We Had A Wonderful Day Yesterday

As I said in yesterday's post, I wasn't much in the mood to begin school this year. But, thankfully, I had already had our day planned for over 3 weeks, and sometimes you just have to MAKE yourself do what needs to be done.

Our day began a little later than I like, about 10 before we started, which was fine, since I didn't have much actual WORK planned. Since C's school year usually starts in late winter/early spring, she was already partially through 3 of her subjects. She had 1 new set of books....Hewitt Lightning Literature for 7th grade, which I introduced to her, and we did the first day's assignment. I have also TEMPORARILY switched C's math from BJU Fundamentals of Math (which she had finished 35% of) to Life of Fred math. We are going to try Life of Fred on a trial basis, and I am keeping the BJU Math in reserve to go back to at any time. Life of Fred Math is COMPLETELY different than any other math program I've ever seen or heard of, but both C and I liked it---she did the first 2 lessons. C also did the next lesson in her World Studies. We didn't do formal science yesterday.

E had also already been working in some of her books, so there were 3 we didn't even go through....Horizon's math 3, McRuffy science 3, and her Cursive writing book. As you know, she finished learning all her cursive letters, and now will simply have 1 copywork sentence daily. New to E was Abeka Health 3, Abeka social studies 3, R&S Spelling 3, and R&S English 3. We went through all of these, and she did the first lesson in English. I doubt you have ever SEEN anyone so thrilled to have a "real" textbook" and her own spiral notebook as my little E. She is used to workbook-type materials, and has never had a textbook that she can not write in, and must use separate paper, and she couldn't be more excited about it! LOL

Together the girls and I are reading aloud Joy Hakim's "History of US", which is a 10 volume set, so I doubt we are able to get through it in only one year, but we began it yesterday. We are hoping within the next year to begin being able to do some extensive traveling around the country, so we decided we wanted to read United states History together to learn more about WHERE we will be going.

After school, I gave the girls their "First Day of School" giftbags, which they, of course, were surprised by, and loved. In the afternoon we went to the park for a couple of hours. God blessed us with such BEAUTIFUL weather to be outside and enjoy, and we only left because we were all extremely hungry. LOL

I had several more BIG blessings throughout the day yesterday, some good news for my family and our future. When we got home and were waiting for hot water for C's bath, the girls and I played 2 games of "Spell Up Count Down", so we ended up just having a wonderful day from start to finish.

I pray such an auspicious first day is an harbinger of how this whole school year will go. If only ALL days could go so well, have such beautiful weather, and be so fun for the 3 of us...Thank you, Lord, for such a perfect day yesterday. : )

First Day of School 2011-2012

I normally start school the first Monday in August, so we're a bit late this year. The girls visit to their dad for 2 weeks, and we took last week off so they could get back into a routine, with bedtime and chores, and to unwind from summer.

So we start today. I have all the books and materials. I've done all my major chores and the house is clean, top to bottom, so for at least THIS week I won't have to concentrate on anything but school.

But....the teacher (me) has had a stressful week, and even more stressful weekend, and the last thing I feel like doing is school. I'm not at all ready. I haven't been feeling well, and yesterday was the anniversary of my Dad's death. It's been 22 years, but I never forget getting the phone call, frantically trying to convince my mom he was really sick and we needed to GO, hearing the news... every minute of that day I relive over and over on the 28th of August. : ( My oldest daughter, April is also having some issues, and calling me constantly. And I've barely seen or spoken to my husband for over a week now. So....I'm not at ALL in teacher mode.

I'll let everyone know how it goes when I can. We're not doing much today, just going over books, and if all goes as planned, a few hours at the park for the girls. I also have a gift bag for each of them.

TV...

I have always been bored with TV. There were very few shows I could even tolerate as a child (Gilligan's Island, Brady Bunch, and Little House on the Prairie.....now don't THOSE date me? LOL) My mom and dad had the TV on every evening from after supper until bedtime. Us kids could have it from when we got home from school until supper, so about 2 hours a day. If it was raining, or I ran out of books to read, I would sometimes watch it, but certainly not every day, and most DEFINITELY not if I had a book, or could go outside.

