Christmas this year was perfect. It’s always a good feeling when you think back and feel satisfied with how everything went. We really had a lot of fun together and it was good to spend this beautiful season together!
The only thing I was missing was my 17 year old daughter. Hopefully we can persuade her to join us next year!
Here’s a movie of all our adventures!
The warmth of the sun rises, and the cool of the evening sky sets on our family classroom.
It happens through the summertimes, and during holidays, starts early in the mornings and ends late at night.
There are no limits to the students curiosity, no walls to their classrooms, no ages to their classes, no boundaries to their questions.
This is the place where it’s okay to teach kids about God, Jesus, giving up and holding on. This classroom thrives on physical touch, hugs, high fives, and arms wrapped around each other.
In our family classroom it’s okay to cry. It’s okay to leave. It’s okay to choose not to participate.
Our family classroom is rarely clean. In fact, it’s usually overflowing with messes, and spills and books and toys and projects.
There are never enough walls in our family classroom to hold all the priceless treasures that my children create. And I mean that honestly. For somehow, each one of them is exceptionally talented.
Oh, in case you wonder, our family classroom is noisy too. There are squeaky flutes & pounding pianos, and loud teenage music (that I rarely like), and kids squealing and teenagers crying, and toddlers racing, and moms and dads yelling to be heard above all the commotion. But it’s a happy, busy, noise, and if it’s too much, there are quiet corners. In our family classroom I’ve noticed that one rarely chooses to escape to silent bedrooms when instead they could be enjoying the community we find in being together.
This classroom is a safe place to make mistakes. It could be the mistakes of the teacher, or the mistakes of the student but either way, you are given the grace to figure it out and try again while still being loved and accepted.
One of my children took her first university course at 12 years old, another was just opening a book for the first time to read on her own. But in our family school, there are no bully’s to make fun, or grades to compare.
It’s okay to show up late, or show up in your jammies, as long as you’re willing show up at all, you can join us.
Some months our family classroom looks like endless mathematical equations, other months it looks like flying across the world and standing at the top of a volcano while hot lava literally explodes in bombs above your head, or diving to the bottom of a sea discovering creatures you never dreamed existed all around you.
All. Across. The. Globe. I get people asking me if I really think my family classroom is the healthiest choice for my kids.
My answer is… ‘Yes, it’s the greatest thing we’ve ever done!’
Some people may peek into my classroom and wonder when I’m gonna teach spelling rules and calculus. I reassure them that they need not worry, because at precisely the time when my children’s minds are ready to expand, they will get to immerse themselves in these important subjects, and nothing will stop them!
Until then, I am going to go from one end of the world to the other, and hopefully, spark a love of learning so deeply in their souls, that it can never be extinguished.
See you around,
BeckyBoo
P.S.
YES!
Yes my kids will learn to read, and hopefully also learn to change the world with the wisdom they’ve gathered from endless hours sitting in the sunshine, basking in the ideas of history’s greatest thinkers.
Yes my kids will learn to write, and hopefully use that gift to spread the cause of freedom, & equality.
Yes my kids will learn to socialise, because from the time they were tiny they got to play with kids from cultures and countries across the earth, and philosophise with adults, and have one on one conversations with leaders and politicians.
Yes my kids will learn to add and subtract, and multiply and divide, and hopefully use those tools to seek further education or build something beautiful or to heal bodies & hearts.
My oldest left home at 17, is attending emergency medical training in another country, and trying to decide if she should go to Indonesia on a 6 month service mission with her cousin.
My 2nd oldest left home at 16, and is using this time on her own to discover the world. She is paying her own rent, buying her own groceries, and getting her own jobs.
My 3rd oldest of 15 years spends most her days reading, dreaming about horses and studying for the ACT.
My two next girls attend our local public school in grades 6 & 8, (don’t worry, I’ll help them catch up later).
My two little boys spend everyday chasing words and animals and books as we explore together. They dress up, dig up, and build up all blessed day long.
Each of these 7 children will take their own path, but hopefully, if I’ve done it right, they will each know who they are, or at least how to become who they want to be. That is the beauty of my family classroom.
