I was, for a time, blogging at my own domain. But since I had quit, I quit paying for it. So it is now lost in cyberspace I guess.

Should anyone happen upon this lowly website…there are a few gems here. In fact, I find myself needing a boost in my homeschool mentality. The ‘why’ has been a little lost and on the backburner. Time for rekindling and renewing. Some of my old posts are good reading for that! And who knows, maybe I’ll even begin to post again!

Currently, I’m awaiting the birth of our fifth child and it seems life has swept me away. I was sick in the beginning and then just plain tired! School has been on the backburner the whole time. We struggled just to get the basics done and are trying to catch up some over the summer. I’m anxious to get life organized and back to normal–but I know a new normal will have to be found!

Fall plans for school: We are planning to get started after Labor Day with Tapestry of Grace, Year Four. I’m also trying to get the boys to work some on their Singapore math and CQLA this summer since we were behind in those subjects, but either way we’ll be continuing that this fall. I’m trying to come up with a reading list for Tapestry and Literature. I’ve also been working on my bible curriculum. I have the outline of the book done and am very pleased with it. I was hoping to publish and ebook with it, but don’t know if that day will ever come.

Life is so much more than school, and somehow through it all the kids need to learn. But just this week at church I’m reminded that through God’s grace He bestows understanding. Our intellectual minds are just foolishness!

I Corinthians 3:19a  “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight.”

1 Corinthians 2:14 “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

I’ve been using my bible curriculum and turning it into a topic module. In the end I plan to have all four years of the curriculum outlined with all my notes as four separate modules. The only problem now is to slow down and work on the section of Scripture I should be working on instead of thinking I need it all done at once–which is where I am now.

Here’s what I’m doing: (note: this will only make sense if you’ve read the tutorial I linked to above)
I created a new topic module labeled Year One. Then for my chapters I started with 00 Table of Contents, 01 Yr 1 Wk 1, 02 Yr 1 Wk 2, etc. I am going to make my table of contents show the general Scripture Reference with the Year and Week numbers so that if I want to go to a certain portion of Scripture to see my notes I’ll be able to locate the notes.

I have my Bible curriculum written out in a word document that lists what Scripture passages we are reading for each week and the different key sheets we are to work on (Key People, Key Places, Key Events, etc.) From this structure I have copied and pasted the info into e-sword. I can now add my own notes, notes from commentaries, references to other books, cross-references, etc. Anything I want to add that will help as I help the kids work on their key sheets. I think I’ve finally found a workable system for my bible study!

I posted this link several months ago–check out Living Life Between the Trees for her e-sword tutorial

If you are looking for more help, try the e-sword website. I looked at the tutorial manual and one of the videos and they were both good.

I’m printing out math worksheets now, as I’m learning that we didn’t quiz multiplication tables enough and the long summer break didn’t help things I’m sure! I’m sure there are lots of great sites, but I’ve had The Math Worksheet site bookmarked for so long. It’s great to just select the numbers you want and it will randomly produce a worksheet for you. It also has 5 minute drill pages for you to print out.

And this funny video came through our local homeschool email list–nice humor break!

I also bought this stamp from Expressionery to mark all our books:

For faith was not something that could be passed on from generation to generation, or imparted by baptism or the partaking of Holy Communion. In order for faith to come to flower, it must be planted in the soil of gratitude.

That’s enough to chew on, but read on,

But being born into town situations instead of having to carve them out of the wilderness, the succeeding generations would not know desperate need. They would grow up never knowing what it meant to be persecuted for one’s faith; to be mocked and scorned or even imprisoned merely because they loved God enough to attempt to put Him and His will before all else. The sons of the fathers would never know what it was like to have no land and no work and no say in how they were governed.

…Therefore they would not be inclined to put all their trust in God.

The rest of the chapter is too long to type out here but the wise words go on. You’ll have to get the book and continue reading on your own! Makes me wonder about America and it’s future. The kids and I discussed how on fire those that first came to America were and then as we read this chapter and the next the decline and then the Great Awakening. We saw the roller coaster of faith–which reminded me of Judges. Were are we now on that roller coaster? Is God going to put us through a time of persecution so we will return to Him?

I just know that we have realized in our home that we are so independent that we are not showing our gratitude to God in front of our kids. Yes, we are grateful (my husband and me, that is) for so much. We are just not doing a good job of having our kids pray with us for those things we are trusting God for. They might see or hear us thank Him in the end, but they weren’t in the whole process and we are doing them an injustice. This has been shown evident from my nine year old and his lack of gratitude in his prayers.

Praying God will show me how to be more transparent to my kids and not try to hide life’s struggles from them and let God walk us through it all!

I just love them!

On Flickr there are some wonderfully awesome pics of the drawings that people do in theirs–you’ll find no awesome drawings in mine unfortunately. So what IS in mine-sermon notes, prayer journal, notes from the latest book I’ve read, misc. things I need to remember like the order info from a recent Amazon order, maybe a cute story about one of my kids. And my latest addition…I added tabs so that I could implement Getting Things Done from the book by David Allen.

My favorite pen to use is a Micron pen. I like the 03 or 05 size for use in my moleskines, but the 01 or 02 are really thin and great for taking notes in your BIble. They will NOT bleed through in your bible–which is AWESOME! They are especially great if you are doing inductive Bible studies where you are using different colors, etc. (Note: Use a 40% off coupon at Hobby Lobby and get a set there)

And here are some great pics on how to keep your pen handy and it really works great! No more fumbling for your pen–it’s always attached!

Tip: Number the pages when you first get a moleskine and keep the first page empty. Then when you fill up a book you can jot down a little Table of Contents on that first page in case you want to reference something later.

Here’s a Monster Collection of Moleskine Tips & Tricks for more moleskine reading! Enjoy!

One thing I didn’t like was the ads, especially for my teen son. So I followed the directions from Online Tech Tips to block the ads and it works wonderfully!