PLAYING THE PIANO

All 4 of my kids are now taking piano lessons, and I’m so thrilled about it.

Children are so different. They have different skills, different talents, and different interests. My daughter, almost 11, dislikes the piano the most. But I am so very, very glad that we persevered and made her continue taking lessons.

In some movies there’s always one kid with glasses that reads a lot but cant make their bodies respond to physical stimuli, like catching a ball or riding a bike. In some cases, it’s a boy that tutors everyone else but has an F in wood shop. Well, that’s kind of my daughter.

Even though she dislikes the piano the most, she needs it the most. When I see her playing, using both hands, and pumping with her foot at the same time, while reading the notes, I know its helping her mind, her concentration, her hand-eye coordination, and her musical awareness.

She needs to play the piano. I’d go so far as to say that she has hated it for the first 3 years of practice. But it has been physical therapy to my daughter and a blessing to her. And, best of all, she actually enjoys playing, now. She doesn’t like to practice, but she does like playing.

My 3 sons, on the other hand are more naturals and they just plow their way through the piano. My oldest son tries to play his music backwards. They asked to start playing. My 3 year old begged me, “Pease, pease, can I pay the piano.”

I couldn’t say no.

SICK AS A DOG–AND A GREAT WRITING WEBSITE

My daughter and I have the flu. We feel miserable. My husband and other kids had it last week. What a miserable feeling. Oh, I feel awful.

But this too shall pass.

And to keep myself busy, I’ve been reviewing rhetoric for high school. It’s fun reading and I’m learning a lot.

Btw, I’ve found a really cool site on breaking out of the 5 paragraph essay mold. If you follow some of the links there are even lesson plans there. But those, I haven’t looked at.

I’m going to use some of these ideas with my highschool coop class next week.

I taught my high school students how to do the 5 paragraph essay, because many didn’t know. Now I’ve begun teaching them how to expand upon it and use it for structure but not to be limited by it.

I got a little side tracked because I got sick, but our next writing assignment will be outside of that mold.

And I’ve got to work on a plan for science progression in school. Same as I did with middle school.

Bit of a side note. I’m such a big picture learner. I always have been. By that, I mean that when I have all of these little details, I flounder around in the dark. This has always shocked my college classmates.

When I started a new class, I often needed help at the beginning. By the end of the class, I could put it all together. This has been the trend my whole life. Until I am physically in it, I can’t really make all of the connections. When I get involved in something about 1/2 way through, the pieces just fall into place with no effort.

In my mind, I visualize lots of pieces of non-connected information floating and swirling around me in the air. To me the pieces mean nothing. After I’ve seen enough of the pieces and I can see how they fit together, I begin to see the whole picture. Then everything just sort of falls together in the right place making a final picture.

I wonder if their is some kind of name for this other than being a big picture person. Anyway, now that I’m 40, I understand myself and I just work with it.

Age has its privileges.

3 AM VISITOR

Last night, at about 3 am, I had a little visitor. I turned over in bed and my 3 year old was standing right next to me, wearing a Clone Tropper costume, a mask, and carrying a toy laser gun.

He climbed in my bed, laid on my arm, and went back to sleep–still wearing the mask.

What a little doll.

IF YOU’RE INTO NUTRITION AND HEALTH, YOU’VE GOT TO LISTEN TO THIS

I love listening to Dr. Wong speak. And his enzymes work! I ran out of the old enzyme formula 3 days ago and my foot is spasming even though I haven’t physically hurt it again.

When I take the systemic enzymes, I feel pain only when I put pressure on the entangled nerve. I love his enzymes they really do remove inflammation. They work! And his new ones are less expensive, but they’re new so I haven’t tried them yet. I’ve taken the old ones for over a year.

I’m trying his new zymessence as soon as it gets here.

HOW PRAYER CHANGES THINGS

My background isn’t in writing although I have been writing most of my life. I have a BS in Chemical Engineering. Do I ever hate engineering. The only good thing about it was meeting my dh. We met at the Chemical Plant; toxic fumes, and love, were in the air.

While we dated, we both wanted to be doctors–me more than him. I went to night school and took all of the pre-requisites, but I didn’t study enough. I was too busy dating.:) I did, however, get accepted into medical school as an alternate. I’m not sure where I was on the list, but I never called to check. We got married instead.

I was really happy. Then we had kids, and I became even happier. I loved being a wife and a mom. Then we started homeschooling, and I was even happier. That is until I began dropping all of my hobbies so that I could be a wife, a mom, and a teacher. Everything I did, I did for .them I even quit exercising so that I could teach the kids during the day, and be home with my dh at night.

After a few years of this new level of commitment, I began to feel overwhelmed in a bad way. I began to feel down, but I couldn’t understand why. I didn’t realize that I was becoming burned out. I was giving, but not being filled. My husband didn’t understand because these feelings were new and sort of blindsided him.

I think what made it really bad was that my best friend moved to Germany. She was the one I would drop my kids to when I needed a break. She came to my house in the middle of the night and stayed with my children when I went into labor with number 4. We talked everyday on the phone together. We were really close, and then she was gone. That, on top of my self-sacrifice, just did me in. And my dh didn’t realize how close we were because he wasn’t involved in that girl friend relationship.

Anyway, I remember the day that a simple little prayer changed my life. I was folding laundry and watching some TV minister. I can’t remember what the minister was saying, but all of a sudden I stopped what I was doing and said one little prayer. I said, “Lord, please don’t let your plans for me pass me by.” I felt lost and I felt as if I were stranded out in the ocean and life was happening somewhere else. And I felt as if God had a lifeboat out there somewhere for me, but I didn’t know where it was nor how to find it.

Within a few days of that prayer, my life changed. I had known how important copywork was because of Charlotte Mason and The Well Trained Mind. I had been using First Language Lessons and had been trying to incorporate more copywork into our lessons. But the project of picking a new selection daily was driving me nuts. I’m just not that organized, and I was already becoming overwhelmed with having to make new decisions every day. (That will be another post some time.)

So I began to pull together our copywork from public domain resources. My intent was that these would benefit only my children. I had so much fun doing the research, I couldn’t sleep. I worked every chance I got on those copywork selections. Three months later, I realized that I had written a different type of copybook which has grown into Write from History.

But this isn’t really about the books. It’s about the prayer. I know in my heart that God gave me the idea to start writing curriculum. And he gave me the resources to do it. In fact, I believe with my whole heart that my foot injury is a blessing. Because if it had not been for that, I wouldn’t be writing and pursuing all of these new found hobbies. God has blessed me all of my life, and while there is so much heartache and suffering in the world, He’s still blessing little ole me. I just can’t understand why God is so, so, so unbelievably good to me.

He knew just what I needed. He gave a project that energizes and rewards me. And most people don’t understand how or why. In fact, neither do I. A friend actually suggested to me that I quit writing new books and focus on marketing, because I’m simply not doing any. But I can’t do that, at least not right now. For me, the blessing is in the fact that God is letting me do this. I am having so much fun, and I’m learning so much new information. Research is my favorite part of writing. And better yet, I’m not down or sad anymore. I can’t wait to get to my computer and start writing curricula. I have ideas about things I can’t even begin to work on because I don’t have the time. My cup is overflowing with ideas, and I know the source of ideas and my blessings.

The only sad part of this post is that I haven’t really given God enough of me. I’ve been feasting off of his blessings, but I haven’t been filling my heart with enough of Him. That’s my new prayer.

THIS IS SUCH AN INCREDIBLE SITE

I read about it on The Well Trained Mind Boards.  Here is the incredible interview from The Children of the Code.

VITAMINS THAT HAVE CHANGED MY LIFE!

B Complex 50

Co enzyme Q10 (like a morning cup of coffee without the stains to my teeth )

Yeast Away  (Digestive Enzymes that contain cellulase.  They digest the cellular coating on yeast and elminate them from the digestive tract.)

VItal zym (These are systemic enzymes that help all of the bodies systems to work.  With out enzymes, vitamins are useless.)

Magnesium (My dc and I take this every night.  It helps us to sleep well as well acts like a muscle relaxer.  It also helps one of my kids with regularity.  One has a major problem in this area and the magnesium helps a lot.)

I LOVED READING SOME OF THE NEW COMMENTS!

I’ve been missing for a while because my two little boys, almost 3 and almost 5, have been sick again.  They fight and cough, fight and cough, nap, and start all over again.

I’m running a little behind, but now that they’re improving, I’m trying to catch up.

Hope to post sometimes soon about something real.

WHY THE KIDS DON’T PLAY IN THE BACKYARD MUCH…

A couple of days ago my son comes running to me, asking me to check the backyard because he can see something black on the sandpile. Well, it was a water moccasin aka a cottonmouth.

I’ll wait till the youngest is a little older.

My dh came home from work, caught it, killed it, and a few days later dissected it.

Here are couple of pictures from our dissection–

INFO ABOUT CO-OP

Someone asked a question about co-op and I thought I’d paste my response here.  In case anyone else is interested.

I am not a main coordinator at our co-op, but I am very involved. Your question was–

Is a serious claassical co-op day interpersed with joyful activity beneficial to the majority of children and the overall relationship of their hearts turning toward yours or away from yours and vice versa?

I think it most definitely is. Our co-op has many crafts and fun activities and classes which are classified as electives in addition to the educational classes. Our new co-op will be operating from 9-3 on Mondays. The morning classes are all educational. History, Geography, Science, Literature to name a few. The afternoon classes fall in the category of electives–ballet, photography, foreign languages, art, piano. The selection of electives is based on the skills that the teaching parents of all of the participating families have to offer. And from those available, the parents based on their children’s bent and interest, select electives that they will enjoy.

For our co-op, the grades 2-6 are all together for the history focus and the science focus. The 7th to 12th are together. But we’ve also tried to offer two threads of history (and literature as well for the 7-12th grades).

The 2-6 are doing MFW history and geography simultaneously–2nd-4th, 5th-6th.  The 7th -12th are offered either Sonlight core 300 or civics. The high school kids taking sonlight will be receiving an IEW class. The high school kids not in sonlight will be offered a different literature class.

I hope this answers some of your questions. And, btw, our co-op has approximately 40 families. It’s a split from our old co-op of 130 families. We grew too large for our facility and split. The new co-op will start this fall.