Homeschooling for 3

Just in from the front — homefront that is. There’s a new writing site available to homeschooled children. I’ve copied Melissa’s original email announcing her site in its entirety. I look forward to reading the submissions from those homeschooled children out there!

“Hi everyone,I’ve started an online literary journal just for
homeschool students. Write at Home will be published monthly on-line at www.writeathome.org. We are currently
looking for submissions of poetry, short stories, and artwork from homeschool
students across the country (the world actually).I’m looking to launch the first
issue in January of 2008.While we will not be able to publish all submissions,
everyone who submitswill receive a response.

Please visit www.writeathome.org/submissions for
submissions guidelines.Feel free to forward this email to other lists that you
may be on. If you have any questions, please email me off-list at mvanbaast@austin. rr.com.

Regards,Melissa Van Baast”

“Anyone can be faithful to an employer; millions are, daily, constantly; it is one of the dullest and most vulgar of loyalties.” - Rex Stout from “A Nero Wolfe Mystery: The League of Frightened Men”

Well, it is a start. Obviously, this is my first true adventure in blogging. It is a little like auditioning for your high school play – only without the stage, lights and props. Still, there is a script and the script is being written by me. I need a better editor.

My family has just started attending a local church in the area. This is a new experience for me since I was raised to believe that secular churches were harbingers of Satan. Anyway, after 39 years of life I’ve successfully crossed the threshold of church without imploding.

Anyway, my girls are quite comfortable there and I am enjoying the experience. It’s so different from my experience. There’s a curriculum, activities and songs that the girls are learning. My youngest has been practicing her song about God didn’t give us a spirit of fear but the spirit to be brave. She’s so cute. My eldest child just learned about the origins of Halloween and she’s trying to decide if she should play Animal Crossing (Gamecube game) during the Halloween season. It’s her first moral dilemnia.

I guess all I really wanted to say today was that for the first time in a long time I am happy and enjoying worshipping God. Now, if I can get my baby to cooperate and stop talking during the adult services, maybe I can hear most of the sermon in the coming weeks.

Well, this was a good week of homeschooling. The tears were kept to a minimum. Now, if you don’t homeschool, you may not understand that tears is a frequent side-effect of homeschooling. Sometimes its the parent who’s crying and sometimes its the students who are crying. Let me explain.

Most homeschoolers have a schedule for doing their schoolwork. And invariably, at least once a week in my home, the child(ren) cannot fathom that its time to do math, language arts, you name it they can’t understand why they are expected to get to work. So, that’s when the tears start. But they never admit that the tears are about the schoolwork — oh no, why make it easy. My eldest daughter, for example, will claim she’s crying because her baby sister is humming (yes humming is a capital offense that should be punished, at least Ms. 7 year old thinks so). Or, the dreaded “is it time for lunch yet?” question. If the answer is “no” the child will commence crying, grabbing her stomach and other starvation poses. The variation of this is the dying of thirst in the desert of schoolwork. Then the child is unable to speak without a pained expression of one being tortured.

Then there’s the joy of teaching a practical joker. In my case, my four year old. She’s known her phonics sounds for a long time and now we’re working on blending and actually reading information on her own. This is where the parent being driven to tears comes in. For example, today we were working on the sounds of the letters “M”, “T”, “O”, “C”, and “S”. She got all of those correct, no problem. Then the online program that I’m using for her exercises, sets up about six or seven words starting with these letters and they’ll ask the students to decipher which word matches the spoken word. You know, words like “cat”, “sat”, “mat”, etc. Well little Ms. Joker now develops amnesia — I don’t know which word starts with the “M” sound. She says things like, “hmmmm, I don’t quite remember” and then she’ll pick the absolute wrong word. Now, don’t think I’m being too hard on her. She is already reading a couple of the scholastic reading books that tell the story of the bat, cat and the rat who sleep on a mat. So, this is just review and should be a no-brainer. But we have to go through this foolishness just to get to the real lesson. Hence, the parent crying during the week.

So, if anyone is thinking about homeschooling, just make sure you have plenty of kleenex for the starving, thirsty, acoustically challenged people you love. And don’t forget your own extra strength Kleenex for yourself. It’s good for wiping away your tears of frustration as well as shredding when your Practical Joker is plucking your nerves.

I am a Christian. I know what I titled this piece, but I want to let you know that I am a very God-centered person. However, I am sick (sick, sick, sick) to death of people who proclaim that their religion is “The Truth” and others are misguided fools who will die at Armageddon.

I was a part of a religion that believed that only they had the Truth of God’s Word and that all others are actually worshiping Satan the Devil. Now, these people may not think that they are agents of Satan, but they are. Because of this I had never entered a church, other than my own, until two weeks ago. Now, the church that I belonged to initially kicked me out because I wouldn’t agree to their disciplinary actions (I left a husband that was an alcoholic) . Anyway, I’m dead to about 150 people whom I grew up with and knew throughout my 30 years of association.