Well the boys wanted to learn about spiders today, and lucky for me a spider home school lesson plan is exactly what I felt like teaching! We are getting close to halloween, so the local grocery store had a few supplies that I bought for cheap to make the lesson more exciting!
Thank you for your wise words, I shared them with my kids today
A spider is dedicated to its purpose: building a strong web. It stays focused, spending hours weaving in a circular motion, keeping the silk tight from the inside out. We can build a strong faith by dedicating ourselves to the purpose of knowing God. This means spending time in His Word, staying focused on what it says and allowing its truth to strengthen us from the inside out. Making God’s Word the hub of our faith will keep us strong when the pressures of life try to bring us down.
Wendy Pope
Of course the first that I always do when we are learning about something new is read to the kids from any books that I have on the topic. I often go to the library and check out books, as well as hit up the local thrift store.
I had a few other activities that I wanted to do today, so I’ll show them all below.
After our spiders webs were done and all the kids were happy, I have them a glass jar and told them to go on a spider hunt. They stormed through the house and after about half an hour they returned successful!
Once their spider specimen was securely in the jar, I had the kids fill out papers describing their spider.
I found this free printable worksheet here:
The kids still weren’t tired of learning about spiders so I printed out some cute math cards that I found free here.
I was seriously considering making the house into a big spider web with masking tape like this from 123Homeschool4me. But I never got around to it! Maybe next time!
Pretty much the kids had an epic time learning about spiders today! It was a great creepy , crawly, lesson plan for kids. I love tying in our Christian values when I teach the kids, which is one of the reasons why I love to home school.
Leave us a comment!
xoxo
Beckyboo
Hello! I’m so glad you’ve stopped by! Today I’m going to share my lesson plan for Rocks, Minerals & Jesus. As you know, I like to bring in my faith to every lesson I teach to my kids. This is just ONE of the many reasons that I LOVE TO HOME-SCHOOL!
It was so cold and slippery out that even the school bus decided to stay home this morning. There was a cold blizzard blowing and I thought nobody would show up, but I was wrong! What it really meant was that we were delighted with lots of extra visitors. Anaya was glad because she doesn’t like being the only girl at my home school classes 🙂
Today was a perfect homeschooling day. I spent the morning gathering all the supplies that I have been collecting to start teaching the kids about 🌑 Rocks, Minerals and 💎 Crystals.
As soon as the kids saw the table covered in our precious rock collection, including diamonds and fools gold, they were pretty excited!
We spent at least an hour reading a million books about gemstones, and rocks and how they are formed. I had just been collecting books on gemstones from the thrift store since I decided to teach this lesson last week.
Whenever I’m doing my cleanup or preparation for the next activity, I put on YouTube movies so the kids can watch movies on how rocks are formed. Today we watched these ones:
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeuYx-AbZdo
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsIHV__voMk
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVy3dzLSMLg
After the movies, I sent all the kids on a rock hunt.
I printed out THIS rock identification table, and once the kids came in with the different rocks they had found we spent some time trying to match them up with what we saw on our table. I was completely amazed at how many rocks we actually found that were on the chart, just from searching outside!
After all of that we did some watercolor paintings of our jewels.
While they were painting I led them into a discussion about the apostle Peter and Jesus Christ.
I read this scripture from Mathew 16:18
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Our Lord then declared to him: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”
I asked what would happen if the wind blew on grass, or a strong mountain. Obviously the grass would bend but the mountain would not. When we build our testimonies on JESUS CHRIST it’s the same as building our testimony on a rock. It’s strong and unmovable.
I love 😍 it when I can share my faith with these eager, and attentive kids. I think it really means a lot to them to be able to learn in such natural and normal ways, and I’m so glad that we are doing this together at home!
Peter P. brought his microscope so we were happy to check out all our rocks and crystals. It was super awesome, and we could even see the crystal formations in our pink Himalayan salt as well as our sugar. The best looking rock was our pyrite, or fools gold.
I love this little microscope because it’s super affordable, but really does a good job of magnifying things. Peter bought from discovery toys.
