I’ve mentioned how our new schedule has transformed our homeschool and how happy I am with it. The older kids had given me some positive feedback, but Sprout sometimes isn’t as happy to warm up to change. Last night, however, she dictated a letter to her cousins. I was so impressed with the things she thought to mention, without any prompting at all, I had to share.

Dear ______ & ______,

I miss you very much. For my birthday, I got a Baby Alive just like ______’s. I wrote a letter once before to tell you this, but I think you didn’t get it. And for Christmas, I got a small bear and a doll bed and Sweetpea and I got a big play kitchen. And for Christmas, we baked cookies: sugar cookies, shortbread cookies and thumbprint cookies. Mommy got a timer. It’s been helping homeschool a lot. We also made a schedule for homeschool. I like it. Sweetpea and Pumpkin went to a birthday party on Saturday. I didn’t go because I got to go to a friend’s house after my ballet class. (She goes to the same ballet class as me.) I made a picture frame. I’m planning to put in a picture of Socks and me. Socks is our first cat. Sweetpea found her outside. We have another cat. His name is Butterscotch like the ice cream flavour. He had little spots of the colour. They sometimes come into our bedroom at bedtime and they curl up on the bottom of the bed.

Love,
Sprout

I decided to homeschool before I even had children. It was a noble idea born out of conviction that I could offer more to my children than I had received through the public school system–a conviction that there was a better way.

When it came time to begin, I was excited. I still am. I enjoy learning alongside my children. Every day holds a new challenge.

I always assumed I would educate through elementary school, but that my children would enter public school for high school. However, as we go along, learning together, it seems more and more likely that I will teach them all the way through their school careers. Since I taught my oldest two since preschool, and assuming our family dynamic remains the same, by the time Sprout graduates high school, I will have been teaching our children for 15 years.

 

When it stretches out before you like that, it makes you really stop and think. That’s a lot of one’s life to dedicate to the education of children!

But as I prepared for the new year, I dug a little deeper yet again. The new year for me is always a time to reassess. There were some things I needed to change in our schedule, and I wanted to do more in the way of teaching literature and to improve the methods I’ve been using to teach writing. I’ve been immersing myself in teaching training materials.

And the last two days with our new schedule and new approaches have been fantastic! I know I’m giving my children what’s best for them. I’m giving them things that are truly important, and it’s worth the commitment.

We’ve begun reading comprehension instruction from the Center for Literary Education and I’m beginning writing instruction from Excellent Resources. I’m already amazed at what we’ve learned together. And I’m keeping my commitment to limit my computer activities to “office hours” so I can get down to the important work of teaching.

Why is all this important?

Ultimately, so the more valuable lessons can be taught: independence, servanthood, a heart for others. Could there be anything better to commit your life to?

Readers tell me that my writing is very visual. After reading After the Snow Falls, numerous people have told me that they can see the story like a movie in their minds. So when it came time to choose a word for 2013, the picture the word evoked was just as clear as the word itself: I had seen others choosing words or pictures for the year, and frankly at first I didn’t plan to jump on the bandwagon. Mostly because nothing seemed to inspire me, particularly. And yet, I believe it’s important to set one’s course, and had some goals I wanted to set for the new year. I sensed a stirring, and I am certain good things are ahead. I wanted a way to set that out clearly, and what better way than a word and a picture? But still nothing occurred to me. Then on January 1st, this verse dropped in my heart as “my verse” for the year:

And God is able to make all grace about toward you that you always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work – 2 Corinthians 9:8

And then someone repeated the verse in a sermon I heard. He mentioned in that sermon that in this year, God wants to teach people grace. So I dug up a book I knew I’d heard of recently and bought it for my eReader. In it, the author, Tony Cooke, defines grace, not with the typical definition one hears repeated to explain grace, but with this simple phrase: grace is love in action. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t believe I’ve often been a recipient of grace before. Certainly over the last couple of years, I’ve been very much aware of the grace of God functioning in my life and the lives of our family members. And yet I feel I’m just learning what it really means and all that God makes available to his children because of it. And it’s begun to seem like such an inexhaustible subject–one of those things that the more you understand it, the more you know you’re just barely scratching the surface. So welcome to 2013, the year of grace. I can’t wait to see all that will unfold.