Today begins the first in a series I'm calling Homeschooling Moms Who Have Influenced Me. I hope you'll glean good things from them, too. At the end of each interview, post a comment about something you felt was applicable to your own homeschool and you will be entered into a drawing to win something wonderful from each of the women I interview! How's that for encouragement? Ann Voskamp is a mom and writer who has given her gifts in the form of books our family has delighted in. You can read her blog, Holy Experience, and be encouraged to seek Jesus anew each day. 1. Tell us about your family. ~Darryl and I are high school sweethearts; it's always been just us. We laugh that I am his Rebekah: He was my Dad's hired farmhand for nearly five years before we were married. Darryl is the youngest of nine in a family whose spiritual heritage goes back as far as is known. I am the oldest of four, a first generation Christian, saved at fourteen. Mercy and grace is fresh and dazzling in my life; I remember life B.C., the time in my life before Christ. God has bestowed 13 years of a marriage I could only have dreamed of, 6 exuberant children (Caleb 12, Joshua 10, Hope 8, Levi 6, Malakai 4, and Shalom 2), and a good, quiet life in the country working His land. It is a gloriously crazy life where sometimes I feel like it's all whirling a tad off kilter--but we are all together, three meals a day, and our exquisite God is in the center, so it is all so very good. 2. How did Holy Experience come about? ~I simply wanted a quiet place to scratch down His story on the pages of our lives, a listening place to hear what He wondrously speaks into our very common days, making these days hallowed and holy, because He is here.... 3. How do you think moms can grasp the idea of living a spiritual life as opposed to having a "Bible Time" as part of school? ~This, for me, is at the heart of what kind of life I am praying to live. I don't want to box up God into a "quiet time," as if that is the only place I can meet Him. I want Him to flood all of the messiness and craziness and beauty of every moment of my day. I think everyone wants that. But what does that look like? What does that really mean? For me, the notion is encapsulated in the thought of a One-piece life. A one piece fabric. No fragmenting. No tearing. No seams. My existence yearns to be just that: a life of one piece, God woven through the laundry, and the cooking, the walk down the lane, the changing of diapers, the learning gathering times, the times when I feel engulfed by it all. “Now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece. They said therefore to one another, ‘Let us not tear it…’ (Jn 19:23). Too long, the fabric of this life of mine was torn up into secular and sacred, "Bible time" and "to-do list" time. Yet such a dichotomy is mere façade, mirage. "The Bible makes no room for the idea of the secular. In biblical worldview, there is only the sacred and the profane, and the profane is just the sacred abused, unkempt, trampled down, trivialized, turned inside out. It is just the holy treated in an unholy way.” ~ Mark Buchanan I have profaned the sacred, treated the holy in an unholy way. There are times, I still do. But I am prayerfully purposing to walk towards all of life as sacred ground, all of life as hallowed--because God is here, everywhere. For me, it is about holistic living. We know that our health is not limited to just what we eat, or just if we exercise, or just where we live, or only what medications or vitamins we take, but it is about being a whole person--all of those elements factor into our being healthy. To live a spiritually holistic life, one can't simply have "Bible time" and expect to nourish an intimate relationship with Jesus. It is about keeping company with Jesus for the other 23 hours of the day, speaking with Him, singing to Him, praying to Him, calling out to Him, resting in Him--living in Him. There is no divide between holy and sacred. God wove life to be seamless, a tunic like Jesus’: one piece. For all is in Him. “In God…we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). “Where can I go from Thy Spirit? Or where can I flee from Thy presence” (Ps. 139:7). Some may think of this as "Practicing the Presence of God"--but to do that we have to practice being *aware* of the presence of God. He *is* already here--we just need to wake up. We do not have to practice *making* Him present--He walks this moment with us. His word is not confined only to a quiet time for “they are not just idle words for you—they are your LIFE”( Deuteronomy 32:47). Life is our liturgy. *All* of Life is our time with God. 4. How do you bring the littlest ones into the spiritual ebb and flow of your days? ~ For us, we simply bring these little children with us, to Him whom we love. We worship Jesus around each meal gathering, closing the meal with the reading of Scripture, singing hymns, praying together--feasting on Living Bread. From the time little ones join the table gathering, they learn to feast from His table: always God's Word, a hymn, prayer. We learn to hunger after Jesus too, to have an appetite for Jesus. As a family, we memorize chapters of Scripture together, Dad leading us in review at the close of every meal. Darryl photocopies the 4 new verses we are learning for the week,and the review sheet, and even gives little non-readers their own sheet to put in their pockets for "review" throughout the day--so they feel a part of