Life Changes

We are about to embark on a new school year with a different focus. Realizing that our time on this planet is limited and we need to seize the opportunity to make a difference in our children's lives, we have cast off the Cyber school "push, push, push" mentality in exchange for a relaxed, Christ centered, memory making curriculum.

I've spent the Summer re-reading my Charlotte Mason books and feeling convicted about my previous ideas of education. One day, as I was thinking about all the things we had accomplished, and all the things I realized we should have done differently, it hit me... Over the years, as our family grew, and as our children grew, we have slowly moved out of the mainstream and into our niche. We homebirth, because we looked at the path we were on and decided that it was most definitely destructive to us and our children and we felt the Lord would have us take the road less traveled when we came to the "Y" in the path. We were forced to rethink everything we knew about childbirth, unlearn what was "normal" and then forge a path toward a healthier childbirth experience.

We have done the same thing in other areas of our lives. In health issues, we look for remedies direct from our Creator to heal our bodies before turning to man-made substitutes. In our diets, we have learned that food in-season and grown naturally trumps anything the local supermarket has to offer. Yet, when I examined our homeschool situation, I realized that we were trudging down a road with the masses. We were crowded by others caught up in the monotony of logging daily progress, working toward the 100% completion by the end date. That our children did all of the assignments took precedence over what they had learned from the class. They were miserable. I was miserable. I felt like we were rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.

To be honest, it wasn't until I stepped back and examined my day to day life that I knew something had to change. Expecting our 9th child, homeschooling 6 of our kids, and taking care of my parents in a neighboring state 3 days a week were all challenges that were threatening to engulf me in chaos. As we came to the end of the school year, we were behind in our progress - way behind. I was teaching from 9 in the morning until 6 or 7 pm many days. I taught Kindergarten lessons from start to finish until our Kindergartner had completed his daily schedule. Then, I sat down with our 2nd grader and worked through her schedule. When that was done, I began working with our two 5th graders, who had been trying to trudge through their work on their own, but without the great success I had hoped for. Our 9th grader was struggling with time management and completing his work, and our 11th grader was juggling high school and college classes that sometimes needed our attention. Our wonderful education system was sucking the life out of our home, leaving little time for things like meal preparation, household chores and laundry. I felt like a tennis ball being bounced about!

As I cried out to God for an "answer", He gave me one. Follow suit. Just as He had convicted us about other areas of our lives and we had made adjustments to come under His will, this area was one that we needed to seek His will in. We needed to step back, unlearn all that we knew school was "supposed" to be, and then follow His gentle leading. I began looking at our children as individuals who had specific needs instead of percentage points on a graph. I began asking the questions Charlotte Mason proposed.

• Was I forming right habits in their thinking and behavior?
• Was I nourishing them daily with loving, right and noble ideas?
  
• Were they bearing fruit in their lives?

Sadly, no. They hated school. They weren't retaining ideas and information. They were working toward the completion date on the surface, but were they learning? I didn't like the attitudes and character that were developing in our home, so I set out on a mission to find "our" way.

And that is where we are now -- two days away from our first day of school... seeking to find our way on this journey of life. I believe the path that now lies before us will take us where we need to go.

OUR NEW ROAD MAP

The first thing I did was ask myself (and the kids) where, in all of our homeschool history, we had the most success. What did we find most enjoyable? Where did we feel the most was learned? The answer was unanimous... the year we did "Charlotte Mason". We had used Ambleside Online six years ago. As I listened to the kids, it was their memories of nature walks and living books that they remembered more than the content of the curriculum. It was discovering God's Creation and "doing" art and learning music. It was having a loose schedule instead of one jam packed with long drawn out classes and text books filled with twaddle.

My husband and I began praying for wisdom and I began looking at various curriculums that followed Charlotte Mason's ideas. One night, at a boy scout meeting, one of the other parents asked my husband if we had ever tried curriculum by "My Father's World". He came home and told me about it and I looked it up. The more I read, the more I felt at peace. I felt that God was leading us and that He had just handed us a road map. As time went on, I could see our journey mapped out before me. It was like typing our destination into Google Maps and having our trip planned for us!

So... we begin... we are packed for the next leg of our journey. The tank is full of fuel, the vehicle is tuned up and ready to go. Monday morning, we turn the key in the ignition and take off...

Until then... enjoy the good Earth our Creator has given us. :)

"We hold that all education is divine, that every good gift of knowledge and insight comes from above, that the Lord, the Holy Spirit is the supreme of mankind, and that the culmination of all education... is that personal knowledge of and intimacy with God in which our being finds its fullest perfection." - Charlotte Mason