21 hours ago
This week we are starting kindergarten with Wyatt! What? Didn’t I just write his birth story two days ago?
I can’t believe my big boy is starting on his school journey already, and I am so excited about homeschooling! I was homeschooled, and I have so many good memories associated with homeschooling. I am excited to start on this stage of life with my own sweet family. I have a big post tomorrow coming about my homeschool educational philosophy, but today I thought I would keep it simple and share a few of our goals for kindergarten this year.
My main goal for September is to get into a homeschool routine. Developing good habits is going to be important for the kids to learn what to expect, but let’s be honest, good habits are going to be huge for me as a homeschool mom! Up to this point our days have been largely unstructured. We do whatever strikes my fancy that day. This month I want to get into a routine, and that is going to require me to be consistent with our daily tasks. It’s also going to require me to learn to say no, not just to outside events and requests that will mess with our schedule, but to my own impulsiveness too.
But if there is a year to work on this, it’s kindergarten! People who do not have a background in homeschooling sometimes don’t realize right away that just because your child will be in a public kindergarten for 4+ hours a day, that does not mean it will take that long to do your schoolwork at home. Everything that truly needs to be covered in Kindergarten can be done in about an hour a day - in a school environment a lot of time is spent just organizing children, distributing snacks, play time, rest time, etc. I will share an update and give you more specifics on how much time we end up taking for school each day, but even if it takes us a couple hours, we will hopefully have at least half the day where we can still get out of the house if cabin fever hits.
So beyond the initial goal for the first month, my goals for the entire year include the things below.
Homeschool Kindergarten Goals
1. Teach my son to read (or at least get him well on the way to reading). I am pretty flexible on this - if he isn’t reading independently by the end of the year, I’m not going to fret. I have no doubt he will pick it up at some point, and a major goal for me within teaching him to read is to present reading as fun. I love to read, and it’s very important to me that my kids learn to love reading as well, so I’m not going to push to the point that it’s no longer enjoyable for either of us.
2. Teach him to write his letters and spell his full name. Writing comes after reading, so I’m not concerned with anything but his name at this point.
3. Number recognition (hopefully up to 100), telling time, and basic addition and subtraction. If we cover all this for math I’ll be pretty happy.
4. Learn three Bible verses per month. I would love to cover one Bible verse a week, but I am giving us a little wiggle room. This is a prime age to work on memorization, and I’m looking forward to helping my kiddos hide some Bible verses in their hearts! We will be doing this as a family, so the younger kids will participate too.
5. Read one chapter book together a month. I want reading aloud to be a big part of our homeschooling, so I am hoping to get through one children’s chapter book a month. If we read a chapter a day I think this is entirely doable.
6. Do one simple craft a week. Maybe. This is purely because my kids enjoy crafts, and I am not a crafty mom, so I need to set goals.
These goals are all flexible to me - if we don’t accomplish something, we’ll just work on it again next year. That’s one thing I love about homeschooling - teaching your child is not a checklist, it’s a continuum. There are great advantages to having the same teacher (me), because we can make sure we don’t inadvertently skip anything he needs to learn. We will cover everything over time, and nothing will ultimately fall through the cracks like it potentially could if Wyatt had a different teacher every year.
Some of you overachievers may be thinking that your child has known how to do many of these things before Kindergarten - and that’s great! But I will tell you that Wyatt doesn’t do all of these things now because of an intentional decision on my part.
My Preschool Philosophy
My preschool philosophy is really simple - let them play.
I have heard some kindergarten schools these days want kids to be practically reading when they start, and I don’t mind telling you that I think that’s ridiculous.
I don’t push kindergarten skills on my kids when they are preschool aged for a few reasons:
1. There is very little time in childhood for children to play with no expectations. I don’t want to put expectations on my children too young and steal that precious time from them.
2. Kids teach themselves a lot through play, especially in the early years. And if my kids express an interest in learning something in the preschool years, I’ll do what I can to help them. Wyatt has often asked about different letters or animals, sang the abc’s, and requested crafts or books before now, and I oblige; but mainly I just let my kids explore through their own play, and we learn as we go.
3. An early start doesn’t ensure excellence later. We like to think it does, but kids who develop some of these academic skills early don’t necessarily do better than other kids when you look the course of their entire academic careers. Things have a way of evening out.
4. It’s more important to me in the preschool years to focus on the Bible and character. This doesn’t stop at kindergarten, obviously, but most of my teaching during preschool is about Bible stories, right and wrong, memory verses, and who Jesus is. In the long run, having a strong foundation on those things is much more important that getting a jump start on reading.
