Our Family's Leadership Education Blog

new blog addresses

2012-02-12T16:45:00.002-07:00

Hello friends. Just making sure that you have our new blog addresses.

For family information as well as homeschooling chit chat view:

beingafamilywhoknows.blogspot.com

OR if you want to read some essays with emphasis on womanhood please check me out at:

beingamotherwhoknows.blogspot.com

A Face Lift

2010-06-19T21:29:00.004-06:00

I have had a blog face lift. I am so excited about it!!!! My dear friend Misty asked me if she could give me one and I said, "Yes, please!" We have both worked hard for the last week or so on this new project! So here's the new link:

The gold on the blog represents virtue.

I don't plan on posting much here any more. I have already written 11 essays on the new blog. There are a couple that are old essays that I copied over.

Mothers Should Know About Nature

2010-06-13T19:59:00.006-06:00

"Mothers and Teachers should know about Nature. --The mother cannot devote herself too much to this kind of reading, not only that she may read tit-bits to her children about matters they have come across, but that she may be able to answer their queries and direct their observation. And not only the mother, but any woman, who is likely ever to spend an hour or two in the society of children should make herself mistress of this sort of information; the children will adore her for knowing what they want to know, and who knows but she may give its bent for life to some young mind destined to do great things for the world." Charlotte Mason, Book One: Home Education, page 64-65.

Here are some things the children are to know:

Field-crops

Meadow and pasture, clover, turnip, corn

Ploughing of the land to the getting of of the crops

Field Flowers

Life-History of Plants such as the milkwort, eyebright, res-harrow, lady's-bedstraw, willow-herb

Every wild flower that grows in their neighbourhood

Describe the leaf-its shape and size, growing from root or from stem

The manner of flowering-a head of flowers, a single flower, a spike, etc.

Never forget or mistake wildflowers or recognize them instantly

Pick out half of dozen trees in "their winter nakedness"

Stopping there....they are more requirements...

It looks like I am to be a quaint naturalist now.

First step done. Went to Barnes and Nobles and found the simplest books possible to begin the "Quaint Mother Naturalist course."

Umbrella: A tool or a toy?

2010-06-12T18:12:00.004-06:00

Every year the kids ask why we don't have umbrellas. Every year I tell them the same thing. It doesn't rain here. It's like the towns in the south buying snow plows. It's not worth the investment.

Things were different this year. It has rained. A lot. And this year we have umbrellas. Alex gets things in the mail all the time for work. He gets pens, paper, candy, stationary, bags, wallets, etc. He's even received manicure sets. This year he received two nice umbrellas, sporting an insurance company on them of course.

Caleb likes to play in the rain. He likes to walk in the rain with a big umbrella. I tell him of course he can, but he must remember that the umbrella is a tool to keep the rain off, it's not a toy. Every time he tells me he understands.

Everyday I thought he understood. Until this happened.

What is it with boys? They can be these angelic angels and then all of a sudden they get over come. For Caleb he discovered a bucket in the ground (for the ditch water) in the empty lot next to ours. There's a small hole for the someday future owners to put a pump in. Caleb saw this hole and was suddenly overcome with an urge to stick the umbrella in it and open it. It's broken. It won't come out.

We only have one umbrella now.

So are umbrellas a tool or a toy? It depends on who you are asking.

Quaint

2010-06-11T17:55:00.004-06:00

Quaint. I've never really like that word. It's like nails on a chalkboard to me. I am concerned with all the better and best stuff that I might end up becoming quaint. I don't want to be quaint. Should I want to be quaint? I'm thinking that I should. For some reason I'm rebelling at the idea. Get thee hence oh Babylon!

When I think about quaint I think about the authors Louisa Mae Alcott and Jean Stratton Porter. They wrote quaint stories right? I've never liked their books because they were quaint. What is it about quaint with me? I've read Laddie three times in an effort to like quaint books. I've read multiple Porter books and multiple Alcott books. I've read the books were they go through the Indiana marshes (or whatever they were) and found moths. I read an entire book on moth collecting!! I read Little Men and all the boys were so perfect and never didn't anything wrong. The little ones cooked "cakes and pies" in their little oven in the toy room. Is that what it means to be quaint? I've tried to like them, but they are just so......well, quaint!

The online dictionary says:
Quaint–adjective, -er, -est.
1. having an old-fashioned attractiveness or charm; oddly picturesque: a quaint old house.
2. strange, peculiar, or unusual in an interesting, pleasing, or amusing way: a quaint sense of humor.
3. skillfully or cleverly made.
4. obsolete . wise; skilled.

I like old-fashioned things, but I'm not big on quaint old-fashioned things. Perhaps I see quaint as having things a little to perfect and everyone just a little to happy. That's not good though. We want perfect and happy. What is my problem?

My problem is that I really don't like Porter and Alcott's books and I'm worried that I'm going to have to all of a sudden like them. I like Austen, Glaskell, and Montgomery though.

Quaint.

What am I going to do?

The Best

2010-06-11T08:19:00.005-06:00

I first need to say that getting rid of our home computer and moving just to my laptop as done wonders for me getting off the computer. Not that I was on it a lot, but I found it too easy to get on before. Now I almost loath it! My laptop is slow and often crashes and it takes me a much longer time to check my emails. Making a comment on someone's blog takes up to 5 minutes. So that little experiment is working well. Maybe too well?

Back to the point. I've been reading Charlotte Mason's Original works. (Lazy can be really pushy that way sometimes). I've wanted to buy them for years, but have never gotten around to it. Remember they are on one of the recommended reading lists in the back of the TJEd book.

I have had "aha" after "aha" with these books. I wish I had read them BEFORE I had children. This was the owner's manual I was always wishing I had. I will make sure Olivia does a through study of them before she becomes a mom though. Lots of gems in those books. I could write for years on some of my thoughts from them and I've only read two of them.

Last night I was finishing up book two. I sure wish every adult would read book two. They sum up one of my husband's campaign points, "The Family is the First Sovereign Unit of Society." That's one of the "truth's that we hold self-evident" or at least we should, but everyone seems to be forgetting. All of a sudden parents aren't capable of making choices for their family.....I digress again....

A couple of months ago there was a heated topic in "The Great Debate/Conversation" about why we all wanted "the best" for our children. Wouldn't it be more realistic to be happy with good and better things and not be so fixated on the best? I maintain that having the best in our family should be our ideal. Sometimes that means letting go of some really good things. Sometimes that makes us look weird. Sometimes that even challenges our thought process. Sometimes we have to do hard things. We've all read Elder Oaks extensively in that discussion. He says our ideal should be the best.

Moving on to Charlotte though. I discovered some quotes from Charlotte Mason about the very same topic. Here are her two bits:

"Children must be Nurtured on the Best. ...They must grow up upon the best. There must never be a period in heir lives when they are allowed to read or listen to twaddle or reading-made-easy. There is never a time when they are unequal to worthy thoughts, well put; inspiring tales, well told...and we shall train a race of readers who will demand literature-that is, the fit and beautiful expression of inspiring ideas and pictures of life." Book 2, "Parents and Children" pg.263.

"Children must have the Best Books. One more thing is of vital importance; children must have books, living books; the best are not too good for them; anything less than the best is not good enough; and if it is needful to exercise economy, let go everything that belongs to soft and luxurious living before letting go the duty of supplying the books, and the frequent changes of books, which are necessary for the constant stimulation of the child's intellectual life." Book 2, "Parents and Children" pg. 279.

Thank you Charlotte. You bring up some excellent points.

Charlotte Mason loved daises. I've always loved daises myself. Now I know why crazy4boys has daises everywhere. I want a daisy background. I'm going to buy some daisy seeds while I'm in town. Maybe I'll name my next girl Daisy.

Character Tool

2010-06-08T10:59:00.004-06:00

A couple of years ago, when I was called to serve as our ward Young Women President, I was reintroduced to the For the Strength of Youth booklet. I quickly found out what a worth while tool it is for our youth and us as adults.

In speaking of For the Strength of Youth booklet Elder Tingey said, "In the For the Strength of Youth booklet, the following standards, among others, are like a North Star to you: choose friends with high standards, do not disfigure your body with tattoos or body piercings, avoid pornography, do not listen to music that contains offensive language, do not use profanity, date only those who have high standards, remain sexually pure, repent as necessary, be honest, keep the Sabbath day holy, pay tithing, keep the Word of Wisdom."

While serving as Young Women's President I made an effort to read applicable passages with each lesson. I would also read the dancing section each time there was a school dance to them in opening exercises and encourage them to keep their covenants and remain pure.

In many ways I find it sad that we have to be so explicit about things. I found reading it straight out of the book to be a lot easier though, followed by a discussion.

When I was called we also began to include it in Family Home Evenings. Each week we read a section together and discuss it with them. We started this when our children were young. There has never been a question about our standards. It is from my continued reading of this that I have such high personal standards in movies, books, computer viewing, dancing and music. There were several parts we did omit that were not age appropriate in the beginning, but we are now reading to them.

After reading it we will have a discussion about that standard. We make sure they understand. We also discuss ways that our family can do a better job keeping that standard. We have made changes based on some of our discussions. Sometimes we also look up the scriptures.

As each member of our family turns 8 they are given their own copy to keep with their scriptures. They do study it on their own. Alex and I also have our own copies and ours are marked up. (I'm on my second booklet). We use them for our talks and teaching lessons. Alex has also used the booklets in the children's weekly interviews from time to time. We also have the small copies stored in our purses and wallets.

I am grateful for this tool that we have that can reinfornce the standards we are trying to teach.

Headgate Update

2010-06-07T15:00:00.004-06:00

Why am I still posting about headgates? Two reasons. 1). I get hit after hit to my site everyday about people looking for more headgate information. 2). It's been three months since I learned about it and I wanted to report.

The first time I read headgates (thank you very much Karen for posting about it right after the Forum), I was blown away with truth. Some of the specific examples I thought were a little extreme, but I loved the concepts and the principles. (I'm all for great ideas!) I felt strongly that she taught truth. Truth and principles that I could take and interpret within my own sphere.

I applied many truths she talked about, adapted to fit our home and our personalities.

STEP 1: We got rid of a lot of stuff. We removed clothes, shoes, sheets, wall hangings, decorations, dishes, spatulas, a computer, piano books, office supplies (like paper clips! - we had a lot), movies, and LOTS and LOTS of toys and books. I think we removed 50% of our stuff. Really.

STEP 2: We stoped certain activities. We classified toys and tools. Office supplies were used for legitimate projects. Building tools were used for legitimate projects. The computer became a tool and not a toy. Food became a tool not a toy. Movies were not to be watched unless they served a purpose and usually only if the entire family participated.

STEP 3: We instituted work time. We taught our children how to work. We began to expect them to do hard things. We expected them to do more than do the dishes after dinner or take out the trash. They learned to work hard for three hours straight. They learned how to clean toilets, do entire loads of laundry start to finish, make bread, vacuum, deep clean, dust, make dinner, serve people, move lots of wood on our land, and numerous other outdoor work projects. They learned to not whine. We taught them to return and report. We taught them to be responsible for their stewardships.

STEP 4: We gave them free time. Before we had randomness. Now we had work time and play time (or free time).

STEP 5: We changed to all lifeless toys. After a month or two we decided to go further down the path. We removed every last Lego, lightsaber and other "follow the instruction" toy. (We just put them in the shed until the experiment was over). We said we'd just do it for a month to just "see" what would happen. We moved the boys all into one room and made a playroom that was only filled with those toys.

STEP 6: Three months later. Let's evaluate. That's were I'm at right now. We really did all the things she said in her ebook (not her FAQ page-I think some are not right for our family. Just the same way I don't believe some of the ingredients are right for our family. But I've still taken truth out of it with out having a panic attack about the rest).

Evaluate. Yes. Let us do that. The scriptures say, "by their fruits ye shall know them." We had a really good home before. We had really good kids before, and I was was a really good mom. (Alex has always been great. I'm extremely biased). Now? We have great kids. We have great kids that work their guts out and are growing up to be real men that can take care of their families. We have a daughter that's growing up to be an amazing women. We have great kids that aren't bored. We have great kids that have amazing imaginations and can make all sorts of creations out of sticks and twine. We have great kids that don't whine when we ask them to fold the laundry. We have great kids that are respectful to us. They recognize where they are in our family structure and they embrace it. They know each of roles and they respect each one of us in our individual spheres. The 'me' culture seems to be getting driven out of our lives.

I personally, don't think that I have ever truly felt more peace and happiness in our family structure. Our home as become a heaven on earth. There are few worldly distractions and we pursue wholesome activities that we find joy in. The desire to have fun has been replaced with a desire to enjoy things.

About the books. Our children have come to cherish their free time. They spent a lot of time playing but they spend a lot of time choosing to read also. It is not uncommon to see Jared on the couch reading a 500 page book, Olivia in her room reading Cicero (or some other meaty read), Luke to be reading a Shakespeare play (abridged), or Caleb writing a story in his story book. Really. They didn't do that before. And really, they are happy.

About the Lego's. Yes, I'm going to bring the Lego's back. However, they are going to stay in the shed outside. If they want to play with them they have to go and get them. They have to act for themselves and not be acted upon (thank you Misty). They may then play with them and then they will return them to the shed. They can of course pursue this activity during free time. My older two boys have enough Lego hours saved up in their little minds to last a couple kids' lifetimes.

It seems hard to image that our life could be so drastically different for the better. We were a really good family before. We were always vigilant on our movies and entertainment. We had strict Wii 30 min time limits. We never let them read trash, no graphic novels, and a host of other books that I considered not worth reading. We went from good and better to best. And that has made all the difference in the world.

By their fruits ye shall know them. Yes, it is truth for us. We are grateful for great people that share their ideas and thoughts.

Setting Goals

2010-06-03T16:57:00.002-06:00

I thought I would share about a little ritual our family engages in every morning. Each morning before we read family scriptures and practice our weekly scripture memorization we review our weekly goals.

On Monday morning each family member sets from 1 to 3 goals. These goals are of the individuals own choosing. Goals set this week included:

Read one chapter in Robinson Crusoe
Practice the piano every day for 30 minutes
Work on 4 and 5 multiplication tables
Schedule swimming lessons
Order more campaign banners

Sometimes we have to guide some one on a goal. We might ask them to be more specific. Then each day we review the goals with them. They don't have to report we just read and remind. At the end of the week we tally up how many goals were completed. Then we add that many beans to our bean counter jar. (recipe ingredient from Thomas Jefferson Education) When our bean jar is full we will do a "wholesome family activity."

We find that this creates unity. Each family member is encouraging of each others progress. If someone struggled to obtain a goal we work with them on how to set a more realistic goal for the next week. We only accomplish about 2/3 of our goals in a week. But we each continue to work on and improve. We aren't interested in perfection only progression.

I also wanted to add that I know that "goal setting" is typically considered a scholar activity. However each person pursues goals based on their phase (or grade/age). We use phases in our family, shocking I know. Caleb, who is still solidly in core (with no intention of leaving anytime soon!), sets goals like: brush my teeth at night, take a bath every night, do my jobs without whining, etc. His goals are very much "core phase" goals. Jared and Luke's are directed towards love of learning goals. Olivia makes scholar goals; read 100 pages in 1776, write and essay about Dolly Madison, answer questions from my mentor about Plutarch, etc. Mine revolve around Mentored Scholar/Depth. And finally Alex's revolve around Mission phase; read incumbents voting record on public education, create an 'issues page' for campaign website, practice speech, reread Proper Role of Government, etc.

We have been successfully engaging in goal setting as a family since January and have found that it is a worthwhile part of our family time.

Cultural Ark

2010-05-29T05:00:00.000-06:00

I love this quote from Cousin Ribby about our "cleaned up Christian Culture" and I had to share it:

"The old Ark, the biblical Ark, constructed to save the chosen from the Great Flood, had two of every creature in existence. The new Ark, the cultural Ark, built to save the chosen from the Great Media Flood, also has two of everything, I'm learning. You say you're a Pearl Jam fan? Check out Third Day. They sound just like them--same soaring gutteral vocals, same driven musicianship, same crappy clothes, just a slightly different message: Repent! you say you like Grisham-and Clancy-style potboilers? Grab a copy of Ted Dekker's "Heaven's Wager"--same stick-figure characterizations, same preschool prose, just a slightly different moral: Repent! your kids enjoy Batman, you say? Try Bibleman. Same mask, same cape, just a slightly different...That's the convincing logic of the Ark: If a person is going to waste his life cranking the stereo, clicking the remote, reading paperback pulp and chasing diet fads, he may as well save his soul while he's at it...What makes the stuff...so thin, so weak and cumulatively so demoralizing...has nothing to do with faith. The problem is lack of faith. Ark culture is a bad Xerox of the mainstream, not a truly distinctive or separate achievment. Without the courage to lead, it numbly follows, picking up the major media's scraps and gluing them back together with a cross on top." --taken from "The Marketing of Evil," by David Kupelian, pgs. 229-230

Lord of the Rings

2010-05-28T05:00:00.001-06:00

I'm REALLY irritated right now. We've gotten rid of or put up 90% of our movies. We rarely even use the TV. (Next step is to get rid of it I know!) And then this happens....

The other night was election night for Idaho. My husband, the politician, was up hitting refresh on about four sites getting updates from around the state late that night. Very exciting night for him.

So I was looking up things with him as the results were coming in and we thought we'd watch a good ole' classic while we were 'refreshing.' We choose Lord of the Rings #3, one of my favorite movies. Now we haven't watched very many movies in a quite a while. So I'm sitting there watching/listening to it half interested and I'm noticing something. This is a horrible movie! It is violent and scary and why didn't I notice this before? Hello? Sure there are some magical parts. Some truly inspiring moments that make me want to fight to the last breathe against evil. However, it's kind of small in comparison to the rest of all the creepy Golum and bad guy parts. Sigh..... I really like Lord of the Rings, but it's going to have to at least be put up......

Every time I think I'm getting ahead of Babylon I find some more things that I now feel aren't the BEST.

Before I think there were a lot of really good things that inspired me to greater thoughts. Now as I've gotten rid of all the good things though I'm noticing that maybe my good and really good might need to go too. This is making me think hard! So do I get rid of those things too? And if I do what in the world is left to participate in????? I'll just end with Cousin Ribby saying the rest of what I'm thinking here.

Babylon is so entwined in my life!

Brain Dead with Only a Few Thoughts

2010-05-27T05:00:00.000-06:00

I want to just have all of you write all my posts I've read some good ones again today. You all do such a good job explaining everything. Would you like to write all my posts? That would mean that I'm not thinking much and not growing though. Sigh....

We are done with the state program we have used for the last couple of years. No more state testing, reports or checks. The last traces of public school will now be gone forever.

That also means the computer is getting packed up today. We've used the state one for several years. Now we only have a couple of laptops. This is a headgate we are going to close and see what happens. An experiment. (Olivia isn't very excited about it). Did you know that accessing a desktop computer is really easy? But accessing a laptop is harder, at least in our family. We are hoping that Olivia and I will cut down our time on the computer now. Not that we spent a lot, but more than we should! So now it won't be as easy to be "acted upon" and just check blogs, emails or goodreads for "just a minute" a couple of times a day.

I know many of you out there already do really good at this and don't even need to get rid of your computer to over come your weapons of rebellion. So you guys out there can all be happy that you don't have to deal with this bad habit! : ) But we are needing drastic things to help us! haha We'll see how long it really lasts though. Maybe we can actually learn some self-control. That would be an even better idea though, huh? groan

Moving on from that, Alex won the primaries for state legislature on Tuesday. (hehe he wasn't running against anyone) Now the real war begins against the Democratic incumbent and their big war chest (their money). If you would like to join his facebook group click the link to the right. We have our first parade this weekend. We have a lot of parades this summer....

Anyway that's all I'm going to say right now. Not because I'm holding back though, but because I've run out of things to say today. (imagine that?)

It's Love

2010-05-25T05:00:00.001-06:00

Yesterday Alex and I celebrated our 13th anniversary. We have had 13 wonderful years together. We mentioned to each other that it seems like we have always been together. We can't remember not being together.

I feel very blessed to have Alex in my life. I'm quite certain he's the only one that could put up with me and he likes it! We are a great match.

I appreciate Alex because he lets me fill my role as the nurturer of our family. He lets me receive revelation for my my stewardship and then supports me. He trusts me. I am grateful that he loves our children and likes to be home and be with us. I appreciate Alex because he takes very seriously his role as provider, protector and presider of our family. He has never tried to pawn off his roles on me no matter how tight things were or how stressful things became. He understands where his duties lie and he does them.

