A Proud Homeschool Moment

So we have company from South Bend the other day that I have never met. My dh and older ones had met the Dad and several of the kids at a Higher Things conference. The family was down in Myrtle Beach vacationing and wanted to spend an afternoon with our whole family, so up they came and it was lovely until.....

I was feeding the baby in the living room when I hear my three year old darling announce to the lunch table, "I can spell! A-S-S! That spells the 'A' word."

oh joy hooray hooray

and this is our homeschool...

Today, I got this book out of the library for my 10 year old son (at least) to read. It is the first book in a series of seven of an adaptation of Homer's Odyssey. As I handed it to him, I asked him to read aloud to me so I could help him with the unusual names.

We get to the name "Agamemnon" and he did not even flinch as he read it fluently. I asked, "Agamemnon? You could read Agamemnon??" "Yes, Mom, I know this story!"

(Huh? You do??? How can you know this story when you refuse to read and I am always finding you watching Disney Channel???) So I ask, "How do you know this story??"

"Mom, you know High School Musical? Well, there is a guy on that show named Troy. That is not his real name. He picked it for himself because when he was a little boy, his dad used to read to him a story about Agamemnon. Troy was the name of where the battle was fought and he thought that would be a cool name to have."


So there you go. He doesn't really KNOW the story of Odysseus, but he knows there is a story which is more than I can say for myself at that age. It was a point of reference that made him excited to read the books, so I am happy.

I cannot count the number of times this has happened over the years when I have gone to teach something and they already knew it from some other place in their daily lives....tv, video game, comic book or some other "unacceptable" place.

Power Point

I am making a Powerpoint presentation. Why? I have been afraid of trying it for years. My oldest had to do her first one ever last year at the community college. I figured that if she could learn in a few days, maybe I would be able to as well. It would help me to know as dear daughter #2 will have to her first one this semester.

I decided to use a Veritas Press song of the Presidents as my "template." I have yet to figure out exactly how to put music to it. Maybe I shouldn't and just have us sing along as we watch.





#1 George Washington, #2 John Adams, 3 was Thomas Jefferson ...

The Great Awakening

When I was a young teen, I thought my emotional experiences in worship situations were the Holy Spirit speaking to me. That is what my college age Lutheran Camp Counselors told me and I believed them completely! Thus began my emotional walk with God - straight to Lutheran College where I could have a mountaintop experience every day!!! What could be better?

(Why didn't I remember Jesus telling his disciples at Transfiguration that it could not be so? But that He would be with them anyway?)

Fast forward to the years I was teaching my little girls a song from our history curriculum...that included the Great Awakening as a significant movement in America's historical timeline. Huh? What was the Great Awakening? What was the Second Great Awakening? I had no idea.



From http://www.wfu.edu/~matthetl/perspectives/four.html:

"The Awakening reinterpreted the meaning of the covenant between God and his creature. In Puritan theology the focus was on what God has done for us. In the aftermath of the Awakening, the new emphasis was on what man can do in response to God's great gift. The responsibility for salvation is not God's but man's."

From http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/eighteen/ekeyinfo/grawaken.htm:

"What historians call “the first Great Awakening” can best be described as a revitalization of religious piety that swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s. That revival was part of a much broader movement, an evangelical upsurge taking place simultaneously on the other side of the Atlantic, most notably in England, Scotland, and Germany. In all these Protestant cultures during the middle decades of the eighteenth century, a new Age of Faith rose to counter the currents of the Age of Enlightenment, to reaffirm the view that being truly religious meant trusting the heart rather than the head, prizing feeling more than thinking, and relying on biblical revelation rather than human reason."

hmmm. Valuing emotional experiences over God's Word.....uh oh.

Long story short, when we get to the part in the history song that goes "...the first Great Awakening..." I added this comment: "..The first Great Awakening-BOO!" so the kids would know it was NOT the good thing that many Christians of that time unfortunately, believed. AND the song was written by folks who to this day believe it was a wonderful blessing to God's people.