Do You Take Time to Be Alone in Your Homeschool Day?

We are seeing signs of spring everywhere and I am so excited. I want to show you a couple things that we've been up to recently in our homeschool and also talk about taking time for yourself in your homeschool day. Four of our older kids are in a homeschool volleyball league and they recently had a tournament so the whole family went to watch them play and this was a really fun day for us. When we started homeschooling over 15 years ago I would never have imagined some of the ways God would have provided for our kids. They have had some great opportunities. The Lord has provided some great friends and I didn't, when we started, I did not know what homeschooling would look like in our family. I didn't know if our kids would have friends, if they would miss out and when I see how it's turned out for our kids I'm just so thankful. When we started homeschooling we knew four other families that were kind of at the same spot that we were and we all jumped in together. In fact that's something I really want to talk about hopefully in a podcast soon just about how our co-op started but the Lord was so faithful to provide for us. We couldn't always see how things were going to look five years down the road, ten years down the road, but we always had our needs met for the moment that we were in. In the last tournament they were in one of our kids teams won the championship. This time no one made it to the playoffs but that was okay we still had a great day. Back at home we are continuing with our daily lessons. James is working on the piano here. Everyone's doing some independent work and I took some time this morning to check our kids' narrations. Now before I get too much further let me just introduce myself for those of you who are on my channel for the first time. My name is Sherry. I'm a Christian homeschooling mom to 10 kids. Our oldest is graduated. We have 11th grader, 10th grader, 8th, 6th, 4th, 2nd, 1st grader and then we have two preschoolers and I'm married to the love of my life my husband Nelson. We've been married for almost 25 years. I write some stories. Do you have narrations that I can look at? Yes. All right why don't you bring that to me and can I open it? Oh are you enjoying that? That is one of my favorite books. Really? Yeah I like it. Okay actually can you read it to me? Yes. Ben left the inn in Philadelphia he had been staying at and went off in search of a printing After my kids write a narration I usually have them read it back to me so that they can see and hear how their narration sounds. If you're interested in knowing more about having kids do an oral or a written narration I did a post on the blog how to do a Charlotte Mason narration. This is something we practice regularly in our home. Another thing I was working on while James was reading this to me was cleaning out William's work box. I had him do some of it but I know sometimes it's just overwhelming for them so I sometimes try to help him out a little bit especially the younger ones. Why don't you start reading this to me while I'm holding it so I can watch it so I can look at it. Okay a little while later Osmond came up to Richard and said Richard the French invaded Normandy. At this Richard was terribly mad at Bernard for letting them invade Normandy. But later Osmond came to Richard and said Richard Bernard is trapped in French. Richard was overjoyed and hugged Osmond and kind Bernard. Their reunion was safe. Okay this is a really good narration very good narration but there's a couple things that I want you to pay attention to next time. Yes and of the first letter of every line. No that's in a poem. The first letter of a person's name of the city of the name of people so if we're talking about the English or the Danes we're gonna capitalize. This is actually not spelled correctly and then I saw a couple spots I am such a believer in narration as well as copywork because there are two practices that are so simple. They combine so many skills into just one simple task. Kids can do it on their own and yet they just are so effective. I have seen the fruit of copywork and narration over a long period of time and it's something that I still do with my kids to this day. After we finished cleaning out William's workbox I spent some time with him on his math. Julia was working on her satara which is a geography program and then Afton was also finishing up her math. I went over to the kids' workboxes and these all just need cleaned out. I have them cleaned them from time to time but it just it seems like it needs to be done so frequently and sometimes I just go over there and do a little bit of it myself. One thing that's helped me stay the course over our 15 years of homeschooling is to take some time to myself alone every day. Being with children all day is very exhausting. If I was available all day long there would always be something that I should be doing, could be doing. There would always be questions that my kids have that they want to ask me just because they see me and I'm there and I'm available. So I learned very early on to establish a quiet time in our home every day. You spelled some of these incorrectly. 64 should be spelled 60-s-o-u-r. When I started quiet time in our home it started incrementally so we tried it just 15 minutes at a time and then slowly stretched it out to a half an hour and then to an hour just depending on the needs of your kids. And I also would teach my kids to stay in their rooms and do something quiet but at first I stayed right outside their rooms because just knowing mom was there until they got used to the idea that we were going to be doing this quiet time every day, that this is not a time to talk, it's a time to just play quietly or rest quietly in your room. Having that close supervision was really helpful. So that took a little bit of time to establish but what it did in the long run was put in place a routine that we still have today. We still have quiet time. It looks a little bit differently but I can now step away. My kids know how to be quiet. They know how to entertain themselves for short periods of time so that I can get alone to refresh and refuel my spirit. One of the bible verses that's always resonated with me as a mom is one from Luke chapter 9 verse 18 where it talks about Jesus and it says as he was praying alone the disciples were with him. Now if you have little children