A change has taken place in my thinking, my heart, and in therefore, my actions or my implementation of how we homeschool.

As I was being refreshed and renewed, I didn’t know it at the time, but God was kind of ‘weaning’ me from all that I had read about what others were doing in their homeschool, even from the much of the material I was studying in the Red Books and the NP lesson plans book. All of a sudden I didn’t have a ‘taste’ for any of it and I began to wonder if I was on the right track with the BPA. I even wondered if I should still be homeschooling…but I’ve learned never to make a major decision when emotions are running high and even when I’m experiencing much uncertainty…the answer will come in the calm…I just continued to wait on the Lord, enjoying my rest in not having to do school just enjoy my family and children.

But I had come to the point where I’m tired of doing things my way or in my own wisdom/thinking. I’ve said that before and even when I thought I was doing what the Lord wanted me to do I realize now that I was not. I received very clear instruction from the Lord to go back to doing certain things that I used to do(when homeschooling was a pure joy!!) when my dd was 5(and when I didn’t have to report to the school district). Once she turned 6 and I had to start sending in everything we were doing a war ensued inside of me-wanting to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading but yet somehow feeling like I needed to cater to the districts and always being more concerned with what they’ll think; and the school district’s/worlds expectations won out…and that burned me out.

So God put me in a place where all of those distractions that used to pull at me were non-existent, flushed my insides out from the ‘old wine’ so that He could put in the ‘new wine’ of His revelation/instruction.

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So I’ve returned to using scripture as copywork for our handwriting lessons. That will coincide with our Bible Study.

I’ve decided to accept the fact that I cannot do all the subjects that I had planned in one day…. Now, we do what we can each day (along with my other responsibilities). The way it has been going since we started back last week, we either do ’skills’ lessons(math, handwriting, grammar, spelling, etc) or our unit study…and I’m even praying about if and/or how to incorporate our ’skills’ lessons into our unit study lessons.

I also count time the children spend cleaning their rooms/household chores as school. It goes under life skills.

I’ve gone back to using math add-ons/games on the internet to be a part of my dd’s math curriculum.

In short, I’ve eased up on myself and my children…My lessons have gone back to ’simple’(no less effective, I pray :). I’m learning how to be much more loving to them no matter how far behind I feel we are and basically to accept and be content with where they are in their development and not PUSH them to where I feel their public/private school counterparts are…even the lessons given in the NP are very aggressive and complete and are WONDERFUL in my eyes…I would want my children to attain to ALL of what I read in these lesson plan books but I’ve had to just stop striving to MAKE my children be…rather I’m learning to just LET them be…while teaching and guiding them gently.

I tell you things go sooooo much smoothly. We go to bed now happy with each other and so much less tension in the house since our days are not spent arguing and me fussing and upset and tense and feeling like I’ve failed if we don’t do have a math lesson everyday…so what if we don’t finish the book.

I’m learning to REALLY put my trust in the Lord and in following His way and instruction. My children are fine and will get to where they are supposed to be…God will make sure of that!!! The scripture God brought back to me is this:

Matthew 11:27-31(amplified)

28Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest. [I will ^[f]ease and relieve and ^[g]refresh ^[h]your souls.]

29Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle (meek) and humble (lowly) in heart, and you will find rest (^[i]relief and ease and refreshment and ^[j]recreation and blessed quiet) for your souls.^(A)

30For My yoke is wholesome (useful, ^[k]good–not harsh, hard, sharp, or pressing, but comfortable, gracious, and pleasant), and My burden is light and easy to be borne.

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So having said all of that this week we started His Story again and picked up with the 3rd link Jesus Christ-The focal point of History. That was our principle.

For BIBLE/HISTORY I read to my children the bible stories of Jesus getting baptized by John the Baptist, Jesus and the little children, and Jesus choosing 12 disciples. I gave them bible sheets, from Heart of Wisdom site to color as I read these stories. In all of this we would discuss and reason Jesus’ purpose (Principle of Individuality) for coming and referencing that to the Chain of Christianity in showing what God was doing/how His plan was unfolding to bring liberty to America and the world from the beginning…Creation.

