And the Q&A's begin...
Okay, folks, I have to tell you that when I had this grand idea of doing a Q&A week, I wasn't really expecting such an onslaught of deep and in-depth questions. I guess I should have kept in mind how intellectual my blog readers are. You definitely are giving me lots to process and think about - which is good. :)
There's no way I'll be able to answer all - what was it? - 175 or so questions this week, but I will take a stab at as many of them as I can. We'll start with some easy ones:
We see education as an all-of-life process and with that in mind, we've begun home educating from birth (you can see our current home education "activities" listed at the bottom of the sidebar). We are doing a somewhat Classical approach, although I admit I have a bit of an unschooling bent, too. I prefer to teach from real-life whenever possible so while I'm sure we won't completely avoid textbooks, I will constantly be looking for ways to implement learning into life and visa versa.
I want my children to grow up loving learning not dreading schoolwork. And most importantly, I want them to know True Wisdom, not just academic head knowledge.
Related: You can read more about our education philosophy and how we're implementing that into our home here.
I'm not super woman, believe me, but I have learned that proverbially pulling my hair out does nothing to fix anything. Some things that help me when I start feeling overwhelmed:
Related: For more ideas and encouragement in this regard, read my post titled, Help for the Overwhelmed.
Q&A Part 2 coming tomorrow...
There's no way I'll be able to answer all - what was it? - 175 or so questions this week, but I will take a stab at as many of them as I can. We'll start with some easy ones:
This is a bit premature, but you strike me as someone who plans ahead. :-) What philosophy/approach/curriculum do you plan on using for homeschooling?I guess you have me somewhat pegged since I'll confess we attended our first homeschool conference when I was about 12 weeks along in my pregnancy with Kathrynne! And we've been talking about what our home education approach will be since before we were married.
We see education as an all-of-life process and with that in mind, we've begun home educating from birth (you can see our current home education "activities" listed at the bottom of the sidebar). We are doing a somewhat Classical approach, although I admit I have a bit of an unschooling bent, too. I prefer to teach from real-life whenever possible so while I'm sure we won't completely avoid textbooks, I will constantly be looking for ways to implement learning into life and visa versa.
I want my children to grow up loving learning not dreading schoolwork. And most importantly, I want them to know True Wisdom, not just academic head knowledge.
Related: You can read more about our education philosophy and how we're implementing that into our home here.
I've been a reader of your blog for over a year now and have invited many of my friends to read also...and they do too. We have discussed why type of church you and your husband belong to. One guessed Pentecostal but I keep going back to Independent Baptist. Are either of us correct? :-)I don't make a big deal of denominations here because I want to hold up Scripture as the standard and find that denominations can often box a person in or be divisive. However, we personally are Reformed Baptist.
Where do you shop for your office supply stuff? Do you get any discounts or know of any? Just curious.Office Max or Office Depot - depending upon which is closer to where we'll be driving or which is running sales or has sent us a coupon. I have also ordered a few supplies online and will probably be doing more of that as our business continues to grow. Honestly, this is an area I've not spent a lot of time trying to cut costs in and I'm sure there's room for improvement.
Do you ever have really hard days where you want to pull your hair out?Um, yes, I have plenty of days where I start to feel overwhelmed with, well, just life. It's busy here with two little girls and two businesses and some days when we've had lots of interruptions and the girls are cranky and I'm running on only a few hours of sleep, I can feel like I'm drowning.
I'm not super woman, believe me, but I have learned that proverbially pulling my hair out does nothing to fix anything. Some things that help me when I start feeling overwhelmed:
-Cry out to the Lord for patience, peace, and grace.Nipping that overwhelmed feeling in the bud instead of letting it foster helps me to stay pretty even keel and positive most of the time, even when everything around me is helter-skelter.
-Put the girls in their beds and go lock myself in a quiet room with my Bible for a few minutes.
-Pull my husband aside (or call him if he's gone!) and ask him to please pray for me.
-Turn on some uplifting music and start singing with it.
-List off all the things which are overwhelming me - sometimes I realize it's really not much and I'm overreacting.
-Do something! Instead of sitting down and sulking over everything that's overwhelming to me, I force myself to get up and get busy.
-Examine whether I need to be doing everything I'm doing.
Related: For more ideas and encouragement in this regard, read my post titled, Help for the Overwhelmed.
Q&A Part 2 coming tomorrow...
posted by Crystal Paine at 7:00 PM
8 Comments:
Thanks for answering my question!
I think and I have heard that Office Max or Staples if you show them you are a home schooler, will give you teacher discounts. There are other stores that do this as well for those of you that applies to. Joann's and Borders here do that as well.
Those were great answers. I actually copied them to paper so I can place them in my journal!
Thank you for your ministry to us!
Leanne
Hi Crystal -
Thanks for being so open and candid! This is unrelated and should not be included in the 175, though I would like a reply :)
Several months ago you talked about knitting a shawl instead of a sweater and gave a link to a site, Eyes of Wonder. I bookmarked it to come back to when I got some wool to use, but I can't access the page anymore. Disappointing! Do you have any idea how I can get in or know of a way to contact the woman who writes for that blog? She may have closed it to keep random strangers like me out. :) And that's ok. I'm just wondering what happened and if you know anything. Or wrote down the pattern. I remember it being extremely simple, but I don't remember how it starts.
Thanks!
Your approach to home education sounds much like ours. Might I suggest you check out Robinson Curriculum? It is simply reading, writing and arithmitic, without a lot of extra expensive textbooks. The creator of the material is a Christian, father of six and widow. He and his children developed this method of self teaching after their wife/mother/homeschool teacher died suddenly. Also, bonus...it is very inexpensive and can be used for as many children as neccessary!! Check it out. (PS I was not paid to endorse them...just really love it!!)
"List off all the things which are overwhelming me - sometimes I realize it's really not much and I'm overreacting."
It prob. seems common sense to everyone else but this is a great idea that I am going to use next time I feel like I am at the end of my rope!
I feel so bad that I didn't actually realise you were Reformed Baptist! (so am I)!
I would be interested to know which church you attend incase it's one we pray for.
Perhaps if you had time you could e-mail me.
I'm really enjoying this Q/A thing! It's helpful! Now I have to write up my whole list of questions. ;) I just have to say one thing, though-I'm SO excited that you're reformed Baptist!! So are we!! The Lord grabbed a hold of hearts and taught us that the Doctrines of Grace are true, and we now have been so very very blessed by being a part of a new church plant, with precious families that are likeminded in so many many ways. If you wanted to, you could check out our website at www.christchurchofchattanooga.com
Oh, I wanted to say, too....When my husband and I got married we started looking into homeschool curriculums and methods, also. Our first child is now five months old, but we have already begun to plan. :) We have an "unschooling bent", too. I think in some ways it's just more practical!
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