Back then we didn't HAVE video games...not till I was about 10 anyway, and we didn't HAVE computers, so TV was the only screen time I was exposed to. So what did I do instead? Well, in the summer time, I got up and watched the sun come up from my bedroom window and waited for Mom to wake up. When she was up and gave me permission I could come out of my room. I'd eat breakfast (cereal or a pop-tart) and away I would go. I'd swing in one of our 5 swings. I'd ride my Big Wheel up and down the block. Once I could ride a bike, I rode it all OVER. I'd climb trees. In other words...I got exercise and fresh air. I'd build tree houses and forts with my friends. We would walk 2 blocks to "Sherwood Forest" which was a very tiny little wooded area that we thought was huge, and a secret place from the grown-ups. As I got older I would sometimes jump rope for hours, ride my bike for hours, and not just around the block, but all OVER town and the countryside. My best friend and I would walk to the library and check out as many books as we could carry. If we were "rich" we'd stop at my dad's store on the way home and buy pop and candy. We happily took old, used textbooks home from school at the end of the year, and would "play school" for hours and hours. We were "home schooling" ourselves, and didn't even KNOW it. LOL The only rule back then was "be home before dark." In other words, I had adventure, time with friends, and all kinds of learning experiences....you don't learn safety any better way than going a mile out to the creek with your best friend and realizing how thin that ice really IS. And those electric fences around fields to keep cows in the pasture? Those really ARE electric. Ask me how I know....LOL

What brought this post on is that my new husband (and the ex-husband, to some extent, although if there were better things to do, he, at least, could shut the TV off, and if there weren't, the girls and I could, at least, go in another room and do our own things) thinks TV is a NECESSITY of life. This man LITERALLY never shuts it off. NEVER. We go to bed and all he does is turn the volume down a little. We eat dinner, it's on. We are talking, it's on. 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, that TV is constantly on, noisy and intrusive. I'm peacefully sitting in the living room drinking my coffee, and mentally going over what I need to do for the day, and hubby wakes up, and within 30 seconds he turns the volume up loudly blaring to his favorite cable news channel. Now, I am all for keeping up with the local, the national, and the global news. I, too, think it is important. The difference is that I can watch 30 minutes of our local news, or check online for 5 minutes, and get all the bullet points. If something piques my interest, I can do my OWN research into it, and form my OWN thoughts about it. At M's house I go from "peace and quiet" to "migraine" in less than 30 seconds. I can't get away from it, like in my own house, because his house is too small, and there isn't a room the girls and I can go to to play games, or read or do puzzles or school together.

When I was in college, I didn't OWN a TV. Never even thought about buying one. I had my books, and I had my music,, and I had my car. When I lived in Nevada for 3 months in 2004 with the girls, I didn't own a TV, and, again....it never even crossed my mind. The girls didn't care, and it was just not something I thought about getting. I spent my summers as a child and teen living in Michigan, and we didn't own a TV there, either. The funny thing was that my mother thought we watched too much of it...and back then we only watched maybe a total of 2 hours a day and only when we couldn't go outside for some reason. TV was a last resort for us kids, only in the most dire of boredom circumstances. We much preferred learning math by playing Monopoly or card games, or spelling and dictionary usage by playing Scrabble or Boggle, or logic and problem solving by playing Checkers, Chess, Clue, or any number of other games out there designed to use our brains to think and strategize and reason.

Technically I own a TV now...I own a huge 5 foot big-screen TV, and the stupid thing takes up my half my living room. I have even turned my TV ON a few times since the girls dad left us 2 years ago. Last night, I counted up the number of times I turned it on, and I came up with 4 times. Once, when E was sick she watched "The Price is Right." I, myself, watched the Royal Wedding a few months ago. 2 or 3 nights ago we had a storm, and I turned the TV on for about 60 seconds to check the local radar. And one night about a year ago the girls and I watched an episode of "America's Funniest Home Videos". Not one time have the girls EVER asked to turn it on or to watch something! They, too, have better things to do with their time, and ways to have more fun.