I am grateful he seeks truth. I am grateful that he gets up super early in the morning and studies the scriptures with me for 1 to 1/2 hours every day. I appreciate that he gives selfless service everyday to all people. I am grateful he never gets angry, he never yells and he his always there.

We are all so blessed to have wonderful men that support us in our God ordained roles. We couldn't go through this journey of life without great men by our side.

Great Debate

2010-05-24T05:00:00.004-06:00

I have been enjoying participating in the "Great Debate" lately that is covering homeschooling blogs now. This has been an exciting discussion and I'm grateful to be apart of it! It reminds me of the different eras in English History when all the great minds would sit, discuss and seek truth. Since we all live in different states we can't sit down with one another, but reading each others home school blogs as been an opportunity to continue on with the Great Debate in our own sphere.

What is the Great Debate? For those in my sphere it is how to raise our children in the midst of Babylon. What do we give them and what do we need to take away? How do we prepare? The Great Debate is about a lot of things though. The Great Debate is a discussion among people of similar like minds as they seek truth and then seek to apply it in their own lives. There are Great Debates going on everywhere about government, evolution, Christianity, truth, happiness, human nature. Here is a link that simply gives you an idea about some of the things out there. These aren't necessarily topics I'm pursuing though.

Here are the links of some of those moms that I've enjoyed actively participating with in the Great Debate:

Heather

Misty and Cousin Ribby

Misty and Jennifer

Lazy

Karen

Celeste

Buzy Bee

Mrs. Smith

Kayti

Googs

Lindy

Rebekah

Stephanie

Moving On

2010-05-22T05:00:00.002-06:00

So I've decided I've killed the toys and tools topic long enough. I've actually written, partially written or brain stormed a toy vs tool topic for: pianos, journals, scissors, puzzles, computers, proclamation, money, books, free time, schedule, temple, family, and words. You'll just have to miss them I suppose.

I've personally learned a lot about thinking about some of those things. I have realized the great many gifts (tools) that God has given us to help us on our journey through mortality. Of course every person will use the tools differently, but it was still fun for me to explore the various ways some things can be used. I've learned as I've pondered on some things that I need to ask myself if I am using the gifts given me to their fullest potential or if I've misusing them. I've realized that in some cases I'm burying my talents.

In the mean time who knows what I'll write about next.

Our Arena

2010-05-21T19:51:00.003-06:00

One of the things the kids wanted on our 80 acres was an arena to practice with their horses. Alex spent several hours scrapping one of the pastures so we could have our "arena." Maybe someday well get metal posts to go around it so it's a real arena. For now Olivia and Jared have had fun practicing barrels on it. I still laugh to think that me, the city girl, has horses, an arena and 80 acres. How did this happen? Oh, yeah, I had Olivia, the horse whisperer. You have to love Luke at the bottom. He loves playing at the land. Notice how muddy and wet he is. Of course he has a stick too.

Our Weapons of Rebellion: Tool or Toy?

2010-05-21T05:00:00.009-06:00

I have recently been pondering about weapons of rebellion. First off what are weapons of rebellion? A scripture gives us the answer, “For they became a righteous people; they did lay down the weapons of their rebellion, that they did not fight against God any more, neither against any of their brethren” (Alma 23:6-7). I don't know if the term "weapons of rebellion" is a universal term or just one that I've heard in my sphere.

I, of course, have lots! Too many! Ugh! But I'm trying to bury them all! I'm so grateful we have a life time to identify them and get them buried once and for all! So I've been thinking about weapons of rebellion. Here is some brainstorming thoughts I've come up with.

Through the years I've heard numerous talks and lessons (see this Gospel Doctrine Lesson specifically 1d) on how we need to lay down the weapons of rebellion in our life. A weapon of rebellion would be something that keeps us from giving our hearts to God. It keeps us from giving up our complete submission. A weapon of rebellion has kept me saying to myself, "God asks to much, I shouldn't be expected to truly give everything!"

That's kind of the point though. God does want me to give away everything. It's not to be mean, but it so he can give me a new heart without all my wrong ideas and past yuck. He says, "And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit with you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them an heart of flesh." (Ezekiel 11:19)

I think I have lots of weapons of rebellion. But slowly by slowly I need to weed them out of my life so that I really can place everything on the alter. I believe that if I go to God in prayer He will tell me what is the one thing that is stopping me the most in my progression. He will help me to overcome it and master it. Then I will receive "further light and knowledge" and I can go on to the next thing. He will teach me how to bury it. For I must bury it like the Anti-Nephi-Lehis so that it will stay FAR away from me.

In all the talks I've heard they always use several examples like facial hair, white shirts and ties, and Mountain Dew as examples. Other examples might be our sleep, tanning, radio, other music, food, online games, books, vehicles, double earrings, Sunday football, other sports, PG-13/R-rated movies, cracking our knuckles, ways we break the Sabbath Day, etc. I think our weapons of rebellion can be anything that isn't inherently wrong and doesn't keep me out of the temple, but it's a questionable activity and deep down inside I know better. It's that thing that I will defend to the bitter end in order to justify the things that I do. That thing I won't admit to anybody that I need to stop but deep inside I know. That thing I boldly say, "Yeah, if Christ were here I'd still do this." Inside I squirm though because I know that's not really true.

Like I said, I have several. And I personally have multiple ones in the list above. Ugh! I am also in no way pointing fingers. I'm not checking people out on Sunday and thinking, "I can't believe they didn't wear nylons!" (Maybe I'm jealous though of people who can get away with not wearing nylons. My legs are so white we would all die of fright). I'm simply speaking in generalities and from the things I've heard in talks and instructions given to me when I've been a leader.

My weapons (some of them, I'm not going to reveal all my bad habits just yet!): Twilight books (I like them a little too much), I add hi-lights to my hair sometimes, I like sugar way to much (do you think it's a problem that I had pumpkin pie for breakfast, lunch and dinner today, nothing else, just pumpkin pie?), I like sleep way too much and I use it ("I'm tired") when I don't want to face things so then I can go take a nap, go to bed early or sleep in, I like to hide behind being an introvert, I use my opinions and thoughts that I've garnered from years of study to justify being a snot sometimes, and well, that's enough. That exposes me raw. I'd better take a nap now so I don't have to deal with the comments.

So how in the world are our weapons a rebellion a tool or a toy? A toy perhaps because I use them to play with and avoid doing what I should. But a tool. Yes, a tool I can use to turn to God and become closer to Him. Will I humble myself and allow my heart to be turned and then in turn receive the "more" that God has to offer me? Hopefully I can use my weapons has a tool to propel me to the great victory of supplicating myself on the alter and giving all. Even those things that are dumb and don't matter, but I keep doing it because it's my "rook card" I'm hiding to prove that no one has absolute control over me. Yeah, I have lots of rook cards. Forget the nap I'd better get to work!

Okay, did I do better about being more positive this time? I tried REALLY, REALLY hard!

How we raise our family....

2010-05-20T05:05:00.002-06:00

"Now I, Nephi, did not work the timber after the manner which was learned by men, neither did I build the ship after the manner of men; but I did build it after the manner which the Lord had shown unto me; wherefore, it was not after the manner of men. And I Nephi, did go into the mount oft, and I did pray oft unto the Lord; wherefore the Lord showed unto me great things...." 1 Nephi 18:2-3

I think that this scripture reference is a great parable to how we can raise our family. At least I've found it so to be for me. Each day we strive to build our family after the manner which the Lord as revealed to us. Each day we petition for what to do that day with our children and our family unit. Each day the answers are different then how the world or the manner of men would have us build our children and our family. The Lord desires that we call upon him and find out how to build our family. He will tell us how to make the tools to make and mold our family and he will provide the knowledge for us to make our "ship" or our family. Isn't that exciting? To know God is always there with answers even in the little things!

And in the end we will have those around us exclaim, "that the workmanship thereof was exceedingly fine." 1 Nephi 18:4 So don't loose hope. Stay on the path that the Lord wants you to be on with your children. He will show you how to raise a family in the midst of Babylon. And those naysayers will someday recognize the "exceedingly fine" family you have raised. Remember it can't be build after the manner of man, only after the manner of God.

Preparing for Missions

2010-05-18T21:49:00.002-06:00

Here's a great article that my friend Heather pointed out to me. It points out how we can prepare our youth for their missions by limiting media in their life and how to teach them balance with these things. Also it address ways to improve social behavior in order to be more successful on a mission. This is a great article for those who think that Headgates might be to strict. The article reminds us again that we definitely need to close what I now call 'the headgates' in certain things.

The Prophet Said to Plant A Garden

2010-05-18T09:54:00.002-06:00

So that's what we did.....

Our Thoughts: A tool or a toy?

2010-05-18T05:00:00.002-06:00

So moving on to our mind! Our mind is a marvelous tool for good in our lives if we can use it for such. It has been said that even if the body were failing if the mind were still strong that we can keep going. (Think about the pioneers and those in concentration/prison camps). It is our first and our last line of defense against everything that is thrown upon us.

It has also been said that the mind is the devils playground. If Satan can get into our thoughts and began to sway us his victory will be swift and decisive.

So the question is posed to us. Do we use our mind as a tool or a toy? A tool to ponder and think about the glory of God? A tool to develop mental toughness against the pressures of the world? A tool to think about the truth and the great thoughts of the world? OR do we use it as a vehicle for fun? A toy to entertain us with unrealistic fantasies about material gain? A toy to think about the glory of the world? A toy to learn meaningless things from books and TV? A toy to think about filth and immoral things? A toy to fix us squarely on the "good" things of the world? A toy to lull in into carnal security and to think "All is well in Zion," I am well enough off?

Long ago (and about 500 books ago) I read a book wherein Sister Patricia Holland (Elder Holland's wife) talked about how Elder Holland would come home from his meetings and comment that the prophet was always telling the brethren that they weren't pondering enough. (I believe this was from A Quiet Heart). If the apostles aren't pondering enough than I feel certain that I'm not pondering enough.

Over the years I've tried to improve this skill of pondering. I've found that for me to ponder more effectively I need to write it down. While I'm reading the scriptures or wrestling over a question or problem I like to brain storm. I write down all the thoughts that come to mind. This leads to more thought and more thoughts. I cross out things that don't seem right and I write down more things. I have found that I can channel more mental power by writing them down. In the past when I didn't write things down I found that my mind drifted and it was hard to stay focused. Writing things down helps me to stay focused. I have multiple 10 cent notebooks filled with my thoughts. Maybe that idea will help other visual learners out there.

Moving on.... Anything involving the brain is going to hurt. Remember the brain is a muscle. You have to exercise it or you won't be able to sustain noble thoughts. It takes practice. The more you use the mind and try to harness your thoughts the more successful you will be. You will be able to concentrate on things that are "virtuous, lovely, or good report or praiseworthy" as you apply yourself. It takes practice and it takes time. But it can be done.

Our mind is a gift from God to help us on our journey through life. He will guide us with His Spirit but we need to do our part and use our mind to empower us to greater levels of truth and ability.

We can use our mind tool to:
Read a hard classic.
Stop surfing and pursuing mind numbing information on the internet.
Master a classical piece on the piano.
Write an essay.
Receive personal revelation in our role as wife, mother and nurturer.
Turn off the television.
Stop overeating.
Get up early even when the sun has not risen, the bed is warm and you feel so "tired."
Replacing our anger towards someone/thing with kind, loving and forgiving thoughts.
Not be overwhelmed by the emotional exhaustion of being a mother.
Speak kindness by first thinking kindness.
Applying ourselves to earnest studying in our scripture study.

Yes, our mind and our thoughts can be our greatest tool or our greatest toy. What will it be for each of us?

Sunday Thought

2010-05-16T06:28:00.003-06:00

I just read David R. Stone's "Zion in the Midst of Babylon"(and I will continue to read and reread it). Thanks goes to Misty for pointing it out to me. This great article talks about Babylon and Zion and the fight that we must rage. I hope the article leads you to much pondering and personal revelation. It has 'headgates' written all over it.

Colorado Trip

2010-05-15T19:04:00.003-06:00

We recently returned from a great road trip! We were gone 6 days and 5 nights. We sent to Southern Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. We visited family and friends. We also saw some great sites. We saw an old cemetery, a scenic railroad, The Great Sand Dune National Park, a natural hot springs, Sky City (pueblo homes) and some Anasazi ruins.

We learned while in Colorado to never complain about the wind in Idaho again! It averaged 50-60 miles per hour one day. Apparently that was normal!

We traveled over 2,100 miles. You can see pictures on the family blog if you would like.

Sleep-a tool or a toy?

2010-05-14T05:00:00.000-06:00

Sleep as a tool or a toy? You are wondering about now if I've gone off my rocker I suppose. I've been thinking long and hard on this so just hear me out.

Sleep is most definitely a tool of course! It's a tool that is a biological necessity. My musings have led me to ask myself if I've used it as a toy too. Hmmm?

A toy again being defined as something that entertains you. There have been plenty of times I've used sleep to cope with my life and I've resorted to it so I didn't have to do anything-I was bored perhaps.

I've discovered in the past I've slept way to much. I use to believe I was one of those people that needed 9-10 hours a night. har har As I've pondered my sleep patterns through the years I've realized that sleep is addicting. The more I got the more I wanted. Pretty soon I needed 10 hours at night and a 3 hour nap. I knew I wasn't any more worn out then the pioneers and they survived on much less sleep and they were much more active. So what was wrong with me? Why was I always tired?

Ding, ding, ding! I was using sleep as a toy and not a tool. Toys and quick fix entertainment will never satisfy our souls and our true needs. I realized that when my husband and I greatly cut back the sleep we had a night we were more motivated. We also found the sluggishness we before felt had vanished. It took a short while to overcome those initial days of my body expecting more sleep to get it kicked in so that I felt normal. I recognized that it was just like an addiction and my body was rebelling at first, but that doesn't mean that weaning myself off of extra sleep wasn't the right thing to do.

We've worked on this for the last five years. It has been a process. We do better for several months and then we bomb again for a couple of more. The bed is so warm and cozy in the winter time! We've always felt worse though when we've been sleeping in. Life's a journey remember. Right now we are in a really good sleep/awake cycle and have been for quite a while. I think we've finally found our niche and we will make a more lasting change!

When I take naps now-which I still occasionally do- I can recognize immediately if I really need that sleep. If I wake up groggy and spend the rest of the day in a daze I probably really didn't need that sleep. However, if I wake up refreshed and can easily get to sleep again at my regular bedtime then I probably did need that nap.

I know these concepts are strange perhaps. One of children was yawning one and a lady said, "What? Are you tired?" Our son replied, "Yes, I slept in. I slept to much." The lady replied, "What? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. If your tired you need more sleep." Society has us thinking that it is not possible, even inconceivable to get too much sleep. D & C 88 teaches us to "cease to sleep longer than is needful."

If you are use to getting lots of sleep and you had to be up late that day than yes, your body will feel extremely tired the next day, because you are addicted to it.

I know plenty of people-Pres. Hinckley- that work(ed) hard all day and sleep (slept) a lot less than me (or me when I was over indulging). They are more energetic , productive, positive and happier to be around than most people I know.

Just some thoughts. Perhaps we can all evaluate the sleeping patterns in our life. We may find we can get some more energy out of ourselves than we previously thought possible. Are we using sleep as a toy or a tool?

And just so I don't sound self-righteous I slept in until 7:30 this morning (the day I wrote this post). Yes, I've felt blah all day just so you know. We're talking about correct principles and not perfection!

I wrote this post two weeks before its actual 'publication' date. I wanted everyone to know again that these are just some ideas that I've had for the last couple of years. This is subject to your own personal interpretation obviously. We are all in different stages. For one thing, I do not have little children or babies. My children all sleep in their own bed and sleep through the night. They also do not hang on me all day and so I'm not emotionally drained like I was several years ago. Anyway my point: don't freak out with this post. As my friend Lazy Lara says, "don't try this at home." : )

Tools and Toys

2010-05-13T05:00:00.001-06:00

I love the concept of 'tools and toys.' We' have been applying it around our house a lot. My husband likes it and my kids like it. It helps us to find value in things more, there is less waste and a greater responsibility to the things we have. Since we have tried to go down to our needs and wants this concepts has helped us take better care of our things.

So what are tools and toys? Tools are things that have a distinct purpose and job. A fork, a hammer, a CD player, a piano, a car, etc these are all tools. A toy is something specifically used for entertaining us.

There are of course tools that are used as toys. I have to remind our kids regularly during meal time that their butter knives are not swords. We've spend a lot of time evaluating how we treat things in our house. Too often we use the tools as toys and tools. They end up getting misplaced and/or broken. We can eliminate waste if we are taking care to keep tools as tools.

I believe that the Lord does not want us to be wasteful with what he has given us and as I've mentioned in a previous post we spend too much time in core phase and therefore tend to turn everything into toys.

I've written several posts that will be published over the next couple of days that weigh in on some of my thoughts regarding certain things. Of course these are only my ideas! It has been fun over the last several months to think about all everything we are surrounded by and what its purpose truly is!

More Headgate Thoughts

2010-05-12T16:50:00.003-06:00

My friend Misty wrote a fabulous post today about The Headgate principles that I absolutely love. Here's her link.

Closing the headgates in our lives is not about having a better home school. Closing the headgates is about lives focused on Christ and lives heading to Zion. That means dropping our idols and fleeing. That means closing the headgates. My friend Misty says the headgate principles are only the tip of the iceberg. I agree!

As we continually visit our summer cottages in Babylon we will be tempted to disregard this as heresy because it threatens our cozy lifestyle. One foot in and one foot out. We all will have to change. We all have many idols to throw down. Headgates starts us down the path of realizing what we need to do.

I hope Misty's words will continue to springboard you on your journey!

Toys

2010-05-12T05:00:00.000-06:00

First off I've decided to insert this post today. I think there are are great many toys that really can be classified as legitimate tools. Meaning they can be a toy and a tool at the same time without being used incorrectly. Confused yet? Baby toys are toys but they are still tools to instill visual and spacial recognition for instance. The ropes and blankets in our kids toy baskets are simply toys, but they are tools to expanding creativity. So there are toys that are valuable. The trick lies is choosing the best ones.

Keri Tibbets outlined some ideas to help you decide if something is a good toy or not.

1). Does the fun or the thrill of the play come from the child's own brain, muscles or voice box? If it's a push button toy (Buzz Lightlightyear, gameboy, etc) , it might not be the best one to have. If it requires batteries its probably not the best. If your child has to come up with the actions, the sounds, and entertainment its a better choice. She calls these plain and lifeless toys.

2).Who was the creative one, the toymaker or the child? This would include bead kids, Lincoln logs, Hot wheels tracks, Lego's, etc. Just a thought. Perhaps not having a house full of these kind of toys would be something to think about. I know we are all at different stages, don't hyperventilate. Think principles, not "Thou shalt remove all Lego's and Hot Wheels tracks from your house from this day forth." Remember seek your own personal revelation for your family. It's always good to hear other peoples ideas though.

She has some more steps but I won't get into them. These are some thoughts to get you thinking about the best toys. And remember the best toys really are tools too because they are developing your child.

May your toy selecting be a happy time.

Scripture Study

2010-05-10T05:00:00.002-06:00

My husband and I have served in leadership positions for nearly all of our married life within the church. One recurring problem that has constantly been present no matter what state we live or what age we are working with is that the vast majority of people do not immerse themselves in their scriptures (core book) on a daily basis. They also don't pray.

How can we ever expect to get through life with out immersing our selves in the Spirit? Scriptural neglect might have been okay twenty or thirty years ago, but today it is not! Not only do we need to read our Scriptures but we need to study them. There are messages in there so profound and so timely that will provide key knowledge for our progression as well as protection.

I know one complaint that I've heard is that 'I've read it all already, there's nothing more to learn from he Tree of Life story.' (or Alma 32 or Moroni 10, ................) I've spent one to two hours in the scriptures every morning for years and I'm here to tell you there are truths yet to be discovered. I love the scriptures!! I can't get enough of them. They have chased away all my fears, all my frustrations and all my inadequacies.

So this post wasn't meant to be so much about getting the mama's and the papa's reading as it was to encourage you to create a plan to ensure that your children are reading every day in their scriptures. (I don't think it counts if they read scriptures with family scripture study, your kids still need to read on their own, sorry).

Proverbs teaches us, "To train up a child in the way that they should go." Now we've all heard that. May I suggest that we train our little ones before they get too big? That way they have the habits down pat when they are little.

Here's what I've done. I offer this only has an idea to spring board your own thoughts and personal revelation! With each of my kids I've read them the scripture readers until they are 5. Then I ask them if they want to read out of the big scriptures. They always say yes. Then we start with verse one. "I Nephi......" I showed them the word THE. Then I would read the verse to them and they would supply the necessary THE at the appropriate spots. The next day we worked on AND. We kept going in the manner. I'd read every day with them. Sometimes I would continue to read out of the reader with them.