Afterwards we made Geode cookies with real glass candy crystals for our rocks, minerals & crystal lesson plan!
The older girls did some water color and we delivered some of the extra cookies to our neighbor who helped us the other day.
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
Mix together butter, sugar and egg. Add vanilla, and then add baking powder & flour until everything is light and fluffy. Cook for 7-10 minutes.
We first spread the icing over top of the cookies and then put them in the microwave for 10 seconds so they went really nice and smooth. Afterwards we used food coloring in a paint tray to paint our cookies and then we decorated it with the glass candy that we made.
Mix everything together in a pot over the stove and stir it until the sugar is dissolved. Once the sugar is dissolved and it starts to boil then DON’T stir! Leave it for 10-15 minutes until it’s a light caramel color or comes to 300 degrees if you have a candy thermometer.
We pretty much had the best time ever learning about Rocks, Crystals and Jesus!
Plus our house is now full of pretty cookies, pretty, candies, pretty watercolors and a lot of happy kids!
Leave a comment, and tell me how you relate Rocks, Crystals & Minerals to Jesus 🙂
xoxo
Beckyboo
Nobody can say the bet the beetle wasn’t well loved. Indeed in it’s short life with my son it got a LOT of attention. It’s just too bad that all that loving ended in death. Join us as we find out about Zaby’s latest pet!
In Canada we celebrate Thanksgiving on the 2nd Monday of October. While living in Vanuatu we have been subject to all manner of degradations in our food standards (beatles in the pasta, bugs in the rice, maggots in the cheese, larvae in the beans, worms in the fruit etc.) Lindy is almost ready to go home and we wanted to do something fun to celebrate. So we invited every neighbor around as well as some favorite family friends to our home for a traditional Canadian Thanksgiving Dinner.
Hang on tight if you want to join us for an island ride!
It’s really hard to get cars on the island because everything has be imported from somewhere else. When you find a car and it’s in your price range you snap it up- pretty much regardless of how it works. That’s how we all ended up with the island bus… 🙂 If you want a few bumps and jolts, join us for as Lindy takes out the island bus for the first time!
Well, the day was perfectly hot and we needed somewhere to cool off. I had heard all about the powerful healing waters of Santo, Vanuatu and thought that this would be a good time to try them out. After all, I was struggling with numerous health condition that were getting worse and worse. “What could it hurt?” I thought to myself as I persuaded the others to join me. I personally had already heard dozens of stories from neighbours and friends that testified to the miraculous power of the healing springs. I thought you guys would like to join me so I inconspicuously made a little video 🙂
Okay, Today my 8 year old brought me this absolutely ADORABLE outrigger canoe that she made 100% by herself. It was tooo cute not to share:) Just to warn you- you’ll need to be in a tropical place to make this canoe.
The house girls makes it look so easy. When I was living at my brothers house his house girl Matilda did all the laundry, but now that we’ve moved into our own house (right next door) I get to do it 🙂 No problem, this mom of 7 has done laundry aplenty- well at least I thought I had. I realized today that laundry day in the tropics is quite different than laundry day at home. Are you interested in finding out how we do it?
I’ll give you little tutorial…
1. Remove the cockroach protection cloth from the washing machine.
2. Open the lid and fill it with clothes and soap.
3. Hook up the outdoor cable to electricity.
4. Hook up water to the machine.
5. Press start and wait for the water to fill up the laundry machine.
6. Wait 15 minutes while it agitates and then turn it to the next stage- drain.
7. Wait 15 minutes and then turn it to its next stage- spin.
8. Wait 15 minutes and turn it to rinse.
9. Wait 15 minutes and turn it to drain and final spin.
10. Remove clothes from washing machine and hang on outdoor laundry line.
11. Leave until Dry. This can take several days as tropical rain storms come quickly and with a vengeance. (My load from 5 days ago is still on the line).
There you have it. 11 easy steps and a few hours of sunshine and one load of your laundry is clean! I’m sure there is some sort of lesson I could learn from doing laundry the hard/long way but I haven’t figured out what it could be yet. Maybe next laundry day something will come to me!