Homeschooling Tip

One thing I have learned over the years is that there is no one way to do homeschooling. Homeschooling is going to look different for each and every family.

But I just wanted to share with you something I've learned and started applying to my life recently.  

This past summer I read a book that gave a great principle to remember when homeschooling. The principle is to be careful to not overbook your schedule. Don't fill your days with too much activity. Socrates put it well when he said,"beware of the barrenness of a busy life."

 I have personally found that when my schedule is packed full of activity, I get stressed because of the added pressure to get a certain assignment done in a specific amount of time. Unfortunately when I get stressed, I am not patient, and when I am not patient our day goes south very quickly. I get it...I have felt the temptation myself to get my kids involved in every sport and music class out there. I think we get nervous about being home all day and all week long. (And all winter long)  I think we fear that our kids aren't going to be socialized enough. But the truth is, most likely, our kids are going to be fine! Our kids need the freedom to spend as much time as needed on a certain subject. Our kids need us to be patient while they are trying to grasp a certain concept. When our schedules are jam packed, unfortunately some things have to get neglected. More often times than not, those things that are neglected are the very most important things that our children need. Now we can't be extreme with our schedules either. Don't move your family out to Alaska and isolate yourselves! I encourage you to bring your schedules before God in prayer. Ask Him to give you wisdom and discernment in the activities you should be involved in. God knows exactly what is best for you, your kids and your homeschool year! We all have to find a balance in busyness. Are you happy with where you are at? 

Helping your kids "Make Up"

I don't know about you but sometimes I feel as though my number one job at home is "mediator of the kids" or "referee." Certain days I feel as though all I hear is, "she did this" or "he said that!" Can anyone relate? Now thank the Lord it is not everyday. I would say that generally speaking my kids are really good, love each other and enjoy playing with each other. Lincoln literally said to me the other day, "mom i'm so glad that I have Ally to play with." I seriously wanted to cry! But on those days, when you want to pull your hair out, run into the bathroom and lock the door, it is good to have a system in place for navigating all those childish fights. Now the system I'm going to share with you is FAR from perfect but it works for us and the goal of it is heart change.

If one of my precious children come to me and tell me that their sibling was unkind to them, I then take the defendant alone into another room and proceed to have this chat with them.

1. I ask them what they did wrong.
2. We talk about how that wrong thing is a sin. i.e. If they pushed someone I tell them that they not only broke God's law but the governments law as well. (this always gets their attention)
3. I tell them that we all sin. We all fall short of God's glorious standard. Even mommy and daddy sin sometimes! (this is derived from Romans 3:23)
4. I tell them that unfortunately our sin separates us from God. God doesn't even hear our prayers until we say sorry for our sin. (Is 59:2)
5 Finally I share the good news with them. If we confess our sins, say we are sorry to God, He is faithful to forgive us! (1 John 1:9)

The first time I implemented this I literally took them to the bible and looked up each verse and read it to them. I wanted them to see that it really was in the bible. Now I just recite the scripture to them myself.

After I walk them through each of these steps I lead them in a prayer that goes something like this. "Jesus, I am sorry for (insert the committed sin). Please help me to not (insert the committed sin). Thank you for forgiving me.

THEN I tell them exactly how to go and say sorry to their sibling. I make them go to their sibling, put their hand on their shoulder and then look them straight in the eyes. I make them say, "I am sorry for (insert committed sin). I will not do that again.

I have always encouraged the prosecutor (hehe) to say, "I forgive you." For some reason my kids wanted to say, "It's ok." I want my kids to know that it's NOT ok when people hurt you, but we say, "I forgive you."

I think it's so important, in the early years of our kids life, to just show them exactly how to pray and how to say sorry. These are the training years. We cannot expect them to instinctively know how to pray to God and say sorry, or say sorry to their sibling. We have to model it to them first, and do it over and over again until they get it all on their own.

Now please don't think we have it all together over here at the Sorcinelli household. I literally just implemented this detailed version of our reconciliation process a year ago. And there are definitely days when I am not on my game. Anyways, I hope that you find this system of reconciliation helpful!

Happy mediating!!!

Home

"Standing outdoors sometimes at night, looking in through the lighted windows at the familiar, cherished rooms, I imagined our house as a living, breathing organism, animated by us and filled to the brim with the stuff of our lives, every moment, every word, and gesture of our family's history contained within it's embracing walls." -The Gift of an Ordinary Day by Katrina Kenison

This is an excerpt from a book that I read a while back. When I read  this part of the book I almost started bawling my eyes out! It literally encapsulates all the memories I have of my childhood home and what I want my home to be now. I hope you enjoy this precious little piece of the book as well. 

Get organized!

Well it's that time of year again! I'm getting all geared up for the start of another homeschool year. Now if you are like me, when the school year starts, your feet hit the ground running and you don't stop! Between all of our studies, extracurricular activities and church activities, there is little time left to squeeze in chores around the house. It's a good kind of busy! Unfortunately though I rarely have time to do any organizing in the home. Side note-I'm a clean person and I LOVE having a clean organized home. Since we've decided to homeschool that is one area I've had to become a little more flexible in. It has been quite the challenge disciplining myself to ignore the mess (at times) and keep to the most important things.(School)

 Anyways, one thing I do before the start of every school year is I get organized! An area of my home that is constantly needing some tlc is my garage. Throughout the year I'll go on these binges where I purge all of our toys and clothes etc and those items just get thrown in the garage into a pile to be taken to savers. Unfortunately as the old saying goes,"out of sight out of mind!" And that's just what happens in our good ole' garage. So this summer I got to cleaning and organizing and let me tell you I feel sooo good about it. I literally feel like a weight has been lifted! Now I'm   ready to start messing it all up again. (Hehe)

 Some other ideas of things that might be good to organize before the start of your school year might be that cabinet under the bathroom sink, the "junk" drawer, a play room, your school closet, or maybe you want to go ahead and pull out those fall clothes. Whatever you need to organize, I highly recommend to just pick one big thing and do it. Just do it! You won't regret it! 

Ok...so maybe it needs a little more work! 

Back to School

I can not even believe that we technically start our school year THIS MONDAY! Ok, so I am not starting early because I am some sort of over achiever. It's actually because I kinda hate the first few weeks of school! Over the past few years I have found that starting school and the first few weeks of summer are kinda rough for the kids and I. After being used to lazy summer days where we ease into our days I find it really hard to jump in all at once. I like to start school the same way I get into a cold pool-very slowly! I decided this year that we would end school in a more gentle way. The last few weeks we just slowly wrapped up different subjects so that we were able to just slide right into summer. It worked out so nicely that I decided that we were going to do the same for the start of school. SO, this monday we will start Math and our foreign language study. In two weeks we will throw our language arts into the mix and then on September 8th we will be completely submersed in our homeschool year! I honestly can't wait. I feel like such a nerd because one thing I LOVE LOVE about homeschooling is that I get to do school all over again. I am seriously so excited about the different subjects we will be studying this year. For history we are going to be studying American history. For science we will be starting our third year using Apologia. Being a lover of Charlotte Mason and Unit studies I just love Apologia! This year we will be covering Zoology 2-swimming creatures. For math we will be using Math-U-See. We started it last year and I have been really happy with it. For language arts we are actually trying out a new curriculum this year. It's called Learning Language Arts Through Literature. I will keep you posted throughout the year as to how we like it. For Music and Art we will be studying the lives of a couple artists and composers. I picked up a couple "Come Look With Me" books that go along with our study of American history and there are a couple other fun things on the menu that I'll mention as the year goes on. That's all for now folks! I'd appreciate any and all prayers for our school year.