Curriculum Review

Today's review is going to be pretty short.

Bob Jones

I grew up doing their Bible and Spelling. As a student I liked it well enough. My kids used it in their third, and last, time being in a private school. I think it is very similar to Abeka. It's great for a classroom, but not so much for homeschool with multiple grades. They learned a lot while using it. I didn't find much objectionable with it. I think I probably don't like all their pictures, but nothing horribly offensive I guess. I like the way they do the curvy printing so that it's easier to switch to cursive when they're older. I did end up using their history for part of one year at home. The reason I stopped using it...My children were failing the tests! I was like "Didn't you guys study?" They were telling me that the stuff on the tests wasn't in the book. I checked it out and sure enough, it's not in the books. I'm not sure where the extra info was coming from, but it was not in the textbook. For some of the older grades there were some extra workbooks that go along with it and I wondered if some of it was in there, but we couldn't afford to get it at the time. We did end up just reading through the books and not doing the tests and the information was good. The kids all enjoyed it actually! The other reason for not using it, is the money. It's quite pricey! Definitely not within our budget. So while I have very few complaints, I do not recommend Bob Jones for larger families such as mine. I think it has the same problems as Abeka. I do really like some of the reading books from BJUPress though. Not all, but a lot of them I read as a kid and love to have my children reading them and enjoying them now!

Blessings, ♥T

A Song

I haven't posted a song for a while and I can't remember if I've posted this one before or not, but I thought I'd post it as it really speaks to me where I'm at right now :D


The Sun's Coming Up In The
Morning

Once again, I faced Satan this morning,
And I battled him all the day long.
But in my weakness, God sent reinforcements,
And at sundown, I sang Victory's Song.

Chorus:
Oh, the sun's coming up in the morning,
Every tear will be gone from my eye.
This old clay's gonna give way to Glory,
And, like an eagle, I'll take to the sky.

In a world, filled with doubts and confusion,
It's so hard when you don't understand.
Oh, but I'll stand on a Solid Foundation,
And I'll hold to an Unchanging Hand.

Chorus:
And the sun's coming up in the morning,
Every tear will be gone from my eye.
And this old clay's gonna give way to Glory,
And like an eagle, I'll take to the sky.


Blessings, ♥T

P.S. Yes that is a sunset not sunrise, but I don't have any pictures of sunrise's! I'm not an early riser, what can I say?! :D

Family Time???

The other day we all went outside. James was watering the yard. The girls were holding rabbits and riding bikes. (not simultaneously☺) The boys were herding goats and riding bikes, somewhat simultaneously! :D I decided to go out and take some pictures of my beautiful family and nature. There was no organization to it. It wasn't planned. I didn't even consider it "family time". But then while looking at all the pictures with my kids, James Michael said "That was really fun, we haven't had family time like that in a long time!" Wow, that struck my heart! I always want to have "family time", but I always have this image of what it must be like. If it's not like that image I just assume it's not family time. But when he said it, it really made me think...What do the kids think is family time? If that was his idea of family time, then why don't we do it more often? It wasn't a big deal. It wasn't all floofy and exciting. It was just time spent outside as a family. How simple! How effective! How easy to do! And if it makes my kids happy and makes them feel more loved, then you bet we're going to do it more! So here's some pictures of our "Family Time"...

My handsome little man...

Sweet Sisters

Madison and Bashful

Walking in the Sunset

Jason, All Boy!

Beautiful little Emily

James Michael, My dependable one!

Watering Trees

What a cutie?!

Beautiful Makenzie

Kathleen with her "baby"

Kathleen and Kessie

All my Wonderful Children!

Precious!

That's My Hubby

Gorgeous Michelle, The colors are the way the pic turned out,  No doctoring!

Are you still chasing me?

Following the Big Boys...


I LOVE MY FAMILY!!!

ACE Review

Since I'm apparently being "harassed" into another review ;) (I've been sick, sorry!)

