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Grace like rain…

Today is one of the days I needed grace like rain.

It was a hard day. In fact, it was a hard week. As I continue to struggle with my struggling learner I question all that is right and normal. I watch my family struggle with the one God has given us to love, teach and raise. I’m searching for answers because I have none. I asked God if I could have this child healed for my birthday. ” Can you do that for me God? I promise I will never ask for another thing.”

Don’t you love the bargaining stage? It’s when I know something needs to shift. Whether it be my focus or my routine or my faith or……

Something must change. These are the days I realize remember the definition of insanity as it was once told to me….”It’s doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

“Lord, am I insane?”

It is during times like these I question myself as the devil begins to throw his darts at me. I think someone else certainly could do a better job of this than me. Anyone. Even the cat.

But I cling to the hope of the next moment, the next day, the next life where there will be no more tears or struggles.

The chocolate? I hide it in the closet so I can eat it alone. Something just for me. One little slice of life that is predictable. I eat and I gain a few ounces. Predictable. I think I like that word right now. It’s a comfortable word.

Trusting Him…

3 Comments

Posted: March 19, 2011 by Julie |Category: Homeschooling | Our Family, Our Lives | Tags:

Facebook

I’m approaching a touchy subject here…Facebook.

My husband and I have been convicted not to use Facebook. It’s a decision many of my friends have not liked but it’s our conviction and a way of protecting our family. I found a great article which I found to be very balanced about Facebook and infidelity. Read it for yourself, but it states that Facebook is just like the phone or the internet. If you go looking for trouble you often find it. Facebook can lend towards infidelity when those who use it are more interested in the past than in the future. It also states that people sin, not Facebook or the computer or the phone. These avenues, I believe, make our desire to stray available at our fingertips. But, like I also stated, I believe where there is a will there is a way. Safeguards are important and necessary as each is led.

I liked the article. We will still choose not to use Facebook as an example to our kids of our choice to go against society and follow God’s prompting in our lives but I feel more balanced now in how I look at one of the social tools of our age.

Most people feel Facebook rocks. What about you?

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Missing in action…

Hello there all of you who have had the time to visit blog land lately.

Yes, I admit it. I’ve been missing in action. We’ve been busy with school and then a trip back home to SC and then school again and…well, life, and…and….you get the idea.

We only have 4 weeks left in our homeschool co-op. Yippee! Then life slows down to a crawl compared to what it looks like now. I wanted to thank everyone who took the time to comment on The Pioneer Woman’s blog here. I have been floored and humbled by the wonderful advice and thoughtful words of encouragement. It’s so wonderful to have a forum for reaching more people than my humble blog reaches. I have OMSH to thank for publishing my comment and taking the time to understand what I was asking and the information I was seeking. For those of you who did not read her blog that day here was my question:

“I have a struggling learner who is 12. He’s in the 6th grade. I’ve done some brain integration therapy with him and read the books. He’s definitely right brain and has auditory blocks we are working through. My daughter who is 6 is exhibiting the same signs of behavior but I’m recognizing them at an early age. My middle two sons are fairly easy going and I feel that because I have to spend so much time on the other two these easy kids get shorted. I need some help, some direction, some other mom that might have a struggling learner and some hope to offer.”

If you can identify with this question in any way click on over to Ree’s blog and read some of the amazing comments.

Seth…one of our rough drafts

I realized after posting my key word outline of Seth that I duplicated one of the photos. Hope to fix that when I can get to my photos. Sorry!!!

Rough Draft with emphasis on rough so you get the idea of where you start and where you end:

I. Intro: (yet to be completed)

II My friend Seth has a great personality and is hilarious. He is kind, fun loving and does not argue, hit and is just plain nice. His family are Christians and have the same family values as ours. We enjoy spending time together. He makes us laugh until our stomachs hurt and he makes great movies. I think he might be a producer one day. Seth, well, he’s pretty awesome and we love him like he loves us. Our friendship has continued since I was 6 years old. As you can see Seth’s personality is wonderful!

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III. Overnighting is so much fun. So Seth is a pretty awesome guy to have sleep over at our house. My brothers stay up all night with Seth. My youngest brother and Seth usually sleep in the den on the couch. We also like to play a game we invented called The Scare Game. Junk food is one of the things we like to eat during our overnighters. We rejoice when spending time with Seth. This is why we like overnighters with Seth so much.

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IV. We definitely have several favorite things to do with Seth. The scare game is a game we play with all the lights off in the basement of our house. Someone is chosen as “it”. Then we basically run and scream and scream. It drives my mom nuts. We also have wars with our Nerf swords, go on field trips together and swim at his house because he has a pool. We also play laser tag at night. These are some of our favorite things to do.

V. Conclusion (yet to be written)

So…. from here we will reword, remove any banned words, add quality adjectives, varying sentence openers, strong verbs and write both an introduction and a conclusion. I hope to have the final papers up next week. See you then.

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Posted: February 25, 2011 by Julie |Category: Homeschooling | Tags:

Right Brain/Left Brain

I am a left brain learner most of the time. God has gifted me with two right brain learners. He has a sense of humor that way. The right brain stores long term memory, pictures, music, colors and humor, option and math concepts (or the big picture) and a more unstructured approach to learning. Those of us who are left brain thinkers are more concerned with the details, short term memory, thinking, logic, structure, language and short term memory.