After a time they would ask to read two verses with me. Currently my youngest is still not independent and he still reads with me every morning. We read a column together. Followed by the reader which we take turns reading. (This is actually how I taught all four of my kids to read. I only supplemented the scriptures with the McGuffy Primer).

I always have them read before breakfast. Why? Because I want the habit ingrained in them as part of their life. So that no matter what happens during that day (they are a dad and they have to go to work) they will have already read their scriptures for the day. I try to check with the boys every morning to ask them what they've read. We usually have a good discussion about what they learned. They feel free to ask questions. This way I also know that they have read.

For all you late risers, or fuzzy brained morningers (Olivia) I just want to point out that Olivia reads her scriptures faithfully at night and as done so for years. I just think that you need to help your kids create a time that is habitual either in the morning or the night, avoid the daytime (in my personal opinion).

So the point of this post, let's get our children trained in their scripture reading while they are young so that "when they are old they will not depart from it."

Family Work Efforts

2010-05-07T05:00:00.001-06:00

A couple of days ago I made good on my idea to make some casseroles for the elderly. I've been reminded lately in my studies that service is such an important aspect in keeping our covenants. That day, for part of work, I read them the first several versus of section 105 in the Doctrine and Covenants and we talked long and hard about caring for the poor and the needy. Then we talked about how we could do a better job of that. They were really excited to learn we would be making food that day for some elderly people.

After our meeting we did a couple of quick jobs around the house. Then we started in on the food. I'm kind of obsessive about keeping the kitchen clean as you go along so I had a lot of opportunities to teach and model that! haha. As Olivia would say, "You're doing good mom. Keep breathing." We made yummy Saxapahash which is a baked/layered spaghetti casserole. This is a family favorite. For all my vegan friends out there don't look at the pictures! We also made a bunch of cookies that we froze for a bake food sale fundraiser for 4-H.

So my thought today is: how can you add service to your home education/family life?

Family Work-Headgates

2010-05-06T05:00:00.004-06:00

In my pursuit of truth I have really found something beautiful in The Heatgates article. There were many things in this article that have been impactful. I'm grateful for other people who are pursuing truth and are willing to share it.

I haven't been all that good at administering family work in the past. Sure I've had the required "chore charts" that all good mothers must have and they take their turn doing the dishes. Yes, they clean their room, but they really weren't working. After reading the Headgates article I realized that I need to get them to work "their little britches off" to quote Lara Gallagher.

So we made a few changes. It's been over a month now so I feel like I can report on this little exercise. So far the results have been.................life changing. That sounds a little extreme but really they have been. Today, for example, I asked my 10 year son, who had already been cleaning for an hour, to go clean all the doors in the house and I showed him how. He said, "Sure mom, no problem." Not only did he clean them, but he really cleaned them and didn't fake his way through. I asked him how he was doing part way through and he said, "Good, but I can't get this part of that door clean. I'm really sorry. What would you like me to do about it?" Then when he was done he came and "returned and reported" that he had completed his assignment and what was his next assignment. That would not have happened two months ago. He would have been rolling on the floor with a fit in a wave of hysteria with the cries of, "How dare I ask him to do that and what was he anyway, my slave?" That sounds kind of sassy though and he's never been sassy, but he would have been desperately in the depths of despair to do any sort of work.

So how did this happen?

First I made my plan. How were we going to clean this house, what work would we do and when? That was what I call the “spiritual creation” step.

Then I sat the kids down and explained the game plan. I told them that we would now be doing two hours of family work every morning together as a family. I explained to them what would be expected of them. That it was work time and not play time. Anyone caught outside fighting with their sticks or inside hiding under the ping pong table reading a book would get 5 minutes per infraction in the corner administered during free time. I also told them what the blessings and benefits would be if they submitted to our work schedule (see below). I call this marvelous principle the “teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves.” I rarely have problems with my kids when I do new things or take away toys. I've always explained why until they understand and then they just accept the new plans.

Then we went to work. Every morning with out fail we have worked for two hours. We've have deep cleaned this house inside and out. They are learning specific jobs and they are getting very good at them. Caleb can now successfully be turned loose on cleaning the toilets for example. We've also been doing a lot of food preparation. I've made a lot of bread with them and other provident living food items. They must always report back to me when they are finished with a job. We usually work in the same area so they are close. This phase is of course affectionately called,”working their little britches off. “

I must comment first on the problem we are having. We have run out of things to clean. Sure we can clean the toilets, dust, clean windows, etc but that only lasts so long when there are so many able bodies available reporting for duty. They are also getting quicker with their jobs (not to mention there is less grime they are removing because we are staying up on everything). I don't like doing meaningless things so I'm starting to struggle with what do to fill up the time. We've had a month long wind storm happening so we have only been able to work outside twice. I'm hoping though when it gets nice we will work a lot outside and we have more then enough projects on our newly acquired 80 acres.

One idea that I've come up with is that we will make mass food (casseroles?) and freeze it in small serving sizes and then on other days we will go visit the elderly. I think this will be a great opportunity. They can learn core principles of keeping their baptismal covenants and learning some cooking skills all at the same time. I think we will also do some more home industries as my friend suggested. I want to do meaningful things that are making them into better people.

Now to the best part. Those blessings. First off my kids have learned that they can work hard, have fun and still be happy. I've learned that I can have my kids work hard, have fun and still be happy. I think the latter lesson has been the most valuable.

Perhaps the most amazing thing I've found is that my kids think deeply when they work. They are asking profound questions. They ask me questions about the book we are reading, a question about current events or even a question they had when they were reading their scriptures. These questions have sparked an amazing journey of discovery for them as we discuss things that will build character for their whole lives. I see them thinking. I see them changing. I see them becoming.

As a mother I could ask for nothing more.

Core Phase Thoughts

2010-05-05T05:00:00.000-06:00

A true principle that I believe in is the concept of core phase. Call it whatever you would like. I believe we each start at a place where we must build a foundation. I believe that core phase is built on Jesus Christ. Right and wrong are learned. True and false are evaluated. The reality of good and bad are discovered. In this phase we learn values and principles that will be a rock upon which we can built the rest of our lives.

In our home we specifically focus on the truths found in The Family: A Proclamation to the World: "Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities." Once this core foundation is firmly established we can move on and learn more about life. I do not believe that we will ever be successful unless we have a base to stand firm on. We would be blown about with every wind of doctrine and we would fall.

One thought that I've been contemplating lately is how are we as adults doing with core phase? We may believe it's important for our children, but have we obtained a solid base to built everything on for ourselves?

It is my opinion that a great many moms and even more dads are still in core phase. This is in no way a judgment on the individual, but a reflection on our society. Most things in our society are aimed at keeping us in perpetual core phase. Just a thought. Something to ponder.

Keri Tibbetts gave an excellent description on how to know if your child (apply to yourself) is still in core phase. She said if they are in core phase they will use their free time to play. Remember core phase as been described as 50% work and 50% play. I know husbands all go to work and moms wash, clean, cook, and sew but what do they do when they are done?

Perhaps a wife who uses her fee time to shop, play Internet games, connect with every soul she's ever known on facebook, surf the Internet, read brain candy books, go out to lunch with her friends regularly is still in core phase. Perhaps a husband who comes home from work and plays the Wii, watches TV, knows the stats on every major league team, watches high action movies, rides dirt bikes regularly, shoots random animals, or plays computer games may be in core. These are just the some thoughts. (These things in and of themselves may not be bad, but it is the overindulgence that I'm speaking of).

"What" you may ask. "We work so hard. Can't we play a little to relax and unwind? We need to refill our bucket!" It is my personal belief that women will never fill their bucket if they are seeking outside sources like shopping or lunch dates to regain their "emotional strength." You will always be empty. Those activities will never satiate your soul.

Then what will? Immersing your self in core values. Reading your scriptures, praying to the one true God (who is not the Internet or the television). We must apply the principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities to find personal strength, to find a soul that is healthy, a life that is solid.

When you find yourself at peace and not reaching for quick-fix entertainment you will know you are building a solid core or sure foundation. Your free time will began to be "wholesome." You will do things as a family. You will choose to read a book. You will choose to serve your neighbor. You will choose to go on a walk and observe nature. You will choose to learn a new skill. You will choose to write something. You will choose to become something other than a robot that is that is addicted to computers, games, shopping or sports. We will be whole.

Perhaps our homes would thrive more if we has parents had some self-discipline and knew who we were and what our purpose was. Just some thoughts....

True Principles

2010-05-04T05:00:00.001-06:00

I've enjoyed reading so many articles lately about principles. What are principles? What are our family's principles?

The last seven years I have earnestly pursued book after book, talk after talk, person after person, temple session after temple session and scripture after scripture trying to find our own personal truth in regards to home education. President Young said, "Pray as if everything depends on God and work as if everything depends on you." To that end I have sought truth.

I agree with many of you that there are many ways to home educate your children and there is no one right way. I appreciate the ideas that you all present. What I've created from those ideas coupled with my own personal conversations with the Almighty look different than yours. My journey is far from over however and I continue to seek more truth.

I've never felt so strongly the Spirit as when I go before Him daily to petition and invoke His help as I seek each day to fulfill my sacred role of nurturer. God is ever mindful of us and reaches out to us when we seek to fulfill our God given roles as mother. He will answer us.

What I've created from those holy communions is a home and not a school room. I've created a culture and not a system. School is not in session from 8-3. Our mortal sojourn is in session 24/7 however! I've patterned our home after the temple and what I envision Zion to be.

Someone may say, "What are you doing? Are you wanting everything church related?" The answer is yes. Yes in the aspect that everything we do as a purpose, with that purpose being bringing each of us closer to Christ. My vision is way beyond teaching my kids their multiplication tables or memorizing Shakespeare. My vision is raising kids who can usher in the second coming and Christ.

Every moment I pray that I will know God's will and that He will direct me. Every book I read, every conversation I start, every chore I require as a purpose. I know exactly what value I want taught, every lesson I want learned and every habit I want developed. I am not preaching to them however. Alex and I are doing everything we can to model that supplication to Christ. Our children do know that everything we do has a purpose and they trust us. They know I have their eternal welfare in sight. They get it. They know I'm not interested in making them out to be the most popular, the best dressed or the next basketball all-star. I have a higher vision.

I am convinced that when we stood in the pre-mortal existence, before we came here to mortality, that my children (who would be called among your children the valiant and chosen generation) begged me not to raise them in mediocrity and Babylon. I am certain they petitioned me to raise them with truth inscribed into their very soul so that they would in very deed be prepared to fulfill their missions however great or small. I will not fail them. I will do all in my power to learn correct principles and to teach them truth.

My posts are geared from an overwhelming desire to prick each of us and to have each one of us ask ourselves what principles can I gleam for my family from these ideas? I believe in the power of personal revelation and its guiding influence in our lives. I hope that my posts, that I feel compelled to write, will arouse our faculties to receive the truth that we are all in desperate need of and are seeking.

God bless us all in our own pursuit of true principles.

Our Bookshelf

2010-05-03T05:00:00.002-06:00

We've gone over and over our bookshelf. What are the best books for our family? In the past we had an abundance of good, better, and best books. Now we don't. I've only kept the books I would absolutely want if I was suddenly not able to ever go to the library again. I've read a great many 'classics' it seems and while they are good, I don't think they are great and need to be on my bookshelf. We can check out all the Magic Tree House books we want at the library. I don't need to keep them in our home though. I don't want to dust them. I don't want to rearrange them. I don't want to move them. Frankly I don't want to look at them. So observe the picture below to see what is left. The bottom binders are their genealogy books. To left of the binders are the picture books that are left. They are mostly fairy tales. We have some blocks on there that I'm getting rid of. Waste. They don't play with them. Why do I have them? The bookshelf is messy. But they look at it and pick up the books.

Some of the books that we choose to keep as the best are Lord of the Rings, Work and the Glory, Narnia, Johnny Tremaine, Little House on the Prairie series, A Wrinkle in Time series, and Little Britches.

Now to my classic shelf. It's pretty small huh? (We have a small assortment of our 'best' theology books on another bookshelf). Our daughter as about 20 books in her room that are all adult classics. Pretty slim pickings. Guess what though? We aren't overwhelmed with our books any more and we actually want to sit down and read them. Isn't that something? Who would have thought? All in all we ended up giving up 75% of our books. It's a beautiful thing.

NOTE: If you are looking into getting the McGuffy Readers do not bother getting anything but the primer book. Once your child learns to read they will no longer want to read a McGuffy Reader. Just a thought. I know you were wondering.

Plastic Plants

2010-05-01T05:00:00.000-06:00

About two months ago we had a major dejunking party. We got rid of so many things. Why do we have so much stuff? It is really embarrassing. I realized quickly that as a society (and the Sutter family) we live WAY WAY WAY beyond our needs and wants. I mean come on, how many spatulas does a women really need?

So we got rid of our stuff. My husband says we got rid of 50 lawn and leaf garbage bags of stuff. I think it was closer to 35, but I stopped counting at 25. That's a lot of stuff. That's too much stuff. Again I ask, why do we have so much stuff?

Not only did I come to see that we had way to much stuff, but we were emotionally attached to so very many items in our home. It was almost as if they were on own little idols. Not good.

Another thing I noticed about all our stuff was that I had to clean it and organize it and look at it and ...... I don't need more things to do. Really I don't.

I've implemented a new cleaning schedule for family work this past month and the first day we did the living room we quickly realized how much we needed to dust. This was after 35+ bags of extra treasures went out. Since I wanted to focus on teaching my kids how to deep clean we were cleaning all of our plastic plants. How did I end up with so many plastic plants? Half way through a really big plant dusting job Jared said, "Mom, are we going to have to dust these every week?" I looked at him and he looked at me and I got it. No we were not going to spend our lives dusting plastic plants. I started laughing and said, "Let's get rid of them!" So they picked one plant to keep (surprisingly it was the very smallest and they put it on top of the piano). Why do we have so many plastic plants I ask again?

Then came the picture frames. Why do I have so many picture frames cluttering up the wall? I don't want to dust them all either. So we took almost all of them down and we are going to put them in a book and put them on our 'prayer table' (also commonly known as a coffee table). We still have pictures up so don't freak, but we surly didn't need that many!!!

So I ask you what plastic plants to you have that are cluttering up your life? Let's not waste our lives dusting.

The Best Daughter

2010-04-30T21:00:00.000-06:00

Have I mentioned lately that we have a wonderful daughter? Well we do. Olivia is 11. She's smart, she's funny, she likes to work hard, she loves little kids, she wants to grow and be a mom and she's happy. She's been solidly in scholar phase for 9 months. Really. We haven't pushed her, we haven't expected, she just is.
She has amazing control of her emotions for an eleven year old. She is on her journey to being a wonderful young women. She likes to sew, crochet, knit, and loom. She likes practical things and she likes to make things beautiful. She LOVES to cook. I can't keep her out of the kitchen. She can make anything. She makes bread, salad dressing, doughnuts, casseroles, cakes, salads, meat, potatoes, green smoothies, etc. She can really make anything.

She spends most of her day reading and studying. She is currently passionate about The Revolutionary War time period and has spent her whole scholar phase so far studying anything she can about it. She is working hard on her writing. She understands the principles of freedom and democracy. She is working on articulating them because she wants to defend them. She pours over the classics.

Here's a quick list of some of the books that Olivia as read in the last year:
The Scarlet Letter
Plutarch
Midshipmen Hornblower
The Screwtape Letters
Leaves of Grass
Walden
The Secret Garden
The Real George Washington
Common Sense
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Proper Role of Government
Johnny Tremaine
Silas Marner
The Little Britches series
The Work and the Glory series
The Book of Mormon
The New Testament
The Doctrine and Covenants
The Pearl of Great Price

She also loves the outside. She loves working with our horses. She loves going on walks. She loves working hard.

Olivia is amazing and we are honored she's our daughter. Whenever I look at her I hope that somewhere out there that there is an amazing your man to match her. I believe that there is. I believe there are moms out there training their sons to be great also in hopeful expectation that there is a spouse worthy of their child.

So here's to all you great parents that are doing the hard things (and making 'best' choices) to raise your children to greatness. You are not alone.

Family History

2010-04-30T05:00:00.000-06:00

I love doing family history. I remember as a young girl helping my mom transfer all her hand or typed pedigree and family records to the new PAF program on the computer. I remember thinking about the families that I typed. Some had a lot of children, some had a lot of children that had died and some lost multiple spouses.

I remember my mom telling me stories about them. I remember her teaching me how to research and how to look for clues. I learned to love those who came before me and to honor them. I felt a sacred charge to carry on in that great work of redeeming the dead.

When I married Alex I learned that his family history work on some sides of his family had not been done. I enjoyed the challenge of discovering his family history so he could know and our children could know what their roots were. Fast forward ten years and I'm still working and still learning about them.

Teaching our children about those who came before them as been as important. Unfortunately we don't have many stories and few pictures to discover Alex's family, but we know their names and dates and we share with our children what we do know. Each time we go back to Pennsylvania we go up to New York and spend half a day walking the cemeteries of his ancestors.
On my side of the family we have pages and pages of journal entries, life sketches, pictures and treasures. Our children's favorite tales are of their great grandfather serving as a Flying Tiger in China during World War 2. They loves reading his stories of his bombing raids and the pictures of all the planes.

To teach our children about their family history my mother created a binder for each of our children. It contains pedigrees, group sheets, pictures and some biographies. The kids regularly read this and study the information. We have them down with their story books. For it is their story.We have regularly read them the biographies and stories multiples times exposing them to the courage of their forefathers. We look at their pictures and we talk about them. We have also studied maps of their immigration and the history occurring through the world while they lived.

One particular treasure we have is Heber C Kimball's "Address to His Children." Shortly before his death he outlined key points he wanted his posterity to know and do. He also states that he would stand with Father Adam and judge us at the last days in regards to how well we kept his charge. We refer to this often as we strive to come unto Christ.
Connecting with our roots is a powerful part of leadership education. It helps each one of us see perspective and understand we each have a part to play in the grand scheme of mortality. What do you do to connect with your roots as a family?

The Wind is Blowing

2010-04-29T20:29:00.000-06:00

....surprised? I'm not, I live in Idaho, land of the eternal wind storm. Since I don't like to go outside and I prefer to stay inside and read, sew, make green smoothies and eat green eggs it really doesn't bother me. Well, maybe it does. I'm really trying to be all gung ho and "lets go work on our land so we can built a house," so this weather doesn't help.

So we tried to do productive things today. We have cleaned this house up one side and down another. There is no more places to clean. The boys said, "So mom what are we going to clean now?" Me, "Well, I guess we can dust... again." So we dusted again. Then we read for a really, really long time. It's what you do when the wind blows.

We've been all feeling blazee (Is that how you spell that word? Is that even a word? It must be French. I don't know French-obviously) soooooo, we decided to break some rules and we watched two movies. Yes TWO movies. Who ever heard of such laziness, such wanton disregard for the pursuit of truth? So bad. But a pursuit we chose to pursue none the less.

We certainly aren't any more motivated than we were before we started watching them. Yes, it was a waste of time. No I don't feel bad about it. Yes, we'll do something productive tomorrow. But it was kind of fun all curled up on my bed in heating blankets giggling together. They all happily helped Olivia and I cook dinner when we decided to awaken from our brain numbing slumber.

One of our movies was BBC's "Silas Marner" so I don't feel totally heathenish. Oh, well. We'll still get there, I'm sure of it though. Why? Because we love each other and we are immensely happy, even if the wind is blowing.

Called on the Carpet

2010-04-29T05:00:00.000-06:00

We own 80 acres and we are working on building a house and going Georgic. We want to have chickens, kitties, pigs, ducks, cows, horses, bunnies, orchards... you get the point. We've already started with some of those things.

Since we are going to do this Alex thought it would be great to get a head start. So he brought me home some farm eggs. Some friends have too many layers and they want to share with us. Gee honey, thanks! You see I have a problem. As much as I say I'm going Georgic (that's in the future so I can say I will) I have a gag reflex problem with farm eggs. Really bad.

I can eat almost anything. I love food and I'm not picky. (I question some kinds of meat though). Farm eggs though? Not good. Every time I crack a farm egg the gag reflex starts. Alex thinks it's hysterical. He's rolling on the floor as I struggle through my gagging and my eyes are watering as I cook breakfast. Why is that so funny? There is just something about having a chance of bloody eggs filled with beaks and feathers that trips me out. I've cracked into plenty of those. So in the past after I manage to cook the eggs I absolutely refuse to eat it. (Even in french toast and pancakes).