My review on ACE isn't very long. My kids used it for 1 semester while in a private christian school. Mainly it was my oldest, as the other two were mostly just doing the learning to read program. My son was able to go through a PACE a day in each subject. So every other day he was starting and/or finishing the next one. While he got an award for going through so many PACE's, I'm not sure it was so great. I personally wasn't too impressed with the content in ACE. Just didn't feel like it was very thorough. The worst thing I thought about it actually occurred after they stopped doing it. My oldest son is very smart. He has a GREAT memory. When we started school the next year after summer break, we started using ABEKA again. He had NEVER had trouble with it before. We spent the first week doing school like normal only to have him FAIL his test! He has never in his life failed a test. Never even gotten under a 90% for the most part. Now here he was failing??? So the next month we had to work on memory retention. Why? Because in doing the PACE's the way they did, he only memorized for 1 day or at most 2 to take the test and then moved on to other things. He COULD NOT remember anything! It was awful. It took months really to get him back to a normal memorization ability.

While I'm sure some people like them for their ease of use, I prefer something that has more "meat" and is meant for building on and learning/retaining the information they're studying!

School Curriculum

We just recently got our new curriculum. It's the first curriculum we've actually bought in over 2 years. I was trying to make do with what we already had, but it wasn't working too well. I like my stuff lined out for me. I want to know that they're getting a good education. I want it to be easy to do, but still challenging. I want them to learn values along with it too. (In addition to what we're teaching them outside of school) I also know that others are either getting new curriculum or looking into what they'll be using this next year. So, I thought I'd do a series about what curriculum's I've used. How they worked and how we liked them. I would like to see a lot of comments on these too. Tell us what you've used and how they worked and how you liked them!

So first up...

Abeka

So first I guess I should say that I grew up homeschooled. I went to kindergarten and part of 1st grade and was at home the rest of my schooling years. Because that was a LONG time ago (not really cause I'm not that old) there wasn't much in the way of choices. My mom used a few different things, but mainly Abeka. We used Rod and Staff for a few things for a while. Then we ended up doing Abeka with Bob Jones for Bible and Spelling.

As you can guess I was pretty confident in Abeka. I knew how to do it from doing it myself. I started my first year of homeschooling with Abeka. I also tried to use a reading program that bombed. I had a baby half way through the year so by first years end my son had learned 2 letter sounds and done all his Abeka books, but not really learned much. I had him tutored over the summer (he was reading in 2 weeks) and then put him in a private school. We moved after the first semester. So I again did Abeka. This time we used the videos. At the time I only had 2 kids doing school and it worked great! They watched their videos. Did their work and liked it, but I wasn't doing anything more than checking work. So after another move and another baby we again enrolled them in a school (using a curriculum I hate which I'll explain about in another post).

When I had only 3 kids doing school we did awesome with Abeka. I would get all their papers out the night before, and put them in their folders. I would give a quick explanation to my oldest and get the other two started on doing what they could do by themselves. I would then take turns helping them with what they couldn't. I was doing school work with them so I knew what was right or wrong for the most part so correcting was very easy. All done at night. It worked so well at the time. Unfortunately we moved halfway through the year and I got pregnant again. During the moving process all my teachers books got lost. Being so exhausted from the pregnancy and move I couldn't keep up with school. So again we put them in a school.

Finally 3 years ago we started at home with Abeka. I had tried another curriculum in there too, but since this post is about Abeka I'll talk about that one later too. So my kids, while changing schools and curriculum frequently, had actually learned quite a lot and were testing really well on the STAR testing. I was sure after all the flops that I could do Abeka. I had a baby, but not a newborn. I wasn't moving again. I was very confident when we started. By this time I had 4 kids who needed to be doing school and 3 that were too little. We started out very excited. By the end of the first day I wanted to scream and throw the books in the fire. I spent the entire day trying to help each person do their work. They couldn't do anything without my help. There was so much work to do and so many books to do it from we were confused about what to do. We kept it up for a few months. My kids would cry everyday. I wanted to also. While I think Abeka videos were great, we couldn't/can't afford them. Abeka is made for and geared towards a private school. There is so much work to be done, because at school they need something to do to fill all those hours they're there. We didn't need that. The work is meant to be taught to them. They can't read it and do it without lots of in depth instruction in most subjects. While I think they're great academically, I don't think they're extremely homeschool friendly when you have more than 2-3 kids doing them. If you have a smaller size family, and you like an extremely in depth teaching type curriculum then this would work for you. If you have lots of children or children close together, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the level of involvement necessary for them to learn the subjects. We quit and I'm now in the process of trying to sell the curriculum and curriculum guides.

