Happy to homeschool

I’ve been re-assessing my life a lot these days…thinking about what really matters to me most, and what doesn’t.

I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of things just don’t matter. Things that are more materialistic, that is. I’ve never been much of a materialistic person. There are times, though, that I’ve struggled with longing to have the things that others do- mostly close friends. That’s when greed steps in and I have to watch my “daily diet” to make sure that my spiritual food is healthy: good doses of gratefulness and self control.

Lately I’ve been wondering if private school would have been a better option for BigGirl.
Very quickly, though, I was reminded of how blessed BigGirl and I are to have this opportunity to homeschool. All of the nostalgia for “regular” school quickly dissipated and I put aside our plans to visit more private schools (after having toured several a few weeks ago).
At that point I totally and whole heartedly embraced our homeschool with a passion like never before.
Our home has become (and is becoming a daily) a haven of peace and the environment specifically tailored toward the absorption of learning through liberal arts in a Christian atmosphere. I love it. BigGirl loves it.

So this is what works for us today. And we’re happy.

History and math fun

Last week we did a brief history/geography lesson on the Makings of America. Here’s Nyomi with the globe as she learns to locate the United States on a globe and atlas:

We learned about the American flag and its significance (our freedom from Great Britain and the waving of the flag on the battleground). We also discussed our National Anthem and sung it a bit (and played it on the piano) as part of our music.

The weekend passed by rather quickly and I’m getting ready for the next telechat series at Christian Ladies Connect, so I’ve spent some time preparing for that. Meanwhile, I’ve been kind of harried about Nyomi’s science lessons for the month.

I’ve got some objectives in place for her this year for science and I want to cover a segment of these before the end of September– so I’m doing some spur of the moment search for cool projects to integrate into our objectives and we’ll be set. Math-U-See program is EXCELLENT! We’ve gone through 12 lessons (although they’re set to be paced one lesson per week and we’ve only been in school for 3 weeks) but she loves the program and I do too. Which says ALOT for this particular program since I’m sooo picky. Currently she’s on the concepts of adding numbers together using manipulatives and I’m seeing where she’s able to recognize a set of 3 1’s within the a “6″ block. She will split the block mentally in half and say “I see 3 units on this side and 3 units on the other side, so this is a 6 block”. Then we take the 6 block and, say, another 3 block and “smoosh” them together to make “6 + 3 = 9″ or “6 + 3 is the same length as 9″. The program is quite comprehensive I think…with the exception of money (which we’ll work on with time- recognizing pennies, dimes, nickles, and quarters and assigning value to them). I’ve been meaning to find a good pretend cash register for those upcoming lessons/games.

Well I guess that’s all for now… We’ll need to do a new podcast episode soon.