The solution. Apparently these eggs are not around a rooster so they don't have a chance of being fertilized unlike all the other eggs he's brought home in the past. So no blood, feathers, beaks, etc.

So now we have eggs again and I must deal with it. I'm fleeing to Zion and so I must eat the green eggs.

Day one-pancakes. That's safe. Luke made the pancakes while I was getting ready. It wasn't until after I ate them that I realized that I'd eaten them! I didn't even notice.

Day two-Luke decided to make scrambled eggs for breakfast. I had to face it then. They are much yellower/oranger (because those are words) than the store eggs. But I held my breath and dumped a bunch of salsa on them and ate them! So proud of myself. I haven't done day three yet. One day at a time. To Zion!

Silas Marner

2010-04-28T16:11:00.001-06:00

Silas Marner by George Eliot

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
What a great read! I decided that I was going to read harder books to my 10 and 9 year old. I didn't know if we could do it but we did!

This beautiful book is about a man who was wronged in many ways and flees town. He settles into a new town vastly different than the one he was from. Since he is new he is viewed as different and questionable. He spends the first 15 or so years there in isolation as a weaver. As he spends every moment spinning his gold his money piles up. It becomes his obsession.

One dark day someone comes and steals his beloved gold. Silas, our weaver, is devastated. A short time later a little girl shows up that is unknown and orphaned. Silas takes in this young child and raises her. His heart melts and he changes himself. He becomes a part of the community.

But who is this girl and where did she come from? Will he ever find his gold again?

This book is a tough read. The first several chapters I had to explain a lot of things to my boys. Sometimes we wouldn't make it past a couple of sentences with out having to talk about it. We pushed through. They were riveted. The classic went through them.

Several times when we would be doing family work Jared, (my 10 year old), would ask me ask me questions. "Why did that man take Silas' money?" "Why did the town people think Silas was bad just because he was different?" "Why did Silas only care about his gold?" Jared asked many thought provoking questions.

The main principle played out in this book is that even if you repent a price still must be paid. It really gave the boys (and me) a lot to think about. Other values portrayed include love, forgiveness, work, friendship, family bonds and marital relationships.

This was a beautiful book with beautiful words.

We must not underestimate what are children can take in.

View all my reviews >>

The Gettysburg Address

2010-04-28T07:29:00.003-06:00

Recently the boys and I read the Gettysburg Address together. Have you ever read it? Really read it? Now this is a powerful document. This gives point to the "Classics, Not Textbooks" from the 7 Keys of Great Teaching. The boys and I had a moving experience as we talked about these powerful words, line by line.

Listen to some of these masterful words.

"...The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced...we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion..."

The whole thing is brilliant and gut wrenching. By the time we were done we were all crying. Crying for what's been done for us, crying because we must carry on with where they left off, and crying because we feel so inadequate to protect this passed on freedom. We had read truth that rang into our souls.

From there a two hour long discussion ensued about the Civil War. I narrated to them the great battles and the great heroes and what they had done. I was weaving a story for them. We talked of Joshua Chamberlain, Stonewall Jackson, Harriet Tubman, The Underground Railroad, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E Lee, Jefferson Davis, Fort Sumter, abolitionism, the south and the election of 1860. Every once in a while I'd pull up a picture of someone for them to see and for it to be real. We would look into their extinguished eyes and feel a sense of purpose and a sense of gratitude.

It is in these moments, as I tell them about heroes and history, that the tears fall and the Spirit penetrates that I feel so very blessed to have them by my side all day long and every day.

Applying the Keys of Great Teaching

2010-04-27T14:22:00.001-06:00

This is a blog post that I wrote for TJEd Trenches. I am a regular contributor and I've enjoyed writing for them for the past year and a half or so. The following is my most recent article.

Over six years ago, when I was first introduced to Thomas Jefferson Education I knew instantly that that was the truth I had been seeking! Applying it through the years as been a journey though.

For a long time I had deluded myself into thinking that as long as I read classics to my children (and still carried on conveyor belt education) I was "doing it." Fast forward a couple of years and I begin applying the Keys of Great Teaching. What a marvelous tool! Looking back in hindsight I discovered however that I had them mixed up a little. I realized that I was doing the following: Inspire and Require, Structure Time and Content, You and Them, etc! I had inadvertently inserted ANDS in the place of all the NOTS.

I can safely say that I was missing the point. What do you think? The last six months has finally brought that break through of awareness. I have learned to drop the ands and insert the nots. Wow! I can only say amazing things have since happened.

First all share the blessings and then I will share some how to's. I have a son who's behavior was frustrating and I was almost hopeless with. Within a month of changing my behavior and our environmental he was "reborn." He hasn't looked back since. This was a miracle for our family. We've seen increased obedience, less contention, greater happiness, vast intake of knowledge by our children, an atmosphere of peace and an increased amount of personal responsibility and self-management! It's been a wonderful time for our family and we will not go back.

Since the key "Inspire Not Require" seems to generate some of the greatest interest on this blog I was share what this looks like in our home now.

I have always been effective in the inspiring department. I read 2-3 classics a week, take piano lessons, eat healthy, write essays, do math problems and absolutely live by my golden rule that is never violated, "We will never require our children to do anything that we are not willing to do ourselves." However dropping the 'not' proved difficult for me; at least I had one out of two right? Hmmm.

Children are required to obey and they are required to work. But just what are we requiring them to do? Each of you must choose what you will require and what you will not. Within the field of education research shows that children out perform when we don't make them do school work, let them choose. This is tough. This is painful. This goes against everything you every learned in public school. This goes against everything society has ever taught you. It's gonna hurt.

Well, I can say after six months the brain pains are gone and we're running with this. The first step is to tell the kids, "You are no longer required to do this. " (shock, gasp, recoil) The second step: Get rid of 90% of your school junk and their toys and leave only the 'best' books, toys, and supplies. The third step: Get rid of all the distractions. This means they may do what they want, but they are not allowed to watch TV/movies, play the Wii, play with friends, play entertaining games with each other, etc. during certain hours. These hours will vary from family to family, our personal window of these popular distractions is opened for a very limited time during the week. The beauty is that they will chose to learn. Maybe not right away, but they will. I've seen in over and over every day in my house.

Today my children (this was my 3 core/lol boys) choose to learn about reducing fractions, general fractions, make bread, read about World War 2, read their scriptures, practice the piano, make a bow and arrow, go on a walk in the rain, read in chapter books, write a story, draw pictures in their sketch books, asked me how to spell multiple words, find out why Denmark owns Greenland, listened to me when I read Silas Marner by George Elliot for an hour, and many more things. They choose, I provided the atmosphere. They are happy. They think life is fun and they think learning is fun.

I can hear you say, "You're crazy!" This exercise in applying the 7 Keys of Great Teaching is really an exercise of faith (but you make this based on your own serious research and the truth that you've discovered). Perhaps in another post I will delve into our "new day." It's shocking, it's revolutionary and it's the best thing we have ever done.

Has anyone else stumbled along in the Keys of Great Teaching like I have? I hope this post as inspired you on your journey through Leadership Education.

The Ugly

2010-04-27T06:57:00.003-06:00

Right now I'm trying to be a better provident provider. Not because I have to be and not because I don't know how but because I feel impressed to be. Just because I've acquired the skills sets to make wheat into meat, make wheat bread, sew a skirt, and I've faithfully attended every homemaking doesn't mean I don't need to PRACTICE. That's a dirty little word.

I've also felt impressed that while I might not need it my children will need to do it. I need to raise them to so that they can make or do anything if they were cut off from the outside world. (We are fleeing Babylon remember). Right now my friend's daughter is learning to make soap. Very cool.

So one thing I've been doing lately is making a quilt. Our master bed needed a blanket because the one on it is a twin size. (The dog ate the other one. Don't ask more). Alex and I tend to play tug a war at night. So instead of going to the store and taking the EASY way out I decided to sew myself up a nine patch quilt. I have a big tub of scrap material.

I haven't made my own quilt from start to finish since I made one for a laurel project 45 years ago. (Okay it really wasn't that long ago). Have I mentioned that I don't like to sew? Well I don't. It's a painful horrible process for me. But I can do it if I have to. I'm hoping that since I don't have to make it and I just 'want' to make it that I'll get more blessings. (Not be commanded in all things....He that is a slothful and unwise servant...)

So I've cut all the quilt blocks and I've sewn about 1/4 of it together. So far the blessing is that I haven't minded it. Since I've gotten rid of all my extra books, all the extra clutter and all the other extra's I'm freed up and so it's not a stressful thing to sew. AND all the clutter dejunking left more than ample room to set up the sewing machine and leave it up. So it stares at me. Beckons me on. Okay, it doesn't talk to me, but it does stare at me. It's like a dare. "I dare you sew on me."

Now a word about the quilt. It's really, really ugly. I didn't not want to spend any money or any mental anguish to make it match. It's impossible to match it anyway. It is a true pioneer 9-patch hodge podge of the last 13 years of kids pajamas, curtains, etc. So I'm not going to show you a picture. Maybe the finished product. Maybe. I see all my friends and others display their beautiful quilts on line. Mine's not like that. (Have I made that point yet?)

I've decided that mine is my pioneer quilt. Since it goes under the bedspread it will work nicely. I'm doing it in memory of my Grandma Ward who believed in practical things. And this is practical. And it's ugly.

Later, when I'm ambitious I'm going to make a beautiful bedspread and name it after Grandma Hancock. She made things beautiful.

I had smart grandmas. I'm finally starting to get it.

A Green Revolution

2010-04-26T15:07:00.000-06:00

We been changing things up around here. Some things, like removing 90% of our personal belongings was easy and fun, other changes haven't been as fun.

Our challenge: the food department. We have always focused on teaching our "children correct principles and letting them govern themselves." So as they've gotten older they've started to ask questions particularly about the Word of Wisdom. We've had to take a hard look at some of our eating practices. We've also kicked up the Self-Reliant food gear too.
We've realized we need to start eating more fruits and vegetables. Or I should say we need to branch out from apples, bananas and carrots. I've always loved fruits and vegetables but to always eat them is boring! We really weren't as bad as I'm making it sound, but we definitely needed to improve. We've also cranked up the home made wheat bread production. We haven't purchased bread or cereal in two months and there have been no complaints. We were never big cereal eaters-Sunday mornings. And sugar cereal only shows up on Christmas Mornings.

Our new yummy as been green/orange smoothies though. Even Jared, who thinks that green food will quite possibly kill him, will at least try it. (Teach them correct principles and let them govern themselves). He will drink a fruit/carrot smoothie with out a problem. Caleb thinks they are delicious and drinks a big glass. The other two like them, but they aren't in love with them-YET!

Since I am mentally challenged when it comes to following a recipe I don't have one. All the on line recipes that I looked at all called for half vegetables and half fruit. We have found we like a couple of bananas in every batch and lots of ice cubes. The broccoli in one batch was a bit much for a couple of them because you can't really blend it all the way down. Caleb and I didn't mind-but we like all food so....
Our goal is to replace a meal with them. We want to start eating smaller meals for dinner, so maybe we'll have them then? I know many people have them for snacks. We only eat three times a day and so we haven't even wanted to do that. We've been eating them with lunch and that's worked well. We should try them for breakfast, but I've been afraid we'd be to hungry by mid-morning. We'll see.....

Temple Square

2010-04-25T19:33:00.004-06:00

We recently enjoyed a quick getaway to Salt Lake City to see some old friends who were in town that we haven't seen in a long time.We also took time to visit one our favorite sites-Temple Square. We watched the Joseph Smith movie for the umpteenth time. It is a family favorite. We love it so much that even when we visit the church sites back east (Independence, Nauvoo, Palmyra and DC) we stop and watch the movie there too. Each time we see it we learn something more and each time we cry more than the last time. Jared, our 10 year old BOY, constantly declares that it is his favorite movie ever.
We also visited the church museum. The artwork in there is so beautiful. We stared at the large painting of the Tree of Life for a long time talking about Babylon, Zion, the last days and coming unto Christ.
We also stopped at Heber C Kimball's graveside. Another regular destination for us. He is our great, great, great grandfather. We enjoy "checking in" and reminding ourselves who we are about and what we have yet to be. When we left this time Caleb said, "Goodbye grandpa Kimball. See you next time."
I love the SLC temple! It is truly a beautiful place. I always feel like the pioneers are talking to me urging me forward "in so great a cause." I always feel rejuvenated after participating in a session in the hallowed and historic halls. I feel so blessed that I was able to serve there twice in two weeks. (Alex and I enjoyed an over nighter getaway there two weeks ago. What we do? Temple, Joseph Smith movie, cemetery...it's a recurring pattern).
I love Temple Square. I love that my husband likes to go there. I love that my kids love feeling in the Spirit there as well. That is what we are about-bringing our family to Christ.
The flowers were in full bloom and beautiful. The photos are courtesy of Olivia (besides the two she's in). As a side note we also met some new friends in Salt Lake City. We gave them our favorite puppy and he couldn't have gone to a better home! Sometimes this journey of Leadership Education and fleeing Babylon is a lonely one. It was refreshing to meet new people who are going through the same spiritual journey as us. They are arriving at the same conclusions about life and its meaning as we are. So to our new friends is was a honor to meet you and may we meet again!

Puppies

2010-04-14T17:31:00.001-06:00

Our puppies are ready for homes! If you want to see them got to this link. Let me know if you are interested. Sorry we don't deliver to Texas or California, but we can deliver to Utah next weekend.

FHE

2010-04-13T07:26:00.002-06:00

Last night for FHE the following comments were heard:

Q: How can the left hand not know what the right hand is doing?
A: Because they don't have eyes.

Q: What does it mean if your eyes is single to the glory of God?
A: You're a cyclops.

While playing Apples to Apples, Jr.:

"Teletubie? Isn't that an electrical outlet."

"Bean-a-butt-babies? What are those?"

"Chickens are useful because you always eat 'em on Easter."

"Time's kicking. Let's get going."

Happenings

2010-04-13T07:05:00.002-06:00

We thoroughly enjoyed conference. We had a really great Easter weekend curled up on the couch together watching conference on Alex's projector and screen from work. I took pictures, but oh well.
Alex's sister Francine will be will us for two weeks. She leaves this weekend to start attending BYU-I. She's very excited to go and we have loved having her visit us! Since she's from Pennsylvania we get to see her for all the holidays and breaks. We are home base now since we are only 2 1/2 hours from Rexburg. Yeah!
Ken, Alex's dad, was here for a weekend visit. Alex and him had some great matches in golf in and ping pong. We can't wait until he comes back again!
We acquired our second horse. Olivia is so excited. She works hard with them, knows tons about them, and her passion hasn't died since it started four or so years ago.
We still have 8 puppies. We will start advertising for them to get good homes this week.
This weekend is Stake Conference. We are spoiled to get a member of the Seventy come again this session. We love to hear from them!
Olivia is excited to go to girl's camp this year. This year I'm the the ward camp director so it will be fun. We have already started having meetings. My assistant is my 1st counselor from when I was the Young Women's president and the YW presidency member going up was my camp director, so we are excited to have fun times!!!
It's snowed to many times to count in the last two weeks. It's cold and it keeps blowing. We are grateful for the moisture and we are trying to keep positive thoughts about the wind and cold. It's just blowing in more moisture we keep telling ourselves.
Alex's campaign is going well. He continues to meet with people throughout the district and discuss their needs. He is meeting with the state leaders again in Boise tomorrow. He's enjoyed speaking and meeting lots of new people.
Our trips scheduled this year include: Colorado/Arizona, Tennessee/Georgia, and Virginia/Washington DC. We have discussed a Boston trip, but we might do that one next spring. We are excited to see the historical sites again. Last year we didn't spend a lot of time in DC. We hope to spend a little more time this year and Olivia wants to do Baptisms for the Dead in the DC temple. We will also see Jefferson's, Washington's and Monroe's plantations this time. Also lots of family in the other trips. We asked the kids once if they ever wanted to go to Disneyland. They looked at us like we were crazy! No Way! We went to Legoland once. We were planning on going for two days. At the end of the first day they said, "Do we have to come back here tomorrow? Can't we just go to the ocean and play in the water?" That was a long time ago. We've learned our lesson since.
We are reading The Hobbit and Silas Marner out loud together right now. Loving it.
I made my family blog public again. I had been the only who could see it, so it wasn't personal to anyone. I'm just not planning on post much there.

The Sketch Book

2010-04-08T19:49:00.005-06:00

There are so many good discussions going on here and on several other blogs I follow regarding the ebook Headgates! So fun to hear what you all have to say. I have really enjoyed several things, but I have certainly found several things that we will keep the way we already have them. (The Lego's and The Lord of the Rings series aren't going anywhere! : ) )

I've greatly reduced the art supplies and so they are no longer overwhelming. We no longer have a huge box of crayons-we have a little box of crayons! How many yellow crayons to we really need? My kids have never been much into art projects anyways. (Gee, I wonder why? Could it be because I loathe them? I've never found value in worthless crafts.) They do however thoroughly enjoy drawing one stick figure on a piece a paper with: "To Mom: I love you. Love, Luke" written on hundred pages.

So to solve this bunch of wasted papers and satisfy their desire to give me a love note I recently bought sketch pads for the kids. I told them how much I enjoyed all their love notes, but I kept loosing them and they were all over the place. So I said I wanted them to draw them in the sketch book. I wanted their best work and then when they were done they could give me the sketch book and this way I would be able to keep them always! I told them that whenever there was one they really wanted me to see all they had to do was show it to me. They were so excited. They all have enjoyed drawing pictures for me that I will get to keep forever. Luke told me he was excited that I wouldn't be able to loose them this way. He also said he liked just having one place to keep everything. Jared also has made nice little drawings that he wasn't interested in before. So simplifying our craft supplies as made them focus on real projects that are nice. Success!

We put up all their extra notebooks. They still have their names on them they are just in our empty closet so they are still here. They only get to have one notebook out to keep notes in and write whatever they want. They have really liked knowing where their books are and not feeling overwhelmed with all the paper.

I have found that has I've gotten rid of things that they are actually becoming happier, more productive, and better behaved. It's all really amazing.

For our family the fruits have been tremendous. While I haven't agreed with everything I have enjoyed the ideas generated and the discussions on all the blogs!

The Headgate

2010-04-03T06:56:00.002-06:00

I recently read a marvelous ebook which I mentioned in a previous post. The book is called The Headgate and it is by Brian and Keri Tibbets. This is all about applying Leadership Education. A lot of things were not new for me and we've been applying, but some I knew but didn't know how to apply and yet others were totally new, but they give me warm fuzzies and I just know it's the good stuff. (Anything that says crafting is only creating "little junks that only a mother could love" is going to be a bestseller here in my house).

Here are some some highlights from it that I wanted to share.

"The longer we home school our children we have noticed our home school becoming more a like a home than a school. In fact is has come to the point that there is now no school left in it at all. It is just a home. There is no part in our daily schedule that resembles school and there is no place in our home where school supplies are to be found. "

In order to create such a home and rear children in a classical education an environment needs to be created where children can grow and where they can become who there were born to be. Children in core phase work on mastering values and in their free time they play. Love of learners work on mastering the 3 R's and choose to spend part or all of their free time learning. The scholar with master subjects and spend all their time studying. (This is true! Our children follow this like it's scripted. It is so natural).

Now on to creating that environment. I hope in all that free time I have (harhar) to write more in depth essays on some of the ones that have been profound for us.

1. Create a House of Order
Order in the relationships. Dad provides for the family. Mom nurtures the children. Our society and communities have this so messed up.
Order in the appearance. How orderly are our houses? Are they filled with clutter?
Order in the schedule. Children feel secure knowing what the day will bring and their basic needs will be met. When families are focused on survival they are not productive and there is great depression among mom and children. I have seen this in so many homes! I am a huge advocate of structure and schedule!

2. Require Work
Did I type that right? Hmm. I better check that again. Yep, it does say that. I personally find it's easier to do it myself then to hear the "I'm a slave." Where did they get that anyway? Grrr.

Children do need to learn to work to develop self-discipline. Self-discipline will not only help them through the hard times in life but it will help them through the hard times of study. Once you have identified the job the system is: Do it with the child. Then do it near the child and finally have them do it independently. Don't forget to have them return and report.

So we've been working around here like they say. We've changed things up a bit again. I do everything with them now and make sure they know how to do it. There has been no complaining and whining (since I'm doing it with them). In fact Caleb said when he went to bed last night, "I liked cleaning with you mom it was a lot of fun." We cleaned for 2 1/2 hours straight. I could go on and on. Stopping though. Need to move on. Maybe in another post.

