Heart of the Matter Meme: Unique?

I have not been able to keep up with any "memes" lately but wanted to do one on this topic. It just sounded fun!

The Things That Make Our Family Unique. What experiences do you have that you can share with other mothers?

I actually don't find my family overly unique. But from the perspective that all people are uniquely created by God for a purpose - that makes us unique.

1- I was born in NYC. I have always lived in New York state (although we have considered moving from here several times!)

Here is a picture of me (on the right) with my best friend in elementary school.

2- My dad was a policeman.

3- I am a Registered Nurse by trade, homeschool SAHM mom by choice.





4- I have been married to my husband for 17 years. Even though we have gone through some tough times - God is always faithful.

(I wanted to add my wedding photo, but I don't have one handy!)

5- My children have always been homeschooled. My oldest is 17.





6- I had three babies in 2 years 12 days (all single births.)

7- We have let the Lord plan our family and we "only" have 5 children. Breaking the myth that if you don't use birth control you will have "upteen" children. Just not so in my case. I am perfectly at peace with the size of our family, although I would love more children. I have thought someday I would love to adopt if God so allows.

8- I have a child with a life threatening illness that almost died at age 9. God is merciful and gracious and she is alive today (15 years old.) She is a tremendous blessing to our family.

9- We used to own donkeys. That is how I found out horses are better.






10- We raised ducks one year and hence the title of this blog. I started a blog and needed a title quick so that is what first came to my mind. The name has kept.

11- We have a dairy cow that we get our milk from.


12- We have 5 chickens and a rooster.




13- I just love beaches! I would love to live near water.

14- I love to cook and read recipe books.


Wow, I could go on (I am a leader of a homeschool group and a community bible study for women, I love attending homeschool conventions, and browsing at bookstores, for instance) but I will stop for now.

"Record-Keeping, the Essentials!"

Record keeping has never been my strong area - I must admit. A book I like that has been helpful to me is "Relaxed Record-keeping" by Mary Hood. She has kind of shaped my record keeping model.

Basically I just keep a daily planner and take notes on that - a list of what is done. Field trips and other activities are kept in one place on the family calender. I do not keep track of grades - if we even take test - except for in high school.

I believe strongly that a child is learning all the time from the time they get out of bed until the going to bed at night. Keeping a record of significant events is all I have time to write.

New York state requires quarterly reports which also I find helpful in making a permanent record of what we have covered. (See, I am trying to make that burden positive.) I look through my day planner and make lists of what we covered. If we used a text or work book for a subject, I will list topics covered from the table of contents for that subject. For a grades I write in "Satisfactory" or "Needs Improvement." In high school, I do figure out the grades from what we have covered each quarter.

A Few of My Favorite Things...

Now I take this to mean things, not people. If I had to list those my favorites of coarse would be 1- My Lord and Savior, Jesus. 2- My husband 3- My children 4 - My friends and extended family. But I am going to get selfish and list the a few of my favorite things....

(In no particular order...)

Iced Coffee at Dunkin Donut

Chinese buffets

Quality time with my husband (that is my love language:-)

Long car rides with my daughter and with my good friend Michele to doctor appointments.

Reading a magazine or book (after the bible)

Homeschooling

Writing / Posting on my blog

Pretending to make "lapbooks" with my friend Stacy

Shopping - the laid back, jut looking, in no rush, no one is waiting for me to make dinner shopping.

Used Christian Book Stores

Library sales

etc.

etc.

etc.

Extra Activites - Helping or Hindering?

"What is your weekly extra-curricular routine? Do your kids take music lessons? Sports? Are they involved in church activities? How much time does this leave for family time? Are you over-scheduled or relaxed in your outside programs? Share with us your thoughts on this!"

We are, as stated elsewhere, very relaxed. I have no intention of recreating school at home. I also don't feel I have to offer my children every opportunity out there.

I take the approach that if they are interested in something they will pursue it on their own. This gives them the motivation to do it. My son wanted to learn the piano/keyboard, so he taught himself. I supplied the books and he did it all. Will he play at Carnegie Hall? Probably not. But he can play a tune on the piano for enjoyment and I believe he achieved the goal he wanted for himself.