I’ve learned as of late there are also auditory and visual processing glitches. So I’m thinking….”Ah great, add that to the soup I’m making and I’m getting a little unsure of the recipe.”

I’ve done a lot of reading lately in Diane Craft’s Brain Integration Therapy Manual. It’s intense but makes a lot of sense. I think the feeling of intensity is only because I feel overwhelmed with the daunting task set before me. Teach two right brain thinkers to “do school.” Lovely.

I remind myself daily that God has given me only what He knows I can handle. He has given me my right brain thinkers for a reason. That lovely iron sharpening iron thing that is so pleasant to think about.

I thought I would list some common characteristics from Dianne Craft’s book.

Common Characteristics of a Left Brain Learner:

Tends to seek structure in his or her day
Memorizes best by repetition (auditory or writing)
Likes to know the plan for each day, week, etc.
Tends to work well independently.
Likes to make lists and check them off as tasks are completed.
Thinks things through with multiple pieces of evidence before coming to a conclusion.
Tends to find math interesting ans is very good at it.
Likes the predictability and conciseness of workbooks.
Can do well with self-paced and computer curriculum.

Common Characteristics of a Right Brain Learner

Likes spontaneous events, versus planned events each day. Seeks change
Memorizes best by using meaning, color, pictures, story, and/or emotion in material
Does not plan ahead regularly.
Prefers much involvement with parent while doing school lessons.
Does not do items sequentially, but skips around in his or her work.
Makes quantum leaps when learning. Figures things out from scanty evidence.
Finds math quite repetitive and somewhat boring.
Prefers projects and discussions rather than workbook learning.
Does not do well with self-paced or computer curriculum, but rather one that requires more parent and teacher involvement, such as unit studies, or any curriculum that is more hands-on and interactive with the adult.

Of course we can usually see ourselves in both category but we often tend towards one. Which are you?

If you want more information a good site is http://www.diannecraft.org/

Anything anyone else has to offer out there would be much appreciated!! Blessings…..

4 Comments

Posted: February 16, 2011 by Julie |Category: Homeschooling | Tags: brain integration therapy, dianne craft, left brain, right brain, struggling learner

Love notes

They arrive on my morning cup of coffee way after my husband has left for work. They are not there every day but most days I find a sweet note I squint to read with my “waking up” eyes. I love these reminders that he is with me during the day.

He’s a terrific man and I love him deeply!!

Seth…

We’re practicing key word outlining in Language. I want my boys to have it down pat so we’re thinking of fun topics (from our brains) to key word outline. The day before yesterday we did 1. toothbrushes and 2. poop, separately NOT together because that would be…..well…..gross.

Today we picked another favorite topic and Monday we will write our paper about this topic. I want this to be a surprise to one of my readers so here are the photos:

Our TOPIC and our brainstorming:

We decided to combine two of our ideas and crossed off the one they were least interested in writing about so here is our key word outlining for our first paragraph:

Second paragraph: pictures are free and do not count in our 3 word maximum so we use them quite a bit in our outlines of course the arrow means up!

Third paragraph: Four words are allowed occasionally as you may have noticed in our first paragraph.

Here is our entire white board:

And here is Son #1 copying it onto a piece of notebook paper in preparation for writing.

For those of you who are not familiar with key word outlining it is the process of picking out three important or interesting facts and using those facts to make a paragraph. We normally keyword outline from a source text but my boys think picking information about a topic from our brains is more fun so we’re practicing it this way for now.

We then write a rough draft, add dress-ups (-ly words, strong verbs, quality adjectives, prepositional openers, -ing openers, VSS (very short sentences)) to make our papers interesting.

We then write a final draft with a introductory and conclusion paragraph. The introductory paragraph introduces you to the paper and the conclusion tells you the best thing about the topic we are writing about. Sound hard? It’s really not! This outline (because the boys love it) took about 10 minutes. My youngest son and daughter were even involved in the process.

When we finish out papers we will deliver them to “the topic”.

What are you doing in school today?

1 Comment

Posted: February 11, 2011 by Julie |Category: Homeschooling | Tags:

Almost nailing it!

Today Jodi at MCP Actions told us how to catch a cool photo of a water droplet.

I took a shot at it today when I had an extra spare 30 seconds. Even tho I didn’t nail it I thought the photo was kinda cool!

3 Comments

Posted: February 9, 2011 by Julie |Category: Photography and Tips | Tags:

On Fishing…

Florida provided a beautiful weekend this past weekend and we had our eyes set on a trip to the beach….not in bathing suits but just to walk and see the water. Clouds rolled in which cut some of the warmth out of the air so we decided on fishing instead. It’s been a while since we’ve been because it’s just been cold, down right cold.

We weren’t encouraged when the bread we tossed in the water wasn’t even eaten by a turtle but we went through our assortments of beetle spins, grape worms and just plain ole bread! We were about to give up when our youngest son snagged what appeared to be the only fish in the pond. We huddled around to see what he would bring to the surface.

Baby Girl is usually the master (only) fisherman when she joins her dad at the pond so she’s gotten herself quite a name in these parts! (These parts being our family…all 6 of us!)

But the baby boy came up with this prize this day! Boy was he proud. Check out that fish! It had to be ten feel long don’t ‘cha think? Just had to be! And no, Lisa, we did not eat him. He’s happily swimming with his buddy Rocky and his tube shaped hamburger deep within the lake. Happy as a little camper, just the way you make me.