3. Inspire Daily.
My favorite. For me the easiest. Also the most covered and talked about in Leadership Education. I've always had really good and best books around. And I've always been very selective about what I read to them. I did realize that I am not always reading them the very best things those. So we've changed that up a bit. In the morning I am now reading them a very hard, worthwhile classic. (Silas Marner by George Elliot). In the evening I read them something fun they will enjoy, but it is still very worth while. (Right now it's Wrinkle in Time #4). Again, there's a lot more to cover in this step. Later.

4. Understand Lessons and Daily Application
This step covers how to give them lessons. Also we need to make sure that we are teaching them skills that they can master in every day life so they can practice, practice, and practice. This is especially true for math. There's pages and pages of this step. So good. You really should just get the book.

5. Close the Headgate
Headgates, for those of you not in a farming community-and I am so I over course new all of this. (Yeah right). The farmer has water for his land. He channels where he wants to send the water by opening headgates that will allow the river to go to a specific field. So the question is what headgates do we have open? We need to make sure that our children are heading down the right headgates and ditches and not the wrong ones.

Yeah, I'm loving this. I've always kind of been a little obsessive about this step. I think it's so important. What I really loved about this was that she provides so many more ideas than merely saying, "no tv, no computer games, no Play Station," ya think? We all can agree that children will usually choose the activities that offer the most stimulation for the least amount of effort. (The wrong headgate).

Beyond merely limiting the obvious we need to look at all their toys and activities. Are our children's toys lifeless and thus allowing them to create? Or are the toys the push the button kind and they reenact the movie with the toys? Thus the toymaker and movie maker are the creators and the child didn't have to come up with anything. Very, very interesting. Hint: If it has batteries, it falls under this category. Sorry folks. This is where that cardboard box at Christmas is more fun than the toy you bought. I laugh though because my 9 year old's favorite toys are sticks. Yep, he always has sticks. He can find sticks ANYWHERE too. Nobody know how he does it, but they are all over the outside of our house. (and sometimes inside hidden underneath the couch or the bed)

Bye, bye organized sets. What? Are you kidding me? They aren't creating they are just following directions. Lincoln Logs, puzzles, bead kits, even pre-packaged science kits. (She mentions Lego's, but I'm going to pretend I didn't see that. I'm going to cover my eyes on that part. I promise that I will ponder it more though. Alex and I have talked about it. It makes sense, but it hurts. I have vowed to get rid of all the instruction booklets. That will earn a couple of points right? We have very few toys now, but we still have our 4 four-drawer Lego bins. We're a bit fanatical. Really though, I promise to consider).

She suggests only 12-15 toys total in the entire house. The only reason that there's a pull against it is emotional money attachment. Get over it. I had already gotten rid of of tubs and tubs. They picked all the toys to go, and they haven't missed them. It ended up amounting to 80% of the toys. Time to get rid of the other 15% I think. Like I said Luke just wants sticks. Olivia wants books, fabric and yarn. Jared doesn't know what he wants, he's like me. Caleb wants games. (The two of us played 19 straight games of Connect Four yesterday, I kid you not).

With their activities we need to get rid of the useless activities. Caleb liked to cut paper to just cut paper. Not only is it useless it is wasting time. If they can pursue useless, brain numbing activities they will never choose to pursue the best. (Remember many us have heard and reheard the concepts of good, better and best. Are we listening?)

When children pursue real and useful things their hands and minds are disciplined and they grow and learn. Things have a point. What is the end result of the activity? Was it simply to waste time? We have to many things to be accomplishing to be wasting time.

I'm going on and on. There is so much more to this step and I could write 10 blog posts about it. I probably will. They just will be disguised.

So many thoughts. The point. What is our environments like? What headgates are open that are the best and what headgates are open that are not good?

Leadership Education E-book

2010-04-02T22:11:00.003-06:00

I recently got my hands on a fabulous e-book about more in depth leadership education and simplifying our life styles. Such a fantastic read. I recommend it to all serious leadership families.

Here is the link.

Happy reading.

Classic Awakening

2010-04-02T22:09:00.002-06:00

I've been teaching the kids that all the great classics are the basis for so many stories in our modern society. We are always looking for examples.

Today Jared told me that the Peter and the Starcatcher series that he has been reading is a lot like Oliver Twist. There's a mean man using orphan children to accomplish his greedy purposes. Hmm? Interesting.

Conference is Coming

2010-04-02T21:42:00.005-06:00

Tomorrow is General Conference! (Like everyone who reads this blog didn't already know that!) General Conference time is our favorite two times of year. We set up the big screen (Alex's projector and screen from work), turn on the internet, and everyone in the family nestles in for two full days of journal writing and spiritual highs. So wonderful. I'm sure people are surprised that our kids watch all the sessions of conference. They have for a very long time and have always loved it.

I was wondering how they would feel when they realized they would miss the Easter Egg Hunt at the city park. They were not phased a bit and have been jumping up and down (literally) all week so excited that conference is coming.

Books from 2009 -2010

2010-04-02T17:42:00.002-06:00

At the back of all my journals, (which I write in religiously everyday), I write down the books that I've read (not the picture books that I read to Caleb though) during that journal's time period. I feel like Louis L'Amour in "Education of a Wandering Man" I suppose. I started my current journal on 1/1/2009. From then until today I have read 153 books, I think I'm slowing down- but I'm reading harder classics. Of those books 20 were Greek classics written over 2,500 years ago. I thought I'd write down some notables. Feel free to look up my reviews on my goodreads.com account.

Favorites:
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The Iliad by Homer
The Odyssey by Homer
Ranger's Apprentice by John Flanagan
Trojan Women by Euripides
Approaching Zion by Hugh Nibly

Books the Boys Loved that I read to them:
The Fablehaven series by Brandon Mull
The Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan
Greek Myths and the Trojan War by Usborne
Several from the Childhood of Famous American series
Greogor of the Overlander by Suzanne Collins
Alex Rider #1 by Anthony Horowitz
The Secret History of Tom Trueheart by Ian Beck
The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis
The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

A Waste of Time: (AVOID)
The Pretties series by Scott Westerfeld
The City of Ember
The Choice by Nicolas Sparks
City of Bones by Casandra Clare
The Lost Symbols by Dan Brown
Pretty much every goodreads.com book I won (11 of them!)
Stargirl series by Jerry Spinelli
35 Clues: Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan
Leven Thumps and the Secret of Foo

Books I reread that I had previously read-So I must really like them!: (books with asterisk I read more than once during the last 15 months).
Richest Man in Babylon by George Claswson
The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Work and the Glory Series by Gerald Lund
Twilight series* by Stephanie Myers (no comments, I know)
Sackett's Land by Louis L'Amour
To the Far Blue Mountains by Louis L'Amour
Lonesome Gods by Louis L'Amour
The Weigh Down Diet* by Gwen Schambers
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Thomas Jefferson Education* by Oliver DeMille
Leadership Education* by Oliver DeMille
Intelegro Math* by Tiffany Earl
Power of Full Engagement* by Jim Loehr
Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Montgomery
Percy Jackson #1* by Rick Riordan

I hope the list gives you some good reading ideas!

A Whirl into Simplicity

2010-03-31T12:43:00.005-06:00

So many thoughts about life are "a-whirling" around in my head. Where to start?

A couple of weeks ago I did some serious spring cleaning (6 month purge). I removed from our house bags and endless bags of stuff. I'm talking a MASSIVE house purge. Actually it was all good stuff. In the fall I had done a serious purge and gotten rid of the junk. What was left was the good stuff. However, I realized that just because it has value doesn't mean it needs to sit in my house collecting dust. So I got rid of our excess. I got rid of the things that while good, were beyond on needs and wants. For example I removed clothes, shoes, books, games, decorations, sheets, towels, kitchen utensils, pans, etc. If we didn't use it or if I had say 10 spatulas when I could get by with 4 I put them in my thrift pile. (Which was the size of my living room).

Now the kids can close their dresser drawers. They each have a couple pair of pants-nice ones, church ones, and jeans, 3 or 4 collared shirts, 5 or 6 t-shirts, 1 pair old tennis shoes for working, 1 pair of nice ones for regular, etc. etc. I have two brown skirts, two black skirts, 2 pairs of p.j.'s, and on and on.

"That book was nice, but gee I haven't read it again in 5 years. I think I'll give it to the thrift store for someone else to read and benefit from. That's a nice classic. It's an easy read. Not a favorite or one we really need to study. I'll chuck it and then when I need it I'll just get it from the library." Thus some of my thoughts.

I found myself desperately wanting to get rid of our excess to bless others lives. In return I found that I was freed up! I have less to dust, less to straighten, and less to put away. I'm not overwhelmed when I open a closet now. There aren't 8 extra pairs of twin sheets ready to fall on top of me since they are just shoved in the closet. I know exactly where things are. I am finding that I'm taking better care of the things I have. When it's toast I'll just replace it because I know what I actually need!

I'm not overwhelmed with cleaning. I'm freer to spend time with the kids and really play and really learn. Very empowering. I challenge anyone to see what they have in their house that they really don't need. It's like our house had a bi-pass. That drastic. Do it, I dare you. (P.S. My husband and my kiddos LOVE it, and we haven't missed a single thing yet).

Other thoughts. We recently - a month ago- stopped buying milk, bread and cereal from the store. You see I have more time and I'm not overwhelmed. So we've made lots of homemade cereal and lots of yummy whole wheat bread. I've always made hot breakfast and bread, but this is serious now! Sandwiches on home made bread, that's a new one. We are cooking a lot more things home made and we are going to the store a lot less. Olivia made home made whipping cream today just because we can.

Go green? Well, I think I might have the bug a little. Over the last three weeks we have started walking everywhere. Yep that's right. (That helps that going to the store to buy milk-who wants to carry that home?) That's including church. I need to state that we live in a very rural town. So it's not like things are super far away. Our piano teacher lives two miles out of town. I've been teasing the kids that they better work up their muscles because in a month or two we are hiking out there baby! Yesterday I had to help at a funeral and it was windy and rainy. I also had a salad with dressing to get up to the church. So I figured it I could walk then I would be able to walk in almost anything. So I did and I survived it. Go figure? Two months ago I'm sure I wouldn't thought I wouldn't have made it. So no scheduling in the treadmill to "work out" I'm just going to stop being lazy and work out all day long. "Pioneer Children Sang As They Walked and Walked and Walked....." The kids and Alex are super troopers with this as well. They think it's kind of fun. They might not have liked the rain storm yesterday though. What do you think?

I recently read a post here that has really got me thinking about the "stuff" that we surround ourselves with. I love her ideas about having kids do real life things. I'm anti-craft. I've always thought they were pointless. I'm so happy that someone is validating me!!! haha So we make, build and create things that serve a purpose in our lives. That includes real life math problems and real life books that teach real life problems. Sewing projects that are gifts. I'm loving it you know. She also has some other really good things to say. Check it out.

That's enough for now. I don't want to shock anyone. But seriously let's think about it. We are the laziest people (Americans) in the world. We drive everywhere, buy everything, do busy work worksheets, and make trinket junk. Let's ask ourselves why? We were born to create and serve. Let's remove the junk from our lives so that we can fill the full measure of creation!

Thoughts please. : )

Week in Review: March 21-27

2010-03-29T08:33:00.004-06:00

Family Scriptures: Jacob 1-5. Each member read personal scriptures everyday.
Weekly Scripture Memorization: D & C 18:10
Theology: Readings out of Gospel Principles.
FHE: Sermon on the Mount/Beatitudes
Family Reading: Finished Percy Jackson #4 and #5. We also listened to 2/3 of Alice in Wonderland while traveling.
Music: Daily piano practice, piano lessons. We are writing verses to Follow the Prophet for Book of Mormon prophets.
Math: Money Management Concepts. Negative and Positive Numbers with graphing. We spent a lot of time on this concept. Even Caleb was understanding it. Percentages.
Discussion Questions: Did God really harden Pharaoh's heart? What can we learn about leaders for today from the stories of the Bible? What is abortion? What is Universal Health Care?
Biology: Puppy care. We also went to a dairy and watched a calf birthed!
Biography: Several latter-day prophets.
Goals: Weekly goal planning session held.
PE: Working on the land. Picnicking. Walking everywhere in town we go. We also have taken our horse out off her winter holiday and she is being worked again.
Clubs: Clover buds, Pine Wood Derby and Activity Days.

Caleb: Caleb is making great strides in his reading. He enjoys reading out of the Book of Mormon Reader. He is still in a solid core phase however there is "an awakening" finally beginning to emerge. He is starting to ask questions and wants to do harder things.

Luke: Luke is working on A Wrinkle In Time. We released everyone from their stewardships and issued new ones. Luke is now in charge of breakfast. He is thrilled about this and his finding it easier to get up in the morning!

Jared: Jared is still trudging away with Peter and the Shadow Thieves. I think he is getting faster. His new stewardship is lunch specialist. His core behavior is excellent which is a miracle since only 3 months ago it was in dire straights. He has worked hard (and us!) and he has learned his limits, made adjustments and created personal systems for success.

Olivia: Olivia is almost finished with Horatio Hornblower. She's worked hard on a lengthy paper about Dolly Madison for her Commonwealth class. She is continuing to refine her home making skills. She made two hats this week. She is now dinner specialist and is excited to cook a variety of things. She attended two scholar classes.

Deanna: I didn't want to read anything but Percy Jackson to the kids! We read extra this week. We even read until 11 PM a couple of times. I finished the History of the Peloponnesian Wars by Thucydides. I'm working on some quilting projects. I am also working on several other home projects. I survived being in charge of the Pine Wood Derby and a Clover bud meeting.

Alex: He is busy hitting the campaign trail. He read Doing Business the Mormon Way. He is has listened to half of Team of Rivals a book about Abraham Lincoln. He is busy working hard for our family!

A Spring Picnic

2010-03-24T15:07:00.004-06:00

Today Olivia asked if we could pack a picnic and go to our land. So she packed us up a lovely lunch. We walked over there and enjoyed our 82 acres with a picnic by the slough. The water isn't turned on yet but there was still some left over water that the dogs thoroughly enjoyed playing in.

We at a very nice lunch followed by several chapters of reading in our read a loud. (Percy Jackson #5). While they played Robin Hood, Percy Jackson, Horatio Hornblower, World War II commando raids and the Horse Whisper (that was Olivia) I sat and leisurely enjoyed my "light read" of The History of the Peloponnesian Wars by Thucydides.

Truly, can life get any better? Simplicity in life pays huge dividends.

Week in Review: Missoula's Childrern Theater

2010-03-21T16:47:00.007-06:00

Here's what I remember that we did. I'm sure I left out lots.

Scripture Study: Family: 2 Nephi 30-33, Jacob 1. Each individual read their scriptures everyday.
Weekly Scripture Memorization: Mosiah 2:17
Theology: Several chapters in Gospel Principles.
Family Read: We started and read half of Percy Jackson and The Labyrinth.
Music: Daily piano practice and piano lessons.
Math: Money management skills, addition, and fractions. Lot's of Lego's.
Cultural Arts: This week the kids tried out for the Missoula's Children Theater. They were able to each have a part in the local production of The Pied Piper. The kids worked hard all week and then performed twice on Friday.
Biography: Heber J. Grant and Ezra Taft Benson.
Goals: Weekly Goal Planning Session Held.
Projects: Dejunked more of the house. I'm amazed that we still had more to dejunk. We attended a ward social for dry-pack canning. Lot's of fun! We did some and helped a lot of others with theirs. We also helped a family move and unpack in our town as a family. Feeding puppies. Now that their is sun and most of the snow melted we are starting to plan our garden. We will be gone for a couple of weeks this summer to Washington, DC and so we are figuring out when to plant things so they aren't ready while we are gone. We've also checked out our 80 acres to see what projects we plan to do this spring and summer.
PE: We have made a new goal to walk everywhere we can and we have for one week now! Lots of walk to the school for play practice. Lots of ping pong and some Wii Cardio.

Caleb: Caleb's reading is really taking off! We reading the Book of Mormon Reader daily. He played numerous phonics games with me this week. He has worked hard on his math this week and can add things much quicker now.

Luke: He continue to have a goal to read easier books this weeks to get his fluency up before he settled into a big book again. He read numerous Magic Tree House books. He also worked hard on a his long story and wrote another chapter in it. He had a love of learning fetish with World War II.

Jared: He also continued to work on Peter and the Shadow Thieves. He's been reading to Caleb. Jared also spend much of the week working on a a complicated motor kit. He did get it done and it's pretty neat.

Olivia: She is still working on 1776 and The Scarlet Letter. She attended a local book club with me. She attended one of her scholar classes. She also is consistently writing in her journal everyday. She had the homemaking bug this week. She is continues hard at work doing some crocheting and looming projects. Her hands are never idle in the car. She made numerous things in the kitchen this week including homemade granola.

Deanna: Read in The History of the Pelopannesian Wars by Thucydides. I finished The Home Ranch by Ralph Moody and attended a book club. I'm still writing in my journal everyday and reading at least one conference talk a day. I went to the temple this week. I spent a lot of time on Family History research. I am also cutting quilt blocks for a quilt I'm making for our bed. We conintued to do well with our on our goal not to buy bread, cereal or milk from the store. I've made a lot of wheat bread. It's yummy though and we can't get enough.

Alex: Alex worked. Read lots of conferences addresses. He is listening to a book called Team of Rivals about Abraham Lincoln. He is finished reading How to Talk to Anyone by Larry King. He is still working on his campaign. He is working on a college level course for further education in his insurance field.

Week in Review- March 7-13

2010-03-13T19:52:00.007-07:00

Here's what I remember that we did. I'm sure I left out lots.

Scripture Study: Family: 2 Nephi 26-29. Each individual read their scriptures everyday.
Weekly Scripture Memorization: 1 Timothy 3:5
Theology: Several chapters in Gospel Principles.
Family Read: We read and finished The Bronze Bow. (World History)
Music: Daily piano practice and piano lessons.
History: Moses, The Spinx and the Jewish Calender.
Math: Money management skills, addition, and fractions. We also had lots and lots of Lego play going on this week. Caleb finally was able to follow the directions and built some of his own.
Science: Walking on the moon, gravity, periodic table, day of of the Creation and the Theory of Evolution.
FHE: Faith and the Story of David and Goliath by Caleb.
Club: Had Cub Scouts, scholar school and 4-H.
Games: Cashflow for Kids and Uno.
Goals: Weekly Goal Planning Session Held.
Projects: Dejunked the rest of the house (6 month purge)
PE: The Snow is melting and we can see the ground! We are playing outside a lot now. Lots of ping pong and some Wii Cardio.

Caleb: Caleb's reading is really taking off! We have settled in to reading the Book of Mormon Reader. He likes that better (and so do I!) than the Step Into Reading Books. We take turns reading a picture each. He worked hard on his math this week and learned to do missing addends in additions.

Luke: He had a goal to read easier books this weeks to get his fluency up before he settled into a big book again. He hasn't found "just the right one" yet any way. So this week he read numerous Magic Tree House books for fun and he had a lot of fun reading them! He was absorbed with Cash Flow for Kids this week and spend a lot of time on that. (math) He started his pinewood derby car.

Jared: He read and finished another Junior Jedi Chapter book. He also continued to work on Peter and the Shadow Thieves. He had fun working on lots of fractions with me. He started his pinewood derby car.

Olivia: She is still working on 1776 and The Scarlet Letter. She also read two Little Britches books for fun. She'd already read the series a couple of years ago. I think they are her favorite. He She attended two scholar classes. She also is consistently writing in her journal everyday. She had the homemaking bug this week. She sewed some on her baby quilt she's making. She is also hard at work doing some crocheting and looming projects. Her hands are never idle in the car. She also figured out how to do some scrap booking things on her blog with her Adobe Photoshop program. She made numerous things in the kitchen this week including homemade corn and wheat flakes and doughnuts. I've just need to get her to clean up after her self!

Deanna: Read in The History of the Pelopannesian Wars by Thucydides and read The Furies by Aeschylus. (a Greek play) I'm still writing in my journal everyday and reading at least one conference talk a day. Went to the temple this week. I spent a lot of time on Family History research. I also have cut out over 200 quilt blocks for a quilt I'm making for our bed.

Alex: Alex worked. Read lots of conferences addresses. Finished an Alex Rider book and he is listening to a book called Team of Rivals about Abraham Lincoln. He is reading How to Talk to Anyone by Larry King. He is still working on his campaign. He is working on a college level course for further education in his insurance field. Went to the temple.

Geography

2010-03-11T21:36:00.004-07:00

For several years I've been meaning to place a world map on our kitchen table and cover it with clear vinyl. I finally made a stop at the fabric store (I don't go there very often you see) and purchased the vinyl. The kids love it! We have already had some great discussions during meals about the world at large, current events and history. It's a great item for the Leadership Education home. What other things like this have you done to your home?

