You’re invited to the “Pity Party!”

It appears JD’s forgot to send out his “Pity party” invitations. Either that or it was a surprise party that I walked into. (Surprise!) The party started at 8:30 with math and continued into keyboarding. Thank goodness it ended at 10:00 am. I thanked JD for the invite but that I was not really into his party. This seemed to snap him out…for awhile…the encore party started back up at 1:00 pm during the study the spelling words portion. (Sigh…) Maybe cold rainy days bring him down too. (Rain…boo!)

The devotion today was about disasters. Apparently it’s “Disaster Day.” (Now see that makes sense to me now…) Then the devotion went on to talk about Jeremiah’s story. I love this bible verse “For I know the plans I have for you. Not to harm you but to prosper you.” Jer. 29:11

The Purpose Driven Life reading was about “Experiencing Life Together.” Fellowship is such an overused word. Like, “Make sure to join us after fellowship.” Real fellowship means sharing, studying, serving, and suffering together. I do believe our family fellowships correctly.

Ugh math! We picked up where we left off yesterday with those crazy fractions quiz. We struggled through it and even had to call Jeff for assistance. He managed to score an 80% on the math quiz and that's all we did in math! I emailed Jeff at work and requested a special tutoring session for fraction. Luckily, his schedule will be freed up tonight.

The keyboarding lesson was tough. I sat beside him and covered his hands with a piece of paper. This was a REALLY bad thing for JD. I told him the purpose for memorizing the keys but he just fell deeper into his pity and frustration. I kept hearing the voices for the wrong keys and I looked over at his hands. He was hitting all the keys at once hoping one would be correct. Of course I reprimanded him for this and RESTATED the purpose. He would be really great at this if he would just try to practice. I usually practice the lesson right after him. I think he likes to hear those voices fussing at me too. I said, “See I’m making mistakes and struggling just like you, but I’m not mad because I’m practicing. I have not mastered it either.”

The edit/rewrite was short today. I was tired of staying at that “party” so I moved very quickly into editing and rewriting. All I had him do was edit his last journal entry and that's all. But I told him it was because he did it so good the first time. It had all the capitalization and punctuation correctly but it was still kind of messy. I have told him in the past to lay a pencil down in between the words for the correct amount of space between his words, butthey allendup togther anyway. (That’s hard to read huh?) He was so thankful he didn‘t have to rewrite it all that I scored a hug! (It was like my payday.)

Health was another short lesson called “To have a friend.” It talked about the characteristics he should be looking for in future friends. The flip side of that was he should also possess those qualities as well. The lesson asked him to list his friends and write what characteristic he saw in them. Then he did a short word search with those characteristics in it. I asked for the qualities he liked in each friend and he was getting so frustrated. They pretty much all turned out to be “funny.”

I was a little worried about the spelling test today because he only scored a 70%. But he pulled another 100% today. However, I had to stop the class before turning in the test. I said, "Class look over your papers and make sure each word is spelled correctly before turning them in." He caught the very first word he spelled "stategy" instead of "stRategy."

Fridays are the day I do the grades for the week. It’s time consuming but I need to have a good record of what we did and how he scored. I tallied up January so I can take a quick peek at the month. The numbers are: Good days - 11, Great days - 2, Bad days - 2, and Other - 3.
Out of 20 subjects he likes all of them except these four: math, journal, email/snail mail, and edit/rewrite. I’m just preparing myself for any surprise visits from the state. I heard they will only look at the attendance records and immunization records and something else but I can’t remember now. So I just prepare all my documentation for mostly me, but then the state too.

Answers to comments: The co-op called FAITH stands for Families Advancing In Teaching Homes. FAITH home school group is a ministry of Liberty Baptist Church in Harnett County and is focused on the specific needs of Christian home schooling families. FAITH is open to both members and non-members of their church. I thought it would be more of a support group or older home school moms mentoring us beginner moms. But it’s only email communication about upcoming field trips and meetings for those already signed up for existing classes. The classes are all full and we don’t want to go on the chosen field trips. I may have to look around for a mentoring group. But REALLY I like the way our schedule works and I have more than enough proof that I’m teaching well at home.

I pull those cute pictures off the internet. I just Google what I want and ask for “images” only. I pull it up to see the “full size image” and then right click and save it to my desktop.

Another good Day!