you know that even if you try to go to the bathroom there will be little fingers trying to reach under the door or banging on the door. It is hard to get even just a small break that we all need as moms. So this verse about Jesus being alone but also surrounded by his disciples has always resonated with me. We know from reading scripture that Jesus regularly took time away from the crowds to be alone with his father and if he set this example for us then we need to realize how important it is for us to do the same. I challenge you if you really want to follow Jesus's example in this read about his life specifically in the gospel of Mark from chapters 1 through 9. It talks repeatedly about him being in a crowd being so surrounded by people that there was hardly time to eat. In Mark chapter 4 it says when the great crowd heard all that Jesus was doing they came to him and he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd lest they crush him. Can you relate to the weariness of being with people constantly? This is why it's so important to take time alone is often to do something that's not refreshing or refueling at all. Sometimes that first time we get some space we just grab a snack and just eat to our heart's content and scroll social media. This kind of alone time is actually even more draining. It does not refresh our spirit. I have found that the two things that strengthen my spirit are first to spend time alone with God in his word in prayer and secondly to spend time doing something I enjoy. For the next three months we are fostering this adorable little golden retriever for some friends of ours who are away on a trip and so this has been something really fun for our kids taking care of her being outside with her and it's almost like a new little toy that has everyone distracted and they just love playing with her. Back to taking time alone for yourself away from your kids for short periods of the day. If you're a Christian getting time alone in God's word is not something that we do out of duty or a box that we need to check off. Spending time alone with the Lord is the strength of our life. It's what reminds us of our inheritance that we have in Christ and the hope we have beyond this earth. The hope we have of eternity with Christ. One of my favorite Bible verses is from Psalm 18 where David says I will love you oh Lord my strength and again in another place he says the Lord is the strength of my life and my portion forever. If spending time with the Lord alone in prayer reading his word is a struggle for you then I challenge you to ask him to change your desires and he will do that. Taking this time is for your benefit this will greatly enhance your life. We've been spending a lot more time outside with the nicer weather and it's been fun to see all the things popping up in our yard. I planted some herbs last year this is thyme and we have bee balm and some oregano and some spearmint and I'm so excited that it's coming up again. The second thing I like to do when I get time alone in that short window is to just do something I enjoy. Something for pleasure and this looks differently for everyone. In fact I'd really be curious to know what some of you do for fun. What are your hobbies? When we as moms do things we enjoy it just breathes new life into us which in turn transfers to our kids. One of the things I love doing is playing the piano and there was a time period for a couple years when I stopped playing the piano because I was just always busy and honestly I haven't always been one that's been good at taking time to do things I enjoy and I remember the first time I sat down to play and realizing that many of my kids had hardly heard me play at all and when they saw me playing the piano everyone gathered around to see what I was doing because it was something out of the ordinary to see mom doing something just for fun. So I'm using myself kind of as a example there because I have tried to be much better about doing things I enjoy because I know how important it is for the kids and for me as well. I am reading here a book called Robert the Bruce the King and the Spider. This is a wonderful story of perseverance. It's the story of a king of Scotland who lost six battles in a row and he was about to give up lose his kingdom but he saw a spider try to make a web six times and fail and on the seventh time she succeeded and this is what gave him the courage to go out and try one more time. This is one book of many in a post I did recently on books that teach kids perseverance. You can find this on the blog ourlifehomeschooling.com if that's something that you would like to use in your homeschool. So again I think it is so beneficial to us as moms to get time away from our kids first of all spending time alone with the and secondly spending time doing something we enjoy. I do think it's important to remember as we try to take time away to not expect it. There were many times when I had an infant or a child that was having trouble napping that as hard as I tried to get time away it just didn't happen some days. When our kids are young they really need us and so while it's helpful to take time by ourselves some days it doesn't happen and we can choose to let that ruin our day or we can make the best of it and try again tomorrow. I also want to say that I remember being a young mom being pregnant having an infant and many times when I got my first bit of time away I just took a nap and it was what was needed and if that's all you have time to do in your short time alone during the day then you're doing what's important what's necessary at this season of your life and you should enjoy it. Don't feel guilty about taking a rest during the day that is so important when you're pregnant when you're breastfeeding you have a new baby. I'm convinced that one of the best things we can give our children our husbands and even ourselves is a calm and peaceful mother a mom who's abiding in Christ and living in the peace of God. It doesn't always look peaceful there are difficult moments but that overarching peace that passes all understanding. If this video was encouraging to you you might want to take a look at the video I did last week on relaxed homeschooling where I take you step by step through the relaxed approach to homeschooling that we've come to love over the past 15 years. Thanks so much for watching I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms.