Joyfully

One of my goals is to homeschool joyfully.  This is part of an overarching quest to lead a joyful life.  And it started about a year and a half ago.

Let me explain.  I am usually a cheerful person who enjoys life a lot.  However, I accidentally took a turn into a land of no joy about two years ago.  And when I realized how drab and gray family life had become for all of us, I set out to find my way back to living joyfully.  If you're in that position, it might help you to know that I have made it to a more joyful life, one that is joyful and not just the product of a cheerful disposition.

One of the first things that I rediscovered was to purposefully try to make life more joyful.  Make meals special.  Celebrate holidays.  Create valuable moments.  I'll talk more about these and resources to help with them in future posts.

Another thing--don´t make excuses.  In my case, I had done all those things in the past, BUT now I was living in a foreign country.  Now I only had one child at home.  Now ministry demands left no time.

I had to put aside all those excuses and try to make the life I am living now joyful.

Another Don't--and probably the most important one. Don´t forget that joy is a fruit of the Spirit.  If you are not having joy, how is your spiritual life?  I do NOT mean are you reading five chapters of the Bible or praying an hour every morning or any other performance type practice.  These things have their time and place, but if your spiritual life is characterized by checklist driven practices, it is unlikely that you are in a close spiritual relationship with the Lord.  A close relationship is usually not characterized by checklists.  Checklists are more like what keeps you going when the joy is gone, or what you do when you have no idea what to do.

Think about it.  When you want to spend time with someone, when you enjoy (that j-word again!) their presence, you do not use a check list of what to say and do.  That's more like what happens when you have to spend time with someone you don't know.

And if that someone is God, then you need to get to know him again.  Read parts of the Bible that you enjoy.  Pray as if God was sitting in the room talking to you.  Tell him that you want a warm relationship, that you want joy.  He'll listen and answer.  This one thing alone may bring your joy back.

If you are looking for joy, why not start here?  It's my prayer that you will find it.

Plutarch and character

When you look for character education resources, you find Plutarch recommended everywhere.  I personally have not done the best with this in the past.  It seems like somehow I miss the point and it just winds up as a (someitmes) interesting historical reading.


  But I found this great blog post on the blog Charlotte Mason Help.  How We Study Plutarch gives a good strategy for Plutarch that makes it a lot more applicable and interesting.  Of course since I have only one at home now I have to make one kid activities!

Free audio books - a boost to literature studies

Librivox is a great source for free audio books.

Our literature studies have really taken off with this resource!

Since we live in Peru, we are always looking for downloadable resources and literature in English.  And of course, as missionaries, we really appreciate FREE!

Librivox also offers the opportunity to volunteer as a reader, a great opportunity to volunteer (character development) , practice reading and theater, and it would be pretty cool to hear your own recording!

Keeping up with grades, lesson plans, etc.

The greatest tool that I have found so far is Homeschool Skedtrack, an online scheduler and tracker that is free to use.  I belong to an umbrella school that requires lesson plans and grades for your annual (or semiannual) report and getting it done is really quick with this.  I have tried many methods, and this one is certainly the best for me!

One hint:  Watch the video tutorials even if you never do that and always figure things out on your own!  They are a big help.

Animal Reports

My middle school son has to write a report about an extinct bird.  He's the kind of kid who needs a step-by-step breakdown of what you do in a report, or he will turn in just a few sentences and wonder why Mom & Dad say its not good enough.  So I went looking for just such a thing.  Here's what I found.

Step by step for older kids  (This is on E How and has links to other articles, but this one is my favorite.)

Animal Report Graphic Organizer

Report planner/writing guide (I think I will try this one!)