We have Monarchs!

On September 6, our Monarch caterpillars morphed themselves into chrysalises, and we have been watching them patiently to see the final step in the process. Although our books say the pupal stage is 9-14 days, ours took 20 days to complete the process. It has been getting pretty cold at night and the day they chose to come out of their "shells" was a nice, warm sunny day, so I wonder if the weather conditions have anything to do with the timing? You will notice that the butterfly on the left has emerged, while the one on the right is just hours away from freedom. About a day before they emerge as butterflies, the green chrysalis turns dark and you can see the black and orange of the new butterfly through the now transparent skin.
Here, the first butterfly is about to be released to freedom.

He chose to fly as far as a leg and rest a bit before saying "Thank you, and goodbye" before heading out to find a mate. This butterfly was a male, shown by the dots on the bottom wings.

Here is a very cool video that someone else made that shows the butterfly life cycle.

And even more interruptions...

We returned from our family reunion (which was incredible, by the way -more on that later...) and I had to take my laptop into the computer store to get some things fixed before the warranty expired. They said it would be 3-5 days. Of course, a week later, they said they were waiting for the parts to come in. Then the parts came in, and a cable was missing from the order. So, 9 days later, I got my laptop back.

Life went on as usual, I just couldn't blog about it. :) It was a little scary - and frustrating - realizing how much of my life is housed on my hard drive, and how dependent I am - even in the classroom - on the internet! So many times we will be discussing a topic and I'll pull up a picture, or a video or song online to go along with the lesson.

One day, we read Matthew 1:1-17, which details the genealogy of Jesus Christ. I gave each of the kids a 4 generation Family Tree chart to fill out and realized that my genealogy software was on my hard drive. I started pulling files out of my genealogy filing cabinet and saw that I have neglected my paper files since I started adding my research to my software program. There were many blanks left "to be filled in later".

Yesterday, we talked about Desert Ecosystems and there was a section on sand storms. I rejoiced to have my old friend sitting on the corner of my desk, so I could easily go to Youtube and find a clip from the movie Hidalgo, demonstrating a sand storm.

While I have a great respect for Charlotte Mason and her teaching methods that were popularized 100 years ago, and there is nothing like holding a textbook in your hand from 1911 and watching your little ones' eyes light up as you read from it, I also have an extreme appreciation for modern technology and how we can use it to give a clearer picture of the topic at hand. (How's that for a fine example of a run-on sentence? :D)

So that said, my laptop is back and working great, so... let the blogging proceed! :)

Life's little interruptions...

Sometimes, when you are going along at full speed, making progress, life happens. One of the positive positives about homeschooling is flexibility. We had planned to have school on Labor Day and save our day "off" for later when the new baby decides to make her appearance, but something came up that changed our plans.

We will not be doing school on Friday, either, as a few of the kids and I are planning to leave for a family reunion out of state. (Dad and the other kids will stay home and take care of the livestock while we enjoy a couple of days away.) This means that we only have three days left to do school this week, so we have two choices: We can do three days of school this week, or fit five days of schoolwork into three.

Since all of the kids were at their desks yesterday morning, ready to do school, we discussed our options and took a vote. The majority ruled, and they voted to do longer days on Tuesday and Thursday and finish two days of school work on each of those days. It works.

So yesterday, I got the opportunity to rub shoulders with some other homeschool Moms and compare notes. One of them is doing My Father's World - Creation to the Greeks with her children and they are thoroughly enjoying their days as well as we are. We shared our methods of recording attendance and book lists and suggested ways to organize our portfolios. Iron sharpens iron.

According to the calendar, the first day of Autumn is still a little over two weeks away, but thanks, in part, to Tropical Storm Lee who decided to take a little trip across the country, we are enjoying more Fall-like days this week. The mornings are a little crisper, the nights are nippier, and the afternoons are nice and enjoyable. The stanza of the poem we studied in our 6th grade English class today seemed very appropriate...

