As followers of my blog, you all know by now that we are pretty much unschoolers through and through.We have purchased and tried many curriculum's, but end up giving up days or weeks after buying them. In light of recent circumstances with the district, we feel a leading to do something differently. Nate has asked me to please purchase a curriculum and use it all the way through. I think this has really shaken us as a family and especially Nate. While I feel kind of sad to say goodbye to my dear friend, unschooling, I am trying to really look at this from another point of view. First and foremost, whether we have not been going to church or not, our marriage follows a very biblical model. My husband is the leader of the family and what he says, goes. I want him to feel comfortable and happy with the way our children are being educated. I also realize that being pregnant and about to have another baby, it will be nice to open a book and know what to do each day without having to jump on whims for each and every personality which can sometimes get very costly and time consuming and only to result in a dead passion shortly after it began. I also know that Kayla, being almost fifth grade will really benefit from some more formal lessons in grammar and spelling. I feel blessed that my kids got to drag out their open ended explorations as long as they did, but I also feel that this is a new season and consistency of one curriculum for the entire year is going to be a good thing for the whole family. I am ready to sweat it out and really buckle down. I have used sonlight for a good 7 weeks or so in the past and of all curriculums we have tried, I believe it is the most gentle and wholesome curriculum I have ever been exposed to. The books are really wonderful so this is the curriculum we will be using. It should arrive shortly and the kids are actually taking this really well. We have been stern and told them that we will not be sending it back when we have a bumpy day. This is not the way life works anyhow so doing that in the past has been an injustice to my kids. They are going to have bumps in life and in their work and home duties and they cannot just give up because its hard or doesn't feel perfect. Its time this lesson starts being implemented in my home. We will be doing Core 1+2 with Bible, geography, history, literature, and science 2 all together. We will then of course have separate Language arts for each of the kids, using Sonlights programs and then Rod and Staff for math. Their math has already arrived and we couldn't be happier, I cannot rave enough about how wonderful Rod and Staff math is. I love that they do a daily, timed drill to practice and solidify easy math facts. Its going to be so good for them and they enjoy beating their own times from the day before. We also have decided to go back to church Sunday. We plan to not get over involved for now because that is when we tend to have problems within the church. We will probably stick to just Sundays. We also plan to stick this out through thick and thin because the kids really need the consistancy in their lives and we have always jumped on every whim and this type of thing has to stop. I have severe ADHD (diagnosed at age 8) and I have not outgrown it as an adult. Unfortunately, I actually find it worse as I get older. I think I get bored in church's and make excuses to leave. I think I get bored with curriculum's and make excuses to stop and at the very first sight of my kid's discontentment, I have jumped and packed up the curriculum and shipped it back. This is something I need to work through. My dear husband has been so patient with me, but he and I have reached the conclusion together that this cannot continue this way. We also realize we need church. Our family and marriage crumbles around us when we aren't following a biblical model for our home life. We need the togetherness of family prayer at the dinner table, we need Nate to lead the family(NOT ME), we need our kids learning character building traits from the Bible, we need to be emulating the grace Jesus has shown within our family, we need all of it and simply trying to rid our lives of it for the sake of making life easy, feels wrong. I have a very sinful past and of course we all become tempted by sin, but that is where I lack that sticktoitiveness that I need. I am working to find that somewhere deep inside me. I guess I wonder, what does one do when life becomes mundane? A Christ-centered life can become dull to me. I try to reinvigorate by reading a good Christian book or going on vacation and whatnot, but sometimes that old sinful life calling(ie friends from that old early marriage lifestyle) and its hard to resist and it sometimes makes me feel my life is dull. Their lives often seem glamorous. They drop their kids off and head to Vegas for the weekend and do really wild things and I guess coming from a life where we did those types of things, we sometimes feel were missing out. That being said, when I leave my Christ-centered life for any length of time, I quickly loose strength to carry on the large amount of tasks I have as a mother, wife, housekeeper and homeschooler. I begin to see the emptiness in those sinful ways pretty quickly. This is the hard journey I want to avoid for my kids. Had I been raised as a Christian, I would likely not be having such a struggle in sticking to church or keeping my faith. I likely wouldn't have led the wild early marriage that I did. I want my kids to avoid those things. I want faith to be easy for them. I guess its that old selfishness I think I want, but true happiness comes from serving others, not self. I know this, I have seen it firsthand in my life. I have a lot to work through and at Christmas I am praying that I will be reporting attendance in the same church as well as being a over halfway through our Sonlight curriculum. Wish me luck my dear friends. I really want to accomplish these 2 big goals. I feel determined, but I am going to need all the prayers I can get!