It was such a simple lesson, if I wasn’t trusting God with my homeschool I would wonder if my children learned anything from something so simple..I trust that what I shared in this unit that God would put His Super to my natural and bring something Supernatural out of it in the lives of my children.

Today we read about the Last Supper, Jesus’ Resurrection, and His Soon Return.

For GEOGRAPHY we looked at and studied maps of Israel and the Middle East Region. My dd had to locate the nation of Israel first She labeled a blank outline map of Israel. She labeled Jerusalem, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan River and the surrounding nations of Syria, Jordan, Egypt and the Med. sea. These are some of the sites we visited and used in our study
http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/asia/lgcolor/ilcolor.htm

http://www.freeworldmaps.net/asia/israel/map.html

http://www.masada2000.org/geography.html

This next site is a WONDERFUL site. You can download interactive maps and map puzzles where your child has to put each state in it’s place(for US map) or each country in it’s respective place on the continent. When we did our Moses link my dd fell in love with this and kept asking (on non-History unit days) if she could do the map puzzle of Africa!

http://www.yourchildlearns.com/megamaps.htm

Now, on to ART. I decided to study/introduce my children to the painting of The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci since we read about the Last Supper today.

I found a printable here at this site:

http://arthistory.about.com/library/artists/tours/leonardo/n_leo_10.htm

I read a very short biography of Leonardo and gave my dd the printable of his painting and asked her to study it and reproduce it. This is what she did…I thought it was precious so I decided to post it….

I also found more art history at this site…

http://arthistory.about.com/cs/leonardo/a/last_supper.htm

I found these search engines just for kids…

AJKids - AOL@school - Awesome Library - Google - KartOO - KidsClick! - ThinkQuest Library - Yahooligans

I clicked on AJKids and found the following site that gives a biography of Leonardo in simpler language for younger children.

http://www.askforkids.com/fr?u=http%3A%2F%2Flibrary.thinkquest.org%2F3044%2Fnov_over.html&bu=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.askforkids.com%2Fweb%3Fq%3D%22da%2Bvinci%2C%2Bleonardo%22%26dm%3Dlang%26page%3D1&q=%22da%2Bvinci%2C%2Bleonardo%22&o=0&l=dir&s=k&dm=lang&qt=0

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So all in all, things are going well…I’m happy and my children are responding so much better to school and just overall. My 5yob can’t seem to stop hugging me and coming up to me laying on my shoulder and he keeps telling me, “Mommy, I love you”. I tell I love him too and I stand in awe at what God is doing in my life and in my family as I determine to trust Him and go with His leading for everyday.

We have started back to homeschooling and I’ve begun our 2nd half of the year with a new attitude, new vision, new (or maybe I should say RE-newed) purpose. I am sooooo grateful to our Gracious God for the blessing of REST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We took from the last week in Nov to the 2nd week in Jan. off for vacation/break….and ooohhhhh was it needed and appreciated!!! There is something to be said about taking REGULAR intervals of rest and actually in my own personal studies I’ve come across God’s principle of REST. He knew we would need rest and so He even instituted and incorporated rest into His commandments…”Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy”

Ex. 20:8-11

8Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.

9Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:

10But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:

11For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it

In fact Moses instructed the Israelites to observe the sabbath even before God wrote it on the tablets of the 10 commandments and as we all know God established His cycle of rest in the beginning when He rested on the seventh day in Genesis. Not only did He rest and establish rest but the Word says He made it HOLY!! Our seventh day of rest is HOLY..God considers it HOLY!! How awesome is that! I still don’t fully understand the import of it’s holiness but if God says it is HOLY unto Him then I shall begin to look at it as HOLY and treat it as HOLY…just like the tithe is HOLY unto Him. That is one thing that I’ve been taught not to mess with because the tithe is not ours, it is the Lord’s and it is HOLY unto Him. Therefore, I render it unto Him with respect and sobriety b/c it is HOLY….just like taking my rest when God says to take a rest.