My son has taught himself many things over the years. We bought an art curriculum and he taught him self to draw. Other times we had to take him to a class and still other times he just read every book out there to learn how to do it. He taught himself how to tan a hide and has done it for several people over the years.

My daughter is doing this with crocheting. She is getting a little help from Grandma, but is mostly pursuing it on her own. She has taken music lessons in the past, but with some of her disabilities she found it difficult to pursue. She is also teaching herself how to cook right now and we get to eat her experiments.

We have done sports in the past but my children found that most people are just too competitive to have fun. In fact some people they found to be mean (do anything to win.) So we quickly gave up on that. We are not sports people anyway. We do like other non competitive type activities such as hiking and other sportsman type activities. Our church during the summer months has very relaxed baseball games at the school ball field (anyone is welcome) a couple times a month.

I have a child who has a chronic illness and has frequent medical appointments so that takes up a lot of our time, so we don't give much time to extra curricular activities. Other things to consider is that we live in a rural area, so we have to travel to go most anywhere and with high gas prices that is a consideration. We did go to several places over the summer (a "diamond" mine, a children's museum, county fair, zoo, etc.) so we did do a bulk of activities this summer.

All that being said, I do feel somewhat overwelmed sometimes with all the things we do. My daughter illness acted up over the summer and we had almost one doctor's appointment a week. The problem being, most doctors are an hour away. One we went to last week was 3 hours away (one way!!) So that spends a lot of our gas allowance on trips and kills a lot of our extra time. So as the Lord leads he will open doors to do more things, but for now, this is where he has us.

Weblink Wednesday 9/10/08

One of my favorite sites that we visit on a regular basis is

The Futures Channel

From the website:

"To connect mathematics, science, technology and engineering to the real world of careers and achievement, so that students can envision a context and purpose for what they are learning allowing them to envision their own successful futures."

This website features short, usually less then 5 minute videos, of different careers and how they integrate science and math into that field. An example of a video they have is how to build a custom guitar or how to feed animals in zoos. There is a lot of math that goes into both areas, which we hardly think about when visiting a zoo or looking at those beautiful guitars a musician is playing.

We really have enjoyed these! They are constantly updated and adding new videos, so sign up for their mailing list!

Something New...

The year the new product we are using is:


Institute for Excellence in Writing


"Excellence in Writing gives you tools to help you teach not just WHAT to write, but HOW to write-in a way that is organized and stylish-GUARANTEED!"

One the most important skills I want my children to be able to do after reading is to write well. I didn't feel like we are accomplishing it by what we were doing. I heard so many excellent reviews of this program I researched it. I visited their booth at our homeschool convention so I also looked the materials over there. Then the 100% anytime guarantee sold me on it.

I have just watched to first video, so I can't say much about it other then Andrew P. was interesting and explained things well. I did teach my daughter the first lesson and she understood it easily. It has been a couple of months since we did this so I can't remember to many details anymore . We will start over in October.

If this of interest to you, you can go to the website and join their yahoo group where you can learn a lot about it.

Best Tips For Conquering Clutter

I am hardly qualified to contribute to this meme. However, I thought I would share a few things that I have done and then direct you to the "experts":

1- This year I have purchase a sweater size Rubbermaid type container and have put each child's school things in them. I will include a pencil bag with everyday essentials in it as well for them to keep their pencils, scissors, glue, etc.

2-We keep a book case in he dining room which holds essential reference books: dictionary, concordance, bibles, etc.

3-We have implemented an evening pick up where everyone is assigned a room and they will check the floors and "hot zones" (couch, unused surfaces, etc.) for clutter and will quickly take of it.

4-We have had a big problem with lost socks and finding socks laying around the house. I have given my 3 youngest boys (6,7,8 years) a laundry bag just to put their socks into. This has actually worked very well and we rarely find any socks laying around anymore (and we have less mismatched socks!)

A few sites I have enjoyed reading on this topic are:

Excellent support for those needing to get rid of chaos and welcome peace and order.

http://www.cynthiahancox.com/goodbyechaoshellopeace.html

Year Long "Spring" Cleaning Schedule:

http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Meadows/8147/cleaning.HTM

http://largefamilylogistics.lifewithchrist.org/index.html
(contains archives for the new one below) or

http://largefamilylogistics.blogspot.com/

http://mymessyhouse.org/

http://organizedhome.com/