Usually I pray and ponder and peruse all the curriculum catalogues so that I can plan an approximate guide for each of my children. Late last year I roughly planned out the years for each of the children until they are 16years old. It was a very loose plan with lots of room for delights,? interests and purposes. I then broke that down into the various years. I had planned to break that down even further and map out what things we would do this coming year but I’ve decided not to! I’m going to try something different. Instead of the 4 P’s (pray, ponder, peruse and plan) I’m going to focus on the 3 R’s. No, not Readin’ ‘Riting and ‘Rithmetic but…
I want to rest in God more and lead my children to do the same. I want to focus more upon relationships than ever before and I want to make sure that we have quality times of refreshment amidst our life of work. I don’t want to always be striving toward the next academic goal nor feeling good about achieving my goals. I just want to rest in God. The practical implication of this is that I won’t be planning, rather I will record what we have done each day. Each of the children will have their own recording journal, which we have designed ourselves and had spiral bound, (Learning Lifestyle Journal) and it will cover the following areas:
SPIRITUAL LIFE ~Bible reading, study, worship, prayer, fellowship, devotional readings, journal writing…
LIFE SKILLS~ Chores, serving others, life skills…
RELATIONSHIP/CHARACTER~ Relationship to others, God and self. Exercise, sport, nutrition, hygiene, personal development, health…
ENGLISH~The art of communication – copywork/dictation, grammar, poetry, writing/composition, spelling/vocabulary, literature…
MATHEMATICS~ Problem solving, thinking skills, logic studies…
SCIENCE~Nature study, typing/technology, study…
HISTORY~Past people and events. History and biography…
GEOGRAPHY~ people and places of the world. Government, Economics, Foreign Language…
WORLD VIEWS, CURRENT EVENTS ~
CREATIVE ARTS ~ Music, art, crafts, drama, Shakespeare, instruments, and other creative activities…
AUDIO, VIDEO, TV & DISCUSSIONS~ Things I’ve discussed or learned by listening or watching…
There is also room at the bottom of the page for student notes or comments and parent notes or comment. Maybe I’m becoming more this way the longer that we do this [learn at home].
I’m tired of seeing myself as a homeschooler! We are a FAMILY! And that is how God designed us to be. Academics are one part of life and so much of it can be done within a different time frame to what we (as school-ised parents) know of.
I don’t want to ‘measure my success’ by the amount of Table-Time that we have or the amount of books that we read or how structured or unstructured we may be.
