Confessions of a Reluctant Homeschooling Mom Post #1

Most people who find themselves homeschooling their children have a passion for it. They have high ideals. They have weird quirky mannerisms that get them dubbed as "homeschoolERS" as apposed to those who homeschool their children. Yes there is a difference, and there is a very educational video on youtube supporting this idea. I might post it on here one day. But not today. I'm too tired to post it today.

First I want to start off with a few of my credentials (as I LITERALLY tried three times to spell that word right and finally resorted to looking it up!). My CREDENTIALS are as follows. I went to college for 4 years, 4 different colleges, all consecutive years. I eventually got my teaching certificate in early ed (meaning I have been told I know how to teach through k-5, the only problem is I have a 1st grader!) I have taught children in various aspects for years, ever since I was old enough to. I was helping in a class when I was 12 and was very upset when our church started a youth group because that pulled me out of being a helper with children. I know how to tie balloon animals. ( I don't know why that is so impressive, but the people at my church seemed to be slightly impressed at my hidden talent, so I thought I'd list it here.) I have successfully potty trained two children! I take full credit for that (the first only took OVER a year and a trip to Hawaii and the second too about 6 failed attempts, a promise of a new bike, and a little talk about how I really didn't know what I was doing and when he was ready to get potty trained he knew where the bathroom was, but that I was done!) So maybe I don't get very much credit for those. The point is, I am comfortable around children and have been for awhile. I took the spiritual gifts test and scored highest in Administration and then scored a few points below with the same score in both encouragement and teaching. God has given me the gift of teaching. But and if I could make the font bigger it would be a great big BUT, I did NOT want to teach my own children. I did not want to homeschool.

Now, before you think I'm some horrible person or before you go away, hear me out, the name of this blog is Ponderings of a Preacher's Wife. My husband is a pastor. I am . . . . da, Da, da, DA, a PASTOR'S wife! I love being a pastor's wife. I am currently discipling 6 ladies, I run the ladies' ministry at our church, I am blessed to have the best Ladies' Bible Class IN THE WORLD! I HELP, yes only HELP with various children's ministries, but that is not where my passion is anymore. I love helping ladies and their families and I love helping ladies to help their families. I had a goal, this year, both kids were going off to school. Then that school took a turn we didn't quite agree with and whereas it is "OK" this year, it won't be if they continue down the road. The other school was too expensive and here's the real reason, my kids are pastor's kids. Pastor's kids, don't get a break. Saturday and Sunday are their mom and dad's BIGGEST days, (although contrary to popular belief the preacher AND his wife do work A LOT during the week. Wednesday is another BIG day, late night, like 11 pm or later. You know, I can send my kids to school, and then come home and take a nap . . . but they don't have that luxury if they are exhausted after a Wednesday. Throw in the mix we only have one vehicle so if 1 goes usually all 4 go for the entire time! This year I envisioned both children going to school, Me having ladies over for bible studies and serving muffins and coffee in the morning, me starting lots of other ministries, working at the church a couple days a week to do paper work and other things, I did not envision having a desk in our back room made school room surrounded by letters and numbers and art projects. You know, quite honestly it's hard when you have a dream and it gets KILLED, murdered, popped, destroyed.

My husband came to me and to be quite honest pulled the Command Man out and ordered me to homeschool and to like it and to not get bitter. That's a fine thing for him, he doesn't do much cleaning around the house, because he's a command man and I'm ok with that (most of the time). I told you, I'm really fessing here. Now I'm faced with homeschooling about 25 to 30 hours a week, housecleaning about 15 to 20. WOW! Wait on the LOW end we are already up to 40 hours a week, I quit! Then you throw church ministries into it. I play the piano, I teach piano, I have disciples I disciple and I . . .  and you have read some of the rest. I'm a busy pastor's wife. Please don't think I'm tooting my own horn, it's just the truth and I LOVE IT! Church ministries realistically add another 20 to 25 hours a week. Then there's cooking, I like to cook, that's a minimum of 3 hours a day, so because we do eat out once or twice a week, because of our crazy schedule we will say 20 hours a week. On the low end I am not up to 80 hours a week, more like 90 to 95 and when am I supposed to sleep? Actually if you want to know the real truth, I was asking myself "When am I supposed to have time for myself?"

