Big changes in store...

So I briefly wrote that we had some changes in store.  At the end of each school year I like to take an inventory of how our year went.  Are we still heading in the direction that we had planned or hoped for?  This year I was a bit troubled by my answers.  At the same time I happened to read some articles that brought me back to my original ideas of homeschool and lifestyle that I had when Isabella was but a mere thought and up through toddler hood.  As it stands right now we have children who, when they graduate, will be able to read, spell half way decent and crunch some numbers (this is only educationally speaking, although it is hard to separate education from the rest of life).  That is not what my goals were when we began this homeschooling venture.  I wanted children who would turn out to be thinkers, not followers, and would look outside the box when it came to life.  And right now we are not headed in that direction.  Right now we have a bunch of followers, who think like everyone else around them.  Yes, I know they are still young, but we are not fostering their independent thinking by our educational methods or means.  Our society is filled with non-thinkers, who don't look past the end of their noses when it comes to the future.  The decisions they make are only made for their comfort in the here and now.  I don't want my children to be like that.  I want them to have a voice and use it to wake people up to the reality that society is crumbling around them.  Phew, that is some challenge!  And so with those realizations I set about to rethink this thing we call homeschool. 

I do not make any claims that my way is the best way, far from it!!!  Homeschooling is so much more than what curriculum you choose to use.  One hundred families could all be using the same curriculum, but their homeschool day would each look totally different because of how they *use* that curriculum.  So the changes I talk about here are only what I feel will put my family on the path we believe that God has for us.  For starters we plan on getting rid of a lot of *stuff*.  The children's computer time and movies being two of them.  Although we will see how they do with a once a month movie night.  It has become overly apparent that the only things going through my childrens' heads are foolish, and silly replays of movies or of comic books that they have read.  Oh, so put 'twaddle' books on the list of things to go as well.  Seriously, not one meaningful thought comes out of my childrens' mouths, and I am not exaggerating.  What goes in, is what comes out.  And so it will be my job to find the good, and meaningful things to put in.  We will be going with the Charlotte Mason approach to schooling.  But I see it more than just a curriculum, I see it as a lifestyle as well. 

Part of that lifestyle will be simplicity and beauty.  My house is a mess.....ALL the time.  Now we do get it cleaned up at times, and can even keep it clean for a little while.  But even when it is clean, there is no beauty.  This part has been hard for me to wrestle with.  On the one hand I think of the people in this world that have nothing.  I look at our family and I know we have SOOOOO very, very much.  But with that abundance has come the lack of thankfulness and the lack of taking responsibility for what we have.  Does that make any sense?  I mean if you have 20 coloring books, who cares if five get messed up because you spilled something on them?  A simple, simple illustration, but I hope you see my point.  My children take everything for granted.  They do not take care of their belongings or other peoples belongings (like library books).  So I plan on doing some major, major paring down.  My goal is to bring order, beauty and peace to our household by making our home free of the over abundance.  At the same time I am hoping to add beauty by getting around to painting. Also by getting rid of what I call our "junk furniture".  And if not get rid of it, then paint it in hopes that it adds some beauty instead of looking like we picked it up off the side of the road :-)  I know that I can not think straight in the middle of chaos.  Which means that I have not done much thinking over these past twelve years :-)  How can I expect my children to be able to think in the midst of clutter.

This is going to mean a LOT of work...a lot of work.  I made up a list of what needs to be done, and it's quite long!  The good thing is that we just finished up the school year. I plan on taking the rest of the month off to tackle our list.  Jed will still have speech though, and depending on how much that interferes with the work that needs to be done than we may take off June as well.  I plan on schooling year round, so plans are to get us up and running by the end of June at the latest.  How our days will run is still in the planning stage.  We are not sure yet about which book list/s we will be going with.  We may take the 'some of this and some of that approach' or go with something like Sonlight.  Although I love that Sonlight gives you everything you need in one bundle, you PAY for it!  So we may just gather a few books at a time. 

The girls are not exactly thrilled with all of the changes.  I can't blame them.  It is so much easier on the brain to be handed your thoughts (movies, computer games), or easier to read 'junk' books, which only require you to be able to read - no thinking required.  I suppose their little minds might actually physically hurt for a bit, as they work out those brain muscles :-)  But my goal is that they actually start thinking about what they read, about what they see, and about what they do.  I am hoping that I will spend more time focusing on our relationships than on 'school'.  I also am hoping that with simplifying we will have more time to do other things than clean all day.  What those other things will be I am not certain at this point.  I am hoping that we will tackle some gardening, and put some time into making our outside surroundings more useful and beautiful.  I am hoping that the girls will find more time to pursue their desires.  For example I know Isabella would really like to train her dog in agility.  We don't have the money to do things like horse riding lessons, or piano lessons, nor do we have things we could barter/trade to do so.  But possibly with our new found time we could start to learn on our own (piano) or learn to make/do something that we could barter lessons for.  If they really want it, they can learn to work for it (with our help of course).  I should look into 4-H, as I really think our girls would love it.  The possibilities are many, we just need to find the ones that the girls are interested in and that we can handle financially.

I think I will put up my 'to do list' on the side of my blog.  If only for accountability!  Plus I won't lose my list, which I am very prone to doing.  Once I get an idea of how I would like our days to run I'll put that up.  And I'll write about more specifics once they happen (like what other types of things I get rid of or add to our life).  Before I go I'd love to pass along a post on homeschooling that helped to solidify some of my thoughts.  I think some of you may really enjoy the series that this group of women are doing.  I'll link you to one post, and at the beginning of her post will be links to the other ladies blogs.  So far they have had two posts each on the topic of homeschool. The first was about their philosophy on homeschooling and this past week was on which curriculum they use.  I really love Raising Olives thoughts on this, and I would recommend that you read her 'background' posts that she links to.  One of the other women in the group told us about how her teenage daughters wanted to take some college courses in history.  The professor was so impressed with their ability to *think* that he then invited them to take a few more classes he was teaching....for FREE!  And these girls had never written a paper before.  Again, it's getting our children thinking and analyzing what they read/hear/see/do that I think is the difference.  So if you are not worn out reading my seemingly never ending post do stop by at Raising Olives.

I will try once more to upload my pictures in the hopefully near future.  I know you are all dying to see me in a sack race with my kids :-)