our seeking to make His Word our life. Throughout the day, we endeavor to keep company with Jesus: we pray for lost toys, and sibling squabbles, and for Mama to have grace, and for diligent hands and focused minds, and for forgiveness for blustery words...and for Mama to have grace. We try to remember, and gently remind ourselves aloud often, that "Christ is the head of this House, the unseen guest at every meal, the silent listener to every conversation." I don't pack my time in Scripture into an "away time", but an "in the midst time," primarily because I want our children to see that we hold unto Jesus in the midst, that His Word comes with us into the messiness of everyday life. So little ones color pictures in their own "prayer journals" in the morning, while the olders and I write in our own prayer journals and read from His Word. And come day's end, we tuck little ones in, pray together, bless each child and offer a Little Pillow. We begin in Him, we live in Him, we end in Him. We are a broken family, sin-marred. And yet we are, staggeringly, beloved of the Beloved One. We are learning and seeking to make the wonder of grace and mercy, His unmerited love, seep through every fibre of our beings, and moment of our days, living out the hope of the Gospel: not that we are perfect, but that His Grace perfectly saves us. 5. What are the most important things new homeschooling moms should know? . ~ I've botched much on this homeschooling journey, and He is abundantly gracious to take my messes and use them for good. Two fundamental things I wish I knew when I began: ~ Do not try to replicate the institution of school. Light yourself to the wonder of each day, what *God* would have you discover, to a holistic life of learning and curiosity, service and love. I am still very much in process in this regard, but we are determined to infuse our days with the wonder of God, and the fantastic creativity He's expressed in the world all around us, to the purposes He made us for. Read living literature, listen to music, dance, create, make, study art, go for long walks, explore, research, discover, serve, give, sacrifice. Let God out of the box we make for Him, and think out of the box. Listen to His Holy Spirit as You homeschool--not scopes, sequences, or curriculum catalogues. Don't escape the world when you homeschool, or live in a homeschooling "ghetto" where all of your interactions are only with other homeschoolers. Christ called us to be in the world but not of the world, to be a light of love. Make sure your homeschooling mission includes answering Christ's Great Commission to go into all the world, to be His hands and His feet to a hurting, wounded, seeking world. Formative books on our journey: ~John Taylor Gatto's "Dumbing Us Down," Schaeffer Macaulay's "For the Children's Sake," Andreola's "Charlotte Mason Companion," Bluedorn's "Teaching the Trivium," this piece... And this absolute must-read article, which I read again, and again, and so wish I had in the beginning. ~That homeschooling is not a formula for perfection, that homeschooling is not a panacea for all the sin in this world. Your heart is flawed, broken, cracked, and your children are born sinners. Homeschooling will not fix that. Only Jesus and His *grace* can. And He will use homeschooling as your crucible, to reveal your impurities and your sinfulness, and the brokeness of your home. Homeschooling will hurt. It will disappoint. You will cry and wonder if you are insane to try to educate these children, to disciple these little hearts, while laundering, cooking, cleaning, managing a household, and still being a wife, a sister, a daughter, a missionary in your community, a servant to Christ and in your faith community. And He will smile and say that He walks with you, has grand and glorious purposes, and He understands radical and crazy! Homeschooling *is* about going higher up and deeper in, for you will learn to sacrifically love in ways you have never loved before. You will know your own heart in ways you never imagined, the souls of your children in intimate, very real ways. For you will *be* together, making memories together, laughing together, crying together, praying together, and asking forgiveness together. Throughout your day, you will worship God, together. And you'll learn to die to self together. There will be no fragmented scraps of learning, home-life, friends, work, God. You will make a one-piece life--hallowed threads of parenting, love, education, living, creativity, wonder, sacrifice, and God all woven together. You'll wear it, and it will fit: Grace, Love, Gratitude. ~~~ With warm love... Ann Thank you, Ann, for being so generous with your time and answers. Ann is offering your choice of her excellent books for someone here, so go take a look and then be sure to comment below! We'll close the drawing at midnight on Sunday, October 7, 2007. A Child's Geography A Child's Geography- Explore the Holy Land The Glorious Coming- A Jesse Tree Advent Celebration
Hi! I was wondering if you would mind expounding some on the circle time that you do with you kids. I remember reading a post on this previously at your site and would love to start some of this with my oldest this fall (she’ll be 4) and need a little more direction. Any tips where to start and what to work on with her? And suggestions for scripture memorization? That’s an area that I struggle with so I need all the help I can get since I want to do it along with her.
