Simply Renovated: Homeschooling week 1

"While Satan weaves his shallow lies...God speaks to me in love"

~Sovereign Grace Music~

Satan weaves his shallow lies everyday in my life. Everyday I have to overcome lies with the Living Word of God. Am I consistent? No. Do I let the lies of Satan sometimes settle...make a little home in my life for the day? yes. But I am, oh.so.grateful. for the Holy Spirit inside of me to patiently bring me back to the one who bought me with his blood...Jesus Christ. Grateful for that reminder that I am loved.

This week has been a week of battles. If you're wondering YES I AM STILL HOMESCHOOLING! I really do think people thought I was just going to entertain the thought...I was just going to casually try it out and see what I thought. I'm sure some people thought I would give up in the first few days and send them right back to school. I have had question after question and attack after attack on my decision and ability to home-school. Just keeping repeating, "God speaks to me in love".

Day 1: Woke up early! Put in some fresh blueberry french toast casserole, made coffee and warmed up the fresh blueberry syrup. Made hot chocolate for the kids, got their books out and lit a candle! They were excited to start and so was I. I was also very nervous. I think if you asked me at the end of the first day my honest response would have been, "I'm not cut out for this. I am going to fail them. They couldn't have possibly learned a thing". Zakary broke down because he couldn't write his "z" exactly like I did it. Matthew was actually kind of impressive, tracing his name almost perfectly the first time around. William had a bad mood after a 1/2 hour of work. The first day I decided they were going to need lots of breaks and not all of them were going to be able to sit down and do exactly what I tell them.

Day 2: William and I had dentists appointments in the morning so our morning was not for school work. We came home and dove in. Again...another bad day. One with crying, a lot of "i don't want to's" and bad attitudes. We did not finish everything that day. I was frustrated. Actually I was down, sad, frustrated and critical of my own ability to do this. I prayed and Brian prayed with me and I did feel a peace about things. I determined to do things differently. I went for a run that night and thought about a lot of things. I had a talk with Will and Zak about the importance of education and why we have decided to keep them home for now. I talked to them about their attitudes and how from now on if any of us have bad attitudes we were going to drop what we are doing and pray to Jesus about our attitude. We had fun that night...casually reading as a family and discussing what we learned.

Day 3: Today! We all slept in a little (amazing). By sleeping in I mean 7:30am :). We woke up and I made coffee, peeled some apples and started making applesauce. Together we made two different kinds..chunky and smooth and both with different spices and ingredients. It was 9 a.m. before we sat down at the table to start. We started off with a prayer and a bible story for the day...while reviewing our bible stories from earlier this week. We then read three books together, talked about the days of the week, sang a few songs and dove into our work. we did lots of craft stuff today and it was an amazing day! we had two times where we had to stop what we were doing and pray for our attitudes and it was such a blessing.

My house is not perfect! My house is actually a mess (if you know how clean I like my house to be). My laundry has been done and folded but not put away. I have only edited three pictures all week but I have talked with my kids more this week than in the last 6 months I think. It is all so worth it!

While everyone else was posting such cute pictures of their kids first day back to school...we decided to be comical :D and we had fun doing it!