I didn’t make it.

I suppose setting an alarm might be condusive to reaching my goal of waking up before 6am, rather than just hopping I wake up! lol!

Wow - I feel completely out of blogging mode! While away I re-accessed the girls’ activities and “schooling”, geared up for and produced some scrapbooking, and started a few “secret” e-book projects. The latter are going to be alot more work than I thought, but still good fun. Blogging has immediate gratification to it. Posts are easy (the average post) to complete, but a larger project takes more perseverance, somthing I am short on these days, it seems.

I discovered an awesome teacher’s store just a mile away which helped me rejeuvinate my “pre-homeschool” efforts. For Elise I made a “school” basket of new phonics activites for us to work on, as well as made a notecard list of other activites to do with her for March. Before Elise was even a month old I had purchased a complete phonics learning system, which really was worth the money. I have had all the resources I needed to get her reading well right in my cupboard. I haven’t bought anything extra except books. Every month or two I just bring out the big box and switch out the activites we are doing. Right now she is using letter tiles to do little activity cards that ask her to fill in the missing letter to form a word, etc. . . along with practicing the short and long vowel readers.

A wonderful lady at our church (thanks Kris!) guided me to a superb online phonics activity resource, Star Fall. It has really wonderful phonics/reading activities that make an awesome suppliment and educational diversion for when I need Elise to work independantly.

We will also be working on learning the calander, the United States map, learning money and handwriting.

I purchased this groovy “Doug and Melissa” calender to use for learning about days, weeks, months, seasons and years, to build on her day’s of the week underwear, bibs and burp cloths for baby and our still going strong days of the week chore schedule and Mulberry bush song. I also found a $3 wall poster of the US with cling labels for the states and capitols. She had learned the states already using puzzle maps, but I needed away to start talking about capitols. In addition, she can practice reading by using the peel-off labels.

To learn about money, its time to break out the Leap Frog cash register again and play store. I think my second is old enough to play with us in a constructive way now. From another wonderful mom at church I got the idea to make or use a chart like this as well.

For my almost-two-year old I am going to focus on shapes, simple counting, colors, coloring and reading lots more books. She is just starting to let me finish a book, barely. I have always heard that reading to young tots is so important and we have been a bit negligent in that area. I found this sweet peg board at the teacher’s store to use for learning many a thing.

I made “play” stations for the baby at each major area of the house. Now that she is awake more, I need places for her to be safe and “play” or look at stimulating things.
I put out her play mat

on our bed after making it in the morning. There is no way our tot can climb onto our 4 1/2 foot tall mattress (really, the thing is huge! We call it our “throne”. lol!) ,

Then she has this swing downstairs in the living room

a pack and play with the bassinet in it in ithe office sporting this favorite toy.

All my babies have loved this Firefly.

In the play room she has her bouncy chair to enjoy and a brand new mobile in her crib.

She is fascinated with this mobile, and I really like it. I think it is both developmentally better than our previous as well as cheaper!

Two things I decided about toys this weekend: Well made educational toys are well worth the money and there is no reason not to buy every baby toy at a resale shop. They are half the price and in perfectly good condition.

I am going to try and sit down with dh to learn how to take/download/print/post pictures so that I can keep rollin’ on scrapbooking as well as post shots of my pages here to keep motivated. One of my “secret” e-book projects is to make an ABC memory verse book. I know there are several already, but not just how I want them to be (some are so obviously baptist in theology, and I want it to be classically reformed. :-)) so I am going to make one! (With the help of my awesomely sweet and tallented friend Allison.)

Ok - I can feel myself getting back into the blog swing of things. My other goal is to get my self up out of bed early in the morning; to join Ann’s early risers club and make it out at 5am. Think I can do it? Look for the time on my post tomorrow morning . . .

Sorry for mis-spelled words. Dh re-did the computer and has yet to put MS office back on so I can use the spell check.

Ah, yes. I must, I MUST make myself break for a few days. My plan is to redirect my energies until Monday. A few things need attending too. So if you are dying to read CEM (lol!), hopefully you might find something interesting in the category archives! Be back soon!

I don’t suggest reading this book if you don’t want to have to think of home schooling or forking out the dough for private school. Wilson writes, “Christian parents who have abdicated responsibility for their children to the government school are guilty of sinful negligence.” He doesn’t mince words, does he?! Although Mr. Wilson states that “Scripture does not list a sin called ’sending one’s children to public school. . . . The godly parents [at public school] who are refusing to abdicate, who are fighting the good fight, are expending their energy in a way that I believe could be employed elsewhere with much greater fruitfulness.”