It even started out as a "good day" today. JD came in my room as my alarm was going off at 7:00am. He very sweetly and almost as if singing stated, "It's time to get up." I said, "Ok, I have my snooze set for 10 minutes." I didn't fall back asleep though. I was too busy smiling that he thought enough of our school day (Giggle...yeah right)...of waking me up as sweetly as I do for him. Thank goodness I don't yell or threaten him with water in the mornings. (Oh, that could have been really bad for us huh?)

Our devotion today talked about the achieved goals of Charles Lindbergh and Rosa Parks. Both of them needed a lot of courage to attain their individual goals. It ended with us asking God to help us achieve our goals and give us the courage to do them.

I loved the Purpose Driven Life reading today. It was called “A Place to Belong.” So many people think that believing in God is good enough. They think they can worship Him in their own way. That is what God had in mind when forming His family. We all need to find a church family to belong to so that we can fellowship with them. We were given gifts, talents, and abilities to use as a church body. What if the “finger” was cut off from the body? It would eventually wither and die. But connected to the body it can assist in what God has planned for that church “body” to do. So those of you currently believing in God now need to belong to God‘s family. (The body needs you.)

I’m so over this whole fractions study and there are SO MANY MORE lessons to do dealing with fractions. Today we had to email daddy to assist in our lesson. Then once over that hurdle it was time for the quiz. Needless to say that was put on hold until daddy gets home. (Maybe not…he’s going to be in W-Salem tonight supporting a friend of ours in her ordination.) So what had us scratching our heads and reeling around? That would be “equivalent fractions” and “comparing fractions.” (Boo to fractions!)

Cute story time…so the lessons offer a choice at the end of each small session. “Did you get it? Yes I did let’s go” or “Did you get it or should I rewind?” Math as you know is not my best or favorite subject. So on most lessons since I’m the official note taker Jonathan will look over me ever so patiently and say, “Do you get it?” Most times I’m still making notes MY way so I understand it so if he has questions I can attempt to answer them. Most of the time I’m scribbling like a mad woman and smiling at the kindness of his question. If I need more time I’ll say, “Ok wait a minute.” He will then busy himself with his silly putty. When I say, “Ok, I get it” I quickly follow that up with, “Did you get it?” His response is so as-a-matter-of-factly, “Yep” (Like, I’m just waiting on the “special child” to catch up.)

Civics still used the lemonade stand scenario for today’s lesson. Only today it talked about consumers. He learned the consumer (him) had choices as far as how badly he wanted a glass of lemonade. He needed to consider price, location, personal taste, personal needs, and did any one of them appeal to him. I love what they did for this lesson. They said it was a hot day and you are extremely thirsty. The street was packed full of stands and you have the money for any sized glass. The closest stand gets quickly overlooked by the one at the end because there is a puppy beside the stand. So of course he said he would go to the puppy stand for a glass of lemonade.

Today instead of doing email/snail mail we designed four Valentine’s Day postcards. This was practice to write clearly and legibly. I told him if the postman couldn’t read it then they wouldn’t deliver it.

Language arts was a fairly fast lesson today. He had to understand the author’s purpose for writing the article or story. He scored a solid 100% on the quiz.

Science was fun today. We had to design a plan for doing and experiment. We did it on magnetic energy. We had to write up our purpose and hypothesis. We gathered the materials and followed the step by step procedures. We did observations on all the things that pulled to a magnet. And finally we wrote a conclusion. This again got JD up and moving so he actually concentrated better during the lesson.

I know some people think home school moms have all the free time in the world. At least that’s what I used to hear. Lately I’ve been busying myself with helping JD make 80 homemade Valentines for a Valentines Day party at the co-op we joined called FAITH. Apparently, there are 74 families in the co-op and 80 kids. The numbers seem a bit off, but that’s what they told me. I’m not real satisfied with the group thus far. They have no dates set aside to welcome new members and the yahoo page information is almost nonexistent. I guess I’m looking for a mission statement and meetings without the kids necessarily. Every time I have a new home school mom question there doesn’t seem to be a lot of concrete answers. So I thought since they don’t really welcome new members I thought, “Well, maybe JD and I should go to them.” I’ll let you know how that pans out on Monday.

A highly distractible day

Today JD was distracted because his friend was on a 2-hour delay. So JD was in school while his friend tried to occupy his free time with walking around.

The devotion was about exploring space. Of course all of that was created by God. But so much of it has yet to be discovered. Then it went on to say some people have not discovered God yet.