Thank you so much!
Stephanie
Stephanie-
Starting circle time (or whatever you decide to call it) now is a great idea. It has been a part of our lives for so long now that I doubt even the 14-year-old can remember our days without it, although he seldom joins us anymore because he tends to go to work with his dad. Still, on the days he is with us, he participates by leading some of what we do, reading aloud, or quizzing the littlest ones on their catechism.
You asked for tips on where to start, so let’s begin there. The first thing you want to do is to determine what it is you want to include in your circle time. This always fluctuates for us, meaning that there are seasons when circle time includes just the essentials like devotions, Scripture memory, and prayer, and other seasons when circle time is a long drawn-out session filled with singing, reading, and lots of laughter. That’s what our current circle time entails and it tends to take up the better part of our summer mornings.
Ideas for circle time:
Psalm or Proverb of the day- read one chapter a day. Let the children illustrate something from the passage that stands out to them.
Prayer- my kids are particularly fond of “popcorn” prayer, where we go around the room with each person sharing one thing in prayer at a time. We use the acronym ACTS (Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication) as our guide; the first person calls out one attribute of God in adoration to Him, then the next person, etc. Then the first person begins again by confessing a sin, and we move on around until the prayer is finished.
Devotional- Books we’ve enjoyed over the years: My ABC Bible Verses (Hunt), Discovering Jesus in Genesis (Hunt), Discovering Jesus in Exodus (Hunt), With the Children on Sundays (Stall), and Family Worship (Cromarty).
Songs- We have worked on one hymn at a time, or our favorite hymns with everyone choosing one, or worship choruses we all like, etc. Sometimes I play the piano, sometimes one of the boys plays his guitar, sometimes we just get a little silly and sing at the top of our lungs.
Catechism Review- No, we’re not Catholic. Historically, Protestants have used confessions to teach the truths of Scripture in a systematic way to their children and themselves, and we use the Westminster Confession in our home.
The children’s catechism goes like this:
Q. Who made you?
A. God
Q. What else did God make?
A. God made all things.
Q. Why did God make you and all things?
A. For His own glory.
Q. Why ought you to glorify God?
A. Because He made me and takes care of me.
If you’re not familiar with the different Protestant confessions, take a look at this site.
Special Topic- From time to time we see areas in our lives that need attention. I’ll add some time to focus on those areas and hope to see a little progress. Currently we’re working on manners.
Memory Work- Which verses or passages do you want your children to have committed to memory by the time they leave your home? Sit down and make a list sometime and then begin to memorize together. Competitions and rewards always motivate us when we get lazy.
I recently purchased an audio Bible on MP3 and now we listen to passages over and over again to commit them to memory. See the link on the sidebar at the right if that interests you, too.
Cards- We like the variety that flash cards give us. You can search the web for photos of famous landmarks to print out, make cards for the Greek alphabet, Roman numerals, sign language, U.S. Presidents, books of the Bible, and practically anything else you can think of that would be worth memorizing.
I hope this gives you some good ideas to start with. Let us know how it goes!
I admit it. I'm a nerd. I like that my spices are alphabetical- makes them easier to grab when the baby is crying and the phone is ringing and the oven timer is beeping. I also like my books arranged alphabetically by author, at least the fiction titles.
My nerdy friend Lisa (she admits it) got me started on taking book organization seriously, and as you know we homeschoolers can amass a lot of books in a short amount of time.
To begin organizing your books, you must know what you have. You can track your library acquisitions using software like Readerware. Next, get serious and label or otherwise mark your books using Dewey's system just like the "real" libraries. This is a fabulous project for a high schooler in your home. Because my kids were little when I started cataloging our books, I made little stickers for the spine of each book that would identify which shelf they should go on (see- told you I'm a nerd). But I have my eye on the 13-year-old and will soon hire him to make labels with the proper Dewey decimals.
After getting everything on the shelves and organized, I then bought tab labels for each shelf. You can get almost anything library-related from Demco.