**WARNING...THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH HAS SOME MINOR LANGUAGE SOME READERS MIGHT OBJECT TO THEIR CHILDREN READING**

I can assure you...if I couldn't stand TV BEFORE...I REALLY DETEST it now that I can't get away from it. And to make things worse....the GIRLS have a TV in the room they sleep in. C, my oldest, could really care less about TV. She watches it only out of boredom, and at least she watches half-way educational shows. Forensic Files, the Weather Channel, animal rescue documentary type shows, and CMT when they have music videos on. E, on the other hand watches what I refer to as "CRAP" . Cartoons with subtle sexual innuendos, shows on 2 certain networks specifically called "Children's Programming", with the little teenagers all dressed like street walkers, and nothing but materialistic mind-sets. On every one of these shows my littlest girl is viewing episode after episode of "how to get away with something without your parents or teachers knowing", "how to trick someone into doing your work for you", in other words...how to be dishonest and disrespect your parents and teachers. The ------ Channel...a channel supposedly for children...is nothing but disrespectful, materialistic, overly-made-up irresponsible teenagers. And for some reason, ------ makes a lot of money promoting teeny-bopper singers that have no talent and CAN'T sing, so they just dress them up like whores, and play them over and over and over, brainwashing my child that that is somehow TALENT or musical ability! They have a FEW shows that don't involve talentless singers making money for the network, and they even have one or two shows where the kids dress like normal kids, and are respectful, and by the end of their 30 minute sit-com they have "learned a lesson". But those are few and far between, and apparently they only made about 5 episodes of each, because I'VE seen them enough that *I* have them memorized, let alone my poor girls who are stuck with the TV on...again...24 hours a day, 365 days a year. (I went back and edited out the specific network names, but I'm guessing any of you who have TV know EXACTLY which networks I was referring to.)

UGH!

C complains constantly about having the TV on. But...she wants a light that "isn't right in her face" and though she has a lamp for when the ceiling lights are turned off, E wants the TV on. C says she can't sleep with that flashing, changing light in her face all night. And no matter how low we turn the volume, she can still hear it. I know that's true, because that all bothers ME, too. We thought we had found a solution by hanging Christmas lights all around...but the cat chewed the cords the first night, and we can't afford to buy strings of lights daily. LOL

So...what's my point? Other than, obviously I can't stand TV. My point is that I think it is fine to watch the news, or check the weather. I think it is even fine to watch educational shows where I can actually LEARN something, or see far away places I will never in a zillion years be able to travel to. I think it is even fine to watch OCCASIONALLY for simply the entertainment value, and share some laughs together as a family, or watch quiz shows where, at least, we learn and test our knowledge. But I think news can be gotten in 30 minutes or less, and it's not necessary too see it over and over and over all day long. I prefer to just hear the news and form my own opinions, not listen to grown-ups arguing politics all day long, rudely yelling and interrupting each other to get THEIR viewpoint across in the time segment allotted. I don't want THEIR opinion; I'd like to form my OWN. I prefer a good, well written BOOK any day to watching a show on TV. With a BOOK I am subtly learning spelling, grammar, how to construct well written sentences and paragraphs, and using my mind to think, "what happens next?", picturing the setting, picturing the characters, cementing in my mind historical dates and figures that would be bypassed completely staring mindlessly at a TV.

I am not completely opposed to TV, not at all. I know there are some really good shows. But I AM opposed to having the durn thing running all day and night. I am opposed to children not using their minds to THINK and their bodies to get off the couch and MOVE. I feel TV wastes a lot of time that could be better spent getting our work done, or finding things to make, games to play, or talking, having conversations, not staring at the TV watching OTHER people talk and live their little made-up lives.

I will now step down off my soap-box. I have to get ready for our school year to start Monday. I would love to hear YOUR opinions on the issue of TV, so comments are welcome.

Pictures

I think I've figured out how to get pictures up on my blog again. I haven't done so, since my computer went kaput, and I lost 7 years worth of photos. Since then, I've been afraid to keep any pictures on my computer, therefore, this blog has been photo-less for way too long. IF I can make this work, the following photo is one I took yesterday. The girls and I went out to the river, and because of the drought our area of the country is experiencing they were able to play in water that was no more than ankle-deep all the way across.



All right! Lookie there, it worked. Sorry about the poor photo quality; that was taken with my cell phone, but poor quality pictures are better than NO pictures! Now that I've figured it out, I'll be posting more photos in the near future. : )

There's No Better Feeling...

