Thursday, September 10, 2015

Routine

After waking up super early and having everything ready for the first day of homeschool, the kids had to wake ME on the second. Oops. I guess it's good that they know their mom isn't perfect.

I don't want to jinx things, but our past 2 days of school have been organized, productive and fun. Maybe it's because my youngest is now in first grade and is a bit more independent? All summer she said over and over again that she didn't want to do schoolwork. But the minute she realized that she was doing similar work to her older sisters, she was in 100%.

My goal is to make time for some of the very imortant subjects that were falling by the wayside when we run short on time. I've had quite a journey in my health these past two years and I want to impart some of that knowledge to the kids from the get-go so they don't require a health scare to get it right.

One of those is meditation. Scientific studies now prove what I experienced myself. Tremendous, identifiable benefits from even the quickest meditation routine. I found some great books on meditation and yoga that honor the perspective of a young child who is going to find deep breathing through your diaphragm hysterical.

My favorite is Breathe, Chill - A Handy Book of Games and Techniques Introducing Breathing, Meditation and Relaxation to Kids and Teens by Lisa Roberts. It was very inexpensive on Amazon and well worth it. All my kids love it (ages 6-12).

The other topic is faith. I was raised from birth as a Catholic. My mom was Catholic; my dad a non practicing Episcopalian. We went to church every week and holidays but that was about it. We didn't have family prayer despite the fact that I know my mom had a tremendous faith. It just was not talked about much in our home.

That "holy on Sundays only" was one of the reasons that I left the church from my college years through my 30's. I felt like I should either be Catholic all the time or none. And I also didn't have enough opportunity to develop my own meaningful relationship with God.

Funny how the threat of a severe illness crystalizes your beliefs in a matter of moments. Needless to say, we've been back to the church since 2014 and as my younger self would have wished, we're practicing catholicism all week long.

That being said, we are also starting every day with a quick bit of cathecism. Another good book I found, Totally Catholic by Mary Glavich.

Each chapter touches on a topic: What is faith?, What is the Sacrament of Penance? What is Involved in Honesty?, etc. They also include a scripture link, a couple of quick "Did you know?" facts and a very brief biography of a saint.  It's a great opportunity for the kids to ask questions and discuss and only took about 15 minutes to go through the chapter.



This morning, I got up early enough to have plenty of time to myself prepping for the day. That included some work on Purlsmith (my Etsy shop that sells freshwater pearl and silver stitch markers). I can't tell you how much fun I had playing with pearls and acorn caps. Just enough to make my creative side feel satisfied before I devote the day to the kids.

Time to go work on the schedule in Excel and see if I can find the perfect blend of planned with room for going off on tangents, our specialty.



Have fun
-Becky


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