The Plans of Mice and Men (and moms)...

Once again, I spent some time this summer tweaking the school room and the basic plans for curriculum and schedule and such. I thought we were ready to move into the official school year. Apparently, Baker was not as ready as I though or maybe he is just being ornery. For the past two weeks, he has spent quite a bit of time on the laundry room stairs. The Lord really encouraged me the past few days with similar stories from other moms. I have spent quite a bit of time in prayer for me and for my son. As you can imagine, I have delayed getting this post up because I have been so worn out. All you mommas that school more than one child, my hat is off to you. To think about having a sibling around that Baker would feed off and vice versa, I'd probably throw in the towel. LOL!

Here are the pix of our spiffed up room. We found out that Baker is just slightly nearsighted so he now has a lamp on his desk since good lighting will help him see more clearly. I have built a break into the morning which seems to help us. We are continuing with the work box system. It has been such a tremendous blessing to us.

I am loving the "morning meeting" board that has his memory work, calendar, a critical thinking activity, visual art from our artist of the month and our We Choose Virtues card. It has made it easy for me to incorporate some of these things that I have and probably would continue to forget to do - namely, critical thinking and learning about the artist.

The art card that you see on the board is from the Usborne decks, "Famous Paintings" and "Impressionist Paintings". There is information about the artist and the style on the back of each card. It's a mini art course in a deck. Let me know if you want to order. We are loving them.

The We Choose Virtues card has been a great introduction to our curriculum. Right now we're doing one a week. The back of the card has a clear definition of the virtue and a verse. We review it every day. I downloaded the coloring book so we are making a book as we go. For every virtue, there is a color sheet followed by a page with the verse in cursive that he traces (I use abcteach.com to make those).  He even hugged his "book" to himself one day and said, "I love my virtues book!". Granted he was disobeying within a few minutes but now I know we are deliberately working towards better behavior. To purchase these materials for your family or church, use "AMY" at checkout to get $8 off the flash cards. The coloring book is $1. The teacher manual is now in a downloadable format for $4.99. The fridge poster is on sale and it's one our fridge so the material is in front of us all the time.

I love seeing your home school spots so please share!

Purposefully Teaching Virtues

I'm a big fan of the Duggars - not because they are from AR or because they are famous. As a matter of fact, I initially thought they were nuts. However, after watching the show and having the chance to cross paths and be a "friend for a season" with them, I am in awe and in a good way. I have read both books and have been convicted of several things. One is that I need to be more deliberate about discipleing my children in Godly character and virtues. Yelling at them to obey when I have hit the end of my rope has not led to long term change; imagine that. Any success I have had in teaching character has been mostly accidental. Just because my child can recite Bible verses doesn't mean that he is always acting as he should (for that matter, neither do I but that's another confession). I looked up many of the resources listed in the Duggar's book and while they work beautifully for their family, I just wasn't "feeling it".
In that wonderful, mysterious way that God works, I saw an little ad on Facebook one day for "We Choose Virtues" and fell in love. This creator had essentially brought virtues and character into a modern era. Each virtue is Biblical and clearly defined. The graphics are charming without being cheesy. That's when it dawned on me - I was expecting my son to learn what these virtues are by osmosis when what I should be doing first is defining them clearly and then correcting behavior. Well, duh! I should know better...(yes, I do have a teaching degree; why do you ask?)
Anyway, I kept visiting the web site and I just could not shake the "I should buy this" voice. So I did. After all, these are the real lessons of life. Math and science are great but Godly character is priceless and has eternal value!   I'm so happy to have found something affordable and appealing and Biblical to help bridge the gap from knowledge to application. I'll blog later on how this will be worked into our school day and life in general here at Chez Loften.
Visit the site. Fan "We Choose Virtues" on FB. Read their story. Pass the word on. When you're ready to buy, use the code "AMY" at checkout for an $8 discount on the flashcards. You'll be glad you did! I'm looking forward to a generation that will turn it's face to God and model virtues for the next one.