Math Resource

2010-03-11T10:46:00.002-07:00

See Inside Math: Internet Referenced by Peter Tallant

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
My new favorite math resource! Every major math concept is taught simply. This book is busy, but it's so detailed that you can take a short section and work out problems on a wipe board with your kids.

Our Days Now

2010-03-08T22:04:00.004-07:00

So I thought I'd break down what our days look like now that we have been off the conveyor belt for two and half months. Who-rah!

Our "day" actually starts on Sunday night when we have a family meeting. We each review the goals we made last week and we each set a couple of goals for the coming week. All goals are completely up to the family member. No pressure or expectation to do anything. If they may be struggling with a goal we help them set a simpler goal if it was something important to them.

Week day: Alex and I drag ourselves out of bed at 7 AM. Yes, I know that's late, but we are working on it. But we are always up by then. We both read our scriptures, journal, read some conference talks (aka devotionals) and ponder until about 8 or 8:15.

Olivia get up at 7 also and her stewardship is breakfast. She's only been doing it for two months. She'll get another one in a couple of months. We've always had hot breakfast at our house. So she makes hot breakfast. She can make ANYTHING. She is totally cooking self-sufficient. Today she made homemade buttermilk pancakes with a special homemade butter syrup. Yummy!

In the mean time Jared's up and in the shower. He's read his scriptures and practiced his piano by 8:30.

Luke drags him self up by 8. He gets ready for the day and reads his scriptures. Sometimes he practices the piano and sometimes he doesn't do that until the afternoon.

Caleb wakes up at a different time everyday. He usually shows up to breakfast in shorts. He's in core phase. And being around him for 5 minutes you know it! He's obliviously happy with his life.

At 8:30 everyone has to report to breakfast deslobbed for the day and ready to go. After breakfast (during too) we have scripture study and usually a very lengthy discussion about something we read. Then we practice our scripture memorization for the week. We review our goals for the week. After family prayers Alex leaves for the day.

The boys finish their chores and brush their teeth. Then I usually spend a couple of hours with the boys reading books, playing games, or whatever they want. I usually try to spend some time with each one individually learning whatever they want. Usually the older boys will sit in front of our "love of learning" bookshelf and pull off random books and read about anything they want. (We call this "structure time, not content." Regulary one of the boys makes a goal to "do 30 minutes-or however long-of structure time, not content"). They'll spread all over the room and have books everywhere and hop from book to book. They usually can't wait to tell me what they learned. Sometimes we'll put an event or a person on our huge time line that takes up our entire library room. I've changed our family reading to the library room instead of the living room. This has been good because there are lots of things to do and we can really quickly look up something on the computer if we don't understand what we read or we want to see more pictures or whatever. Today we looked up to see when the Hebrew month Nisan was. Very cool you know.

In the meantime Olivia disappears for the day and reads and reads and reads and then writes essays in between. She only shows up at meal time or to walk to our land and check the horses.

Luke is in charge of lunch and so he prepares it for everyone. I still have to help him with it depending on what it is.

After lunch on two days we have to rush off to a scholar school/play date and piano lessons. We are gone for several hours on those days. When we come back from them the kids usually play outside until dinner. (I'm in charge of dinner, but Olivia usually shows up and cooks half of it because she just loves to cook). During lunch we have a big ole' discussion out of the Gospel Principles book about some theology topic. The kids enjoy our discussions and they don't let me forget to do this!

On the other days the kids just keep reading. Jared spends time with Caleb. Jared's stewardship is to mentor Caleb and so he'll usually do it then. We'll play more games or read more books. It just depends on their mood. There is more individual time in the afternoon then in the morning. Who ever didn't practice the piano by breakfast usually does it in the afternoon. Luke sometimes needs reminded to practice, but he does it willingly. They all practice and take piano willingly. I take lessons and practice right along side of them so I think playing the piano is like reading your scriptures-you just do it and don't think about whether you want to do it or not. Family culture?

There is no "school's out time." There is no magical, "Oh, now we get to watch a movie." We just keep on reading and keep on playing. The kids can play 30 min of the Wii in the afternoon-sometimes. They have to stand up and they have to cardio things like boxing.

During dinner we pull out a discussion question and have a big discussion about current events, theology or past history situations. This time is when Alex really gets to talk with the kids about what they think. After dinner if Alex is home we play ping pong while the kids do the dishes. If Alex was home for dinner he usually has to leave for somewhere else so he doesn't stay long. After dinner they play. Sometimes they read (okay a lot of the time). Sometimes we play more games. Sometimes I read more to them. Sometimes we go somewhere.

Caleb pretty much plays hard all day long. He can sort of last through parts of our family reading time. He does like reading to me and so he always sits down to do that. If Caleb has a whole day of playing games and/or playing dress up (dress up as a knight, or Native American or a Roman) he considers the day a success. Today he was in the bath tub for almost 2 hours. He also played play dough for an hour. He's just silly and happy.

We usually put the kids to bed around 9:30. Olivia stays up late reading. She doesn't have a bedtime because she's a scholar. (You wouldn't think an 11 year could study for 8+ hours a day, but she does. And she reads hard things). Luke lies in bed for 1 1/2 hours before he falls asleep. The kids all listen to books on tape or music as the go to sleep. Alex and I usually don't get to sleep until 11.

We stay busy enough with outside things though. It seems like we are gone somewhere for the afternoon or the evening. The kids have piano lessons, 4-H, Cub scouts, scholar school/social play date, and I have things regularly too.

Anyway. There you go. My kids always tell me, "I love my love mom! Thanks for home schooling me." When we drive by the school they say, "I'm so glad I'm home mom. " They've also told me many times that they feel sorry for those kids that have to go to school. "Maybe some day their mommies will let them come home."

Oh, today their piano teacher said, "You kids are always reading such big books!"

We love learning at home and we're happy. : )

Week in Review: 1st Week of March

2010-03-06T22:13:00.004-07:00

Scripture Study: Family: 2 Nephi 19-25. Each individual read their scriptures everyday.
Weekly Scripture Memorization: D & C 4:4
Theology: Several chapters in Gospel Principles.
Discussion Question: Was it fair for God to give to opposing laws in the Garden of Eden? What is Zion? What should we give back to the Lord? What are the benefits of exercise?
Family Read: We finished Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse, an abridged version of Wizard of Oz, and started The Bronze Bow.
Music: Daily piano practice. (Piano lessons canceled this week).
History/Biography: Lorenzo Snow, Archimedes, and Hitler.
FHE: Service and visiting the elderly.
Club: Had Cub Scouts and Girls Activity Day.
Math: Geometric solids and their properties, money management skills, and basic math drills.
Games: Cashflow for Kids, Apples to Apples, Jr, Stratego, Yahtzee and Scrabble.
Goals: Weekly Goal Planning Session Held.
Projects: Dejunked the closets, bedrooms and library room. (6 month purge) We are also still the proud parents of 8 strong healthy puppies. It's been an interesting experience!

Caleb: Focused on reading and doing chores. Caleb read numerous Step in to Reading books to me this week. (I don't' like 90% of these books. I need to find better books!). He responded well to each of us taking turns reading a line. He wants to be reading a lot more now so that's good!

Luke: Finished reading Ranger's Apprentice. He has such a hard time finishing book (true love of learning attribute) so he was excited to have finished this. He loved this book. He's been reading numerous other things since then trying to find just the right book to read.

Jared:He officially graduated from Core Phase! He has improved his behavior tremendously. We are so proud of him. His official stewardship is to mentor Caleb in reading everyday. He has taken this responsibility seriously and has read to Caleb for several hours. Aren't we sneaky? Guess who's fluency is gaining speed? Jared also read a Jr. Jedi Chapter book. Not my first choice but he's been glued to it. He's already half way through a second one. He also enjoyed some sessions of "Structure Time Not Content" and really enjoyed them! He reported back about all kinds of things he'd learned.

Olivia: She is still working on 1776 and The Scarlet Letter. She also read several Jr. Biographies of Revolutionary War women, two Little House on the Prairie books, and she also started and read 1/2 of Little Britches again. She only attended one of her scholar classes because one was cancelled. She also attended a dance class at the Commonwealth school. She also is consitantly writing in her journal everyday.

Deanna: Read Emily of New Moon, A Swiftly Turning Planet, A Circle of Quiet, finished Approaching Zion and started The Home Ranch. It seems like I'm missing one. I'm still writing in my journal everyday and reading at least one conference talk a day. We went to the temple this week. I also wrote an essay. Had my first camp meeting-I'm also the Ward Girls Camp Director this year.

Alex: Alex worked, read lots of conferences addresses, listening to an Alex Rider book, reading in several random books, spend some time on his campaign (meeting lots of people), studied up on our current legislator's voting record, participated in another military honor guard at a funeral (he does numerous through out the year) and taking a college level course for further education in his insurance field. That's a good list for this week.

"Doing" Math

2010-03-05T07:00:00.005-07:00

Here is my latest post on TJED Trenches:

It seems that in leadership education that there are some subjects that just come easily. Or at least they come easily in our house. Religion, history, literature and even writing are all easy it seems, at least you know how to do it anyway. So what about math?

A really great resource that I use in our home to help us know and understand math is the book Inteligro Math: The Holistic Approach to Math and Science for the New Millennium by Tiffany Rhoades Earl. Earl is the co-founder of the LEMI projects that many of you are aware of. I'm going to break down her key points now in hopes that it will help all of you in teaching math at your home.

1. TRUTH: The primary purpose of math and science is to discover truth. We can measure truth by comparing it against our core book. So the first great place to start your math and science quest is in daily immersing yourself in your core book. (Click here to read a post about core books). When you study your core book look for patterns and laws.

For example, "God said, Let there be light; and there was light." Here's the pattern: God's spoken work= (equals) action. Action=Light. God's Word=Light. a=b,b=c, and a=c.

2. LOGIC: In order to come to truth you must be able to reason. Being able to follow a line of logic is a necessity to keeping our freedom. We can not allow ourselves to be led down a path by others only to find out they have tricked us into their way of thinking. We need to sharpen our reasoning skills. She lists three ways:

1. Increase the difficulty of your reading material.
2. Play an instrument. She says, "Playing a musical instrument requires the association, recognition and command of patterns. Not only does playing an instrument well require both sides of the brain, but it also develops reasoning because of the patterns involved." As a student of the piano I vouch for the innumerable patterns in music.
3. Don't close your eyes to the obvious. She states that sometimes, "social mores blind us to the truth all around us." Look for the obvious that others may be missing.

3. READ ORIGINAL WORKS. In order to learn how scientists and mathematicians arrived at their discoveries it is helpful to read their own works. At the very least learn about them. In my on personal education I have found reading about scientists and mathematicians chronologically is the most logical and helpful. (This makes sense in every field. Read history and literature in the order that it unfolded). Here are links to famous scientists and mathematicians.

4. NEWTONIAN MATH. This is where Saxon Math (or Singapore, Life of Fred, Right Start, etc.) comes in. Newtonian math is how we measure and compute both the quantity and the quality of our findings.

5. THE INTELIGRO METHOD. The old way was the scientific method. Here's the new way:

1. Notice a problem or roadblock
2. The Heart: Be Interested-Care Enough to Have Initiative
3. Use Spiritual Eyes to Name the Real Problem. Notice patterns. Notice what others may be missing. Notice symptoms to the problem. Ponder, think.
4. Ask questions
5. Spiritual Creation. Brainstorm for answers
6. Choose the best options
7. Physical Creation. Implement your ideas
8. Implement
9. Evaluate
10. Make adjustments or changes. Go back to #5

6. INTELIGRO MATH AT HOME. Teach truth. Read your core book as a family. Set up environments where kids can ask questions and explore. Teach children to own and solve their own problems. Play musical instruments. Use Newtonian math helps. Lots of hands on projects.

I've included her basic ideas in hopes that it can jump start the math and science processes in your home. Don't forget to read those living math and science books! Here are some links (A and B) to math lists.

A House of Reading

2010-03-04T12:30:00.002-07:00

I haven't been posting much. What have we been up to? Lots and lots of reading! We were fortunate this week to not have to leave our house. Several of our regular commitments were canceled for this week. The kids have maximized this time and have all done some serious reading. It is so nice to see them on the couch, on the floor, on their beds, in the library room, on my bed, all of them curled up reading. It's wonderful to see them finding their own personal joy in reading great books. I hope they continue!

Week in Review

2010-02-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

Family Scripture: 2 Nephi 14-18
Weekly Scripture Memorization: 3 Nephi 13:33
Theology: Several chapters in Gospel Principles.
Discussion Question: What were the causes of the Civil War
Family Read: We read 1/2 of Percy Jackson and the Titan's Curse.
PE: Played Wii Fit and Basketball.
Music: Piano lessons and daily piano practice.
FHE: Gratitude and the 10 Lepers.
Club: Had Cub Scout Pack Meeting.
Social: Played with friends three different time.
Goals: Weekly Goal Planning Session Held.

Caleb: Focused on reading and doing chores. We are seeing success with each family member spending time reading to him everyday. Caleb worked on two digit math addition and subtraction.

Luke: Focused on fluency in reading. Reading Ranger's Apprentice. He spent time on multiplication work.

Jared:We also had to rewind and work on some core behavior things again. Reading Peter and the Shadow Thieves. Is reading fluency is really taking off!

Olivia: Continues to focus on Revolutionary War. She is now reading 1776 and The Scarlet Letter. She wrote several papers on American History. She attended two scholar classes. She also read the Princess and the Goblin.

Deanna: Read Libation Bearers by Aeschylus. Read 1/2 of Inteligro Math. Read 1/2 of Approaching Zion. Had meeting with mentor.

Alex: Alex worked a lot and successfully watched a lot of Olympics. I think his brain needed a break!

Scouting

2010-02-25T21:32:00.002-07:00

Scouting has become a big part of our family for the last year. Because of Alex's calling in the Bishopric he is the Unit Commissioner over the scouts in our ward. I'm the primary counselor over scouts also. Because I'm a little hyperactive in my callings I'm VERY involved in the cub scouts. I hang out to help the den leaders every week and I attend all their pack planning meetings. I'm pretty much the cub scout committee because we don't have one.

Any way that just means we are thinking scouts all the time. Jared has really enjoyed his leaders this year and has worked hard on scouting requirements. Tonight he earned the Webelos badge. He's only been a Webelo for 3 months. He loves working on the requirements and is working hard on the Arrow of Light now has well. He has to be a Webelo for 6 months before he can get that.

We are really blessed to have some fabulous older men as the boys' den leaders. In Luke and Jared's den their den leader ages are 82, 60, 75 and 55 ish. They are a great example of enduring to the end! They have been great mentors of good character to our boys. We love them!!!!!

The power of great men in the lives of boys today can not be underestimated or ignored. Our boys (and society) need strong men to reinforce in them true principles. We need to honor great men who act like great men.

Lincoln Days

2010-02-25T21:17:00.003-07:00

Over the weekend we celebrated Abraham Lincoln's birthday in our district by attending the annual Lincoln Days. It's a fun event we always look forward to. It's also a big Republican rally. The Governor, Senator, Congressman, Lt. Governor and other state leaders were in attendance again. The kids always enjoy seeing them every year. The state leaders are actually starting to remember the kids because so few kids participate.

This year Olivia was asked to sing again. She also sang the National Anthem last minute. See this post. Alex also spoke. He did great for his first "speech." He has gotten a lot of support. The governor pulled him aside afterwords and said if you want to use my name you have my full support. All the campaign managers of the state leaders have been so helpful. They are fun people! They are my favorite. They also remembered our family from last year. I taped Alex's speech. It's long so I only want to upload it once. I'm putting on his facebook page so look there for it soon.

Our family strongly believes in this country and the freedoms we have. We know it is our duty to stand up and fight for them. I'm grateful for great husband that understands this and leads our home in all things. God Bless the USA!

I don't know why I didn't get pictures of the kids with the state leaders this year?

Hands On Science

2010-02-24T17:24:00.002-07:00

Today we had an all day long, "Hands on Science Observation Event." About 11 AM our 8 month old puppy went into labor. She was a little early by our completely unscientific calculations. She had surprised us by going into heat over Christmas. (because she was so young) There was not a lot to be done when we found male dogs jumping in our fence either!

After about 4 hours of labor she had EIGHT puppies to show for her hard work. We hadn't thought she would have very many or that any would even live because she is so young. They all look big and strong though. We pretty much watched the whole thing except for about 45 min when we had to have a book club meeting. (It was at our house, Johnny Tremaine if you care, so we didn't have to leave the house).

The kids were fascinated and we all learned a whole lot about the birthing process for dogs! We had lots of good discussions and I think they learned more in that four hours than a semester of science class would do!

Fun day! (But 8 puppies? Holy Cow! or I should say Holy Dog!)

A Classic

2010-02-22T21:38:00.004-07:00

This is just a short ramble.... I could look up the answers in my TJED book but I'm just brainstorming on the computer (and that would mean I'd have to get up and go get my TJED book).

I'm just finishing up a book right now that in it's present form doesn't make the classic list. It's a book I need to give a review to my brother-in-law about because well, he wrote it! It has some great potential, but it needs some direction. All books do I'm sure at the beginning.

So I've been thinking, what makes a classic? Obviously this is personal opinion and each person has their own classics and their own core set of truth. Here's some of my thoughts:

What is right/wrong or good/bad is established. How is it established? In Jane Eyre she was pursuing truth through out the whole book. At the end she made a decision about her absolute truth. In Louis L'Amour books the good is the man who protects his women, respects the land and improves his mind. In Lord of the Rings wrong is the Eye (I don't remember how to spell his name) who want to force all to bend to his will and be under his rule.
The "good" characters stay true to their roles. For me I want the women in the classics I read to be feminine. I want them to honor their role as nurturer and wife. I want them to consider this their highest calling. I want the men in classics to recognize their role as protector, provider and presider. I don't want to read about macho women who have gender confusion. I don't want them say it's a truth for them to enter into the work force and prove that they are better then men. Again Jane Eyre and Louis L'Amour are the perfect examples. Other examples include Pride and Prejudice, Little Dorritt, The Odyssey, and Little Britches.
The main characters seek to over come their human nature. In my classics I want the protagonist to seek to over come their human flaws and recognize the divine truth that they can over come obstacles. They don't give up. They pursue truth.
Those who make wrong choices face natural laws. I'm not going to read a book and consider it a classic where selfish characters break a natural law and no repercussion occurs. It's a natural law that if you leave your family it's going to come to a bad end. I don't want to read in a book that those who break core truths end up having everything turn out all right. That would make the book false. When you do something wrong characters still must face reality. Like I said, that would be false. I read for truth. I don't need a happy ending, I just want to truth up held.

My Top Literature Classics:

Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
Les Miserables
The Sacketts
Lonesome Gods
The Iliad
The Odyssey
The Ranger's Apprentice (Total boy classic)
Pride and Prejudice
A Wrinkle in Time
The Hiding Place

There ends my thoughts. I could be watching the Olympics, but I'm randomly timing on the computer. What does that mean? I don't care about Ice Dancing or I'm obsessed with reading/thinking about classics?

It's Greek to Me!

2010-02-19T22:06:00.004-07:00

The very first book my mentor asked me to read was The Iliad. Frankly, I wasn't thrilled about it. Since I was ready to be mentored though I agreed and decided to trust the process. What a rewarding experience that has turned out to be!

As I progressed from The Iliad, to the Odyssey, to the Oedipus Trilogy and then any other Greek play or writing I could get my hands on I started realizing how much I love them. I came to feel a great need to share them with our children. The more I read, the more I knew they were important.

But why? When they first started becoming important to me I didn't know why they were and I certainly couldn't articulate the reasons. Over time though I am starting to be able to give voice to those feelings. Here are some thoughts taken from Oliver DeMille in A Thomas Jefferson Education.

1. The Classics Teach us Human Nature. Just as we read Shakespeare to see human nature, the Greek classics play out human nature in all its glory. In the Iliad we can see how Achilles' pride was hurt and how that affected the Trojan War. In the Odyssey we see the power of mind numbing activities can have over our life with The Lotus Eaters. In the Oedipus Trilogy we see an example of parents trying to run from a prophecy about their son only to have it fulfilled despite their desperate attempts to prevent it. The prophet is always right! In the Odyssey we see cleverness can win the day in several examples including Odysseus' escape from the Cyclops. Jason learns in Medea that ending a marriage can lead to an end of everything else in life. Agamemnon teaches us what happens when we stop valuing our children. There are countless stories of greed, revenge, pride, cruelty, and many more played out for us to learn from.

