It's Bittersweet

Abigail (kindergarten) has recently started reading.  Her progress has been very rapid and, every day, I am impressed by how quickly she is learning to read.  And, I am SO excited for her!  

However, these past few weeks, a bit of sadness has invaded my joy.  I keep thinking about the fact that Abigail will soon be able to read bigger books on her own.

Before I know it, she is not going to need me to read to her.  She will be able to read whatever she wants without any help.

Our times of cuddling on the couch and reading a book together will soon be over.  

Sometime in the next few years, she is going to ask me to stop reading bedtime stories to her.

She is growing up and it makes me sad!  I suppose that I will have this feeling countless times as a parent.  But for now, I am so thankful that I get to watch her learn every day and am trying hard to cherish the moments now because I know they won't last long!


Marla is a former special education teacher and homeschooling mom of two little girls (ages 3 and 5) and is expecting #3 soon.  She has her PhD in Special Education and loves to put her knowledge to use teaching her children and sharing learning/teaching ideas.  She blogs about raising and teaching her children at Marla's Motherhood Musings and her family's experiences living in Zambia at Our Life in Lusaka.

I Miss My Kids!

Yesterday, I was reading a friend's blog.  She shared her personal goals for this month and one of them is to spend more time with her family.  She made the point that homeschooling is not the same as spending "quality family time".  I agree!  Sometimes, after a busy week, the thought that goes through my head is "I miss my kids!"  Since I homeschool and spend all day with them, that might seem strange.  But teaching them and shuttling them from one activity to another is not quality time!  

Today, I have decided to share a few ideas for how we ensure quality family time in the midst of our busy lives.

1. Put it on your calendar.

I schedule at least one "date" with each of my girls each week.  Some of our dates are big outings and others are small.  Sometimes, we go out for lunch or ice cream.  We might also do a special cooking or art project together at home.  The important thing is not what you do, just that you have special 1:1 time together.  My husband also schedules "dates" with the girls and those "dates" are often the highlight of his week (and theirs).  

2. Incorporate your children into your daily household work.

While it will take MUCH longer to have "help" cooking dinner or doing laundry, your daily chores often provide a great time for spending time with your children.  I cannot count the laughs and giggles that I have had with my girls while we baked a cake together (and spilled flour all over the flour) or attempted to fold a fitted sheet together.  

3. Refocus your priorities.  

Sometimes, we overextend ourselves and take on too many commitments.  The end result is often that our family suffers.  When I begin missing my children and feeling that I don't get quality time with them, I often have to take a close look at my calendar and think about where my time is going.  While it is good for me to be involved in church, volunteer activities, etc., some of these things might not be the most important uses of my time during this season of my life.  I recently read in my bible study that "all things good are not from God."  Just because it is a good activity that serves God's overall purpose, does not automatically mean that God intends for you to do it.

4. Ask for help.

There are times when are lives are so busy with unavoidable commitments that we truly can't add anything else to our schedule.  When this happens, we need to ask for help from spouses, friends, family, fellow Christians, etc.  It is okay to ask for help!

5. Pray.

I don't have all the answers and neither do you.  But, the great news is that God does.  Get down on your knees and pray.  God will help you find the solution!

What other suggestions do you have for ensuring quality time with your family?


Marla is a former special education teacher and homeschooling mom of two little girls (ages 3 and 5).  She has her PhD in Special Education and loves to put her knowledge to use teaching her children and sharing learning/teaching ideas.  She blogs about raising and teaching her children at Marla's Motherhood Musings and her family's experiences living in Zambia at Our Life in Lusaka.

Making Memories

One of the things that I want most for my children is for them to have pleasant memories.  I want them to look back on their childhoods and smile about their experiences.  While I know that they will have some unpleasant memories, I try hard to give them good memories too.  

I try to do small things on a daily basis to make them smile and feel loved.  I place a small note in Abigail's school snack box every day.  

I take time to play with the girls.  I color, paint, read, play dolls, build Lego houses, etc. every single day.  It might get boring sometimes, but I love spending time with them and I want them to remember me as a part of their childhoods!

I also try to create larger memories of big events.  We host a large playgroup every week.  I bake mini muffins for the children and lead them in an art project each week.

We also host events for the girls' friends.  Last weekend, we hosted an Easter egg hunt for 30 children.  I hard boiled and dyed over 200 hundred eggs that my husband then hid in the yard.  It was a lot of work, but it was worth it!  And the girls have been talking about it ever since!

As I have been working hard to make memories for my children, I am also creating great memories of my own.  I know that I will only have my girls at home for a short time and I want to make the most of it.  One day, I want to be able to look back at all of the fun we had together!

I hope that my children grow up with happy childhoods and want to create similar experiences for their own children one day.

What special things do you do to make memories with (and for) your children?

Marla is a former special education teacher, current PhD student, university instructor, and stay-at-home, homeschooling mom of two little girls (ages 2 and 4).  She blogs about homeschooling at Marla's Motherhood Musings and her family's experiences living in Zambia at Our Life in Lusaka.

Seeds of Wisdom --- Motherhood Moments

Happy Mother's Day to all homeschooling moms! Today, we would like to share with you some of our more memorable motherhood moments.

Aurie

The moment that I became a mom. We had our struggles on the way to pregnancy, but the moment that they put Sophie in my arms was worth every bit of the struggle.

Sam

Becoming a mom for the first time-being terrified I had no clue-realizing it all came so naturally and that I was fiercely independent as a relatively young new mother.

