A New Year...A New Resolution

No, it's not January and even if it was, I wouldn't be making a New Year's resolution. We are into our 5th week of the school year. So far things are going fairly well. This year we have a 9th, 7th, 5th, 3rd, 2nd and Pre-K student. Andrew (2.5) has a different playmate every 30 minutes to help keep him out of trouble and Daniel (16 mo.) naps through the majority of our school time. I've probably got about another month of relatively smooth days until Daniel gives up his morning nap. Once he does that, I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm praying now that the Lord will give me wisdom for handling that new "wrinkle." (By "smooth" I don't mean perfect, I mean Andrew only interrupted 5 times as opposed to 20, no one has "lost" their reading book, I have all the supplies for the science experiment and Luke and Will aren't wrestling in the floor as opposed to doing their math!)


My resolution for this year is to make school more "fun." When I taught public school my students didn't use a textbook and at least 1/3 of my lessons were hands-on. When I first started teaching my own children, we did a lot of hands-on projects. As our family/school grew those types of activities began to fall by the wayside. Somewhere I became more concerned with "getting school done" than with making learning come to life. Now I don't think everything a kid does needs to be fun. Not all of life is fun. It happens to be a lot of work, and school is a place where kids should learn to be diligent. However, that doesn't mean we don't need to mix in fun projects along with memorizing multiplication facts and writing reports.


I think a lot of my hesitation about doing projects/activities is related to my "Yes Mom" post below. I don't like messes. I don't like being inconvenienced. I don't like getting side-tracked and not accomplishing my "to-do" list for the day. Notice a pattern? All of my excuses are about me, me, me. Christ asks us to die to self and serve others. This year I'm going to try to die to my own selfish desires and do the things that I know will help my kids have wonderful memories.



So quiet down textbooks, spelling tests go to sleep
I'm making memories with my kids...memories they will keep.