2. The Classics Bring us Face-to-Face with Greatness. We can stand in their shoes at a great moment and we can see what they did with it. You'd be hard pressed to find a greater example of absolute courage than Hecktor in The Iliad. That guy rocks! You weep with Priam's wife as she sees her daughters carried off as war booty in the Trojan Women. You stand at the docks with Cassandra as she faces her doom with her chin held high in Agamemnon. You see the hope and the courage in Penelope as she outwits the suitors in The Odyssey. You feel sick with Oedipus as he learns who he really is and how he deals with an utterly horrible situation in the Oedipus Trilogy. So while you can most certainly learn these examples from so many reads through out history, you can also devour these examples of pure greatness within the pages of the Ancient Greek texts. As we do we can ask our selves, "What will I do when I stand before Greatness?"

3. The Classics Force Us to Think. The Greek Classics force us to look at ourselves and realize what it means to be great. It forces you to think wild dreams and awaken "all that is finest" with in you. To face your mission head on and THINK now what am I going to do? Am I going to hide behind everyone while they fight your war like Paris (The Iliad)? Are you going to stay with Circe or are you going home to your wife (The Odyssey)? Are you going to mock the Gods or worship them? (figuratively of course) This was Hippolytus' problem and Aphrodite sure didn't like that!

4. The Classics Connect Us to Those who Share Our Stories. Our Western Civilization is based on the ideas of the Greek Culture. Through their literature we can learn from them why we do the things we do. The Greek religion was also a corrupt form of the gospel. They learned their worship of the Gods from the Egyptians. And the Egyptians learned their worship of the one true God, the Sun God, Aten, from Abraham. Through time all of these teachings were corrupted. You can see in so many of the writings about their religion where the basic ideas came from. How have we corrupted our teachings? Are we trying to live in this world/Babylon expecting our worship to stay pure? It didn't work for the Egyptians and the Greeks! Who could Persephone represent? Who might Prometheus stand for? Also because Greek literature comes first you can see all the ways they have influenced our culture and all the Western writing after them. References to Greek classics are scattered through out all great literature. Greek ideas are scattered throughout our culture today as well. For example, The Little Mermaid contains multiple references to Poseiden and those things associated with him. (Tridents, sea horses, etc). Jared figured that one out all by himself.

These are just some ideas for now. Greek literature contains powerful examples of our own human nature. It causes us to ask our self what we would do in that situation. I believe that Greek literature should be a core study in families.

Here are some children's books that have taught about the Greeks and their literature that our family as enjoyed:

The Odyssey by Geraldine McCaughrean
The Gods and Goddess of Olympus by Alki
Usborne's Greek Myths
King Midas and The Golden Touch by Demi
Greek Myths: Ulysses and the Trojan War by Anna Claybourne
The Percy Jackson Series by Rick Riordan
Book of Greek Myths by D'Aulaire

Week in Review

2010-02-19T21:25:00.003-07:00

I've already posted most of this stuff this week, but for the sake of me getting into a 'weekly' habit I'm going to recap.

Family Scripture: 2 Nephi 9-13
Weekly Scripture Memorization: John 14:15
Theology: Several chapters in Gospel Principles.
Discussion Questions: Should we or should we not close off our borders to illegal aliens? Should we attend our club meetings even if we have completed our requirements? Should we allow our emotions to guide all our choices?
Field Trips: Library, Fossil Beds and Natural History Museum.
Family Read: Finished Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters.
PE: Made a Horatio Hornblower ship with friends, played capture the flag, played Wii Fit, and played basketball several times.
Music: Piano lessons and daily piano practice.
Weekly Goal Planning Session Held.

Caleb: Focused on reading and doing chores. We introduced the "mentor Caleb" goal. Each family member is encouraged to spend time with him everyday, if possible and if willing, and they play games and read books to him.

Luke: Focused on fluency in reading, spelling rules, and not pouting. Reading Ranger's Apprentice.

Jared: Focused on fluency in reading, 3-digit multiplication, and controlling emotions. Reading Peter and the Shadow Thieves.

Olivia: Continues to focus on Revolutionary War. She finished several biographies of the Founding Mothers in America. She is now reading 1776 and The Scarlet Letter. She wrote several papers on American History. She attended two scholar classes.

Deanna: Started Family History Research up again. Reread Anne of Green Gables and A Thomas Jefferson Education. Continuing to pursue multiple Greek classic reads.

Alex: Heavy emphasis on campaign! He wrote a speech that will be delivered tomorrow before the state and district leaders. (no pressure)

Field Trip Friday

2010-02-19T20:57:00.003-07:00

Today we were all over Southern Idaho. We went to the library. We went to the Natural History Museum and saw their new display about pre-Columbian fishing in Idaho. We also went to the Hagerman Fossil Beds and saw the Idaho State Fossil, "The Hagerman Horse."

Posting Change

2010-02-19T20:08:00.004-07:00

I've decided that I'm going to stop posting our daily schedule. (I think). You see, I have a psychological need to prove to myself (and to the Universe) at the end of the day that we are actually learning here at the Sutter's. Writing it all down for the last 1 1/2 years as really helped me gain confidence and see, "We really are doing it!" Whew! I think I'm maturing past that now fortunately for every one's sakes. (Like I said, I think). This also qualifies under those conveyor belt/public schooling mentalities somehow I think and so it needs to go!

I have two other reasons beyond being obsessive compulsive. The first is that I'm trying to free up more time for myself and our life. Simplify and the "6 month 'no.'"

The second reason is that as I advance through my scholar phase I need to work on essays. So I'm hoping to devote some more time to my essays, which I will be posting here. So look for a regular essay about who knows what.

Also, I plan to include a weekly post of the general happenings during the week. That will be a work in progress as I'm not sure what that will look like yet. I want to do this because I hope it can generate ideas for others out there.

Thanks for being apart of our journey. We hope we inspire you to greatness as you inspire us with all of your blogs!

Capture the Flag

2010-02-17T23:00:00.001-07:00

Family Scripture Study: 2 Nephi 11
Weekly Family Scripture Memorization: John 14:15
Science Experiment: Planting seeds
Creativity/PE: They played capture the flag outside for several hours.
Fantasy Read: Read 5 chapters and finished Percy Jackson #2.
PE: Played basketball for a couple of hours at the church.
Chores/Animal Care: Lot's of extra chores today.

Caleb: Read his scriptures, math and spelling practice, listened to Mr. Popper's Penguins, and individual reading.

Luke: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, read in Ranger's Apprentice, played Music Ace, and played Wii Sports.

Jared: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, read in Peter and the Shadow Thieves, played a math game with Olivia, and played Wii Sports.

Olivia: Read her scriptures, wrote in her journal, practiced the piano, practiced her vocal solo, read for several hours in 1776, mentored Caleb in math and spelling, and played a math game with Jared.

Deanna: Scriptures, journal, conference talk, went to the temple, walked on the treadmill, read in The Thomas Jefferson Education, read a couple of chapters in Anne of Green Gables, read in the Libation Bearers, and took a much needed nap!

Alex: Scriptures, church handbook reading,, writing a speech, finished he palm card literature, went to work, set up for the Lincoln Days on Saturday, went to mutual, walked on the treadmill, and is listening to Good to Great.

Horatio Hornblower

2010-02-16T21:16:00.007-07:00

Another day drawing to a close. Today was another fabulous day. Sometimes I feel guilty that life is so good. Sure there are those moments. I feel like I have this little secret that nobody wants to hear. I'll share it anyway (but most of the people who read this blog already know it), HOMESCHOOLING YOUR KIDS ROCKS AND MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND! Most people just assume that only crazy people do it. I've also heard it's just to hard of a thing to expect a mother to do. Well, I'm sure some mom's get overwhelmed, but the joys and blessings out weigh those days of chaos. Cheers to all you families out there that also home school and share the same joy in your homes!

Now on to our day.

Family Scripture Study: 2 Nephi 10
Weekly Family Scripture Memorization: John 15:14
Theology: "Prophets" from Gospel Principles.
The Discussion: "Should we be expected to continue attending meetings of church clubs when we've earned all of our requirements?" Alex was gone until late so we had to have a tame question that I could handle. I put the questions about our national borders and Spanish being included on all government literature back for another day.
Spelling: We did spelling with the boys on the wipe board.
Social: Today was the home schooling weekly social date. Last weekend we lent some of our Horatio Hornblower movies to our hs buddies. This morning we received a phone call, "Come dressed as Horatio Hornblower as much as you can. We are going to build a ship." The boys were so exited! They had a 10+ trailer that they ended up rigging into a ship. It was a work of art. Really. They hauled all sorts of materials to this trailer and each time I looked out the window more and work had been down. In the end they had rigged a huge mast with a sail on it. Twine was everywhere. They also had a twine rope later up it. They had rigged 3 cannons, that looked like cannons. They also had a rudder. It was amazing what "backwards home school" children can really create with their imaginations. The worst part is that I didn't bring my camera. They'll remember today for a long time.
Fantasy Read-a-loud: Read several chapter of Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters.
Health: Watched The Biggest Loser (we watch it a week delayed on hulu).
PE: Watched an hour of the Olympics together. We aren't big TV people. 1 1/2 hours of the Biggest Loser (sometimes) is the extent of our TV viewing usually.
Chores/Animal Care

Caleb: Read his scriptures, read to his "public school teacher," learned about Komodo Dragons, wrote a blog post about them, played Wii sports, I started a Hank the Cowdog book that I'm reading just to him, and did some free reading.

Luke: Practiced piano, sketching in his book, read a book that was about the Wizard of Oz, read in the Ranger's Apprentice, played chess, and played Wii sports.

Jared: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, Read in Peter and the Shadow Thieves (he's been consistent with this-he's really starting to gain some fluency), wrote a blog post, did some wipe board math, played 30 min of Wii sports and played chess.

Olivia: Read her scriptures, wrote in her journal, finished a biography about Patsy Jefferson, wrote a paper for her scholar class about The Screwtape Letters, played with a friend in the afternoon, practiced her vocal solo several different times, and played Wii sports.

Deanna: Scriptures, journal, conference talk, walked on the treadmill for 30 min, went visiting teaching, made dinner for some friends, read a chapter in the Thomas Jefferson Education book, read several chapters in Anne of Green Gables, wrote an essay, finished listening to Alex Rider #2: Point Blank, and started The Libation Bearers (Greek classic).

Alex: Scriptures, church handbook, walked on the treadmill, listening to Percy Jackson #1, went to work, and went to the temple.

The Discussion

2010-02-15T21:31:00.007-07:00

Okay, I technically I do not know if this is an "ingredient" with in the Thomas Jefferson Education model. It sounds like a good one though!

In our home we have implemented, "The Discussion." We've always discussed things around the dinner table, but now we're getting more specific. We have a bowel where every dinner meal (assuming there's nothing else going on and nothing else to talk about) we draw a question out of it. There are questions that have to do with core behaviors as well as current events. Whatever mom and dad feel needs to be discussed. Also any family member can add a question. In our home Alex is really good with discussion and helping the kids think about things. So I'm utilizing him on this one and learning how to lead good discussions!

We've based this on Alex's upbringing where every dinner meal his dad would invite discussion and challenge their ideas. It was a great experience for Alex. We hope to base on these good things to our kids. Thank you Ken!

Why?

2010-02-15T21:26:00.003-07:00

Why in the world do I post things like scripture reading, exercising, service, attending the temple....? Because Leadership Education is 24/7. We do not run a school in this house. I don't even like that word! We are creating a culture. Within that culture there are many components. These include core discipline and behaviors. This list includes, but is not limited to; developing a relationship with God, serving mankind, and keeping physically fit. All of these things are the foundational base that makes a leader for future generations.

2010-02-15T20:51:00.004-07:00

We weren't home a lot today. Piano lessons themselves take almost 2 1/2 hours and archery was over 2 hours. That's not counting any drive time.

Family Scripture Study: Finished 2 Nephi 9
Weekly Scripture Memorization: John 15:14
Science: We did an experiment about water vapor.
Music: Piano lessons
Club/Social/PE: We had 4-H archery practice for over two hours.
The Discussion: Why is important to learn to control our emotions?

Caleb: Scriptures, chores, listening to Mr. Popper's Penguins and played a reading game on the computer.

Luke: Chores, piano practice, reading Ranger's Apprentice, reading about ancient explorers, working with geometry solids, and exercise on the Wii.

Jared: Scriptures, chores, piano practice, reading in Peter and the Shadow Thieves, working with geometry solids, prepared a FHE lesson, using the old Webster's Dictionary, and exercise on the the Wii.

Olivia: Scriptures, journal, piano practice, voice practice, read a biography about Dolly Madison, read a biography about Patsy Jefferson (only 30 pages left), made cherry pie, made a turkey dinner with the fixings with me and did laundry.

Deanna: Scriptures, journal, conference talk, piano practice, walked for 30 minutes, read in The Thomas Jefferson Education, and read in Talkers, Walkers and Doers.

Alex: Scriptures, church handbook reading, working on campaign, helped someone move, went to work, and listening to Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

Family Home Evening:
Songs: How Firm a Foundation and The Valiant Song
Testimonies: All
Article of Faith: 13th
Proclamation to the World on the Family: 2nd paragraph
Strength of Youth: Education
Character: 21 Rules of This House Lesson
Lesson: About the Wentworth Letters and the 13th Article of Faith by Jared
Activity: Basketball at the church. We did drills and more drills. We played PIG and played 3 on 3. We had a lot of fun!
Treat: Homemade Cherry Pie by Olivia

Friday

2010-02-15T07:15:00.002-07:00

Oh, yeah. Friday.

We all did our scriptures, prayers (family and personal) and practiced the piano.

Then we went into town for our Valentine's Party. The kids had an okay time getting 30 Valentine's from other kids. Kind of lame-o, very public school. Sigh.

Then off to the library. Lots of reading and looking.

Then dinner. The Golden Corral. I always tell the kids, "notice what most people have in common that frequent a place like this." Hmmm. A pattern? We only go there once a year for the kid's sake. We get free kid's tickets for their birthday's every year and save them up. So it was their Valentine treat. I had to remind myself of my love for them while I was there.

Then off to Percy Jackson and the Olympians. Fun movie. I think they just took half of the characters and wrote a different story than the one that book had. But it was still fun to see some things acted out.

Oh, and Olivia had scholar class in the morning.

We made Valentine's-I'm not even kidding.

2010-02-11T20:16:00.004-07:00

Family Scripture Study: D & C 36
Weekly Family Scripture Memorization: John 3:16
Theology: "The Holy Ghost" from Gospel Principles.
Fantasy Read a loud: Read multiple chapters from Percy Jackson and the Sea Monsters.
Art: Shocking, but true, we made our valentines "boxes." Aren't I a genius? We put tin foil over our Halloween buckets and glued paper hearts on them. It wasn't even very painful. I didn't like it, but it wasn't painful.
Clubs: Today we had boys scouts and our 4-H meeting.

Caleb: Read his scriptures, did 10 plus pages in Explode the Code and finished the book, read two e-books on line at Raz-kids.com, learned about lizards, wrote a blog post about them,

Luke: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, read The Ranger's Apprentice to me for 30 minutes, walked on the treadmill, made lunch, read several books to Caleb, played ping pong, and worked on his story.

Jared: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, read in Peter and the Shadow Thieves for 1 1/2 hours, and listened to Alex Rider #2 on tape for an hour.

Olivia: Read her scriptures, wrote in her journal, practiced the piano, practiced her vocal solo, finished The Great Little Madison, read in several American History books trying to find what she wants to read now, made breakfast, and made home made beef stew.

Deanna: Read my scriptures, wrote in my journal, read a conference talk, read in 7 habits of Highly Effective People, had a scout meeting, worked on stuff for 4-H (I'm the Clover Bud leader), walked on the treadmill for 45 minutes and played ping pong.

Alex: Read his scriptures, read in the church handbook, listened to a Ronald Reagen speech, had a meeting with his campaign adviser & the Regional chairman, ordered lawn signs, ordered his palm cards, listening to Percy Jackson #1, went to work, and played ping pong.

2010-02-10T21:27:00.005-07:00

Family Scripture Study: 2 Nephi 9 (1/2 of it)
Weekly Family Scripture Memorization: John 3:16
Theology: "The Holy Ghost" from Gospel Principles. We had a very long discussion that was one of those ones that you chalk up to potentially life changing experiences for kids.
Book on Tape: 1 hour of Alex Rider #2
Literature: A Winter's Tale by Shakespeare from Usborne's Tales of Shakespeare.
Fantasy Read a Loud: We read multiple chapters of Percy Jackson #2.
PE: Watched the high school girls play for the conference championship. They lost. First time they've lost the title in several years.
Science: Watched several science videos on Brain Pop.

Caleb: Read his scriptures, did several pages in Explode the Code, played Money, Money! with me several times, did addition wrap ups, played Book of Mormon Who with me several times,word search, coloring, learned about pythons and boas, wrote a blog post about them, and played Connect Four.

Luke: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, spent lots of time sketching, read for quite a while in Ranger's Apprentice, walked on the treadmill, practiced the violin, working on a creative writing story, played with the subtraction and addition Wrap-ups and played Connect Four.

Jared: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, did a Math Detective lesson, worked on scouting requirements, read for a while in Peter and the Shadow Thieves, played Wii Sports (boxing), word search, played with the addition and subtraction Wrap-ups and played Music Ace.

Olivia: Read her scriptures, wrote in her journal, practiced the piano, finished Pride and Prejudice, did some laundry and read the entire book Johnny Tremain. Who does that? Go scholar phase.

Deanna: Read my scriptures, wrote in my journal, read a conference talk, practiced the piano, walked on the treadmill, played ping pong and read The Bacchae by Euripides.

Alex: Read his scriptures, read in the church handbook, went to work, listened to a Ronal Reagan speech, went to a regional scout meeting, order lawn signs for his campaign, wrote a letter the a legislator debunking their economic plan, played ping pong, and he's listening to Percy Jackson #1.

2010-02-09T21:28:00.003-07:00

Family Scripture Study: 2 Nephi 7
Weekly Family Scripture Memorization: John 3:16
Read-a-loud Fantasy: Read Percy Jackson #2 for several hours.
Social: Went to some home school friends house and played for several hours.
Emotional: I was feeling completely depressed today and so when that happens I turn to my drug of choice (after rereading my scriptures and praying) and I watched Lord of the Rings #3 with the kids to get that eternal perspective back. I'm feeling much better! (Most people just eat when they are that upset. Fortunately that's not a habit I have).

Boys: Read their scriptures and practiced the piano. (Among other things).

Olivia: Read her scriptures, wrote in her journal, made dinner, went to scholar school and had 3 or 4 hours of Scholar studies.

Deanna: Read my scriptures, wrote in my journal, read a conference talk, visited with a friend, played ping pong, and practiced the piano.

Alex: Read his scriptures, read in the church handbook, went to work, listening to Percy Jackson #1, working on lots of campaign things and played ping pong.

Homemade Ice Cream-Yummy!

2010-02-08T22:31:00.007-07:00

Family Scripture Study: 2 Nephi 6
Weekly Family Scripture Memorization: John 3:16
Theology: The Creation from Gospel Principles
Family Council: Weekly family council to review last week's goals and set new ones for the week.
Vocabulary: Peterson's Word of the Day: Supplementary
Math: We played Totally Tut together-a math game dealing with add/sub equations.
Read a loud: Read the last half of Alex Rider #1 and finished it.
PE: Went to the land and shot their archery bows.
Animal Care/Chores

Caleb: Read his scriptures, played several rounds of Sum Swamp with me (adding and subtracting), played Book of Mormon Who with me, played Connect Four with Luke numerous times, did a word search puzzle (he's pretty good), learned about turtles, wrote a blog post about turtles, learned how to upload pictures, did a craft project, and played Wii sports.

Luke: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, played Connect Four with Caleb, read in Ranger's Apprentice, read about Sinbad, did some structure time not content, worked on his fictional story set in ancient Egypt, read almost the entire Friend, played ping pong, and played Wii Sports.

Jared: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, played Chess with me, played a multiplication game with him, read in Peter and the Shadow Thieves, learned how to make bread and bread sticks, learned how to make spaghetti, did a craft project, and did push ups.

Olivia: Read her scriptures, wrote in her journal, read two abridged Shakespeare plays in Tales From Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb, starting writing a song with music (I was practiced the piano and a new song just came into my head and I had to stop and write it all down), read in Pride and Prejudice (only 30 pages left), read a 1/3 of The Great Little Madison by Jean Fritz, practiced the piano, practiced her vocal solo, prepared a family home evening lesson, made homemade ice cream with Alex, and worked on Adobe Photo Shop Elements.