So there you go, my preschool philosophy in a nutshell and our kindergarten goals! Check back tomorrow for my post on different homeschooling methods and what we will probably be doing, and keep an eye out over the next couple months for posts on our curriculum choices and schedule.
Also, if you have any questions for me about homeschooling - now is a great time to ask! I’ll incorporate some of my answers into future posts!
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My August goal was to get everything ready for Clarice’s first birthday party - and I think I am pretty prepared! I just need to send out invitations and work on the menu - and take her one year pictures. So I guess that sounds like alot, but trust me, it’s all under control.
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It was a little over a year ago now that I sat down and actually watched one of the videos from the Center For Medical Progress. Up to that point I had just read articles about the videos, describing the callous behavior and illegal actions of Planned Parenthood officials.
But for some reason, that day I decided to click open the video and watch myself. I watched an interview with an abortion worker. Then the video changed, and they were walking into a lab. And I put my hand over my eyes and peeked through every now and then. I saw a bloody tray. I saw the backs of Planned Parenthood employees as they worked.
And I peeked through my fingers and felt my baby kick right under my heart as one of them proclaimed "it's a boy!".
That baby boy would have been born a couple weeks after Clarice.
The tears started then, rolling down my cheeks as my girl rolled over in my womb. I cried for that baby boy, whom some have named Emmett, who never had a chance to kick his mama, or cry, or laugh, or have a first birthday, or start kindergarten. I cried for that mother, who will never know the joy he might have brought into her life.
I still want to throw up just thinking about it, and even though I have been pro-life as long as I've known about such things, I knew it was time to stop pretending this wasn't happening. It was time to stop forgetting about it unless it was an election year.
So a few months later, on New Year's Eve, I made a secret resolution. This was the year I'd get involved. This was the year I'd do something.
You'll see me talking a bit more about my pro-life beliefs on here as I get my thoughts together. I have a post with ideas on different things you can do, including telling you a little bit more about the shirt I'm wearing (hint: donate here), but today I wanted to share one way I've tried to get involved in stopping abortion - volunteering with a pregnancy resource center. It hasn't looked like I thought it would, and I have a bit of advice for those of you who have considered volunteering yourselves.
Head over to the Save The Storks blog to read about the one thing you should know before you offer to volunteer at your local pregnancy center!
Head over to the Save The Storks blog to read about the one thing you should know before you offer to volunteer at your local pregnancy center!
1.5/5 stars.
Niequist is known (to me) for her food memoir, so I knew this book would be a bit of a departure, but I was excited to give it a try. However, I would not recommend this book. As so many books I have read lately, I felt this one had positive and negative elements, but the negative elements outweighed the positive for me, whether I am looking at this book from a biblical perspective or just the enjoyability factor as a new reader. Here are my thoughts.
Negatives
I started this book and about a fifth of the way through I realized I was just going to have to plow through without really enjoying it. The main reason I couldn't enjoy it was because it felt a little schizophrenic to me - not Niequist, just the book. Was this supposed to be a memoir or a self-help book? I couldn't figure it out. For so much of the book Niequist seemed to be just going on about her own internal struggles, like a memoir, with little practical advice for her readers. The book seemed selfish to me, in a way. If I had read other books by Niequist and was interested in her as a person, I might have really enjoyed getting an inside look, but mostly I was just annoyed because I had no background on the author to frame all this personal stuff. It felt like reading a stranger's journal of innermost thoughts. There were occasional gems (I'll quote a couple lines I liked below), but mostly I just kept thinking, "yes, but where is the value here for me?" That sounds a little selfish, but then again, as a reader I'm the one who could potentially be buying this book and spending hours of my life on it. There should be something in it for me.
I did not like this author's mention of "centering" prayer and deep breathing. The idea of "centering" is a very New Age concept and not biblical at all. I was more likely to give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume she meant simple meditation on Scripture, but then she started talking about her "spiritual director" (shouldn't that be God and His Word?) and "which God she prays to", which for the author was a mix between the Father and the Holy Spirit, not Jesus. Um, what? They are all ONE God, you don't get to pick and choose. At this and other points in the book, she uses language that suggests that God changed as her view of Him changed, and the way she expressed it could be misleading. I feel like she missed the boat on communicating that no, He's been the same good God all along, regardless of how she viewed Him before.