I sat in our backyard about a month ago, give or take a week and I sat with a couple and she wanted to homeschool and he didn't. Here I am trying to advocate for homeschooling, not really wanting to do it myself. I believe homeschooling is a VERY good thing and I believe in CHRISTIAN education. He said No and I finally had to look at her and tell her that she HAD to give in to her husband. She did and he surprisingly said yes to Christian school! Praise the Lord! As I'm telling her this, I was thinking, Yeah and I have to give in to. I have bucked, I have squawked, I have pleaded, I have tried to work out another way and TODAY, I found myself doing what I was dreading. And you know what?! I had a great day. YES, there were struggles and there were tears of frustration but am I glad I did this? I don't know I have another 139 days to go, ask me on my 140th day.

I want to share with you some things we did for school today:

I wrote this message as an afterthought yesterday. 

This is my bulletin board. We will put projects to display up here. 

Pictures of the tops of their desks. 

Of course, Abby has already girlied hers up! 

My desk, typical me, how much can I put on one little desk. 

I am quite pleased with how these turned out. 

Our numbers and their chalk board. 

This car sits on my desk to remind me to not go on empty spiritually, but to fill up at God's pump every day . . . else I WON'T make it through this year! AKA a daily walk with God! 

He was so thrilled to be starting school today, he bounced around and was a general ham, which if you know him, is not usually him, He is generally a quiet serious kind of kid! 

She was thrilled when she found out she could wear flip-flops! 

Bad pic, sorry, the sun. 

She was tired of pictures by this time and wanted to get started! 

Remember my credentials, I was a preschool teacher for years. The fun of doing hands on, large motor activities has never quite left me. We learned the letter I and i today so of course we had to make a track for our cars to race around! He loved it. Of course, in the mood he was in I think I could have done just about anything and as long as I called it school he would have loved it! 

This was "reading group"

Drew was so funny. His was more about quantity than quality. As many papers as he could get done as quickly as he could. He did not care what color the elephant should be and he did not care how it looked, he accomplished it not what could he learn next. 

These next set of pictures were probably my favorite part of the day. Partly because I felt that true, fun learning happened today. We are reading about history and how can we know history, from historians, people who read documents, but what about people who didn't know how to write? We can learn from them by archeology. I painted stones with different things and hid them in the sand. Then the children used paint brushes to gently brush away the stuff so they could see and find the "artifacts" carefully. Then they took their "story stones" and told a story about what might have been with those stories. As I write this blog tonight, they are STILL in here playing with those stones, covering them up, uncovering them and telling a different story using the story stones they have uncovered. 

Being archeologist. 

Drew's discovery. A boy, a tree, a cat, a well (he begged to call a spider), a teepee (it was late when I was making these), a mountain, a chick, a basket. He told a story about a boy who liked to pet his cat, squash spiders, climb trees, and put his chick in a basket because he had to move because his village didn't have enough rain. 

Abby's "discovery". A girl, a horse and cart, rain, sunshine, night sky, rainbow (which she asked if it could be dishes), a pig, and a butterfly. Her story was about a girl, who had a "borrowed brother" from Drew, who liked to wash rainbow dishes. She liked to catch butterflies. She had to take care of the pig with her brother's help. The sun was shining really hard and everything was dying. They ordered the rain to come but it didn't. They went to sleep and the next day the rain still didn't come and they had to move away. 

So school was fun! We are all of us looking forward to tomorrow! I "interviewed" my children today as part of "their history". They both said the same thing they wanted to learn, About God. We have purpose statement for our school: To develop the mind of Christ, in the life of product and well educated students. I have this in the front my Lesson Plan book as a daily reminder of why I am doing what I am doing!