If you have any experiences with this or other curriculum please give us your insight! No nasty, rude or hateful comments will be published :) Thank you!

Guest Post By Faithful Mama

This is for all those who DIDN'T click on the link in my last post :D

Man is the Head of the Woman??? Yep!

"But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God."--1 Corinthians 11:3

"For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man."--1 Corinthians 11:8-9

Hubby and I have recently been doing yet another study on 1 Corinthians, chapter 11. We have been doing this study with the kids, and trying to help them truly recognize the order in which we are called to serve under God. :) I always love doing these studies with the kids, and then seeing their little eyes shine when they truly understand. I also love that we can give them funny scenarios and watch them laugh when they realize how *out of order* something seems in contrast to the Bible! :D It is just fascinating to watch the Lord work in our home in this way, and I am so thankful for his mercy, love, and ability to guide and teach us in the way we should go!

I was talking with the girls yesterday about ways that we can serve our husbands and earthly fathers in our home, and we talked about many things that we can do to make the days *easier* for dad. I must tell you that I was quite happy when he left for work this morning because I was actually given the opportunity to put some of those things into practice to show the girls! :) Let me explain...

Most of you know that we get up at around 4:30-5AM each day. We have many chores that must be done before hubby leaves at 7, and we also like to get a character study in at our breakfast with dad. So....you can imagine my husband's shock and dismay that the alarm wasn't set, and we got up at 6:20AM today!!!! lol! We both gave a groan and then got busy...

I have to stop here and tell you that our day is usually very, very structured so opportunities for me to grow in the area of serving my husband calmly and in the right way are few and far between as we are usually on track, and don't have any disruptions. Today, however, I had the chance to really show the girls how to serve dad and their husbands one day. Praise the Lord for guiding me through this, and helping me be a servant to my husband. I think that I may have FINALLY gotten it!!!! PRAISE THE LORD!!!! (ladies, please do not think I'm being prideful here....I am just so happy and thankful that something is finally sinking into my thick skull that I have been praying about for so long! The Lord is truly answering my prayers!!!!! He is truly doing a miraculous work in my life, and I give Him ALL the thanks and glory!!!)

So first thing...my husband has to take out the dogs and let out the chickens. He has to make sure they have water and feed, and take out the scrap bowls. He also has to load the trash into the van to take to the dump each day, and just chores outside in general. He usually does that in his comfy clothes that he lounges in(sweats and that kind of thing...just comfy clothes).

So, first I asked him if I could get out his clothes for the day so he wouldn't have to do that. He was so thankful, and I was happy to be able to help in that small way. Next, I got everything ready for him to take to work. He had to ship a package, drop off some other things, and had some errands to do. I got all of that ready and in a bag for him to carry with him. All he had to do was grab the bag and shoot right out the door.

Next, I made breakfast. I made a quick, easy breakfast of oatmeal because he can just scarf it down quickly and head out. I made his lunch, and made sure there was nothing else he needed. My sweet man was so happy and thankful! He didn't have to go to work hungry, he didn't forget something because he was too rushed, he will have a hot lunch that he didn't have to waste his hard earned money on, and he was able to dress and get ready quick enough to enjoy a meal with us and even spend just a couple of minutes to pray and chat with the kids this AM! :)

I LOVE THIS!! I LOVE that the Lord is guiding me in being a good helper to my husband!!! My husband truly deserves this after living with me all these years....1/2 of them in which I was not even TRYING to be a good helper! :) I LOVE that my girls can see what wives can do to be a *help meet* to their husbands.....especially on those wild days that are the hardest to get it all together!

Ladies, I know some of you who think that you are *deserving* of a break from your husbands. I have to tell you that this is just not biblical truth. You are created to be the helper. You were made to be the help meet.....not the boss. Your husband was not made to serve you. You are to serve him.......in EVERY way(yes, I mean EVERY way!!!!!!). As soon as some of you will realize this, and begin to pray to the Lord to change your heart...I think that some of you would find that a marriage that you think is good would become a marriage that you think is FABULOUS!!