....than having my daughters safely back home. I missed them so much. I worried about them so much. It was almost unbearable to hear them crying on the phone, knowing they were 200 miles away, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Their dad said they'd be home LAST Friday, but then he QUIT his job (more likely got fired for calling in 6 days in the 6 weeks he actually HAD a job) so he could "spend more time with the kids". Then he said they'd be home Thursday.....but he was so plastered Wednesday night he and new-wife couldn't be bothered to get up in the morning. And of course no one bothered to return my calls and texts until AFTER they were supposed to already BE here, and I was worried sick. Turns out they BOTH had their phones turned off!

But they finally arrived yesterday morning, only 15 minutes late. (Dad got another speeding ticket on the way here.)

These 2 girls followed me every step I made all day and evening yesterday. THEY are happy. I am happy, and all is right with the world again! Thank you so much, Lord, for bringing my girls safely back home where life is safe, consistent, and all children are treated equally, and THEIR needs and concerns come first!

Would You Send Your Children Here?

Would you send your children to a home where they go 3 days straight with no bath or shower? Where they come home and burst into tears WANTING a bath? Where they are so tired they BEG to go to bed as soon as they can get bathed? (and this was at 3 in the afternoon!)

And yet, although the CHILD doesn't get a bath or shower, the adult taking her to the doctor for her 104.2 temperature had to get HER shower before taking this child TO the doctor.

Would you send your children to a place where they call you in tears, in fact, crying so hysterically that I thought someone had DIED, and when I finally get this particular child (the one that's almost 13) to speak coherently, I hear how the entire DAY was spent with nothing but yelling, arguing, and crying? And THIS is my child that I've only SEEN cry WHEN someone dies!

The OTHER child, my 8 year old, was crying, too, when she finally got her turn on the phone, but she was so exhausted, yawning, and almost falling asleep on the phone, that I reassured her the next day would be better, and to go get a good night's sleep.

Would you send your child to a place where, when you call them, they are hiding in the car, because their dad is in a drunken fight with 4 neighbors, and his wife is still new enough that she plays the role I, and the first wife, played for so many years, of trying to stop him, trying to appease him, calm him down, get him in the car to go home? The drunken fight is so loud, I can hear all the words out of all the parties involved, and when he finally gets in the car he begins cussing out his new wife, turns to the backseat and cusses out my little girls, yanks the phone out of their hands and hangs up, while I frantically text and leave voice mails on both he and new-wife's phones to make sure my girls even get home safely. A nice little touch their dad added, AFTER he yelled at C, "Give me that f--- phone you f---- little b----!" was when he called me back, and tried to sound sober as he said, "Would you like to talk to the girls?" 15 minutes later.

No...I would not WILLINGLY send my children to a place like this, and I doubt any other mother worth a grain of salt would, either. But the law says I have to. The law says there's nothing wrong with this. They have food (plenty of it, and GOOD food, too, not just Ramen noodles day after day.) They have shelter, (again, very GOOD shelter....a beautiful house on a lake in a gated community.) They have medical care. (C DID get to the doctor, right?) And they have clothing. (in fact, new-wife has been so kind as to buy my eldest daughter more clothes than she's had in 2 years this past week...and I thank her for it, too.)

So, according to the law, their needs are being met, and I have to keep sending the most precious things in my life to this place every so often for good, quality time with their other parent.

So....I would appreciate my readers prayers, for my girls, for their safety, and for their father to be sober, loving, and responsible. They still have a few more days to go on this particular visit.

How Have We Done on Meeting Our Summer Goals?

Back in May, I posted about my goals for this summer. We met almost all of them.

First, my goals for this blog. I said 3 months ago that I wanted to "re-introduce" who we are, and how we began homeschooling. I accomplished that goal. I'd also said I wanted to talk more about our particular situation, how I came to be divorced, and being a single, stay-at-home-home-schooling-mom. I haven't gotten around to writing about all that, but give me time.

Goals for the girls this summer? We met ALL of them!

> Both girls successfully finished another season of softball.
> E has successfully learned to read music, and her piano playing is improving daily. She has set a personal goal for herself to memorize every piece she plays, and so far, she has done so.
>C....well, C has FAR surpassed my expectations with her violin lessons! She has completed her "beginner" book. Her teacher said she is the best student he has ever had, and that most of his students take a year just to get through HALF of this book. C has completed the ENTIRE book in only 11 lessons.

