Being an Account of A Great Endeavor

Back to Homeschooling: Week One

Our first day of full academics proved both wonderful and frustrating! The morning went smoothly. Breakfast and chores were finished in good time, and Bible with Dad was a blessing. They had their Bible journals out and they each added something they learned from the text (James 1). Wonderful.

And then we sat down to math (insert sinister music here). At halfway through each girl was crying, including me—some out of frustration with the math, some out of frustration with each other, and one sweet little girl out of sympathy for everyone else. Math isn’t our strength and it’s a challenge for me to teach it (which I was doing this morning because of Dad's work schedule), especially to three girls that all need my help at the same time. But we picked each other up, dusted each other off, and eventually finished our lessons.

Lessons learned:
1) Do math early in the morning while energy (and patience) abounds.
2) Sometimes the lesson God has planned for you to learn has nothing to do with the subject in front of you!

The rest of the day exceeded my expectations. I’m learning that time solves a multitude of problems. My “vision challenged” girls have had more than a year of normal vision under their belt (or, should I say, under their glasses) and their reading has improved tremendously. Although they both read at grade level, the texts we use for history, literature and science is challenging and that is read aloud to them until they are ready to take over that reading on their own. This age varies for each child, but with three in the “read-a-loud” phase (and one of those quickly approaching the “pre-reading” stage) I’m anxious to get the next one fully independent. To my surprise, my two middles were able to do quite a bit more of their reading than I expected, so, Lord willing, we’re on our way!

Time answered the narration problem as well. Narration is the practice of “telling back” what one just read or was read to them. It takes the place of traditional worksheets, quizzes and tests. There are several reasons for narrating: it trains the habit of attention, gets the child to process, reflect and then communicate what they heard and what they know, makes the language of excellent literature their own, and it forms the foundation for composition. Narration is a very complex task. It requires the higher level mental activities of processing, sorting, sequencing, sifting, and articulating information. Try to read something and then tell it back to someone (without referencing the text). It is challenging. And it’s a lot to ask a young child to do. Now I knew narration takes time to develop but still I stressed over not getting consistent or thorough narrations from my middle two. Today they narrated beautifully! Yes they got tired toward the end, and yes, Maya started making up her own details to the story. But still, they narrated from what I read to them, and from what they read for themselves. What a wonderful thing!

Lessons learned:
1) Don’t cave in to your fear or the time line of others; give them gentle nudges along the way and plenty of time to grow.
2) Trust God’s timing and the way He made each child according to His will and good purposes!

Thus begins our fifth year of homeschooling.