Tis the Season

I love this time of year.  I love the smells, the food, the music and most of all the reason for this season.  When I remember the reason why we celebrate, this time of year has a much deeper, richer meaning to me.  I have thought about ways that I can bring this into our daily learning.  It really is nice that we can begin each class with a prayer, and then talk and reflect about spiritual things.  When we look to heaven for direction, enlightenment comes and that is when true learning happens.  I believe we then are able to see things as the really are and not clouded by the way we want to see them. 

Last night I went and finished my last minute Christmas shopping.  It was the only time I had  alone.  I left after dinner, (7:00 pm) and didn't get home until everyone was in bed (11 pm).  The life of a homeschool mom is exhausting.  I'll be honest.   I don't know how parents homeschooled 15-20 years ago.  There is so much information available at the touch of a button today.  Even Christmas shopping is made easier now.  Most things I have purchased online have been shipped to me in two days.  Incredible!  When I sit and think about that, I am amazed at how blessed we are.  I am grateful to live in this day and time when there is an abundance of resources available to aid in our growth and understanding of things as they really are.

We are a week away from Christmas and I am feeling the anxiety of finishing neighbor gifts, cleaning my home for my in-laws to arrive, finishing our lessons before our 2 week hiatus and all of the items left on my "to-do" list.  I am an anxious person by nature and this is the time of year when I can get overwhelmed.  I am trying to do my best to remember that I need to relax, breath and pray for direction.  As long as we are doing our best to progress forward a little some days and more on other days; God will aid us in our learning as we look to Him. 

October Catch-up

This post is an attempt to catch up on the last month or so.  We have had a wonderful fall, full of fun and memorable activities.  When we decided to call home our new school, I worried about all the fun events my girls would miss.  They very rarely complain about missing out on events at the public school and every time I ask if they want to go back they both yell with an emphatic "NO!"  That is comforting since I never planned, nor thought we would be walking down this road of homeschool.

October we went on some fun field trips.  This was the second year we visited Black Island farms with some other homeschool friends.  We road on a tractor, picked our own pumpkins, played in a pit of corn and slid down huge slides. 

 

This has become a fun tradition that my girls now look forward to every fall.  I have tried to make sure that we have fun memorable activities that contribute to what we are learning in school.

 

One of the things that I remember when I was a child in school, was the Halloween parade.  When Avery and Taylor were in kindergarten and 1st grade, I loved going to the school to watch them as they walked in the parade.  This year, in an effort to fill that void, we decided to have a homeschool Halloween party with some of our fellow homeschool friends as well as our cousins who were off track from their year-round school.  We had such a great time. 

 

 

 We decorated caramel apples, bobbed for apples, made paper bats and played a game that ended with our face in a tin of whipped cream.  The kids had such a fun time and memories were made.  I have realized that I can't worry about the experiences my girls will miss from public school.  It is true, they will miss out on things because we aren't there, but I hope that the experiences we share here at home, at The School of Mom, will forever stay with them.  Halloween...homeschool style was a lot of fun this year!