Today’s Purpose Driven Life taught us “What matters most.” This taught us to learn to love. We need to learn it down here because it will be a necessary skill in heaven. The hardest part is loving even those irritating, frustrating, and imperfect people in God’s family. (You know who I’m talking about.) It went on to say life without love is really worthless. Love will last forever. And finally, we will be evaluated on our love. I never really thought about it but the best expression of love is time. I can’t help but think about the single mom who has to work two and three jobs to feed her family and keep the lights on. Those kids are being provided for but where is the love? I have seen these kids in my church. So I guess Mr. Warren said it best when he wrote, “The best time to love is now.”

We only did one lesson in math today. I had to take JD’s friend to the bus stop and it interrupted our lesson. So we reviewed finding the greatest common factors so we could simplify fractions to their lowest terms. (Again with the fractions?)

I let JD do his word bank lesson independently today while I was taking a shower. His words were: nonchalant, humdrum, and ludicrous. He did very good and finding the meaning of these words. I didn’t know humdrum meant boring. (What’s that saying? You can’t teach an old dog new tricks - yes you can.)

The journal lesson was suppose to be in cursive today but I let him print in manuscript because he missed Monday’s lesson. The topic he wrote about very descriptively was “The food I like best is pickles.” It took a while to dictate and edit correctly because his supporting sentences were all over the place.

We did not do music today because I had errands to run and the bus stop trip this morning set me behind.

We had lunch late and decided not to watch Animal Planet. Something about the graphic pictures of abused pets set our stomachs upside down. So we started watching the History channel. The TV does not come on all day until lunch and he‘s only allowed to watch certain channels. So anyway, on the History Channel they were talking about different states. So JD was allowed to watch it all as long as he could tell me three historical facts about them all. He learned facts about Texas, Massachusetts, Arkansas, Iowa, and Delaware. So we ditched the dry history lesson with TV. (Another bonus for JD.)

Today was the first day I ventured out since last week sometime. The blah weather had me socked in. You’d think I would get cabin fever really bad but I didn’t. Until tomorrow my friends…

Special Edition

I often wonder if my non-Christian followers see the significance in the joy I personally take in being a part of God’s family. I think I add the Purpose Driven Life reading so I can reach out in my own little way to those that don’t want to “hear about God.” I used to be the exact same way. In the not so distant past, I would think “I want my life just the way it is.” I didn’t want to change what I was doing, what I was saying, or how I was living MY life. I was after all a “good” person. Sure I broke some of the commandments but doesn’t everyone? Yes they do. But the truth is our punishment for breaking even one commandment is heading straight for hell when our number is up. I realized if I did the crime (breaking God’s laws) I would have to do the time and the time my friends is for all of eternity. At first I thought “How can I believe in someone I can’t see? How do I know this is true?” Then I thought, “What’s my other option?” After many years of searching and wondering I chose to step out in faith that what others were telling me about God was true. Some people say miracles don’t happen today. I would have to argue that statement. God changes lives and I’m a walking example. I simply submitted my life to God and he did all the changing he needed to so I could effectively witness through my words, my actions, and for all I know through this blog. I have done what God wanted me to do. I told you the truth about your near future. Now it’s up to you to submit your life to God. He wants you to be a part of His family too. To take part of His inheritance. If you have not accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior you are not his child. So when you tell someone, “Your in my prayers or I’m praying for you” then your prayers are not being heard. The only prayer my God hears of yours is the prayer of salvation. It’s very easy to become a child of God and it’s a free gift to all. First, in a prayer to God admit to Him that you are a sinner. Keep in mind that anything you do that is “not of God” is a sin. So yes, we are all sinners, even those that are “saved.” Remember to repent. That is to turn from those sinful ways and allow God to work in your life. Then, you have to believe that Jesus is God’s son and was crucified with your sins on his shoulders. He took the penalty of an eternity in hell for you by being the perfect sacrifice. Just like the whole garden of Eden episode. Adam and Eve tried to cover their sins with their own hands but God sacrificed a perfect animal to cover then. The blood needed to be shed. Jesus, the perfect lamb, shed his blood for us. This was to “cover us” so when we get to heaven and face judgment time Jesus will walk up to us and put his arm around us and say, “I covered her sins too Father. She’s with me.” I think the toughest part for me was saying it out loud that the child God made was so disobedient and deserved a life in hell for breaking His laws or commandments. But I confessed with my mouth that I was a sinner. I said I believed that Jesus was God’s son and died on the cross for me and that He rose three days later and still lives today. He’s seated right next to God. You can say whatever you want in your confession to God. And the best part is you don’t have to tell anyone but God. He knows anyway. He’s just waiting on you to personally say it.