A haze on the far horizon,

The infinite, tender sky,

The ripe rich tint of the cornfields,

And the wild geese sailing high --

And all over upland and lowland

The charm of the golden-rod --

Some of us call it Autumn

And others call it God.

From Each in His Own Tongue, by William Herbert Carruth

Also, before I close this post, I'll give a report on our Monarch Project. So far, three of our caterpillars have entered the chrysalis stage, and two caterpillars are still munching away on fresh milkweed. It should take 10-14 days for beautiful butterflies to emerge from their life changing cocoons. We are (trying to) wait patiently.

The chrysalis on the right (above) has just changed from a caterpillar this morning. You can still see the stripes as it has not turned into the green jeweled chrysalis as the ones in the back have.

You may notice the black object to the right of the caterpillar on the left in the bottom photo. It is not a fly - it is the caterpillar skin our new chrysalis removed as it took on its new form.

Where is Your Passion?

One of the things I do, outside of being a Mom, is layout and edit our church's monthly newsletter. This is my ministry in the church and I spend a lot of time in prayer about what we, as a church, need to hear each month. As part of that duty, I write the front page article each month, as the Lord leads. I just finished the September article and thought I would post it here, as well...

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Passion - Wikipedia says it is an intense emotion, compelling feeling, enthusiasm, or desire for something. What are you passionate about? Your family? Your job? Your cause? What about your faith?

A status that has been circulating on Facebook lately filled me with conviction! It says, "I wonder what would happen if we treated our Bible like our cell phone? What if we carried it everywhere we went, flipped through it throughout the day, and went home to get it if we forgot it? What if we received messages from the text, couldn't live without it, gave it to kids as gifts, and used it in case of emergency?" Are we as passionate about our Bibles as we are our cell phones? Our cars? Our hobbies?

My daughter and I had a discussion the other day as we were driving. I was telling her that there were people that I had known throughout my life who seemed to always be living close to God. They were GENUINE! What separated them from people who called themselves Christians, but went through ups and downs? What is the key to remaining close to the Lord? How do we STAY in that place where our sanctuary is found in Him? We passed a church whose sign read, "If God seems far away, who moved?" It's obvious - but how do we keep from moving when we are pulled in so many different directions in life? The one thing that those true saints had that others didn't was definitely passion! They were so passionate about their faith. They had such a love for their risen Lord! They had a burden for sinners and spent time in prayer and praise.

I read recently that John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, made the great discovery - that "without holiness no one can see the Lord" (Heb 12:14). This he understood to mean that unless a person had purity of heart and life, entrance into heaven would be forfeited. Fearing for his soul, Wesley started to systematically and methodically structure his life around the great goal of taking time to be holy. What a worthy goal!

My family just started reading the book of Revelation for our family devotions. In Chapter 2, John writes a letter to the Church at Ephesus. He mentions all the things they are doing right. Then he tells them about their one downfall – they have lost their first love – the passion they had for Christ at the beginning. In verse 5, he tells them to 1) Remember – what their relationship with Christ had been. 2) Repent – turn and head back to their first love, and 3) Repeat – do the first works – do again the steps of discipleship they took as new believers. David Jeremiah, in his Study Guide to Escape the Coming Night, says, “Trust that your obedience to do the “first works” will be followed by a heart that gets emotionally excited once again."

Thinking about these things gives me a yearning to be alone with God. It makes me hungry for the things of the Lord. It brings to mind Psalm 42:1, "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God." The Psalms also tell us "he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things." (Psalm 107:9) And Matthew 7:7 reminds us that all we need do is, "Ask and it will be given to you." I have found that sometimes, when we are feeling dry and spiritually thirsty, we need to ask God to give us a hunger and thirst for His word. Just ask... and it will be given.

I am convinced, that if Christians would passionately pray to hunger and thirst after righteousness, the Revival we have so fervently been praying for would come. Lives would change, families would change, communities would change, our country would change ... the world would never be the same!

