Homeschooling Has Helped Us Give Our Kids a Wonder-Filled Childhood

A great number of questions, a calling of Do you want your kids to have a wonderfilled childhood? Time for imaginative play, for creative thinking, time to enjoy God's beautiful creation. Homeschooling has allowed us to give our kids a wonderfilled childhood. [Music] Paul and Barnabas went to the Jewish synagogue and preached with such power that a great number of both Jews and Greeks became believers. Some of the Jews, however, sp uh spurned God's message. The academic part of our school year is winding down and I am beginning to see the spark in my kids' eyes as this change take takes place. Uh it's not like the learning stops at all. It just changes and they're getting ideas of some different projects they want to try over the summer, different things they want to learn. It's really exciting to see. of Augustus Caesar, Emperor of Rome. There reigned in England, which was then called Britain, a king whose name was Symbolene. Did we do it twice from Beautiful Stories? Yeah, we did it twice. Okay. But we didn't do it from this book. And this has a little bit more detail. Imagigen, the eldest of these children, was brought up in her father's court, but by a strange I am rereading one of Shakespeare's plays. We don't read the actual play at least at this level but I read the story first from beautiful stories from Shakespeare and then I read it again a second time from tales from Shakespeare. This goes into a little bit more depth and gives a little bit more information. This is part of our morning time work. We have almost finished up all the material in our simple morning time notebook. Pass through this. All right. You're going to have to stop that. Or Leonadis, as he was called in the other story. I'm pretty lenient about what my kids can do during morning time. If they want to draw something or play with something, my rule is if it distracts someone else, then they need to stop. So that helps everyone to be able to concentrate. You see him at the camera. Do you guys remember the artist that we are studying? Who is the artist? [Applause] And what do you remember specifically about his work? Anything? It's always very dark. Yes. He uses dark and light. Well, and dark and light. So, you can see in the picture, hold on. Hold on. You see in the picture that we just did, the light is shining on Saul and shining on the horse. Daddy. Okay. So, the next What can someone put? That one's like the same thing. You want to go outside? On the tractor. Okay. Mommy help you in a minute. Okay. This is called The Calling of Matthew. I like that one. Our 2-year-old Ben saw my husband who was home this morning outside mowing the yard and he was just so focused. He wanted to be out there with them. He calls it daddy's tractor. It's just a riding lo lawn mower. So, I had a really hard time holding him off while I was doing morning time, but I was just trying to help him get through morning time and then I could take him outside for a little bit so he could see it. We're studying Caravagio's portrait, The Calling of Matthew. And we have a couple more pictures to catch up on and then we'll finish. We also finished the geography portion of our simple morning time notebooks. You can find these on the blog rlife homeschooling.com. These are the notebooks I do every year for morning time with my kids. We did all the physical features of North America this year. So that was really fun to learn. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep and truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. For those of you who are new, my name is Sher. I'm a Christian homeschooling mom of 10, married to my high school sweetheart, and I love encouraging other moms on my channel. April 28. [Music] On Saturday, thousands came from all over the world for Pope Francis's funeral, filling St. Peter Square. If you're unfamiliar with our school day, it's four-fold. We have morning time first. Second is chores, which I tell my kids is the first school work of the day. Then they all break for independent work, and we stop for lunch and going outside, but then we all come back in, and the last part of our day is reading aloud on the sofa together. Cleaning up is something children naturally don't really like to do, but I have learned over time how helpful it is to just consistently have a chore time. This is something I honestly wish I had spent a little bit more time perfecting as a younger mom, seeing it as such an important part of our day. When we all work together at the same time every day to get the house in a presentable order, the kids get used to this as part of their routine and the house never gets super messy. So, it's more a matter of maintenance than a big job. It was not easy holding Ben off. He was so excited to run outside and see daddy on the tractor, as he calls it. Um, but we finally I was able to get out there and we took a little bit of time just stood there watching him. This was his whole world at this moment just watching his dad on the tractor. He is fascinated with vehicles. Some of my boys have really been into balls. Others it's been all different kinds of diggers vehicles. And that's what it is for Ben. I was just talking with my kids this week about how blessed they are to be able to see the world change around them, to be in such such close proximity to nature and have time for creative play. They get three home-cooked meals a day. They have time to pursue different interests, whether that be learning a musical instrument or baking or starting a business. They've had so much free time because homeschooling, as many of you know, takes much less time than traditional school. I can honestly say that my kids love to learn. And that's not to say that we haven't had any difficulties along the way, that it hasn't been hard, but that pleasure of learning has not been snuffed out of them. If I tried to describe their childhood, I would describe it as a wonderfilled childhood. And I I really think this is the secret genius in homeschooling. I think it's why homeschoolers do so well across the board is because they still enjoy learning. That excitement of understanding a concept or seeing something brand new for the first time hasn't been extinguished from endless worksheets or sitting in a classroom day after day. Here, my 2-year-old made a mess with the toothpaste. He squirted almost a whole tube of toothpaste into the sink. Maybe some of you can relate to some of these toddler antics. Yeah, you made a big mess for mommy to clean up now. So, with spring, my kids have been getting up earlier, getting their schoolwork done faster, and having even more free time than normal. So, they've each been inspired to do different things. My one daughter wants to learn how to play the flute. The other one is picking up the violin for the first time. We're looking into maybe giving her lessons. Here, I'm helping William with his math lesson. 