Homeschooling Struggles: Part 4- Life’s Interruptions

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Old fashioned wooden stop sign against a blue sky.

I have always worked by setting a basic schedule to accomplish what I know I need to have done. But there are times in life when all the best intentions just don’t cut it, and life “interrupts” the best laid plans. I have found though, that God is the master; in my experience, there have been several times that God has planned for my family a “curriculum” we would not have chosen for ourselves. In retrospect, however, it was during those stressful times that we grew together as a family and learned some lessons of the true meaning of life.

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Homeschooling Struggles: Part 3- Uninterested Learners and Creative Teaching

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 How do you deal with children who don’t seem interested or who don’t seem to want to learn?

First of all, I have learned,  that some kids need to move to remain alert.  It’s almost as if they just can’t get their brain to focus. They can be sitting, looking at something you know they know how to do, and yet it seems that although they are physically present, their brain is just not in gear. I think of one of my boys in particular. With him, he just needed to get up and move. He’d ask me if he could go jump on the trampoline to wake up his brain, and it really did work! Especially boys just seem to need to move, and when kept sitting still for long periods of time, they click into zombie mode. Several times during the course of a morning, he would go outside and run or jump on the trampoline, come back in and be able to focus again. I noticed with him also, when spelling his words out loud (which worked much better than writing them for him), he could think better if he was moving, climbing on the couch or scooting around on the floor. If you have one like that, let him move. When he is older, he will be able to sit and concentrate for longer periods of time, but don’t rush it when he is young.

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Homeschooling Struggles: Part 2- Struggling Learners

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I began homeschooling my first son when he was in kindergarten. What a joy..a firstborn eager to learn all he could just as fast as he could! I thought, wow- this homeschooling really is wonderful; and it was! But when my other children came along I expected they would learn just the way Rick did. Surprise! Each one of my children was very different and learned in the unique way God made them.  Continue reading Homeschooling Struggles: Part 2- Struggling Learners

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Homeschooling Struggles: Part 1- Mom Can’t Do it All

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tired and busy woman with multitasking conceptFirst a little intro to this new series: I thought I would share with you some of the struggles I’ve experienced over the past 31 years of homeschooling. My hope is to encourage those who may be involved in struggles of your own to hang in there, realize that God has the answers we need, and that we, as parents, will be blessed by demonstrating persistence, commitment to our goals, and determination to trudge on even when the going gets tough. As our kids watch us learn to rely on God to change our character, they gain a vision of how to develop those same character qualities in their own lives.  God knows what we need and what our kids need, and He is designing our life curriculum for us.

Struggle 1: Mom Can’t Do it All

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