God is just soooooo good…His very name means good(the scripture says God is good—-a little bit of mathematics here, if a=b then b=a….if God is good then the definition of the word good is God and vice versa). Anyway, God has given us daily rest periods(the time where we sleep), the then weekly rests(after we’ve worked for 6 days we are commanded to rest on the seventh…and as far as homeschooling I would encourage every homeschooling mom to schedule regular intervals of rest(and even one prolonged period of rest) in their homeschool schedules b/c it is soooo beneficial. I’ve come to see the answer to burnout, any kind of burnout is rest…but isn’t that what God told us to do in the beginning? I wonder why we’ve not seen it as important and as HOLY as God sees it? Of course it was not stressed in church about how important it is to rest…the 7th day was always spent in church and so was Wednesday night at bible study and so was Friday night prayer and then we go to work and take care of our families and try to spend time and have real relationships the remainder of the week and we are in “rest-deficits”….we don’t have anything to give b/c we violate God’s principle of rest and dont’ take the time to rest and be renewed.
The following is for your consideration:
Isaiah 58:13-14

13 “If you keep your feet from breaking the Sabbath
and from doing as you please on my holy day,
if you call the Sabbath a delight
and the LORD’s holy day honorable,
and if you honor it by not going your own way
and not doing as you please or speaking idle words,

14 then you will find your joy in the LORD,
and I will cause you to ride on the heights of the land
and to feast on the inheritance of your father Jacob.”
The mouth of the LORD has spoken.

This scripture says to me that God has promised a blessing in keeping what God has established as HOLY!

The book by Dr. Richard Heidler called The Messianic Church Arising has been such a blessing to me in pointing this principle out.

Something else that has been brewing in my heart is to study the Biblical feasts and not just study but to implement in our lives and homeschool. That is the reason I bought the book by Dr. Heidler. It has turned out to be a wonderful rsource for me (along with Chuck Pierce’s book called Reordering Your Day. This one talks about establishing the prayer watches in your life.) So I’m in prayer about what principles to bring out about each feast as we observe them. I’ll share what we do when we do it. My heart has also been pricked into acquiring more understanding of the Hebraic view of life, God, education, family, etc. Although man has put ‘labels’ on all these topics that I’ve mentioned I don’t see it as becoming Jewish or Hebrew but this quest I’m on is about attaining to the knowledge of The One Who Loved me and Gave His Life for Me…about knowing the Eternal, Ageless One Who Created me and Gave me Life and continues to sustain and commune with me…the One who beckons to me in the night seasons when all is quiet and everyone is sleep…beckoning me to come sit in His Presence JUST because He loves me and wants to spend time with me…the One who speaks Words of comfort to my storm-tossed and weary soul…a soul that is weary from worrying about our homeschool not being up-to-par, storm-tossed with the emotions and physical fatigue of taking care of sick children and rushing my 7yog to the hospital with 103 fever b/c it would go no lower on a Sunday and then my 2 yo coming down with a fever of 102, a soul that allowed itself to be burdened down with the care of finances that are not there in abundance the way I’ve prayed for them to be for so long and yet we still wait, etc, on and on…yet and still I praise Him. It is in these night seasons, at 3am, 4 am sometimes 12 midnight as I respond to His call that He frees me from these cares and concerns and He sets me free to rejoice in Him

I willfully issue forth a praise and I determine to live a life of love and obedience that I pray is a pleasing fragrance unto the Lord even thru the pressure of trial, testing, and warfare.

He continues to show Himself faithful in my life and on my behalf and I shall continue to worship Him for His goodness and to kiss His nail-scarred Hands and Feet…those precious Hands and Feet, I lay tender kisses of my love, of my praise….of my very life.