I want to say that the Lord has shown me this: When I FINALLY stepped back under the tier of protection that is described in the scripture at the beginning of this post, and I FINALLY let go of the ideas that the modern world has put into my mind of the role women play in the home(which are all lies, by the way), my life has made a 180 degree turn. I also think that *protection* is a key word here. When I reside under the head of my husband.......he is able to protect me! It has truly been a blessing to feel loved, protected, and perfectly safe in the arms of my husband and my Lord. I pray that those of you who struggle in this area can figure this out, and let the Lord work a change in you as well. It has certainly been one of the biggest blessings in my life! :)

Submit to your Husband

Them's fighting words! Among most women that is :D And I don't know about you, but it's something I really struggle with. I know what is right, I know what the Bible says, but the execution of it is a bit elusive :)

So I pray. I ask God to help me be a submissive wife. I talk to Godly counsel. I get advice on how to do it. I read "Created To Be His HelpMeet" (For the umpteenth time) and I start making some headway...I think...And then...He says or does something that infuriates me, and I throw it all out the window and yell right back at him. I say things that aren't right. I refuse to submit to him. I refuse to respect him in any way. Shocking, huh? (Sorry if you thought I was perfect :D LOL)

Now, I'm not saying he's perfect or that he's right in what he's doing, but it's not a justification for my actions. As my friend so eloquently put it HERE God made an order for the way a household should be and if I'm not in my place I'M WRONG! No matter what he does. I'm not responsible for his actions, only mine. I can't let his actions pull me away from Christ. I can't use his actions to justify my sins.

1 Peter 3:1-2 says "Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear." First I know most people use this in reference to an un-saved husband, but while I agree that it can be used in that regard, I think it can be used for a husband who isn't necessarily living right even though he is "saved". I also must point out that the word conversation here isn't just referring to your speech. The word conversation being used here is "behavior or manner of living" or "act of living with," or "to live with, keep company with," lit. "turn about with," "having dealings with others," also "manner of conducting oneself in the world;" It's your actions not your words :)

So what am I saying exactly? Well, I'm struggling. I need prayer in this area. Any words of wisdom or encouragement are welcome! :D

Michelle's Birth Story

This is a re-post, but I just wanted to share again, since today is her birthday! She is such a joy and blessing in my life!

First off none of my children were accidents :) but she was a surprise! I don't know why but I really didn't think I was pregnant! Normally I pretty much know right away. I'm always a little paranoid for the first 12 weeks. Never had a miscarriage, but came close with Makenzie so I always worry til I get past 12wks. Then I usually am perfectly fine! No worries at all! With Michelle my worry didn't go away, it got worse! I was really afraid she was going to die. I was in a car accident when I was 6 mos along. That was really scary! It wasn't a really bad accident but I was already worried and then I started having contractions. They stopped the next day and everything "seemed" fine. I continued to have this overwhelming feeling that she was going to die though. Everytime I got that feeling (which was quite often) I would just pray (Lord, please keep your hand on her, protect her, keep her safe!). I ended up going 2 weeks late with her. My midwife (whose name is Michelle :) tried to naturally induce me on the 7th. It didn't work. She sent me home & told me that if I didn't have her by the next day I'd have to go to the hospital on the 9th. I really didn't want that. I also had an ultra sound a few days before to make sure everything was ok. The U/S showed everything was fine. But still I would get that feeling! It was so overwhelming that I would just cry and cry and pray! I went into labor around 4pm on the 8th. My contractions were hard but not too painful. Even as they got close they were "easy". I was actually falling asleep between them. No drugs were doing that, it was God. When the midwife said I was complete she broke my water and said I could push, I did. After 1-2 pushes she said "her heads out, stop pushing" I actually did NOT feel her head come out. I was still pushing thinking I needed to push hard to get her to come down! I pushed her shoulders out and the midwife handed her to me. She was beautiful! I was so enraptured and absorbed in her...then the midwife said "Twylia, you're bleeding PUSH." It wasn't easy cause my body wasn't ready for that phase yet. But I did. As soon as the placenta came out the midwife sat back and said "The Lord has had his hand on you!" The exact thing I had prayed for nine months! Apparently her cord had implanted into the side of the placenta. It had a velamentous insertion ( which means the veins/arteries running through the placenta weren't inside of it they were exposed. And about an inch and a half of the whartons jelly was gone from her cord where it meets the placenta. At any time in the pregnancy if she'd have moved wrong she could have ripped the cord and bled to death. If the labor had been hard or my water broken before she was about to come out, it could have ripped the cord and she would have bled and possibly died or had serious complications due to lack of oxygen. If...But no if's! God took care of it all! I had the shortest(6hrs), easiest labor & delivery! Even through the car accident He protected her! I looked it up afterwards and the mortality rate is like 95%! She had a 5% chance of survival, and the injury rate was like 99.9%. She has absolutely nothing!!! She is perfectly normal in every way, even advanced in some ways! (she can memorize so quickly it's amazing! she memorized the 23rd Ps. in less than a week @ 4 yrs old!) God is GOOD! 