Anyway, my mother (and others from that church) really believe that if you don’t attend their services and read their publications that you are incapable of:

• Understanding the Bible
• Teaching it to your children
• Raising up children with character and common sense

My girls have been learning about God since birth. We pray together, read scriptures together, make decisions based on our understanding of God’s standards, etc. In addition, they are being brought up to have good manners and all of those other things that we all need in order to function successfully in the world with others. But to hear this group tell it, my kids are spiritual Neanderthals that are to be pitied.

Don’t they understand that they are the ones to be pitied? That to actually believe that anyone has the complete “truth” about the nature of God and his will is delusional at best. Studying the Bible, observing God’s creations and applying the principles found within the Bible give us a pretty good idea of how we should act and treat others. But to think that we can understand God’s plan in such absolute terms is crazy. Shoot, most of the time we can’t even understand our own motivation and we’re instantly accessible to ourselves.

But, this past Sunday, my girls showed me that I have been doing a good job in helping her develop a personal relationship with our Creator. We’ve started attending a local church about two weeks ago, and last Sunday she stood up before the children’s church and prayed for her friend who lost her grandmother. No prompting on anyone’s part, just a genuine desire to speak to God and ask for his help in comforting her little friend.

Now, I know for a fact that in my previous church people don’t often show that kind of empathy or understanding. They are so caught up in quotas, reports and doing works to prove themselves to God that they don’t allow God to come to them and move them to do things from the heart. If the corporation doesn’t set the goal, these guys won’t do much of anything. It’s such a shame because most of the people are nice, just reduced to being drones for the organization.

So, once my maternal unit finds out that we’ve been going to one of those Satan run churches, I’m sure that I’ll be disowned quick fast and in a hurry. She’s so out of touch with what her grandchildren are really about spiritually. She sent a little letter to each of the girls telling them to pray before meals and at bedtime. Uh, duh, they’ve been doing that all of their lives. And what I really find funny/sad is that the last family gathering that we were invited to, my children were the only people who prayed before eating their meal!!! But no note was taken of that. The only thing she can see is that they don’t go to her church, so therefore I’m raising devil-worshipers.

Well, that’s off my chest. Now I can go forward and do something constructive instead of stewing over this nonsense.

Hi. My name is Cheryl and I am one of the many moms who work from home. I’m also one of those brave souls that educate their children at home and still manage not to pull all of their hair out of their heads. I have one husband, three children, one dog, cat and a couple of fish to round out the group. My dog is neurotic, my cat thinks she’s a dog and life is very interesting on this side of the world.

Actually, I think my husband is the bravest (or kookiest) because he willingly commutes across two states to keep us in food and shelter. I like to tease him when he gets home and enters the madness of children fighting over shadows, dogs chasing cats and our little son sticking his head into things that no person should willingly place their heads. You know, he was in the land of grownups and willingly returned to the chaos that is our home. He claims we’re more fun, but sometimes I wonder about the state of his sanity. LOL!

My golden retriever is the only dog that raises your blood pressure as you pet her. She is so needy. I received her from another family and I don’t know how they raised her as a puppy, but she definitely has more than her fair share of issues. She is constantly needy. Sometimes I think she’d be better off with someone older who is housebound and wanting companionship. She requires 22.5 hours of petting per day and sulks when she doesn’t get it. She’s also perpetually starving (or so she thinks). Her latest bizarre behavior involves eating the cat feces from the litter box. So, if there are any P-sychiatrist (we just got finished watching Animaniacs and I couldn’t resist) out there for dogs, please give me a shout.

On the positive side, my golden lady is excellent with the children and very protective of them against strangers. Granted, if pressed she’d probably hide behind the children if the bad guys were after them, but she puts up a brave front long enough to give you a chance to call 911 or run. She’s very sweet tempered and easy to manage. She’s as sweet as Candy.

My daughter’s cat, Skitty, thinks she’s a dog. We got her as a young kitten and she spent a lot of time emulating the other four legged creature. It’s fun watching her swat Candy’s tail. Every morning we watch the “Candy and Skitty Show” where the cat and dog chase each other through the house. Skitty displays her full range of feline agility and acrobatic talents during these shows. Now my youngest daughter is requesting a gerbil. I think she wants to be a vet or a zoo keeper. We’ve been going deaf whenever that conversation comes up.

I decided that I needed to do a blog as a way to keep my writing skills from getting rusty. But, it has been a struggle. You’d think that I’d be able to find 10 minutes to jot down a few thoughts before I recommenced (is that a real word?) running around like a chicken with its head cut off.

But nooooo that would be too easy. First of all, I couldn’t even log into my own blog. Each time I tried to login I was told that my email address was unknown. So, I played the retrieve the password game and finally got in. (And by the way, I’m actually quite good with computers, so this was frustrating on many levels.) Then I set up the blog and play with the graphical backgrounds. By the time all of this was done I was tired and my 10 month old was waking up to eat, so I logged out.

But when next I tried to put a few thoughts together I got the same error message when I tried to login to the blog. So, there goes another 10 minutes lost for foolishness. (I’ve set the auto login on my browser — now let’s see it deny me!) But at least I’m finally here. Now maybe next time I can write something interesting instead of just ranting about technology and its many vagaries.