It has been 3 months since my last blog post. I took a break because I was feeling a little overwhelmed with the changes in our life and felt frustrated with not being consistent with my blogging.
What changes overwhelmed me so...becoming an Active-duty military family & relocating our family from Ohio to Kentucky. Leaving our home, family, and our church was very stressful for me...it takes me a long time to warm up to change.
Even though my blogging wasn't consistent, I missed it. I often found myself saying "that would make a good blog post" and then feeling a little bummed because I wasn't blogging anymore. Then I started a new blog...yep...a brand new blog! It isn't a blog that is for writing out thoughts though, so it hasn't really fixed what I was missing with this blog. So I decided to dust off the ole' blog keyboard and begin again! This time though I won't be focusing on how many posts I do or don't write, when I have an idea I will share it and if I don't have any ideas then I won't stress about it.
Change is still happening for our family. Two big changes....
- Hubby is deploying for 400 days. While we have been separated several times all ready with the Army, this is our first deployment and it is the longest length of time. So LOTS of prayers will be requested!
- We are changing from an eclectic-unschoolish homeschool method to an eclectic-Charlotte Mason homeschool method.
Why are we changing our homeschool method? Well, as much as I loved our eclectic-unschooling style, it just doesn't seem to be a good fit for our 9 year old son, Eli. He would prefer to just sit around and play video games all day, with very little interest in anything else. Don't get me wrong, I am not against the video games, he learned how to count and read some words while playing Minecraft...but he needs more of a constant structure to help him retain what he is learning.
So, why Charlotte Mason? Homeschooling is a lifestyle choice for us, much like going to church, living a Christian way, and being a military family, so Charlotte Masons' words "Education is an Atmosphere, a discipline, a Life" really drew me in to learning more about the CM method. We started last year with a few weeks here and there of more structured learning using a few CM ideas and Eli really seemed to take to it pretty well. A CM style is definitely more structured but with living books and lots of nature study, not a bunch of workbooks or worksheets and rigid lesson plans (which I really dislike). Anyway, I will be sharing more about our CM homeschooling later, I still have plenty to research and learn about it.
And since we are switching methods, it also means that we will be switching curriculum choices....so I am loading up a photo album on our Facebook Fan Page of homeschool items that we are selling to make money for purchasing the books that we will need and to make room on our book shelves for all of the new wonderful living books.
Well, that's all for now. I'll be back later.
God Bless!
Jenny