Farm Life :)

That's the life we're living now :) Well, a mini farm really! We now have 6 donkeys, 12 goats (2 of which were born last week!), 10 rabbits, 9 bunnies born 2 days ago, 2 pigs, 11 chickens, and we're looking into getting a milk cow. I should mention that with the exception of the pigs, most all the animals are dwarf or mini's of their breeds, hence the "mini" farm! We are looking at getting a miniature milk cow also. The kids are loving the animals! It's so cool to see babies being born and watch them grow! The baby goats are so fun to watch play! The skip and jump all over the place :D

We've been spending a lot of time getting pens set up and getting our yards cleaned up. We're also working on getting our house cleaned out and organized. I want to get it all done before we get our school curriculum. Which should be here this week sometime. We have decided to go with Landmark Baptist curriculum. I'm really looking forward to it! The kids are sorta excited, sorta not! :)

I'll leave with some pictures...

James Michael's Birth

Wow, I can't believe it's been 12 years, since the birth of my first child! It seems unreal. He is such a blessing in my life. My right-hand man :) He is always helping me with everything. He has always been such a good child. Hardly have to discipline him at all. (Mainly just attitudes occasionally) A good hard worker. Loves his little brother and sisters. Loves to take care of babies. He is quite the artist and is now cooking quite a bit, and likes it :)

His birth story...

I found out I was pregnant with him at around 5 am one morning. We were ecstatic! All my life, all I had wanted to do was get married and raise children. (my standard answer for how many kids I wanted was "so many you can't count em" LOL) So, I couldn't wait!

There were no midwives available in the area at that time, so I was seeing a nurse-midwife that was actually a friend of our family. I loved her. I saw her through my entire pregnancy. I got very sick at the beginning. I don't throw up, but I was so nauseous I couldn't eat and lost weight. I gained 35+ pounds, but my tummy was very small. People didn't believe me when I was over due! They thought I was still around 6 months along :) About a week and a half before he was born I got into a slight car accident. I was driving a little car and a big pick up truck didn't see me and slammed, twice, into the side of my car. (he was trying to back out of a parking lot, but didn't look out his back window) It hurt my neck and back, but not bad. I was very distraught about it though. (he just drove off) I didn't have a phone so I had to go home to make a call. Side note: I have no idea why no one stopped him. He was an old man, but still. No one called the police. No one asked if I was ok. They all just stood there and stared. Quite the absurd! Anyways, so I was very upset and called my husband, who was working about 2 hours away at the time. So he called my mom and she came and picked me up and took me to the doctors office. (she only lived about 20 mins away) They checked his heart rate and it was fine. The were going to hook me up to the non-stress test machine. Now mind you I was still VERY upset at this time, not hysterical, but very upset. So when she went to put the jelly on the monitor she realized the tube was empty, so she got a new one. She opened it and started to put it on and apparently there was an air bubble in the tube. Half the tube shot out, over the monitor piece and right into my face! And all over the rest of me!!!! I absolutely died laughing! She was horrified and so embarrassed, and I just kept laughing. My mom was laughing too. She tried to wipe it off me, which made me laugh harder! She finally was convinced I was ok. I think she thought I'd lost it :D They finally got me hooked up and he was fine. So I went home. Past up my due date and 6 days after my due date had my doctor appt. I saw the NM and asked her how much longer she thought it would be. I was very anxious to have him. Partly because it was my first and I wanted him in my arms, but majorly because I had been feeling this overwhelming feeling that something wasn't right and he needed to get out. So she stripped my membranes and set up an induction for the next day. Ah, how naive I was! I figured that since I was a week late that it was "normal" to induce :P  So we went home and had my family over to eat, KFC. I don't think we slept at all we were so anxious :)

