Confident Homeschool Nerds

These homeschoolers warmly embrace the potentially nerdy tone of homeschooling with talent and a great sense of humor.

I was homeschooled until I was about 12, (then my mother turned my education over to others, much of it one-on-one and I learned to run my own homework). I appreciate most of all the different perspective, the time I was able to spend doing the things that really interested me.

unwind the mind

This is one of my most "unwound" moments just taking this picture. No stress. Somebody else is making dinner. No work. Just drive on these long, nameless roads until you end up where it is good and peaceful. Like heaven.

Honesty in Homeschooling

I can't stand some of the homeschool books I've read recently. They are decidedly monosyllabic, written on a third grade level, telling you more or less that having a casual conversation about the digestive system while eating a peanut butter sandwich counts as "health" which goes under the label of "science" which goes under the umbrella of "academics." This just doesn't Speak to My Soul, As It Were. We need to drill these kids- they are brilliant minds begging to be stuffed. This is not a casual endeavor. I don't like to be told that Homeschooling is successful because Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were homeschoolers. That's spurious: how do we know they wouldn't have been brilliant anyway- that it was in the nature of their being to be brilliant? Just because we homeschool doesn't guarantee us a spot in history. We have to sweat for a good education! This is the PURSUIT of happiness. Kids don't want to just sit around their houses and call everyday life education. Education needs to be a special event that takes effort and work.

All day long I am telling myself, "We can do more!" And I can go full board on academics and end up with a pile of clean laundry so large that a boxcar is about the only thing left that can haul it. We homeschool mothers. Do we ever win? Today we fell far short in the academics department. We got only a little done. But our floors are really clean, and we all went 8 miles skating and biking on our own steam through the sunny, windy afternoon! No, this is not school, this is just housework and wonderful frivolity! This freedom is one of the dangerous advantages of homeschooling- it's way to easy to have fun instead of hit the books. It's not like we didn't learn during that time, though. We learned not to brake suddenly going downhill when Mommy is rollerblading directly behind us if we don't like to see her swerve and careen past us yelling at the top of her lungs to never do that again because she is an object in motion that tends to stay in motion and has no idea how to stop on rollerblades. (See, this moment would be where the Homeschool Books I Read That I Don't Like would say, "Ahh, physics. Yep. They're doing physics.") Thankfully I did not end up demonstrating the force equals mass times acceleration formula.

I wish I had a book like Rafe Esquith's There Are No Shortcuts (a great book!) but tailored to the homeschool model and not quite as boring as The Well-Trained Mind that lights my fire.

The Source of Strength

The Lord gave me a rich early morning Mother’s Day gift: I went into the children’s room to get a hanger: when I turned the light on full strength one of the children giggled in her sleep. It was an adorable sound. Instantly it reminded me how much I love the threesome, and how much the Lord loves the gifts that are on loan to us from Him. Later at the breakfast table the children were glowing when I opened the card on the table. These kids. I need to do my best for them.

My husband spoke to the children this morning saying that if we walk a godly walk in close communion with Him, we will have an" abundant entrance into the Kingdom of God." 2 Pet. 1:11 This (he continued in a later conversation) has to do more perhaps with our return with Christ at the start of His thousand year reign than with the rapture of His saints at His coming: what we do on earth now directly affects our responsibility, our status, our abundance in His kingdom. We indeed have responsibility there! The Lord is the one to make that judgement how our talents multiplied or were squandered in our lifetime , but the bottom line is, our cup of enjoyment of the Lord will be full in the coming day, but the size of our cup can certainly depend on our faithfulness down here. Much later, in the eternal state, all is found in God, there is no more work to be done, but the verse about the abundant entrance into the glorious Kingdom have much to do with the rewards and responsibilities of reigning with Him in the millennium. The mustard seed of faith in my heart leaps when I think of this!!

Yesterday he said to our own children “God really cares about every part of our lives.”

After my husband said these words to my three children, we prayed together as a family, then we kissed the children good night. I went to the laundry room and the thought was with me: “God really cares about every part of our lives”

How much do I really believe that? Is God looking down from heaven at me right now, His heart rejoicing that I am thinking of His love for me? Is God watching my hands do the family laundry? Is He following this train of thought? How much does He think about me? How much does He esteem me? How much does He love me?

If God’s love and the power of the Holy Spirit are going to have some impact on my life this is something I am going to have to consider.

The hairs of my head are numbered.

He cares about my hair more than I do, to go to the trouble of attaching a number to each hair.

My tears are in His bottle. I have forgotten the last time I cried: I have been pretty happy lately in spite of myself: God’s earthly gifts to me of a secure marriage relationship, a worthy family, a comfortable home and sweet, rich fellowship with other Christians have been priceless. Yet He has not forgotten the last time I was sad.

If we think on His name, He writes in His book of remembrance.

I am here to write about our homeschool, and this time it is just about tapping into the source of strength and energy to carry out this mission. The privilege and the responsibility are enormous.