Category Archives: Work Spaces

bad weather

 

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I’ve decided to have a file system which is easy for the kids to use, so we start our day with Bible study, then Mathematics …and work our way down the box, should be simple enough, the boys can see that when we reach the bottom we should be finished for the day (some changes will be if we are doing Art/Music or PE).

I wrote this two weeks ago, but only now am I able to find time to blog it…

To start  home schooling on the right foot would have been ideal but some wild weather has hit our mountain and we have been without power for 3 days (turns out we were without it for 5). Which means all those last minute print outs (extra work) I wanted to do just didn’t get done (we’ve had to try and catch up – which isn’t the best way to do it, better to do it daily).

Thankfully the storm didn’t knock the wind out of my enthusiastic home school start too much. We managed to get done most subjects today – First Day – before having to do an essentials run (milk, bread from the local, 20 minutes away). The storm has ceased and it was safe enough to brave the trip. Not without having to drive under fallen power lines, with us weaving from one side of the road to the other, dodging massive fallen trees, – A lesson in safety for the kids if you’d like to look at it that way.

Already I am discovering what works and what does not for us in the home classroom.  When both older children start a lesson they need the teacher guided part before moving onto the activity sheets, at least they do now with only being new to this. So while I cover one grade the other child must sit and wait – my boys at the moment are not very good with this and continue to make background comments (“I’m bored”).  This is very distracting, and it takes longer – I also feel rushed.  To combat this I will try to alternate what subjects they do. So while one does English the other will work on Maths (which does not need as much parent instruction), and then swap them. Hopefully this will help.

Ishmael, who really isn’t school age is going to get bored too so I will need to set him school tasks just as I do for the older two.  He might then enjoy his free time more if he must complete certain work first before play.

Organisation

I am a very disorganized person. I don’t put things back where I got them from, don’t close cupboards and drawers, half finish jobs and it drives my husband crazy..Not me. It’s not for lack of trying though, in the past I’ve had great big cook-up’s, frozen meals a head of time, cooking in the mornings so afternoons aren’t as crazy, printed out chore lists for the kids, made my own tick lists daily, all in efforts to be more organized.  I’m always cleaning and re-arranging. The problem is that I’ve never truly been organised because I’ve never seen the point to it.  Why clean if no one’s coming to visit. I’m one of those people who’ll do that mad dash 1 hour before visitors arrive.

On Gumtree (online sell/buy local website) I stumbled across a book for sale last week ‘The organized home schooler’, I snapped it up quickly – if I was going to home school successfully this year I had to become honestly truly organised without giving up mid term. So far it’s challenged me to ask what God says about being organized and well planned. It’s about letting go of comments like, “I’m just not the organized type, never have been, never will be”, and letting God retrain me to become organised. Organised means ‘giving thought to each step. To be prudent is Godly.  I didn’t know what prudent ment -‘It means carefully managing one’s activities’. The opposite is confusion, disorder, jumble, and a lack of clarity (yep, I feel this often, and my house shows it often). ..Oh how I want clarity, especially in a house with 4 young boys and a man all wanting to talk at once and all needing something from me.

Being organised was something I used to try to do to please my husband and whilst there is nothing wrong with that, to be organised, because it’s pleasing to my maker seems to sit very well in my heart.

Of course to truly change, God’s going to have to do it – I just can’t do it, my past efforts are rubbish to what I could achieve with God’s guidance.

Exert from book – page 14 – 2 Corinthians 3:5 Be assured that any competence you gain comes from Him.. That’s so encouraging and puts it in good perspective.