Academic goals? I hadn't set many for C, and in fact, said that if she did NO school over the summer, it would be okay. However...

>C completed chapter 5 of her math, and is therefore 35% of the way done with 7th grade math.
> C also completed module 1 of General Science.

And E also met and surpassed the academic goals I'd set for her...

>After reading through her 3rd grade R&S English, I scrapped our Language Arts goals for the summer. R&S is very comprehensive, and there was no need to finish FLL.
>E completed the first 20 lessons of her science. (out of 66 total lessons)
>E completed the first 30 lessons (and 3 tests) of her 3rd grade math.
>And....drum roll, please...FINALLY E has learned, every letter of the alphabet, lowercase, and upper-case, in CURSIVE! She loves cursive. And while she still writes slower than most children her age, her cursive is beautiful (unlike her printing) and it is marginally quicker for her. She JUST learned "Z" Friday morning, before leaving to go visit her dad for 2 weeks, but we DID it! She is very excited to begin her R&S English and Spelling, and I told her we couldn't begin Spelling until she could write in cursive, because we intend to do all her spelling in cursive. She will also have 1 copywork sentence each day to help her practice.

So, although it seemed most days this summer I had no time to do HALF of what I wanted to...the girls and I did manage to get all our academic goals met. They also had time for softball, music lessons/practice, and tons of daily play-time with friends.

Why We Began Home Schooling...part 4....final chapter

During Christmas break of C's 3rd grade year I noticed something strange. Her night terrors stopped. Completely. And then it dawned on me that she NEVER had night terrors during the summer, or any other times school was on break. She didn't wake up screaming, yelling, thrashing around, crying, throwing up, or crawl into bed with me when there was no school!

Coincidentally...or maybe NOT coincidentally, I tend to believe God sends us SIGNS we can either choose to follow or ignore....I happened to read an article in "Parents" magazine during Christmas break profiling a family in new York City that home schooled. I thought to myself, "Well THAT'S a cool idea, too bad it isn't legal." And then....another sign....I happened to see something on TV about home schooling...perhaps an episode of the Duggar family, if I'm recalling correctly. And I thought again, "Wow, I wish *I* could do that. I wonder what the laws are about this home schooling stuff. Maybe it's NOT illegal, since I keep hearing about it."

So you add C's boredom with being held back academically, the bullying and verbal abuse, the tyrannical lunch-lady, along with the fact that I'd suddenly realized during breaks from school C wasn't suffering ANY of her night time terrors and sickness, AND add in the fact I kept "coincidentally" seeing things about home schooling, and I decided one morning to do a little google search online to see what I could find out about this home schooling stuff.

Much to my surprise, I found out home schooling is not only perfectly legal in all 50 states, it is growing exponentially every year because LOTS of parents were having the exact same issues I was worrying about with my daughter. I began researching obsessively. I couldn't STOP reading websites. I couldn't get enough books from the library on the topic. I found home school blogs. I found home school forums. I asked questions. I made up my mind, and decided that this is what I wanted to do...that homeschooling was a completely natural extension of parenting, and that no one would be able to teach my individual child as well as i could, that no one could invest the time, the love, the energy into her well-being better than I. I decided that I would make C finish out her 3rd grade year in public school, but that for 4th grade she would stay home safely with her mother teaching her. I even, after MORE research, chose and ordered her 4th grade math curriculum. (Saxon 54)

Then I decided maybe I should broach the subject with my then-husband. LOL

I was scared to talk to him about it. I thought he would think I was nuts. I thought he would be against the idea. I excitedly opened the Saxon math box, and then hid it so he wouldn't find out. And then I just couldn't keep it from him any longer, because I wanted to tell C about home schooling, and I couldn't tell my 9 year old without first at least NOTIFYING her dad of my plan. LOL I printed off pages of information off the internet, and marked places in books to show him. I went into this discussion fully prepared to defend my stance, argue till I wore him down, and no matter what he said to home school anyway.