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told the eager crowd, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled." (Matthew 5:6) Think for a moment about those words. Why would Jesus use the idea of hunger and thirst to refer to a yearning for righteousness? Because those are ideas we can all relate to! Who among us has never been hungry? Who has not said, "I'm dying of thirst!" In Clarke's Commentary on the Bible, he says, "When the uneasy sensation termed hunger takes place in the stomach, we know we must get food or perish. When the soul is awakened to a tense of its wants, and begins to hunger and thirst after righteousness or holiness, which is its proper food, we know that it must be purified by the Holy Spirit, and be made a partaker of that living bread, or perish everlastingly. Now, as God never inspires a prayer but with a design to answer it, he who hungers and thirsts after the full salvation of God, may depend on being speedily and effectually blessed or satisfied, well-fed, as the word "filled" implies." The Greek word interpreted “filled” in this verse literally means “completely satisfied” or “saturated”.

As I write this, I am dealing with conviction and fight back tears of repentance. I WANT that hunger and thirst! I want to be filled. I want to return to my first love! Lord, that you would give me a passion for you!

NOTE: To read the whole September issue of Beyond the Pew, you may download a low res PDF file here.

Organization - The Color System

When there are 10 people in the house, that means 10 towels, 10 cups, 10 plates, 10 forks, 20 socks and 20 shoes. Sometimes it means 10 different bottles of shampoo, several different sticks of deodorant, 10 toothbrushes and several tubes of toothpaste. How do you keep all that "stuff" organized? This is how we do it...

Back when we had 3 or 4 kids, we started "the color system". It just so happened that each of the kids had their own favorite color. Our oldest daughter's favorite color was purple. Our oldest son's favorite color was blue. Our second son liked green and our second daughter liked pink. As I shopped for items such as towels, plates and cups, I would look for these items in their favorite color. As we added more children, it turned into a "system" and made sense.

If I walked into the bathroom and found a pink towel on the floor instead of that child's hook, I knew exactly which child to call to develop the habit of hanging up her towel. If I found a blue and purple cup on the table after dinner, guess who left them there? The only downside to this system is that it has become increasingly more difficult to find items in a variety of colors and we seem to be running out of readily available colors to assign to new little ones. ;)

What about the rest of the "stuff"?

Since everyone has their own toiletry items, it made sense that we needed a system that allowed us to have "a place for everything and everything in its place". We have a tall cabinet in our bathroom with shelves in it, so I found white plastic baskets that were just the right size that two of them fit on one shelf. I labeled each basket with the owner's name. Inside the basket goes each person's toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush or comb, deodorant, and any other toiletries they need on a daily basis. This makes it easy to grab your basket and sit it on the sink while using it, then put it back on the shelf when finished.

For the wet towels, I purchased removable Command hooks, and placed them on the back of the bathroom door. After showers, towels get hung on your assigned hook to dry. We reuse towels a couple times to avoid the growing mountain of laundry each day. If you come out of the shower clean (as you should!) then this shouldn't be a problem! :)

Laundry is a daunting task as you can imagine, so it is done on a daily basis. By the time the kids are 10 years old, they are taught to do their own laundry. A small round laundry basket is in each person's closet, and dirty laundry is placed in it as it is accumulated. When the basket is full, it is carried to the laundry room. If you are a "self-launderer", you wash it, dry it, fold it and carry your basket back to your room, put clean clothes away, and place the empty basket back into your closet. Otherwise, you leave your dirty laundry by the washer and your clean clothes are given back to be put away when they are clean. There is also a hamper in the bathroom for dirty clothes that come off there. Those are washed by the parents of the house, folded, sorted and each child's stack is placed on a step (oldest to youngest) to be carried upstairs and put away. With each child being responsible for their own laundry, we have eliminated the problem of someone yelling, "I don't have any clean pants!" as they are preparing to go to Awana or a scout meeting. Now, if you want clean clothes - wash them! (This is a case where "tough love" and "consequences" come into play, and it's all a part of growing up and learning responsibility!)