hope you are starting to realize that "the rest of us" is nearly ALL of us!)

If your child were in public school, you would have a team of people involved in your child's education. The school counselor, the principal, the special education teachers, a diagnostician, the OT, the classroom teachers, etc. There would be ARD meetings and 504 meetings and IEPs and all kinds of paperwork and legalities.

Education is so much more than academics. Little Bit learning to sew last year. 

On really trying days maybe a team of folks sounds good to you! On other days you feel blessed to have your problems be YOUR problems--with you and your spouse in control. I am of the opinion that public school resources are there to help. If you need them--use them! If it's an interference, don't! I don't think you should feel badly either way.

There was a time in our country when children who struggled probably weren't diagnosed at all. My dad tells a story about a family they knew and "the older boy wasn't right." Have you ever heard that expression? He probably had some sort of mental or learning problem. I asked my dad and he said, "You know, we never thought about it. We just knew he needed help and he wasn't like the rest of us." Yep. That's all they needed to know back then. The parents and family and even neighbors just helped the child however was needed. No doctors or psychologists involved. To a certain extent I still think homeschooling families can help their children however is needed. (Of course, if medical intervention is required that's another thing.)

That's my Dad sitting on the porch with his siblings and neighbors. 

It just means that your homeschool will not look like anyone else's. (And it probably never did to begin with.) I know we talk a big game about "who cares about grade levels" and all that jazz but the truth is those things are firmly entrenched in our way of thinking. I tried really hard the other day to think how educating my children would be if I never knew a thing about public school. My first thought was, "well, there wouldn't be grade levels and I wouldn't start and stop each year. We would just keep learning until they were 18 and graduated!" Then it hit me: Wait! They wouldn't stop at 18 and we wouldn't even know what "graduating" was! Boy are we stuck on public school traditions!

If you are the parent of a child who has a diagnosis of one kind or another, you just need to keep on teaching your child. We may say things like "she's in 4th grade" or "2 more weeks and our school year is over" but really and truly we just need to KEEP ON TEACHING and they need to KEEP ON LEARNING. They will make progress. They will learn. It just may not have anything to do with a school calendar or benchmarks or the scope and sequence or any of our other pre-conceived notions. Oh how freeing would it be to be able to shuck all that from our mind and just do what our child needs?

Thoughts?

Dealing With Stuff

Welcome back to my series about how homeschool isn't always pretty!

I was fairly confident going in to homeschooling that I could do the teaching part. I had taught for years in public schools. Second grade didn't seem like that big of deal. It was the teaching while doing housework and taking care of a 3 year old and paying the bills and running errands and fixing meals that seemed hard. (I was right.)

For years I worked under the assumption that everyone else was being terribly successful in their homeschool endeavors and I was the only one having struggles. I'm not sure why this is. I certainly heard my fellow homeschool moms talk about their struggles at park days and play days. I heard them, but it's really hard to imagine other moms at home actually homeschooling. Since we are all in our individual homes, we don't get to see each other in action, so to speak. All we know is what we read on blogs (complete with cropped pictures!) and what we imagine in our heads.

The first struggle we had was with math. Sweetheart had gone to private school using ABeka curriculum in 1st grade. When we began our homeschool journey, I stuck with ABeka that first year. We were used to it. It was solid. It was Christian-based. At first that was fine. Throughout that first year I learned about other curriculum I wanted to try and dabbled in unit studies and lapbooks. The next year, third grade, I was ready to branch out. But since the ABeka arithmetic book was still working, I stuck with that.

Well, about 1/2 way through 3rd grade, we were both in tears during math time. Sweetheart hadn't really gained a very solid foundation in her 3 years of prior schooling. ABeka moved FAST. And we were drowning. We threw away the book, ordered a new curriculum, which started off marvelous, and it was easy enough to blame all of these struggles on 2 things:
1. her former school experiences
2. the curriculum

So I wasn't too shaken up.

Fast forward to this last school year (7th grade). Guess what? We are STILL struggling in math! It has become obvious over the years that we can't just lay blame and shrug it off. I've had to come to grips with the facts. In my mind they were:

1. She's not too good at math
2. I must really stink at teaching math

And then you hear about so-and-so's Kindergarten student who is working through a 3rd grade curriculum and CRIES when his mom says "no more math today." I NEVER wake up to children who are happily doing math worksheets before breakfast just because they want to. What's wrong with us?

The thing is: in public school everyone is kept in the same place. The smart kids might get to go to G/T classes and do extra projects and the slower kids might go for remedial tutoring, but really, you aren't allowed to stay back or move on outside of your grade level very often.

However in homeschooling, there are no limits like that. We ignore grade levels if we want to. And I think that's great as long as you're talking about my 3rd grader doing 4th grade work or above. But it's not so pretty or comforting to think about my 7th grader doing 6th grade work or below. That's nothing to brag about. And I was all "better late than early" in my happy Snow White voice for awhile there. Then it hit me that if we didn't get to moving, she wouldn't actually finish high school on time.

And I was pretty sure that no one else's kids were really grade levels behind. Oh sure, they might struggle, but surely they aren't years behind where they should be! Why are we always so sure it's only us?

So my first point on Homeschooling for the Rest of Us is this:

not everyone's kids are on grade level

And if yours aren't, you are not alone. Now you know.

(I'll talk more about what we are doing in math later!)

Homeschool For the Rest of Us

I don't know about you, but my kids are not going to be earning their college degrees while still in high school.

They aren't reading 5 grade levels above where they should be.

They aren't going to make the news for their outstanding standardized test scores.

I know because I got their test scores back already.

That's why today I am starting a blog series called:

Do you like that picture of Little Bit mid-meltdown during her test? And Sweetheart trying to complete her math assignment with Baby Bee on her lap? This is real life, folks.

A friend of mine found a blog last week that nearly made her have heart palpitations. The woman did seem just about perfect. Her children were ultra-successful, happy, accomplished, and doggonit they got more done in one day that we get done in a week AND cooked their own sauces that we couldn't even pronounce. It's enough to make you want to scream.

And I had already planned this series, but that solidified it. My friend shouldn't feel that way.

And then, another friend posted a link to this post. And that cemented it. (That link has some bad words in it. I couldn't link to it on FB because I'm, you know, the preacher's wife. But by golly it's the truth even if I would have said it a different way.)

Folks, I'm not cropping our homeschool here. I'm going to tell you the down and dirty, nitty gritty truth about homeschooling kids who struggle in school.

I know more of you relate to that than a perfectly successful, highly motivated, owns-their-own business while working on college courses and volunteering daily at the animal shelter while learning photography on the side and scoring perfectly on the SAT student anyway.

Hope you'll join me.