One evening I finally brought it up. And he said, "Yes! Yes! That is PERFECT! Yes! You HAVE to do this! We have to do ANYTHING to keep her out of these schools. They are ruining A and B, and I can't see another child of mine go through this. YES! That is a GREAT idea!" I didn't even have to say anything other than, "I have been thinking about C's problems in school, and I've done some research, and I'd like to try homeschooling her." And then I said, "Oh, good, because I've already ordered her math, and I know what else I want to buy." LOL

When I talked to C about it, she began crying. Crying because she was so happy to know she had an "out". Happy because her mommy had figured out a solution to her problem and was going to help her, save her. And sad because she didn't want to go back. Ever. It took a lot of coaxing to get her to agree to go back. I made a bargain with her that I would call her in sick every Wednesday; that way she never had to go to school more than 2 days in a row. And reminded her that Mondays were ok because she had that 30 minutes of violin. And Fridays weren't bad because when she got through the day she had a whole weekend. Of course, she tried to get me to call her in sick EVERY day, and since I was already doing "school" with her every night at home, it was hard for me to adhere to making her stick the rest of the year out.

By March, the ONLY thing keeping her in school was those 30 minutes of violin once a week. I began calling her in sick more and more often, but not too many days in a row, because we didn't want to get in trouble for truancy. By mid-March it was time for Spring break. And once again, for 2 weeks, I had my happy child back. The one who LIKED to get up in the mornings, and the one who slept the nights through peacefully.

April 1st, 2008, was C's first day back to school after spring break. It was also her LAST day of public school. As always, she walked out of the building at 2:15, crying, miserable, mad because her class was so boring, and the teacher wouldn't let her work on multiplication because "it would make the other kids feel bad since they are still working an addition and subtraction." She had to go to the bathroom, because she refused to go at school because that's where some of the girls cussed at her and pushed her around if she went in. She was hungry, because she never ate lunch unless they served something with rolls or mashed potatoes. Three girls had called her a "white b***h" and poked her with pencils waiting in line on the staircase. That night she woke up screaming, crying, and yelling again.

Early the morning of April 2nd, as her dad watched the news, and got ready to go to work, and I sat drinking my coffee, I said to him, "Enough is enough. I can't take this for another 6 weeks, and I'm not putting her through this anymore. (as we listened to her crying in her sleep in her bedroom) I'm not sending her back. I'm writing a letter of intent to the school, and I'm taking it up there in person this morning, and I'm never making her go back to that hell-hole." And he said, "Good!Thank God!"

So I let C sleep in late that morning, and when she woke up, I told her she didn't have to go back, but that she and I had to drive up to the school and take her principal the letter of intent. C said, "Really? You MEAN it, Mommy? I don't have to go back?!?" And began bawling her head of out of relief. I showed her the letter. We delivered it. We thanked her teacher, her music teacher, and picked up her school supplies. As we walked out of the classroom, the teacher's aide followed us into the hall, and whispered to me that she, herself, had been home schooled, and that she intended to home school her own children, and that she was SO happy for C, but not to tell anyone she had said that to us because she had been instructed not to ever tell anyone at the school she worked at about home schooling.

I have SO much more to say about home schooling. It is truly my passion....educating my daughters, spending time with them, finding curriculum that matches their own individual learning styles and personalities, their strengths and weaknesses. I'd love to talk about all the things *I* have learned through teaching my daughters. I'd love to ramble on and on about this whole new lifestyle. Because it is NOT just "school at home", it is our whole way of life. I'd love to talk about some of the wonderful people I've met through home schooling, or tell you about all the people who are positive about it. (and in fact, I've not had any negative reactions to it at all.) But I've rambled on enough for right now, and the only thing I'd like to add to THIS post is that from that night on, C has not spent ONE NIGHT in my bed. She has not woken up crying or screaming or yelling or puking ONE TIME since I pulled her out of public school.

My daughter left public school on April 2, 2008, and I have NO regrets. I KNOW I am doing the right thing, the best thing for her, and also for little E, who I've home schooled from the beginning and is now in 3rd grade. I have so many thoughts, so many ideas, so many opinions, but at least now I have finally gotten down in writing the story of WHO we are, and what led us to home schooling.

New Post Below...Why We Began Home Schooling

I started to write the post below a week ago, but wasn't able to finish writing until today, and for some reason it is not showing up as a new post...so if you want to read the next post in my "Why we began Home Schooling" series, read the one below dated July 25th, even though I just posted it a few minutes ago.