Wilson is correct in arguing that no education is “neutral” in terms of religious bias that under girds what is taught, how it is taught and by whom. And indeed, our public education is based on an agnostic (at best) religious worldview. He quotes Stephen C Perks as having said,

“This truth has been understood by more by the humanists heretofore than it has by the Christians. It is the mutual exclusiveness of these two positions which makes the provision of a specifically Christian education for our children essential, and the sending of our children to state schools to be educated by humanists a denial of the faith implicitly.”

Again, bold statement! If I try to argue with this and imagine how I might, in good conscience (not because the idea of having 6 hours a day break sounds nice . . .), be able to send my girls to government schools, I first think that just because I let someone else teach them a bit, doesn’t mean I have abdicated their education. If I as a parent take responsibility for it all, even though I am not doing all the tasks, then might still give them a Christian education. I can use what “wrong things” they are taught at school as opportunities to train them how to deal with a world in rebellion against God. Practically, however, children spend so much time at public school and there is so much else going on in life, that it seems overwhelming to have to play “catch up” with my kids when they aren’t home much to catch up! Children grow SO fast anyway and there is SO much to teach them. It does seem like negligence to give up so much of my time with them.

What’s more, even Neil Bortz, who is hardly seems a Christian, mocks the state of our schools. Because of the commitment to agnosticism, so much of the teaching is mediocre, trying to take in all sides and be fair. Wilson says,

“Nonbelievers can teach the truth in any given area only on the basis of common grace - that is, if they borrow Christian categories on the sly in order to do so. But when nonbelievers grow increasingly aware of their epistemological assumptions, they begin rejecting the very concept of truth - every manifestation of it - and they embrace the absurd.”

For example, in a song on “Signing Time” Rachel sings “Your family was made for you and mine was made for me.” The category “made” is a Christian one, or at least theistic. Is it not too far fetched for teachers to be told not to use the “made” category because it is theistic? First grade teachers unable to tell their students that they family was specially made just for them? News has reported worse poppy-cock being taught at the school down the road than that. Or imagine the term “creature”. That is again, a creationist category. The word “creature” is now banned from a teacher’s lips so that we can be “fair” to all religions.

More and more it seems like a vague not-much is taught except for where the commitment to secular humanism has something certain to say, such as in the field of biology. Education is powerful when carried by the thrust of passionate conviction, and I doubt that the passionate convictions I want my children to “catch” are going to be found at the school down the street.

Wilson doesn’t think Christian teachers should waste their time in public schools either. He says they either won’t accomplish anything or be fired if they do. I am not sure I agree with this, but don’t have time to work out my thoughts further.

The main mental shift that it seems necessary for American Christians to understand is that we don’t live as a subset of our culture. The church, the kingdom of Christ, is a whole, complete other culture. Imagine an outline; we are not a capital A under the Roman numeral “Untied States”. Christ is King and our faith breaks forth into every aspect of our lives and recreates it in the image of The Son.

Click here to find the book at amazon.com

“It is no slight thing when they who are so fresh from God love us.” ~ Charles Dickens

“Before you were conceived, I wanted you. Before you were born, I loved you. Before you were here an hour, I would give my life for you. This is the miracle of life. ~ Mauren Hawkins

“The soul is healed by being with children” ~ Dostoevsky

“The most effective kind of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things.” ~ Plato

Toss out the bleach, this is your new non-toxic whitener and disinfectant!

I used it on the whites this morning with a sprinkle of baking soda (Monday is laundry day, you know!) and they turned out nice and bright.

I see the rise of an army emerging on the hroizon, marching toward the valley of Kidron, wearing helmets of salvation and sandals of good news and wielding the sword of truth, yet clad in hemp fiber pants and tunics of fine, soft organic cotton. The eco-christian and crunchy con’s are gathering together to take back love of Creation from the seductive grips of atheistic liberalism.

If I could form my own party it would have the Green consciousness of the Green party, the (presumed) impitus to ensure the welfare of the poor from the Democrats, the conservative view of the role of government from the republicans and the skepticism of government of the libertarians. To all these things, add a great disdain for political corruption and abuse of the systema and you have . . . an impossible dream! lol!

I have found some others with similar thoughts over at Sarah’s blog “Misadventures”. Check out her crunchy con manifesto. I don’t really agree with points 4 and 6, however. Politics and economics are very much a part of culture, even Christian culture. Rather than seperate them and stand as critics of politics and economics, we are to redeem them as the body of Christ. All things come together in Him, all things.

Further, big is not always bad. Not even almost always. Christ’s kingdom is big; its not bad. Christ’s kingdom is global; its not bad. However, the nature of that which is large scale must enhance instead of deminish the quality of the small scale.

Good thoughts Sarah, very timely for me.