My son designed a pine cone bird with a sweetgum head.

My daughters made acorn dolls with green hair and silk flower dresses.

On our next adventure, we hope to gather leaves. Last year the leaves rotted brown. If the rusty patinas are missing again, we will make our own color with these crafts:

• Salt Dough Leaf Magnets
• Melted Crayon Stained Glass Window
• Nature Luminary Candle Holders
• Yarn Painting
• Fall Fingerprint Trees

Next on the agenda, haircuts.

What are you creating this season?

At three thirty every afternoon a dingy yellow school bus rambles past our house. My oldest and I are invariably working on math lessons while the little ones sleep, or, at least, are in their room supposed to be asleep. My son gazes wistfully out of the window wishing he could be finished. Then I hear the dreaded question,

Can I go to school?

Honestly, this hasn’t been much of an issue. My son once stated he wanted to home school in college. I replied, “That is not going to happen, but I will attend university with you, if you don’t mind.” Bug laughed, but I think he got the point. Someday it is time to leave home.

How do I address this question on the occasions it does arise? Knowing my son’s personality, it is not an entirely honest question. It is based on his perception. Multiplication problems are not his idea of fun. The children bouncing on the bus are on their way home to eat, to play, to relax. Or, are they?

Reviewing reality, I discuss our daily schedule versus wake up at 6:30 a.m., eat breakfast, leave, and return home at 3:30 p.m. with homework. Granted, sometimes this idea sounds nice to me. Those days that I want to quit. Those days the dog slurps the spilled milk off the table, and a toddler doesn’t quite make it to the bathroom. Those days lessons stall, because of interruptions. Then I think of what my days would resemble if my son did attend school elsewhere. My house might be clean, but I would miss sharing the daily stuff of life.

My son acknowledges this, too. He realizes we have time. Time to enjoy breakfast. Time to watch the birds. Time to reason. Time to rest. Time to imagine. When I hear the bus coming, I no longer cringe. Remembering the reasons we home school benefits both of us. We do have time. I don’t have to rush. I want to cherish the joy of the moment.

A is for Apple

Only one child suffered through recreating school at home. My oldest had to sit in a desk and raise his hand to speak. Anxiety pushed me and he resisted. His own perfectionism collided with mine.

Wobbly letters on tear stained pages remind me of those first steps into homeschool. I regret squelching my son’s excitement for learning those first weeks.

Thankfully, I spoke with the teacher who taught me Writing Road to Reading after the first fits. She admonished me to slow down. I thought I was doing everything right, but the book led me and fear drove me. Her words spoken with the confidence of experience brought peace.

It will come with practice. Relax. School shouldn’t be so hard.

Those words come back to me often. It has taken me years to relax, but I’m beginning to understand. Slow, steady progress is difficult to see when you sit next to it day after day.

A few years earlier, when Bug was still toddling around in a diaper I asked that same teacher how to prepare for school. Images of flashcards swirled in my mind. Her words scattered them.

Play with him and read a lot. That is the best foundation you can give him.

I took her advice. We did not work on numbers or letters. We just built blocks and talked while reading books.

Formal lessons began with Bug learning phonograms, the sounds the letters make, not the A,B,C’s. I taught him how to form the letters, how to say the sounds, and mentioned spelling rules, such as q is followed by u. And when he knew alphabetical order without any further instruction, I realized some things don’t have to be written in lesson plans.

Children learn far more than we realize by playing, listening, and living.

There were so many helpful ideas. So many passionate speakers. So many foundational truths. How do I sort it all? Even encouragement becomes cacophony unless the grains are sifted for a few sweet morsels to gnaw.

Grain Harvest, Montfoucault

It is easy to get overwhelmed. Full-color magazines with 185 pages of glowing reviews tempt me to purchase the latest, greatest curriculum. Veteran homeschoolers elaborate on what works for their families. Friends gush about the latest book they read. And I wonder,

Have I chosen the right lessons? Should I change our schedule? Why don’t I add more crafts? And timelines? I need to read more, and plan more, and…,and…

Questioning is not bad, but running after an illusion is detrimental. There is no perfect curriculum. There will be gaps in understanding. We cannot give our children everything they need to know to fulfill their purpose, but we can start them in the right direction.

Somewhere along the way, we need to learn and teach grace:

• The free unmerited love and favor of God, the spring and source of all the benefits men receive from him.
• Favorable influence of God; divine influence or the influence of the spirit, in renewing the heart and restraining from sin. (Webster’s 1828 Dictionary)

Grace for ourselves. Grace for our children. Divine influence renewing my heart and restraining me with gentle, quiet truth.

Milling Grain, Ceylon

Truth revealed in many ways. Sermons, speeches, friends, children, nature, and even my dreaded mistakes teach me. Shutting out the opinions, I reflect and realize I have a guide who loves and knows me and my children. He led me here, and His influence matters most.

The conference speakers shared great ideas and discussed pertinent information I look forward to reviewing. But they cannot all be adapted into our homeschool. Hulling the grains leaves me with golden gems worth savoring.

In The Madness of Multiple-Choice Andrew Pudewa discusses why multiple-choice questions do not encourage reasoning. He states,

There is no room for different answers, unique responses, or independent views. The emphasis is always on what the child does not know, not on helping him clarify and express what he does know.

Do we really want to focus on what our child doesn’t know? It seems to me this just serves to discourage and frustrate. Students are conditioned to pass the test but end up feeling inferior. Then the game of comparing scores continues all the way through college and into the work place.

As home educators we don’t have to prepare for standardized tests. Our emphasis can be on teaching our children to think. If we challenge them to labor over ideas, they will receive the reward of knowing that they understand. They will be much better “fit for usefulness in their future stations” since in life you are rarely given the answers. (from Webster’s 1828 definition of education)