As I was planning for the next few weeks at Panera last night, I had a very strong sense of peace about this upcoming year. I kept thinking that even when we encounter frustrations, trying, exhausting days, ruts, set-backs and lack of motivation, God will be with me and will bless our efforts. And I became very aware that I was in a partnership. Not just with Mike, but with God. I could see God's hand in our actions throughout our first day. Oh wow-- I just realized the art masterpiece that we discussed today and put on our piano to display for the month was a close-up of the hands in Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. Coincidence? I think not.
So far, I really like what I've seen of the planning book that I was motivated to get for myself when I saw it on a friend's blog. I am reminded on nearly every page to offer up my plans to God, to look for his graces, to meditate on scripture. Not to mention I was very much in need of a planning tool. I used to consider myself an organized person, until I actually stared homeschooling. Between my fried brain and having so many little ones with unpredictable schedules themselves, it's difficult to stick to a routine. But I'm going to attempt to be better about it this year, for the kids' sake- and my sanity. I feel like my scatter-braininess is doing them a disservice by making it harder for them to concentrate or anticipate what's coming next. The planner has at least got me thinking about becoming a more organized person. While I enjoyed the spontaneity that this past year afforded us for pre-school and Kindergarten, I spent a lot of time researching some curriculum that we're going to implement this upcoming year. Faith formation is going to be at the core of everything we do. From there, we tried to find materials that would work well with our individual kids' personalities and interests.
I cleaned out my Cooking Light magazines and moved my cookbooks to make a more practical place for their schoolbooks.I won't go through all of the curriculum we chose, but Jack is particularly excited about his Exploring Creation With Astronomy and Junior Notebooking Journal by Apologia (what a letdown that we're still waiting on one of the books!). And I was all prepared to find something else that might suit her learning style better, but Abigail jumped right into Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons today and asked to do more (Jack did well with the program last year). We're doing Building Good Character: God Made Me to be Part of a Family (Catholic Heritage Curricula), and it seems to be doing wonders for #2 already. She's so anxious to earn stickers on her character card- (almost) all day she went out of her way to be helpful and kind (when asked to do something), which is this week's focus. I was so encouraged by the whole morning.
And then, after morning lessons and lunch, we went to the library, and they all talked at once and didn't listen the first time, and kept pulling books off of the shelves, and we ended up piling 34 books, some of which I apparently hadn't screened, onto the counter (like this one and this one). The outing wore me out. And no one got stickers on their character cards when we returned home. But I saw it as a pretty good foretaste of what our year might look like and felt at peace just heading into it with the understanding that it's not all going to be joy and successes. We may not always feel called to homeschool, but for now, this feels so right for our family, so we're going to plow ahead and take the blessed days with the challenging.