You are each dedicated followers and each one of you means something special to me. I am burden this evening with typing this out in hopes that you might accept the truth and submit to God today. Please remember I won’t feel pain in heaven, but I’m feeling a lot of pain here on earth because I know I have not effectively shared the word of God with you and that means that I will be eternally separated from you.

A rainy and moody day.

Maybe the rain had something to do with JD’s mood today but he was real moody. His friend was out of school today and doing homework projects at the kitchen table as JD performed his school day schedule. It was a relatively short day. It ended at 1:00 pm including a 30 minute lunch and cold soggy PE time. (blah)

The devotion today was about Ground Hogs day. Of course most people root for or have hopes for spring to come. Then it transitioned into putting our hope in God.

The Purpose Driven Life reading was about us being “Formed for God’s Family.” There are BIG benefits to being a child of God and they are: the family name, the family likeness, family privileges, family intimate access, and the family inheritance. Knowing that I will be with God FOREVER is so comforting. I love that God has changed me to be more like Jesus. I also find comfort in knowing in heaven I will be free from all pain, death and suffering. When I finally get to heaven I will be rewarded and reassigned a new position of service. And lastly I will get to share in Christ’s glory. In this economic time of struggles we should reflect on the promised inheritance and realize we are richer than we ever could have imagined.

I knew this day would come and I'm here to tell you fractions confuse me. JD seemed to understand it better than I did. We learned about "changing improper fractions to mixed numbers" and back again. (Um, what?) Then we had to find the least common multiple of fractions. (Ok, understanding now.)

Social studies was a fairly short lesson. We reviewed the map tacked to the wall. For each state I had JD see what picture the border made. He scored very well on the computerized flash cards. Only a couple of them tripped him up. This week he picked Tennessee, North Carolina, and Oklahoma to find facts on. He did this much quicker than last week. This time instead of sitting him in the classroom I said, "You have 2 minutes to write the capitals and come back." When he finished I said, "You have three minutes to find the nickname," This worked very effectively and adding movement to the lesson was a bonus on his part. (Woo Hoo!)

We did not do the email/snail mail lesson. Instead we did ten funny sentences to remember his spelling words. He had difficulty relating the sentence to the word. I had to help him a lot because I would say, "What does that sentence have to do with that word?" Then we'd erase and do it again.

Language arts was also a short lesson today. He learned about cause and effect. It went very well. He still likes language arts the best I think.

In science today we reviewed conducting experiments and took a chapter quiz. He scored an 80%. On Monday we looked in on those coins we had setting in three different liquids. The water coins didn't change. The vinegar coins didn't really change. But the salt water coins turned green and appeared to have grown fuzz. (Yuck!)

He only had one piece of homework. He finished his Christmas in Camelot project. He chose to make a book jacket. I can tell he rushed through it but it's finally finished. I didn't just accept it I told him I could see he was rushing and would grade more harshly next time.

School was cancelled Monday!

There was no school for Faith Christian Academy. Since JD's friend was out of public school today due to freezing ice on the country roads I decided it would be extremely unfair to home school JD while his friend watched TV in our living room. (I watch his friend after school.) So instead of our detailed school day I thought I would share some pictures of JD on Sunday. Church was cancelled Sunday too.

JD thought taping racquetball rackets to his feet would help him keep his footing.

Then his daddy mentioned the skies sitting in the garage. Once daddy vacuumed out the spiders webs, all was good in our neighborhood.

"Now make sure your foot is all the way to the front and SLAM your foot." (Giggling) "I am daddy." "Here let me help you."

Mommy, Daddy, look I'm skiing! (You can't see the huge smile or hear the same giggle he's done since he was a baby, but he was happy and super excited to be skiing for the first time EVER!)

Hey! Who put that trampoline there? Slow down, slow down. He eventually slid down to his side.

We hope you enjoyed our snow/ice weekend. Public school is also out Tuesday 2 Feb, but since JD's friend has so many projects to do for his extremely strict 4th grade teacher I told his mom to send them on tomorrow and I would make sure he does them. I will also be homeschooling JD but hopefully it will only be a 1/2 day for all.