Sunday, September 13, 2009

Some Catching Up...

I truly hate to leave things undone, including keeping up with my correspondence with family and friends. I have let this blog go for far too long, and although I always resolve to "start and then keep up with it", I am afraid that sometimes our lives get so busy and hectic that it is not a terrible priority and so it gets forgotten in favor of far more pressing things. So, dear friends, I do not want to promise once again that I will faithfully enter the daily journals that I wish I could, but I will promise to write more regularly...Aiming at first for once a week. It is my heartfelt desire to chronicle this homeschool year, as things have begun a little unexpectedly.

You see, at some point during the summer my dear husband decided that we would keep our oldest daughter, Kayla, home this year. I struggled most of the time trying to figure out where I should place her with regard to the studies I am doing with my middle daughter, Sara. At this time they do much of the same work. Sara seems to be more apt to remember and recall information, and this I attribute largely to the fact that she's always been homeschooled using Charlotte Mason's principle of narration.

Kayla tells me often, while rolling her eyes, that she has covered a topic before, but when I probe for details, she cannot recall a single one! Kayla is a product of public school education for the most part, with only a short year or so having been at home. She thrives on being in the classroom, and I feel this is largely because when she first was placed with us as a seven year-old child, she was used to going to a public school, which seemed to be her only truly "safe" place. By the time her adoption finalization came about (along with her two sisters and her younger brother, all of whom are here with us!), she had been in our school system for two years while I homeschooled my other four adopted children. Two months after their finalization in court in December, we found out we were expecting our first biological child, and so the remainder of the school year was busy and hectic and we decided to let Kayla stay until she completed that school year.

At the time I did not mind so much, because the little school that served our country community was located right across the street, with one classroom per grade from kindergarten through grade four. The whole school seemed like an extension of the community, and reflected some old-fashioned values that one does not often find in public schools today. Sadly, our school district closed three country schools, and our own nearby school was one of them.

I find that I need to go, as my "baby", who will turn five in just a little over two weeks, has something akin to a flu and he is crying for me. I hope that those of you who read this post will pray for us this year as we undertake the next stage of our adventures in homeschooling and life.

Blessings,
~Mary

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