Dear Kendra,
Quick question (or maybe not so quick) that I'd be interested for you to address on your blog when you have a chance. I've been reading more about starting homeschooling and over and over I hear that it is really better to just take it easy until the kids are a bit older (at least 6). Overwhelmingly I hear that focusing on character training and helping around the home are far more important than making sure they know all their numbers and letters, which I'm discovering they kind of pick up on their own. I know that your home school is fairly academic so I'd be interested in your opinion on this. And, I'd also be interested in knowing any ideas on character training for preschoolers. Perhaps you've already addressed this, if so please let me know where I can read about it. Thanks heaps Michele Dear Michele- This is a really great question. Undoubtedly when we were just starting out I would have had a different answer, but time and children have brought us to a place in our lives where we have a little seasoned perspective. Or maybe we're just getting old. On the one hand, I don't think you really need to separate the two. Academics bring out some of the best character training opportunities. While teaching a child to read, one has to acquire great lengths of patience. Oh, but you meant character training of the child, didn't you?
Really, there will be opportunities to teach your children stick-to-itiveness, long-suffering, humility, and patience. Pencil allergies and aversions to word problems must be overcome. Hanging in there and completing an unpleasant task, seeing even fun projects through from conception to clean-up, patiently hearing a younger sibling read veeeerrryyy slowly all help to form and shape character in our children.
On the other hand, there are some fun and deliberate things you can do to teach your children about Biblical character traits. And while there are some terrific tools on the homeschool market, you really don't have to spend a dime. You can make a list of all the Biblical character traits and color a poster of them together. You can feature a character trait per day or week and spend some time studying the subject. One year we made "character houses" for each child: I labeled a piece of paper with each one's name and as they exhibited a particular character trait, we wrote it down on a little rectangular piece of paper that served as a "brick". Brick by brick we built a house on their piece of paper.
Lastly, you asked about delayed academics. Yes, we believe that going slowly is the best way to teach. Actually, that's not quite true. We believe that going at the child's pace is the best way to teach. After all, that is one of the definite benefits of home education.
Let's put it this way: I can spend two years trying to teach my six-year-old the concept of statistics. But if I wait until that six-year-old is sixteen, he'll teach it to himself in two weeks. Make sense? We believe wholeheartedly with the Bluedorn's Ten Things to Do With Your Child Before Age Ten.
Peace!
Kendra
p.s. Michele dropped by my house to meet me when she was in the States a few months ago. We had a great time! Thanks for the Crunchies... we're all big fans of the hokey pokey. And I put the chocolate covered pineapple in the fridge- yum!Cristy is a neat mom I know from church. Her blog is specifically written for and about families with autistic children, as Cristy's son Scotty has autism. She emailed me the following questions last week:
Dear Kendra, I have been meaning to write this question up in your blog but always forget. I want to get your advice on all those papers, worksheets, artwork that your children have done. Where do you put them? Do you just keep a few in your folder? What about those notes and lesson plans you write? We use notebooks a lot. They have 5 notebooks each every yr., and I can't bear to throw them away. Do you keep any? I'm attempting to unclutter our homeschool before we start school again... Thanks, Cristy Hi Cristy- Papers...ugh... worksheets are saved in their binders throughout the year (one binder per subject per child). Then at the end of the year I scan the best worksheets and schoolwork onto my computer into files. At the end of sixth grade, each child gets a disc containing the best of each subject for grades K-6. This also serves as a record of their work, and a disc takes up far less room than binder upon binder of paperwork. As for artwork, I tend to display what they've lovingly given to me but then when they give me new stuff I discretely toss the old. I use some of their larger works for wrapping paper or little notes to grandparents, and I am entering some of their work in the fair this year, as well. I keep only the most sentimental items in a folder labeled with each child's name, but I am super discerning about this because otherwise the folders would be inches thick! So I'd say each folder contains 5-10 pieces of artwork. I keep lessons plans and schedules stored on my computer for future reference, but the hard copies are usually displayed in one or two places in our home: on the fridge, on the hallway bulletin board, on the school room bulletin board, and on my clipboard that gets carried around the house with me. I am a notorious tosser. It is not hard for me to get rid of stuff, so I know that for people who love to hold onto things, it's tougher. But think about what you have from your childhood- how often do you really look at it? I have two things from my childhood school years that mean something to me; the rest was tossed long ago and for that I am grateful. Always here to help! Kendra