I think of school as more than academics. For the younger kids its about character development and for all of them it's about learning about God's character and about Him. Uh huh. R. C. Sproul, Jr. says that if all kids do is study the Bible, that's enough. He uses 2 Tim 3:16 for his reasoning:
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"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness..." That's it. That's all you need. If you want to read more about this I highly recommend reading his book, When You Rise Up. You can buy it fairly cheap on Amazon.
So, anyway, we had "off" yesterday. Even so, Luke did a math lesson. I am still regretting my decision last year to change is math from Teaching Textbooks (TT) which had been working very well for him. I changed to a different curriculum for Geometry and it did not go well, so after a few months he switched back to TT for Geometry which put him "behind" for the year and he finished geometry this school year. So he started Algebra 2 "late" and he's trying to catch up so he can start a new level of math at the beginning of the school year next year rather than partially through like he did this year. I don't think he's "behind" or started "late". I've realized that the kids just need to keep doing math and it's not about what level they actually complete in high school- just keep progressing.
Why did I change the curriculum for Luke's algebra 2? That's the million dollar question. I had some feedback that TT alg 2 was lacking in some areas. Not being a mathematician I didn't even know what they were talking about when I questioned "what areas specifically"? So I changed. After much more research I decided that most/all math curriculum will miss something at some time. It's best to use the one that works for your child, stick with it and they'll eventually get what they need from it. I found there were many college graduates who used TT in high school and even majored in areas such as engineering. I also rationalized that there are many kids who move around when attending public schools and these schools don't all use the same curriculum, so those kids probably end up "lacking" in something too and they do fine in high school and college math.
Years ago I was going to change a spelling curriculum for one of my kids. One of my homeschooling friends asked, "Why?" I didn't have a great answer because I wasn't really sure...it just wasn't "perfect" I guess. She gave a characteristically short, smart answer, "If it's not broken, don't fix it." She is one of the most brilliant people I know.
Back to our day off: Our "make-up" days for yesterday's school are today and tomorrow. Today our family helped with our church's Christmas Care. That's when a bunch of people pack and deliver boxes of food to families near the church who need food. We did it last year. This year we were asked to lead one of the three teams delivering food, so we got a group of our friends to join us! Fifty people. Some from our church and some from our neighborhood. So, school today was hospitality, compassion, relationships, navigation, etc.
Here are pictures of packing boxes of food at our church.
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| Each station has a certain food and the person at the station places it in the box. |
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| This is pre-packing, getting ready to pack. |
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| Packing. |
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| Teens working. |
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| Some standing around-and-waiting time. |
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| Caroline and Aislyn. |
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| Here are some of the finished boxes just before delivery. |
Tomorrow we have tickets to see the Nutcracker. So tomorrow's school is "Fine Arts". Nobody really likes going, but I LOVE it so we try to go every year. Hey, if they are going to go to counseling it might as well be about, "My mom made us go to the Nutcracker every year"....
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