Jessica

I'm not sure about the most memorable, but the most defining moment of mothering in my life was deciding to homeschool. I went against the grain, set my family apart, and took what we felt was a huge risk in order to meet my children's needs in the best way I could.

Tracy

There are so many moments, but a recent one has been my son's first love note to me, composed and written all by himself on our dry erase board. I took a picture so that I would still have it after it was erased. So sweet!

Marla

The moment that I found out that I was pregnant with my oldest was amazing!  I am not sure that I have ever been as happy or as excited as I was at that moment.  For days, all that I could think about was the beautiful little baby growing inside of me.  Motherhood is wonderful and I am so blessed to be a mommy!

Please share your memorable mommy moments with us!

Too Much Teacher, Not Enough Mother?

I LOVE watching my girls learn!  I think seeing those little lightbulbs going off in their brains is one of the coolest aspects of motherhood!  I am SO glad that I get to be my girls' teacher!

However, sometimes I wonder if homeschooling causes me to miss out on motherhood.  

Sometimes, I think that I would be a better mother if I let someone else worry about teaching my girls.

Sometimes, I am so busy trying to ensure that my girls get fabulous learning experiences that I forget to just spend time cuddling with them and playing with them  

Sometimes, I spend too much time and energy trying to ensure that my girls learn as much as possible from our experiences instead of just letting them (or me) enjoy the experiences.

When we go to the zoo, we spend several days before the trip talking about animals and after our return home, we do writing, art, and reading projects about the animals we saw.  Sometimes, I wonder what it would be like to just take a trip to the zoo without doing extra learning related to the outing.

When we see a bug outside that piques their interest, we observe the bug, write about it in our Science journals, and often look for more information on the internet.  Sometimes, I wonder if my children would learn just as much and enjoy themselves more if I just let them observe the bugs on their own.

Much of my day is spent ensuring that everything we do leads to quality learning for my girls.

While I love that they are learning, I am beginning to worry that I am becomin more of a teacher and less  of a mother.  My first instinct when I see my girls enjoying something is to figure out how to incorporate it into learning.  Am I missing out on enjoying motherhood and being a good mother because I am too worried about teaching?  Am I forgetting about developing "the whole child" because I am so focused on developing their minds?  

Does anyone else have these thoughts/concerns?

Virtues

The spiritual upbringing of my children is one of my top priorities. Proverbs 22:6 is a verse that is constantly playing in my head. "Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old, he will not depart from it". In my opinion that is one of the greatest lessons of the Bible. It's the sole responsibility of parents to foster spiritual development in their children.

Not only does spiritual development involve your child knowing Jesus (don't get me wrong, that is VERY important), but it also involves character development and training your child to have values and morals. Reading Bible stories and memorizing Scripture will help a child to know Jesus but it won't necessarily lead a child to live like Jesus, which is the very life He wants us to live. In order to live like Jesus we have to learn about the virtues Jesus (and many other religious figures) exemplified. We have to learn to live by these virtues and that doesn't always come naturally.

As a homeschooling family, we have chosen to make character development the core of our Bible studies. My husband is a religious studies student and is the mastermind behind Project Conversion, in which he is practicing a different religion every month for a year in an effort to increase knowledge about the major religions of the world. In just 6.5 months, my children have learned more about world religions than most adults know. This experience is so valuable. My girls love Jesus and know all about Christianity and now they also know about and respect Hinduism, Baha'i, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Buddhism and are beginning to understand Mormonism. Instead of knowing what makes each religion different, they can tell you about the virtues that unite us all. Seeing this amount of acceptance and respect in a 5 and 6 year old is amazing and our prayer is that it continues for the rest of their lives.

A lovely Baha'i family gave our family a book entitled The Family Virtues Guide by Linda Kavelin Popov. This is an incredible book that will hopefully bring out the best in our family. The book is based on the Virtues Project that was founded in Canada in 1991. The Family Virtues Guide is "a tool for parents to use in guiding and teaching their children so that the content of their character is a first priority." But this isn't just a book used in guiding your children. If followed correctly, your character will also be strengthened. "Many find that as they use this simple tool to parent their children, they are at the same time re-parenting themselves." The first few chapters of this book explains the author's view of children and tells you how to use TFVG. It's built on the premise that children are not born as a blank slate. Each child is built with all the virtues, it's the role of the parent to assist the child in bringing them to light. Popov states that what a child becomes is a result of a combination of 4 things: nature, nurture, opportunity, and effort.

The second part of the book consists of 52 virtues. How you choose to use this book in your family is completely up to you, depending on the ages of your children. We plan to tackle one virtue each week. Each of the 52 virtues contains 4 pages. Page 1 explains the virtue and contains an inspirational quote from one of the Holy Books of a world religion (Christianity, Baha'i, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Zoroastrianism). For the weeks that contain a quote from a Holy Book other than the Bible, I plan to also show the girls a Bible verse that corresponds (trying to point out similarities in all faiths). Page 2 of each virtue tells us why we practice it. Page 3 tells us how to practice it and gives discussion exercises. Page 4 tells us about signs of success and gives us a daily affirmation to review every day of that particular week.

We received The Family Virtues Guide a few months ago and I've read it twice already. My husband and I spent a some time talking about how we planned to implement the project into our family. Finally, just last Sunday we had our first family meeting and introduced the first virtue we would be covering. The girls were very receptive to the concept and I've already caught them "practicing" their virtue.



I only wish I would've come across this awesome book a few years ago. According to the author "Much of a child's character development is complete by age 7." Oh my word. Our oldest will be 7 in just a few months...and we have a long way to go.

How are you training your child in the area of character development? I would love to hear feedback regarding what is working for you.