Too Busy Home Schooling to Blog, Email or Tweet
Posted By Jacque on June 6, 2009
Our whole family has been kind of AWOL online for the past couple of weeks. This will likely continue for another couple of weeks at least. Last year in June, I thought we had outdone ourselves by taking our 5000 mile vacation across the lower and SW states, but it seems the LORD has even more busy plans for this June.
What have we been doing? Well, what else? We have been home schooling… Ok, not your conventional, sit down and fill out the workbook or take tests or even go out and sketch or do a nature hunt home schooling. We have been doing a hands-on building project home schooling that has taken nearly every hour of our time from 9am until about 2 am each day, 6 days a week. Today I can blog about it and do other online business, like put up new Gleaning the Harvest ChipIn widgets, because today, PTL, is the sabbath, the *siiigghhhhhh* day of rest.
Managing all of this is a huge job, believe me! Our home schooling for the past two weeks has included:
Taking a few days and researching and writing up the articles for June 2009 issue of GGM
Care of 11 new kittens – and keeping the Littlest from playing with them!
Care of 6 new ducklings – that are growing FAST!
Care of 5 new Silver-Laced Wyandotte chicks
Tilling, planning and planting 75′x30′ of our garden
Putting in 3 bathroom vents
Drywalling a firewall around furnace in garage
Mowing the lawn every few days, because it has RAINED! so much.
Designing and coordinating colors for 13 rooms in our home. It’s harder than it sounds…
Painting the ceilings and walls of 11 rooms. Though she hasn’t been the only one, Jocelyn has become quite the painter…
Boxing up and moving furniture out of rooms in a coordinated effort to paint and re-arrange who goes where.
Using power tools.
Sanding old beveled glass wondow frame to hang in bedroom.
Measuring and cutting window trim.
Staining and sealing window trim. That is Amanda’s area…
Staining floor trim.
Laying sub-flooring and tile onto three floors.
Using machine sander to sand one wood floor – one to go, and two to stain and seal!
Putting up a handrail a specific height from the stairs.Getting up and feeding all the animals and locking them up at night, then getting up and doing it all again the next day, in-between all the work.
You may be reading this, thinking, “Are you kidding me? This is not home schooling, this is all just a bunch of work!”, but with all of this has come the occasions to learn several things:
Organizational skills in this world are of utmost importance. If you cannot organize your time and think things through, in an orderly fashion, then you are one who will require another person to do that for you as an adult.
Home keeping has still been something to keep up on as we are working and keeping Little Ones occupied and out of the way of power tools and stained boards drying. Having dinner ready before we are all starving and cranky has been ‘Rachels job, for the most part, and she has done a great job of it!
We have had the opportunity to teach math and fractions, adding and subtracting, and other questions and logic skills that come up when building and putting things together.
We have cultivated a willingness in our children to not be afraid to just do things. So many times today, people will stand there and watch, feeling like they should be doing something, but not quite knowing what to do or maybe being afraid of trying something they have never done before. We have expected them to lend a hand and help clean-up and be thoughtful and mindful when someone needs refreshment or help or a Little needs a leader, to be that leader, even if they don’t want to…
We have made fires and cooked out on them and sat around at dinner and talked and rested for a bit. That was great fun. I remember doing things like that when I was a child. It was one of my favourite family times. It has been fun teaching the middle children how to build fire, teaching them all safety and watching Rachel cook on a skillet on it. Roasting marshmallows has been fun, and they have all been quite good sitting around it while we work.
Have you ever really thought all one can learn by just doing one thing? Some things we adults take for granted, but, if we take the opportunity, we can teach our children things they have never experienced or would love to try but have never known how.
We put up a playset about 7 years ago for our children, and it was all finished, except for some vertical boards on the back of the top part. Yesterday, I gave that task to Eric. He went and sought out some wood that would fit, measured it, found a board he needed to place underneath them, cut them with a power saw, and he did it all by himself. He not only learned how, and did it, but he felt the sense of accomplishment of a job well-done too! (And, he turned 12 a week ago too… didn’t get to blog that!
Still to do:
There is still much more to do before our special guests arrive this week. I know I am forgetting what we have already done. We will be staining the sanded wood floor and sanding and staining the other tonight. Matt has a window to put up in a bathroom because the first contractor we had neglected to put in the right kind of window. He also has some electrical/GFI issue to work out in the garage before the inspector shows up on Monday. As soon as we pull up this carpet and the floors are stained and finished, we can move the furniture back in. It’s been a bit crowded in some rooms with 2 rooms of furniture in it.
We also have to have the gas line cut and moved to new laundry room, cut and cap water lines from washer, put in two doors, laminate flooring laid, nail up window trim and cut and place floor trim, put in and trim beveled glass window, hang curtain hardware and curtains, move furniture in to proper rooms and hang wall hangings up, put locks into doors.
Think we can do it all? Only God can. Looking back at all we have accomplished through Him in the past 2 weeks, I would say he is up to the task if we are.
blessings~
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9 Responses to “Too Busy Home Schooling to Blog, Email or Tweet”
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Yup…that’s my kind of homeschooling. Sounds great! We’ll be praying that your time with your special guests will go fabulously!
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June 6th, 2009 at 5:06 pm
My sister let us know that she and her hubby will also be joining us, so that was an added surprise!
bless you~
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Sounds like some fabulous homeschooling!
Can’t wait to hear all about your time with your guests!
{ jamie’s cottage }s last blog post..Adoption is Strange
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June 7th, 2009 at 2:42 am
It sure is! Can’t wait to be done with it and rest and enjoy our guests!
We will have to get together some times for sure!
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Hey Jacque,
I wish we could be there, too, but we are in the midst of moving again. I guess we’ll be staying around here, but we have to leave this house because the owners are returning and need their house by Aug. 1. I didn’t give you an answer any sooner, because I was waiting to see what might happen. It looks like we won’t be able to come. I really wish we could. I know this would be terribly short notice if I was telling you that we are coming! Ha! I’m sure you’re glad that I’m saying the opposite. We don’t sneak up on too many people with 10 kids.
I hope you all have a wonderful time. Maybe we can come some other time on the way to visit our parents in Ohio.
Love,
Penney
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June 7th, 2009 at 2:41 am
Oh boy, we sure would love to have you! Even if that meant short notice!
We will definitely have to make it another time.
May the LORD give you the perfect place and peace, with lots of hands to help with the packing, moving and Littles!
May the LORD bless and keep you!
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What a wonderful type of busy. Sounds absolutely blessed.
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June 7th, 2009 at 2:43 am
Yes, a wonderful type of busy. So glad to have all this work. I told my Dad today that all this work and experience for our children is absolutely priceless. He agreed wholeheartedly.
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You guys have been working so hard! What an awesome project to with your children!! Creating a home together.. and that’s something they can take with them!
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