We got to the hospital early the next morning. Got checked in. They took me to my room. My mom got there (she was so afraid she'd miss it that she flew, like over 90 mph, to get there). The put in the gel to soften my cervix and contractions started. That was around 8am. So around 12pm they hooked up the pitocin and broke my water. I didn't really have "water", it was more like thick pea soup. Apparently he had already had his first poop :) Most likely from the stress from the car accident. So they were all very concerned. In addition to a the regular nurses they would have a neonatal nurse with all the special machinery for suctioning him ready for after he was born.

The contractions really picked up then. I finally thought it was bad enough that I let them convince me that it was "OK" to take medicine for it. So I received a shot of stadol. Wow, that didn't do much :P mainly just made me sleep between the contractions. I don't remember the times exactly but I received another shot a few hours later as well. Around 6ish my mom and husband took turns going to eat. While hubby was gone, things started to get really intense, read transition :) So I was really worried he wouldn't make it back in time and started telling them to get him. He came back in plenty of time ;)  I finally was a 10 some time right after 7. The doctor came in and the neonatal nurse and they got everything set up. (I had the doctor at the practice because the NM was unable to attend for some reason :( I started pushing. And pushing. And pushing. For a half an hour. The doctor didn't do much besides give me some shots and watch. Finally my mom said "Wouldn't it help if she had an episiotomy?" The doctor said "yes, but she said she didn't want one" WELL, after 30 mins of pushing I was desperate to get this baby out so I said "if it'll make him come out then do it!!!" LOL...the things women do in the midst of labor. Very bad time to make decisions! Now while this was going on, my husband was support one of my legs. My mom the other. And suddenly my mom says to DH "are you OK?" and everyone looks at him...He was white as a ghost! He shook his head and so MY nurse took him over to the couch and the neonatal nurse came over and held my leg! I could see him over there with my nurse giving him a cold cloth and asking him if he was ok, while I was pushing our son out :D (he thought there was something wrong because of how jelly like the head was, but that's just normal as they're coming out and being compressed like that) So...once the episiotomy was done, his came out pretty quickly. And then I had to push his shoulders. And then I had to push his chest. And all the time I'm thinking "why isn't he blooping out?" Why you ask? Well, because my birth story goes...I pushed your head out and then you just blooped out! So, I was apparently expecting all my children to just "bloop" out! LOL...it's so funny the things we think sometimes! So anyhow, they put him straight up on my belly, which was nice. He was breathing fine and they just suctioned him out right there. I got to nurse him and hold him for quite a while. Then the nurse took him and weighed him and I think she suctioned him again. Then once she was done, she just let him sit there under the heat lamp. I was getting sewed up at this time, and was getting very anxious to hold my baby again! So I kept asking for him. Finally the doctor said pretty loudly "I think she wants her baby!" So they finally gave him back to me. He nursed like a champ! He was so beautiful! I was so in love! Daddy recovered and was also so in love! 

We had to stay a full 24 hrs from the time he was born because I had tested positive for group b strep. I was so glad to be released and go home! We ended up moving a week later. Back to the town both our parents lived in. When he was 2 weeks old he caught a "cold". Well by the time he was 4 weeks old his cold turned out to be whooping cough with secondary pneumonia. We had taken him to the ER, where they gave him an antibiotic shot and gave me a prescription for a 2 week course of strong antibiotics. This happened to be the Saturday before Easter. James and I stayed up all night holding him, praying for him, and watching him cough so hard he turned blue and would stop breathing. Never in my life had I been so scared. Praise the Lord he lived through the night and the next day both of our families came over to celebrate the holiday. He got better slowly, but surely. I weakened him though so that he was sick very frequently during his first year. We were in the ER so many times with him, thankfully nothing as serious though. 

He is now a very healthy, handsome, wonderful, smart boy! He has always been such a sweetheart! I thank the Lord for His protection over him and His blessing me with my son!