Overall I got a sense of a New-Age, fluid version of Christianity from this book, and it bothers me how easily we are letting New Age philosophy into our churches and lives. These ideas are not in line with the Bible, and it's not okay. That's another point - there was little mention of Scripture in this book, aside from a couple verses Niequist uses to explain her own journey. Definitely no explanation or reference to the Gospel, which I always find disappointing in Christian non-fiction. She quotes many people and talks about "spiritual" this and that, but she doesn't back up any of her main points or principles with God's Word, which is our only firm grounding in the world. The more I think about it, the more it bothers me. Niequist almost talks about God and Christianity as some sort of phsychological "savior", instead of the truth - that God became a man (Jesus) and died to pay the price for our true problem (sin) and to save us, not from poor self-esteem, but from an eternity apart from God in Hell. That truth isn't even alluded to in this book at all.
Positives
While many of the chapters in this book felt like a waste of my time, there were a few that I actually appreciated - mainly the ones that actually related to the title of the book, giving thoughts on how to be present in our lives while letting go of our ideas of perfection. Unfortunately there were probably only two or three chapters that I felt were somewhat valuable to me as a reader on these topics. These are a couple quotes that I thought were actually useful things for me to think about.
"I was faced with a dilemma—one so many of us face quite often: I could either wrestle my life and my kids and my house and our Christmas into something fantastic, something perfect . . . or I could plunk myself down right in the middle of the mess and realize that the mess is actually my life, the only one I’ll ever get, the one I’m in danger of missing completely, waiting around for fantastic."
"I was faced with a dilemma—one so many of us face quite often: I could either wrestle my life and my kids and my house and our Christmas into something fantastic, something perfect . . . or I could plunk myself down right in the middle of the mess and realize that the mess is actually my life, the only one I’ll ever get, the one I’m in danger of missing completely, waiting around for fantastic."
"I gave myself away indiscriminately. Be careful how much of yourself you give away, even with the best of intentions. There are things you cannot get back, things that God has not asked you to sacrifice."
I thought she touched on some good points here, but it was too brief. She quickly went back to the personal reflections, which I found disappointing, because it was not what I was looking for when I started this book.
Conclusion
Overall, I wouldn't recommend this book. As someone who was new to this author, I did not enjoy this book, I was disappointed by the New Age undertones, and unfortunately I won't be picking up one of her books again.
Note: I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for this review. This is my honest opinion.
Second Note: I felt a lot of the themes that Niequest tried to address in this book were things that I had already read about in other books, and they were addressed by other authors in a more effective way for me. Since I can't recommend this one, I thought I'd say that "The Best Yes" by Lysa Teurkherst was really helpful to me in learning to say no; "Breathe" by Prsicilla Shirer was a really useful Bible Study on the biblical value of rest; and ironically, a secular fiction book called "What Alice Forgot" by Lianne Moriarty was a fun book (warning: some language) that really got me thinking about how busyness was affecting my life. I would recommend those ones to you if the title of "Present Over Perfect" is what interests you.
One thing I really appreciate about this Bible study is that it doesn't do all the work for you. It is full of scripture verses to look up, and the questions make you think a little more deeply about the passage and applying it to your own life. As part of the 30th Anniversary Edition, Heard also includes "Thoughts From An Older Woman" at the end of each chapter, writing about things she has learned since she first published this study 30 years ago. I really loved how this study got you deep into God's word.
What I didn't love about this study - the organization was a little confusing to me. I think this might be partially because I didn't use it every day, so maybe I forgot some of the ties between chapters. I am still working through it going into the fall (about half way through), and I am looking forward to finishing it and seeing if it starts to fit together better for me. The scripture verses Heald chooses seem to follow this kind of scattered organization, as she picks short passages or single verses to make some of her points. I miss getting the full context of a passage, and I think I would like it better if each chapter focused on one Scripture passage and pulled points out of that passage, instead of listing Scripture verses that support her own topics or points.
All that said, this really is a good study, and I think it is one that is flexible enough to be good for those who want a lighter study, while also providing that springboard for depth that others might want. I'm looking forward to finishing it (I'll update this review if I change my mind about anything by the end)!
Note: I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher in exchange for a review. This is my honest opinion.
I balanced Clarice on my hip as I took the papers from the pediatrician. The kids were driving their Hot Wheels cars on the white, probably non-sterile exam room floor (I cringe just typing that), and I asked them to stand up again as I attempted to listen to the doctor’s instructions. I got everyone on their feet, tossed the papers she gave me under the stroller and thanked her as she complimented my skirt. Then our pediatrician asked how I managed to look so put together with so many kids.
This post is part of a social shopper marketing insight campaign with Pollinate Media Group® and GREATER Productions. but all my opinions are my own. #pmedia #GREATERMovie #GreaterTheMovie http://my-disclosur.es/OBsstV
Confession: I have absolutely no sports ability; but despite this fact, I love sports movies.
There is something about a good inspirational sports movie that makes me wish I could have been on a team. (But then that thought flits out of my head, because trust me, I am doing everyone a favor by staying off the field.) Sports stories appeal to a few things that touch my heart, things that I want to teach my own kids - maybe while watching a good sports movie.
Sports movies remind us that we weren’t meant to do life alone.
Sports movies reflect this in the most poignant way, because no player really succeeds unless the entire team succeeds. And when when player is successful, it’s because their teammates have been there to help them along the way. God didn’t make human beings to live alone, raise their families alone, or do life alone, and I think sports teams and movies are a good reflection of a deeper truth.
Sports movies remind us that hard work and doing the right thing pay off.
Though sports movies are obviously about successes, it’s the parts where the players have to overcome obstacles to achieve greatness that are most poignant. Does hard always pay off with your dreams becoming a reality? No, not always, but it always pays off with good character, and I love when sports movies reflect that.
Sports movies remind us that true teammates are there for you even when you fail.
One of my favorite parts about sports movies is seeing how the main character develops relationships with teammates, and how those teammates are there to pick them up and encourage them when they fail. Everyone will want part of your successes, but true teammates are the ones who are there to give you a hand up and slap on the back when you fail.
Sports movies speak to that intrinsic desire to be a part of something greater.
I think the main reason I love a good sports movie is because the best ones make your heart swell as you watch the individual players work together to achieve something greater, a goal none of them could reach alone. I love that. I believe that all of us were made to do something greater than just strive for our own success on earth - I believe we were made to bring glory to God, and we were made to do that together with others, and there is something about sports movies that speaks to that truth that God hid inside us.
With fall and football season coming up, I am ready to break out all my sports movies and be inspired! And if there is one sports movie that encapsulates everything I listed above, it is the new film, GREATER. This movie follows one of the greatest walk-on stories in college football, how Brandan Burlesworth went from an underdog to an All-American football player.
The Brandon Burlesworth story incorporates everything I love about sports stories, and his story in GREATER makes the perfect inspirational sports movie. It reflected the support Brandon had from his mother and family in achieving his dreams, and how he supported his teammates and they supported him in the wins and losses. It showed his consistent hard work it takes for players and teams to be great. It showed how respect and friendships develop among teammates. But my favorite part of GREATER was the reminder that our lives serve a greater purpose than just what we can see on the surface.
GREATER was such a moving movie for me, and a wonderful one for a date with my football-loving spouse! When the kids are a little older, I am going to love watching this movie together as a family! There are so many good lessons and examples in GREATER, and I think it is a wonderful way to teach our kids about what is most important. After watching the movie with Derek, I was inspired to put together a few discussion questions to get the conversation going.
GREATER Discussion Questions:
1. When Brandon was a child, he was discouraged and bullied. When did things start to turn around for him? Do you think he would have been able to achieve so much if he hadn’t had some voices of encouragement around him?
2. Brandon was told over and over again that he didn’t have what it took to play college football, and he experienced some failures - but he used that to inspire him to work harder. Even if he was never successful on football, what other advantages do you see from his determination to work hard against the odds?
3. Brandon’s coach said character is what you do when no one is watching. How did he display good character? How does a person develop good character?
4. Brandon faced a lot of bullying and name-calling, but he persevered in kindness and doing what was right. Why do you think he did that? What effect did it have on his teammates?
5. One quote from the movie is “Our loss is great, but God is greater.” How did Brandon’s football journey serve a greater purpose beyond himself?
GREATER comes out on August 26th in select theaters (check to see if it will be available in a theater near you) - just in time for football season! I highly recommend this movie and hope you all get a chance to see it! Come back and tell me what you think when you do - this is definitely going on my list of favorite sports movies.
Watch the trailer below, and follow GREATER The Movie on social media for updates on when and where the film is released!
What is your favorite sports movie? Are you planning on seeing GREATER?
My baby girl just turned ten months old and I have to tell you, I am feeling the first birthday party pressure.
There is a lot of pressure to have Pinterest-perfect birthday parties for our kids these days, and it would be a good thing if we all just relaxed a little bit. You know what my favorite birthday party memories were? Decorating with whatever we could find in the cupboard and having relay races with my little group of friends. I think it doesn't have to be big and fancy to be memorable and fun.
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