4 6 8 9 and then 1 one. Okay, this represents 691. Have you done your 100 cards where we make this? Here you have 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 tens. So you need to take 10 of them out. This is 10. 2 4 6 8 10. And trade them for 100. So, what I like to do is say, "Ready, set, trade." And I take the tens away and I move the hundred up. Do you want to do it? Put one hand on the tens to bring them down and one hand on the hundred to bring it down. Ready? Ready, set, trade. Now you have 100. And that's kind of what we did here. Colin is sitting in listening. And this is the reason why my youngest kids pick up on things so quickly. 3 + 9 is 1210, which is the same thing as 100 and 210. 12 10 is the same thing as 10210. Yeah. Yeah. Good. That was okay. As I was saying before, our kids have already made a list of some of the things they want to try learning this summer. My daughter has some sewing projects. Another one is going to be learning to mow the lawn for the first time and they are excited about the things that they're going to be learning. So, the learning really just shifts. It pivots. We still do a lot of readalouds. The kids end up reading a lot on their own, but with this free time, they pick up a lot of new things as well. When I think about the childhood that our older kids have had, our son who's graduated, our second son who's graduating next year, they really did have a wonderful childhood. Not without mistakes. There's always things I would go back and do differently, but they spent so much time creek stomping with friends out in the real world. They had so much experience and exposure to raw materials at a young age, which just breeds curiosity. I was talking recently with some other homeschool friends of mine that to be and we were saying that to be able to give your kids this kind of childhood, you really do have to say no to some things, to some really good things so that you can say yes to some other things. One of one of those for us has been competitive sports. Our kids are involved in sports, but we always look for options that are going to be minimal involvement where they can enjoy the sport, but it's not a huge commitment that's going to take away from our family time. Our oldest high school and middle school kids are in a homeschool volleyball league, which is one practice a week and then a couple tournaments in the fall and spring. and this has been such a great fit because they're able to enjoy sports, but we still have a family life and that's just really important to us. That reminds me of another conversation I was having with the kids this week. I was explaining to them that um the education that their grandparents had was so much different than how education has become today. Even when our parents were in school, my dad would come home for homemade meals. He would come home for lunch, he would have a hot meal, and then he would go back to school in the afternoon. But over time, here my husband is showing Binn how to use the mower for the first time. Our older boys have been doing it and now they're working a lot more, so she's going to take over. But over time, the schools started offering lunches at school for kids that maybe couldn't go home for lunch. And then further, they started offering breakfast at school. And not that any of those things are bad or that they didn't have good intentions from it, but it just became more convenient for kids to be at school for longer hours and for families to spend less time together. I think homeschooling has really changed the playing field with this because more and more co-ops are popping up, hybrid schools are popping up. People don't necessarily want their kids to be gone all day every day for such long periods of time. They want more time with their kids at home. And that's something I can say my husband and I have definitely appreciated about homeschooling. Now, one thing I do think is important to say when we talk about so much free time, kids pursuing interests, having a wonderfilled childhood. I think that the most important pre-erequisite is a general attitude of respect and routines at home. If the kids are disrespectful to mom and dad, if there's no order or no plan, there is nothing wonderful about that. It's really important that we teach our children first of all to respect us and to respect the rules of our home. hastened by in high spirits with much chatter and laughter. They were returning across country after a long day's outing with Otter, hunting and exploring the Learning to crochet is the artistic endeavor that Julia decided to pick up today. She moved from making a chain into making rows and she was just so excited about making this little project. And then Holland is working on a little magnetic book with pictures. We love reading outside. Whenever we can, if we can read outside, we do it out there. I think an additional benefit of spending so much time outside, being so close to nature, and even being in a home where you encounter so many more raw materials, where you eat food from scratch often, where you can plant all these different varieties of flowers and have so many. We have cats and we have a dog and a fish. so many living things is that it just makes you more curious. I think children are more inquisitive because there's there are things to look at and wonder about Heat. Heat. One final thing we did this week was to invite our co-op over for a playd date. We had a whole houseful. The kids played volleyball. They ran around in the woods. They were in the creek. This was really fun for everyone. If you enjoy this content, you may enjoy watching the video I did a couple weeks ago on relaxed homeschooling. If you want to learn more about a relaxed homeschooling approach, you definitely will enjoy that video. Well, thanks for watching this week. I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms. I'll see you next week. [Music]