Deseret Industries

If you're ever looking for some books you can hold on to check out DI. I got these books there for a dollar a piece. That's pretty hard to beat.

What's Been Happening

We have been studying the creation this week and today we talked about the water that was created above the earth. We made these cotton ball clouds and the kids had tons of fun.




This is a picture of our water cycle books.




Here they used water colors to paint the Earth.




These are their creation books.




Here are some other activities we've done.

The children are having a great time with homeschooling. Besides crafts they do lots of worksheets and some book work. Rebeka loves doing worksheets. Some days I have to put a limit on her because she wears me out :) Jacob loves hands on things as well as Jayson so I use both learning styles. So far none of the children seem to be auditory learners like I am (although I'm visual too). If I start talking to much they start ignoring me so they keep me in check.

Embarrassing Moment

Well, I think I've lived through the most embarrassing moment of my life. Yesterday at church was the primary program. Rebeka was at home with Seth and James and I had Jacob and Jayson with me. About half way through the program I saw Jacob telling one of the teachers he needed to go potty. She took him and I was thinking 'maybe I should go help'. I decided not to since Jayson was asleep in my lap. I figured she would be o.k. helping him. So they come back and Jacob keeps coming to me telling me his pants won't stay up. He's carrying them high like Steve Urkul would and I have no clue why. Well, he went back up towards his teacher again and stops in the middle of the isle (this is about four pews short of the front). He has his pants pulled as high as they could go and is standing there with his legs spread apart as far as they could go too. I'm thinking to myself 'what in the world is he doing'. Then to my horror a puddle forms in the middle of his legs on the carpet. He just PEED. AAGGGGHHHHH!!!!! People are looking at me with shock on their faces and I try to just ignore them. Jacob comes back to me and says "Mommy, I peed!" Just then the closing prayer starts and I have to keep my hand over Jacob's mouth because he's keeps trying to tell me he peed. As soon as the prayer ends Sis. Haskett (about 35 with four kids, sweetest in the world) comes up to me and asks me what she can do to help. I gave her wipes and she went and cleaned it up. Only she would be so kind as to do something like that. Needless to say I thanked her and then we went home. I tried my best to not feel any embarrassment. If this happened two years ago I wouldn't have shown my face in church for at least two weeks. This incident by far tops my list of most embarrassing moments.

Quote

"I feel to warn you that one of the chief means of misleading our youth and destroying the family unit is our educational institutions. There is more than one reason why the Church is advising our youth to attend colleges close to their homes where institutes of religion are available. It gives the parents the opportunity to stay close to their children, and if they become alerted and informed, these parents can help expose the deceptions of men like Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, John Dewey, John Keynes and others. There are much worse things today that can happen to a child than not getting a full education. In fact, some of the worst things have happened to our children while attending colleges led by administrators who wink at subversion and amorality.

Said Karl G. Maeser, 'I would rather have my child exposed to smallpox, typhus fever, cholera or other malignant and deadly diseases than to the degrading influence of a corrupt teacher.' "

(Ezra Taft Benson, The Teachings of Ezra Taft Benson, 307

Divine Calling

I was reading an article from ldshomeschooling.org titled 'Are We Having Fun Yet?' The author talks about happiness. She quotes Joseph Smith as saying "happiness is the object and design of our existence." As I continued reading the article she stated this quote by President Benson. "Mothers, teach your children the gospel in the home . . . this is the most effective teaching that your chldren will ever receive. This is the Lord's way of teaching. The Church cannot teach like you can. The school cannot. The day-care center cannot. But you can, and the Lord will sustain. Your children will remember your teachings forever. . . Mothers, this kind of heavenly, motherly teaching takes time--lots of time. It cannot be done effectively part-time. It must be done all the time in order to save and exalt your children. This is your divine calling." (President Ezra Taft Benson, Fireside for Parents, Feb 22, 1987). I have been trying to decide this last couple of weeks if I want to include gospel studies in with homeschooling. I still need to pray about it, but I really like this quote. It's true that the church, schools, daycare, or anyone else cannot teach our children as well as we can. While they all care about our children one way or another (esp the church) no one does as much as us. No one on earth loves our children as much as we do. I think that is what makes the difference. We teach our children with absolute pure love. I know our Bishop's and other church leaders have a special love for us and our children, but we spend the most time with our children. We have a bond with our children that no one else has. I do feel that by having my children in school I am lucky if I get to even teach them part time. I truly believe that teaching them is not based on the time we have with them but the time they have in their entire day. Mornings were always rushed as was evenings with dinner, homework, and bed time. There just wasn't any extra time to sit down calmly and teach my children. The only time we had for that was Sunday. Sure, I definitely enjoyed having less responsibility, but I started feeling like I was missing out on something. Now I know what that was. My daughter. Just in a few weeks from being at school I was already losing out on knowing who she was. The teacher probably knew her better than I did at that point. This is not why I brought her home (I don't want to put her on ADHD medicine just so she can survive at school), but I realized this after the fact. I had also lost a lot of authority over her as her teacher 'knew best'. She would say to me "that's not what my teacher said" as we were doing homework. I know she doesn't get the full instructions due to her attention and comprehension issues, but I was getting tired of having to correct her. She just didn't believe me and I had to make her do it anyways. I bet this is why teenagers use the famous line "you don't even know me". Of course the parents don't. How can they when they only see them 5 hours a day and that's if they're not hanging out with their friends after school. This is also why we have the generational gap. Because the parents have no clue what's going on in their children's lives. I don't want to be that type of parent.

Rolling Along

Things are going amazing well with homeschooling. It's not as hard as some people think. The nice thing is I can take the time my children need to understand something instead of just having to move on. I can know where their weaknesses and strengths are. I'm looking forward to next year because I will start teaching Rebeka how to do independent studies. I feel it is important to know how to find answers to questions and research topics of interest. This is how I learn things all the time. I do a lot of research on the internet to become knowledgable about certain things in my everyday life. This skill has come in handy so many times as I have been able to apply it. It's also important to know how to weed out the bad and good information. These skills will help her immensely in college, if she chooses to go, with her studies. I've started to teach her cursive and having her use the letters she has learned with her normal printing. She has caught on very quickly and is eager to learn. I've read so many times from other homeschooling moms that the first year is the hardest. For me the hardest part isn't in teaching my children, but trying to decide which method to use. So far I'm pretty much eclectic. I use any method I want to teach a particular topic. I like doing unit studies for science, and worksheets/books for math, language arts, and social studies. I'm still trying to figure out how to teach U.S. history to Rebeka. I'm more on the high school level as far as how in depth I like to go, but obviously I can't do that with a first grader. The first year seems to just be a learning period for everyone. We're doing great and having fun and the three older kids look forward to school everyday and get very excited when they hear me declare, "It's time for school!"