Hostage

There is a really great blog post over at The Busy Homeschool Mom called Homeschooling Held Hostage. You can read it here.

This was something I really needed to read because I fall victim to this day after day.

Funny thing, each year I say "we will make time for field trips."  But, field trips never seem to make it into our schedule.  And yes, I totally get the co-op thing....struggling with that this year, an abundance of work for my oldest simply because she is "dialectic" now.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE our co-op.  I love the two families we are in a co-op with.  And I love Tapestry of Grace, although it is a very detailed curriculum.  Pressure is certainly rising....my oldest is now 6th grade, won't be long before we will be counting credits for High School.  I admit, the thought of dual enrollment has been on the radar, hoping for an Associates Degree by the time she graduates High School.

I know there is room for improvement.  When my son is no longer paying attention to his 5th book on the Holocaust, we should jump on our bikes and take a stroll around the neighborhood.  The weather has been so gorgeous outside lately, we could spend time reading out by the pool - or let the kids do their work in their fort.  As the pool heats up, we can do work with our feet dangling in the water (this we have done before).  Now, we do our read alouds on our couch, but even this is new this year as I have always done everything in our school room.  I thought, we had a school room we need to use it.  This shift around the house to do school has allowed me the freedom to move the schoolroom and make it a bedroom for one of our children.

And field trips....well if I honestly look at it, we do field trips just not really in a traditional way.  We take our vacations during the school year (a week in the mountains), we take long weekends to camp and do take time off for those days.  We hit amusement parks.  The Florida State Fair is going on right now and our county schools had a "fair day." I don't do fairs.  I cannot stand them actually, so I told my kids if we can skip the fair, we will take a day off school to go to Busch Gardens.  Its cleaner, the food is healthier and the rides are safer.  Now, I just have to schedule that trip.

Bible.  Guilty.  I was awful about not doing Bible for the right reasons.  I did realize this though and we have changed our motivation and attitude towards Bible.  My oldest started her first Precept Upon Precept on Esther, which she is loving.  I got my youngest the Jesus Storybook for the iPad, which reads it to her.  And my son is working on Precept Discover for Yourselves on John.  Now, none of this matters if our heart is still just a checklist.  Teaching God's word should be the center of what we do and creating a Christian Biblical worldview, which is exactly the heart of our co-op.  We teach history and literature through a Biblical worldview and our homeschool needs to be the same.

Anyway, the article is good and brings up things I have not been so good at doing.  So today is a new day to enjoy and remember why we started homeschooling!