Scripture

3 Nephi 13:32-33 "For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."

The last few years of my life I have often pondered on this scripture. I seem to make a habit of doing really well in the doctrinal basics only to become comfortable and the next thing I know I'm hardly doing them at all. I would think after having gone through this so many times I would finally learn. Lately, this scripture has taken on more of a personal meaning to me. I've always known that as long as I am obeying the commandments I'll be blessed, as well as my family. But, I think I have finally learned how this concept applies to my life. Seth and I have been talking a lot about our future and the direction we want to take with our family and his work. I can choose to help build our future as a family and for myself, or I can help hinder it. We can do all the things we need to to get where we want to go, but without the guidance of our Father in Heaven we will end up basically nowhere. Sure there are things I want to get accomplished, but I want to make sure they are in line with the plans that our Father has laid out for us. I truly feel in my heart that if I put Him first in all things He will guide us and bless us and we'll be able to accomplish things we could have never done on our own. He has so many blessings he wants to give us but we have to ask him first. At this point in my life I don't feel that I have done all I can do to be worthy of those blessings. I want to try harder and even though I won't always succeed I will know I have done my best. I'm tired of wading through this life being comfortable doing nothing. Through my soul searching these last few months I have received a new conviction of the love my Father has for me and my family and for how much He wants us to succeed in our lives and in raising our children. I know that if I put Him first in all I do that my family will be greatly blessed and that we can have a home where the spirit can dwell always. It won't be easy, but I am determined to turn my house into a home where my family can be at rest from the conflicts of the world and were we can have hope for a brighter tomorrow.

Change

Well, I was keeping track of how much the printer paper and ink cost for the first month. $80, can you believe that. I read throughout the web how much cheaper it was to do your own curriculum. $80/month for 12 months (we're doing year around) comes to $960/year. Ouch!!! That is way more expensive than some curriculum you can buy, even for three kids. So, I got to thinking. If I bought five workbooks for each kid at $15 a piece that comes to $225. If I bought another round (which I'm sure I will) it would only come to $450. That's less than half the cost of paper and ink alone. So, I decided to buy workbooks for things like math, reading, phonics and use textbooks for social studies and science. I also got Rebeka a handwriting book that includes cursive which I've already begun to teach her. I also got two workbooks for Jacob. I bought the workbooks at Amazon.com except for the phonics book. My total was only $49.97 with no tax and free shipping. I was thoroughly proud of myself for finding such a great deal. The cool thing is these workbooks contain over 300 pages each. That makes it an even greater deal. I don't have any workbooks for Jayson, but I do still print out things for him to do. Mostly it's just coloring easy preschool things. Rebeka and Jacob love their workbooks and we always end up doing extra pages. I still like to do unit studies once in awhile and we always start out with a prayer and bible stories. We're also reading Charlotte's Web. For now what we do seems to be working really well. The great thing about homeschooling though is that when it doesn't work so well anymore I can always change things up a bit.

Progress

Rebeka was not reading very well in school. Her strength does not lie in memorization. She was being taught how to read by memorizing lots of words. Unfortunately she was not reading well at all. I feel that in order to read, one needs to know how words are made and why letters sound the way they do. I was not taught these rules so I at the moment could not teach them to her. I came across an A Beka homeschooling phonics book at Deseret Industries. Thankfully, only the first few pages had been used and there wasn't anything on them that she didn't already know. This workbook includes all of the spelling rules and special sounds. Wow, has it made a difference. We have been using this book for two weeks now and she can finally read. When she comes upon a word she doesn't know I say something to her like 'What's the rule when there is an e on the end of a word' and she'll tell me. She'll then mentally or with her finger mark all of her vowels and sound out the word correctly. She has caught on so well and I'm so proud of her for her accomplishments. She is quickly rolling through her learning and sometimes I wonder if her behavioral problems were 1. She couldn't read and 2. She was bored out of her mind. There are still some things she struggles with. She can't be good at everything but I'm thankful I'm able to take the time with her that she needs so she can properly understand. It's exciting to watch her learn and grow and increase her knowledge and understanding. She has a love for learning and I pray she'll always maintain that love as she goes through her life.