Day of What???? Passing the Homeschool Teacher Test and Sweet Rest

Already lots of words I haven't heard for a long time are starting to float around the house - big words!  Post-modernism, trascendentalism, naturalism, theism....and my daughter who is now studying all this in her worldview course actually understands it all and is loving it.  I am quite enjoying it, too, as she is making me read over worksheets or listen to assignments.  It's good to refresh my memory, too.

But last week, I nearly fell out of my chair (that seems to happen to me alot).  She told me an amazing fact she had learned about Russia and it was just too crazy to believe,  I even had to google it to make sure!  If you haven't heard about this you wouldn't have believed it either.

Apparently, well, actually, we probably all know this, but apparently Russia is blaming its suffering economy on the fact that it's population is declining, due to lack of children being born.  The truth is, many, many children are being conceived, but never born.  The abortion rate in Russia, i.e., the number of children being killed is higher than the amount of children born.  That is too awful to imagine.

Russia decided to do something about this, so they created a holiday, are you ready for this?  The Day of Conception.  I'm not joking.  They give people the day off work and they are told they must go home and.....conceive!  And conceive they do, no doubt their theory worked!  But did it?  No.  Most of the babies conceived that day never see the light of day.  Russia doesn't understand they didn't get to the root of the problem.  Their worldview tells them children are a burden and must be gotten rid of.  They have a statistical number like 1.2 or 1.4 children per family to prove this.  It is so sad!

It is great for my daughter to learn this.  Around here she is surrounded by homeschoolers who, generally speaking, have large families.  This year alone, I had 4 friends either expecting their 8th or their 9th babies - that is quite normal for my daughter to see and she loves it!  She certainly knows the world doesn't love children, but to see it so clearly in Russia was really eye-opening to her.

This is the great part of learning alongside my daughter, even in her college courses.  We get to talk about everything.  I learned many things I would have loved to discuss with others when I was going to school as I was a newly committed Christian at that time.  So it's been fun to have her at the kitchen table.  You can almost see the wheels turning in her mind as new ideas get exposed to her. It's the ultimate test of a homeschooling mom, "Did I prepare her well enough?  Can she communicate well, both written and spoken? Will she now be able to live out her faith in the world?"

I certainly had her (and the other kids, too) do special assignments along the way where she had to do "research" of some kind or I had her write about the history we'd be reading about, but when they were all little, the only thing I had them truly write about was their lives.  I have the sweetest little "books" they wrote when they were younger and it was only about their days, the field trips, or the bumped heads.  Those were their stories, almost exclusively, not some silly made-up idea that didn't make sense to them.  If I had them write about their day the day before, they could go on and on.  I would start with them dictating to me until they were 6 or 7, but by 8 they were full on writing and they wanted to!  They wanted to record their lives!  I love their little perspectives looking back.  This is the interesting thing though, it taught them to write, to describe things really well and to be honest, I never ever bought a single writing program and each one of my children is an amazing writer, just because they wrote about their lives.

I read what my daughter had to articulate yesterday about all the worldviews she'd been studying and I have to say, I felt a little proud of myself - she was so clear and worded things so well!  Taking these courses has been as much a test of my teaching as well as her learning.  It seems we are both passing!  Ok, I realize I can't take all the credit, but I was her teacher for most of her life!!!!  Maybe she really did learn a few things when she was under my tutelage.  It was a great feeling, very satisfying and so fulfilling!  I wondered, "When did that happen?"  How does it go from being a story about your day to writing about worldview and writing about it well?  However it happened, I'm so grateful.  I'm so grateful I was there the whole time, alongside her.  People always told me (and now I do the same) that it would go so fast.  I had no idea how fast it would go.

The funny thing was I had my 11 year old in tears last night as she went to bed.  Why?  Because I told her that today she had to try to learn about decimals by herself.  What????  "No!  You have to teach me!"  "Yes, of course, I will, but first you must try to learn yourself."  She did not like this and was panicking, thus the tears.  I told her the whole idea of homeschooling is that you must learn to become self-taught which is why the oldest is doing so well in her courses, she is teaching herself to learn.  I am no longer teaching her.  I explained that I must be more focused on the younger ones now and that they need me more as they don't even all know how to read.  She does and she needs to take up a little less time with me and start teaching herself more and more.  This was quite disturbing to her.  I reminded her, "I'm not kicking you out of the house!  I'm not leaving you!  I just want you to try to read the instructions first!"  Finally, she understood - whew!  There is always so much drama with that one!  But it's a fact - I cannot and will not "homeschool" all of them everyday at the same time!  I would lose my mind.  The idea is to get them started and then push them out of the way into their own rooms to study on their own.  The older 3 get that and are doing great.  She's next - it's called "learning to fly" by kicking them out of the nest, in the safety of our own kitchen.  Now, I just have to pray that decimals won't be what does her in and that somehow she'll see they aren't actually that hard to understand!

Every day holds so much around here!  Last Friday, I put the 2 year old down for a nap, then the 2 older boys went skating at a rink for an hour.  Then, my 3 girls went to Grandma's for a tea party. Then my husband took the 2 busy boys (4 and 8 years old) on an errand for the morning.....I was left completely alone....just me and the cats.  At first, I couldn't believe how quiet it was.  I was loving it! Then, I ran around the house getting it clean, to the level I wish it could look all day everyday.  Then, I made an amazing soup (broccoli/chicken noodle).  Then, after I finished all that, no one was back yet, so unbelievably, I didn't know what to do!  So I picked up the computer and read the news!  I never have time to do that in the middle of the day!  Shortly after, one by one, people started to show up and my "break" was over.  I did enjoy the peace and quiet for awhile, I have to admit.  I always say to my husband, "If everyone could just be out of the house for a couple hours every week, I could keep this place spotless!"  But it's not true.  It always gets messed up right away no matter what...Ah well, it was loud again within a few minutes, but it was great.  Everyone had so much to tell me from their different little trips.  When my four year old came home, he entered in, slammed the door and then announced, "I'M HOME!!!" as if I didn't know!  It was great.

More ahead today....decimals, new readers, laundry (loads of it), screaming toddlers (it's his new thing).  I'm just like the kids....I write my life down now just like they do.  Now I can see why they have learned to write, it's fun and easy!  I'm sure I will look back on this one day, too, and laugh at what seemed like such a struggle at the time. Thank goodness for those little breaks once in awhile!