She had a goal this week to do six hours of scholar study.

Deanna: Read my scriptures, wrote in my journal, read a conference talk, read Hippolytus (an ancient Greek play) by Euripides, played ping pong, and walked on the treadmill.

Alex: Read his scriptures, read in the church handbook, walked on the treadmill, went to work, listening to Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, had a meeting with his campaign treasurer, played ping pong, made home made ice cream and went to a County Republican Party meeting to meet all of them (he only knew a couple of them) and they said they fully support him in his campaign.

Family Home Evening:
Songs:I Will Be Valiant and We'll Bring the World His Truth
Testimonies: Alex, Deanna, Olivia, Jared, Luke, and Caleb
Strength of Youth:Gratitude
Article of Faith: 13th
Proclamation to the World Paragraph: 2nd
Lesson: Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy by Olivia
Activity: Watched Work and the Glory #1.
Refreshments: Homemade ice cream by Alex and Olivia

Thursday and Friday

2010-02-07T17:05:00.002-07:00

On Thursday and Friday we played in Boise. We spent time with three of my siblings and their families. On Thursday Alex was at the state capital attending meetings. On Friday he had Lasix surgery for his eyes. It was a fun getaway. We came home Saturday afternoon.

Learning styles

2010-02-03T21:37:00.003-07:00

Knowing your child's learning styles is an important part of their learning. You need to utilize those teaching methods to help your child.

I've listed each family member and their preferred method of learning. I've included what works well for them.

Alex - auditory. Alex listens to lots of books of tape because he drives as much as 8 hours in a normal day. He can utilize this time. He also listens to speeches and books while at work.

Deanna- visual. I can not follow along if someone is reading a loud. I do all the reading a lot in the family other wise I wouldn't have a clue. If I can see it I can learn it.

Olivia- auditory. Olivia can actually learn almost any way.

Jared- visual. Jared likes to check off his goals for the day. However, he is probably just as strong audio as anyone. I can read him any level of book and his comprehension his amazing.

Luke- tactile. He has to touch everything. He has to follow along with his finger when he reads. He likes games and hands on learning. One he was little he was know to lick things. He also has to hold something in his hands.

Caleb - visual. He likes looking at pictures to learn. He'll look at an animal while I read to him about it.

Scholar

2010-02-03T21:28:00.003-07:00

Olivia is currently a practice scholar. Here's what her day looks like:

She has one stewardship-breakfast. She is in charge of planning it and preparing it. It is suppose to be on the table at 8:30 every morning. She hasn't missed once. We've had all kinds of yummy food. She has no other chores besides her room and personal care. She does however like to do her own laundry and she always likes to help me with dinner.

Immediately after scriptures study and family prayers she goes to her room and studies for 3 hours before lunch. She is way ahead in her two scholar classes at the moment. She is only 11 but is thriving in classes where the kids are much older. She wishes now that she had taken a third class because she likes the structure of class and the assignments. She is pursing a love of American History. She is also working on her writing. Her third strength is piano. She's only taken 4 months of official lessons and she is already playing advanced solo pieces.

I've been told that one of the signs of scholar phase is that the child will ask to be excused from mom/kid school. She did not know that, but at the beginning of the school year she asked to do just that. She opts out of mom school nearly every time we have it. She studies for several hours in the morning and she will study a couple of hours in the afternoon.

She is a very fast reader and so she covers a lot of material. She always says after finishing a book, "that was easier than Walden!"

She's a happy girl that is thriving. She good be the poster child for home schooling and Leadership Education. Good job Olivia!

2010-02-03T21:13:00.002-07:00

Family Scripture Study: 2 Nephi 6
Weekly Family Scripture Memorization: 3 Nephi 17:6
Science: Trip to the vets office for all 3 animals. And the 8 month old puppy IS pregnant. Our joy knows no bounds. : )
Read-a-loud: We read 2 chapters of Alex Rider #1.
Health: Watched an episode of Biggest Looser as a family. We watch it on hulu.com and so there are just a few commercials.
History: Listened to Story of the World vol. 2 while we traveled to the vet's office and back.
PE: Watched a high school girls basketball game.
Chores/Animal Care

Caleb: Read his scriptures, played on a science website, learned about goblin sharks, wrote a blog post about them, and tormented various family members. For some reason I am at a loss each day to remember just what he did. He does have solid core days however. Lots of creative play.

Luke: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, read various science and history books (one hour of structure time not content), played Wii Fit for 30 min, and passed off some life skills in cooking.

Jared: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, read Peter and the Shadow Thieves for an hour, learned about probability in math, practiced long division and multiplication, did push ups, played Money, Money! with me, and did 30 min of Wii Fit. Jared also had a practiced "love of learning" time and did 15 min of structure time not content and learned about things from Ancient Great Britain.

Olivia: Read her scriptures, practiced the piano, wrote in her journal, read the entire Landing of the Pilgrims book, read in Pride and Prejudice, started His Excellency George Washington, and practiced her vocal solo.

Deanna: Read my scriptures, practiced the piano, wrote in my journal, read a conference talk and played ping pong.

Alex: Read his scriptures, had a republican meeting for his campaign with the region president and his campaign manager, went to work, went to the temple, played ping pong, and he's listening to Alex Rider #2.

Another great day

2010-02-02T23:02:00.002-07:00

What another wonderful day! I love spending each day with my children and teaching them things of eternity and things of this world. Today a highlight was a very in depth discussion of Jesus Christ and his role as our Savior and Redeemer.

The are really eating up our latest read-a-loud, of course they usually do.

We've made a lot of changes to our schedule over the last several months and these changes have all been good ones! Each day I think and ponder about how I can do better, how I can motivate and inspire and how I can instill greatness into their little minds.

Olivia has a goal this week of consciously getting 5 hours of scholar study each day. That has been going well for her. She is particularly drawn to studying the piano and reading American History.

Here's a run down of our time together today... (Sometimes we do a lot together and some days we pursue more individual activities. Today was an all morning couch read).

Family Scripture Study: 2 Nephi 5
Weekly Family Scripture Memorization: 3 Nephi 17:6
Theology: We read/discussed the third chapter in Gospel Principles-Jesus Christ.
Pledge/Pray/Song
Music: We sang My Savior Loves Me, The Valiant Song, Friends, The Old and New Testament Songs and the Books of the Book of Mormon song. We also practiced our rhythm poem that we love.
Christianity: We read half of the new children's Friend.
Math: We discussed the types of triangles and polygons. They are starting to get their vocabulary down more and more. We have been trying to focus on geometry specifically besides basic math skills at the moment.
Read-a-loud: We read 4 chapters of Alex Rider #1: Stormbreaker.
Social: Spend several hours this after noon playing with a couple other home school families. They played outside and they also played RISK.
Peterson's Vocabulary Word of the Day: -WINSOME -(adjective) Charming. With her pleasant voice and good manners, Serena is a winsome child.
Chores/Animal Care

Here are some things that I can remember. It is late and my brain is fogging over...

Caleb: Read his scriptures (in 1st Nephi), read to his public school teacher on the phone, coloring, and played Connect 4, I know he did more, but I absolutely can not remember much of anything with him right now for some reason.

Luke: Read his scriptures (in Mosiah), practiced the piano, and played ping pong. ditto above note

Jared: Read his scriptures (in 2nd Nephi), practiced the piano, push ups, read in Peter and the Shadow Thieves, played ping pong and played Music Ace.

Olivia: Read her scriptures (reading in the New Testament-Gospels), wrote in her journal, practiced the piano, practiced her vocal solo, finished 55 Fathers: The Story of the US Constitution, wrote an article for the 4-H newsletter, wrote her compass, attended a scholar class with her mentor and discussed The Screwtape Letters some more, and read in Pride and Prejudice.

Deanna: Read my scriptures (in Mosiah/all over), wrote in my journal, read a conference talk, practiced the piano, reading in Approaching Zion by Hugh Nibley, and went to the temple.

Alex: Read his scriptures (all over/BOM), reading in the Church Handbook, reading in Dale Carnegie's Public Speaking book, listening to The Proper Role of Government by Ezra T. Benson, listening to speeches by Ronald Reagan, listening to Alex Rider #2, attended his professional meeting, played ping pong, walked on the treadmill, and went to work.

2010-02-01T21:17:00.003-07:00

Family Scripture Study: 2 Nephi 4
Weekly Family Scripture Memorization: 3 Nephi 17:6
Theology: Gospel Principles chapter 2 "Our Heavenly Family."
Goals/Life Skills: We had a family meeting where we reviewed our goals from last week and we set goals for this week.
Music: Olivia, Jared, Luke and I had our weekly piano lesson.
Peterson's Word of the Day: HAUGHTY: (adjective) Scornfully proud. The haughty princes believed their royal blood made them genetically superior to others.
PE: Proper sit ups and push ups drill work. Alex's years in the military came through.
Chores/Animal Care

Caleb: Read his scriptures, learned about foxes and dogs, wrote a blog post about them, walked on the tread mill, watched several science videos on Brain Pop, worked on cleaning his room, and played ping pong.

Luke: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, worked on creative writing, read in The Ranger's Apprentice, did multiplication drill work, read about World War 2, and walked/ran on the treadmill.

Jared: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, watched a science video, took a Saxon math test, did multiplication and division drill work, did a Math Detective lesson, did a Daily Grams (grammar) lesson, read in Peter and the Shadow Thieves, walked on the treadmill, and played Lego's.

Olivia: Read her scriptures, wrote in her journal, read 1/2 of 55 Fathers (about the signing of the Constitution-for her Key of Liberty class), read in Pride and Prejudice, practiced her vocal solo for when she sings to the governor at the end of the month, practiced the piano, and wrote a paper on "good laws." She logged 5 scholar hours today. These hours were specifically directed on scholar level pursuits. Core activities, fun activities, and stewardship's do not count. She has a goal this week to do 5 hours a day.

Deanna: Read my scriptures, wrote in my journal, read a conference talk, read in Approaching Zion, practiced the piano, and played ping pong.

Alex: Read his scriptures, read in the church manual, started Dale Carnegie's Public Speaking book, went to work, played ping pong, and listening to Alex Rider #2.

Family Home Evening:
Song: We'll Bring the World His Truth
Talent: Jared did a piano solo.
Testimonies: Alex, Deanna, Olivia and Luke
Strength of Youth: Agency
Article of Faith: 13th Article of Faith
Proclamation to the World on the Family: 2nd paragraph
Character: Uncommon Courtesy-We put others needs before our own.
Lesson: Deanna-Building Zion
Activity: Played In a Pickle.
Treat: Lemon Squares (Caleb)

2010-01-29T23:48:00.000-07:00

Family Scripture Study: 2 Nephi 2
Weekly Family Scripture Memorization: Moroni 12:34
Theology: 1st chapter from Gospel Principles
Literature: We read The Taming of the Shrew from Usborne's Tales of Shakespeare. The comment was made, "I love Shakespeare" by my 10 year old.
Geometry: Circles and vocabulary words
Read-a-loud: We started and read 2 chapters from Alex Rider: Stormbreaker.
Animal Care/Chores

Caleb: Read his scriptures, spelling practice, played BLINK, played with some geometry solids, read a book about Egypt, played a geography game, learned about toucans and woodpeckers, and wrote a blog post about it.

Luke: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, read about ancient Egypt, spelling words, spelling rules, and read The Ranger's Apprentice.

Jared: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, played 15 min of Wii Boxing, played chess, spelling, played Music Ace, read Peter and the Shadow Thieves, and played with Lego's.

Olivia: Read her scriptures, practiced the piano, went to scholar school and read in Pride and Prejudice.

Deanna: Read my scriptures, wrote in my journal, read a conference talk, and went to the temple.

Alex: Read his scriptures, read in the church handbooks, went to work, finished The Ranger's Apprentice, and went to the temple.

Geometry

2010-01-28T20:24:00.003-07:00

Family Scripture Study: 2 Nephi 1
Weekly Family Scripture Memorization: Moroni 10:34
Greek/Read-A-Loud: We read several chapters in Percy Jackson and The Lightening Thief and finished it.
Greek/Movie: We watched Hercules (Disney) together and we pointed out all the Gods and situations we recognized. I'm not a huge fan of cartoons and my kids rarely get to watch them. So this was a treat!
Math: We received our new Lakeshore Geometry Activity Kit Grades 4-6 in the mail today. It is very cool. We talked about all sorts of Geometry concepts. They have very neat manipulates. We worked especially on graphing with positive and negative numbers. The kids are still playing with the kit right now. Here's the link, it says it's discontinued, but at least you can get an idea of what it is. Maybe you can find it on ebay.
Spelling: I quizzed the boys on spelling words from the book Dr. Fry's 1000 Instant Words: The Most Common Words for Teaching Reading, Writing and Spelling by Edward Fry, Ph.D. They wrote their answers down on wipe boards and then revealed their answers. They thought it was fun.
Club: We had cub scout pack meeting tonight. Jared earned some more awards.
PE: Playing in the snow and fort building.
Chores/Animal Care

Caleb: Read his scriptures, learned about sharks, wrote a blog post about sharks, and 30 min of Wii Sports.

Luke: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, spent a lot of time working on his creative writing story, did some silent reading in various books, and played Wii sports for 30 min.

Jared: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, and made a skills list for cooking. Did a dictionary search and located the words coconut, hydrogen, Neptune, rain forest and coat of arms. These were just random words I picked and then he told me about them. We added some dates to our times line, worked on scout requirements, did 30 min of Wii fit, and listened to a book on tape for a reward. He has misplaced his chapter book and so didn't read it today.

Olivia: Read her scriptures, wrote in her journal, practiced the piano, worked on math skills, and read in Pride and Prejudice.

Deanna: Read my scriptures, wrote in my journal, read a conference talk, practiced the piano, worked on cub scout things, played ping pong and reread Prometheus Bound for my mentor meeting this weekend.

Alex: Read his scriptures, read in the church handbook, did cub scout things (Unit Commissioner), listening to Ranger's Apprentice, played ping pong, and went to work.

2010-01-27T21:37:00.002-07:00

Family Scripture Study: 1 Nephi 21
Weekly Family Scripture Memorization: Moroni 12:34
Greek Fantasy Read-a-loud: We read 9 chapters in Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.
PE: Lots of snow play.
Chores and Animal Care

Today the kids wrote letters to their pen pals. This took a lot of time. They loved it though! Writing with out pain and writing with a purpose. I love it! They were able to work on good handwriting, sentence structure, paragraphs, spelling and grammar. They aren't perfect by any means but it's a whole lot more meaningful that random workbook assignments! (Thank you Heather!)

We also spend a lot of time on Percy Jackson. We read in three different sessions today. The kids really like the book. It's fun, but it definitely requires editing by me as I read a lot.

As always I know I've forgotten many things. But hopefully our blog is helpful to generate ideas out their for your own homes!

Caleb: Read his scriptures, drew pictures, practiced the piano, played with clay, wrote a hand
written letter to his pen pal, and addressed an envelope.

Luke: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, worked on his creative story (this one is handwritten), wrote a handwritten letter to his pen pal, addressed the envelope, did subtraction wrap ups, read in The Ranger's Aprrentice, and played a math game for 15 min on V-Flash.

Jared: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, wrote a handwritten letter to his pen pal, addressed an envelope, worked on division and multiplication problems, played with clay and made figures of all the major characters of the last several books he's read or heard, read Peter and the Shadow Thieves, read a book on Raz-kids.com, read 1 Greek myth from a chapter book we have, worked on the multiplication wrap up, played a V-Flash math game for 15 minutes, worked on his Faith in God, and listened to Harriet the Spy as a reward.

Olivia: Read her scriptures, practiced the piano, wrote a handwritten letter to two of her pen pals, addressed a letter, made home made doughnuts, worked on math problems, read in Pride and Prejudice, and finished some writing assignments for scholar school.

Deanna: Read my scriptures, wrote in my journal, practiced the piano, finished the book The Last Days: Types and Shadows from the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and played ping pong.

Alex: Read his scriptures, read in the church handbook, went to work, listening to The Ranger's Apprentice, played ping pong, and went to mutual and did bishopric things.

Neat Web Site

2010-01-26T20:27:00.002-07:00

I don't know if any of you are familiar with Academic Earth. There are multiple free online lectures that you can listen to. It's been super helpful for me in my BYU English class. Here's the link:

http://academicearth.org/

Snow Fun

2010-01-26T19:55:00.004-07:00

Family Scripture Study: 1 Nephi 21
Weekly Family Scripture Memorization: Moroni 10:34
Read-a-loud/Greek Fantasy: We read 3 1/2 chapters of Percy and the Olympians.
Social: Played with some home school kids for a couple of hours. They had killed and skinned a coyote that morning so my kids had quite the "biology" class with the skin they are tanning, the blood all over the barn (and now all over my kids snow clothes) and the carcass outside the door.
PE: Hours of shoveling and playing in the snow making snow forts.
Chores/Animal Care

Caleb: Read his scriptures, read to his teacher and got his best score ever, made a robin and nest out of clay and painted it (it turned out pretty darn good), learned all about mollusks, and wrote a blog post about what he learned.

Luke: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, read some random books slightly below his reading level but they are good for fluency, working on a creative writing story, and lots of army man imagination play.

Jared: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, read in Peter and the Shadow Thieves, worked on division math problems, played Quarter Mile Math, and listened to Harriet the Spy for a little while.

Olivia: Read her scriptures, practiced the piano, when to scholar school and discussed The Screwtape Letters, read in The Screwtape Letters, worked on some math problems, and is working on a report about Williamsburg. (We are going there for her 12th birthday this fall and she has to write about the places she wants to go and see).

Deanna: Read my scriptures, wrote in my journal, read a conference talk, practiced the piano, worked on piano theory, started a theology book, listened to a lecture about literary theory from Yale to help with my English class, word of the day, and played ping pong.

Alex: Read his scriptures, reading in the church handbook, word of the day, went to work, lots of Republican Party things going on, listening to The Ranger's Apprentice, and played ping pong.

Pen Pal Letters arrive!

2010-01-25T22:05:00.001-07:00

Family Scripture Study: 1 Nephi 19
Weekly Family Scripture Memorization: Moroni 10:34 (Jared's turn to pick for the week).
Goal Setting: Each family member reported on their goals from last week and set new goals for this week. This is really going well especially for our goal oriented children (Jared).
Economics: In an effort to do our part to stimulate the economy (and do 4-H horse projects this year) we bought a horse trailer today.
Financial/Money Management: Alex presented a real life investment situation to the kids. They had to do all the math problems in it. Then we all talked about it and decided if was a good deal, and based on Rich Dad, Poor Dad principles we decided to do it.
Music: We had piano lessons today. We are really pushing the music theory.
Pen pals: The boy's pen pal letters came today. They were beyond ecstatic! They have been checking the mail for a couple of days in anxious anticipation. They've read, and reread them and won't let them out of their sight. Pen pals are fun! Our pen pals are from Texas where it is warm and we are jealous!
PE: Played outside and made snow forts for over two hours.
Chores/Animal Care

Note: The kids have really enjoyed doing their math problems on a wipe board. I recently ordered some lap size ones, but they haven't arrived yet. It reminds of slate work in Little House in the Prairie.

Caleb: Read his scriptures, learned about contractions, played a Happy Phonics game with me (about contractions), worked on addition problems, learned about octopus, asked for a piano lesson from me and I gave him one (hoot, hoot! our plan is working), listened to Farmer Boy on tape for an hour, and played ping pong.

Luke: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, worked on a creative writing story, wrote four blog posts, reviewed sentence structure, pronoun usage, spelling, learned about mummies and the Valley of Kings (structure time not content), listened to Farmer Boy on tape for an hour, read for an hour in Ranger's Apprentice, and double digit addition practice.

Jared: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, practiced double/triple digit multiplication problems, wrote a blog post, did a dictionary search of words I picked out then he read to me a definition, read in Peter and the Shadow Thieves, and listened to Harriet the Spy on tape for a reward.

Olivia: Read her scriptures, practiced the piano, read for two hours in The Screwtape Letters, made banana muffins, listened to Harriet the Spy for fun for 30 minutes, and wrote a blog post. (I'm forgetting some things????) Today we also had her, for a math problem, take our check book for the month and then categorize our income and expenditures into categories. She then had to hand-add them up and check her work with a calculator. She then will make an Excel sheet at some point. Also at the end of the month she will check our percentages in each category to see if we spent the correct amount for that category. This is a "real life" problem to teach her money management skills.

Deanna: Read scriptures, wrote in journal, practiced the piano (heavy emphasis on theory also), finished (finally!) Othello by William Shakespeare, worked on my English class by reading an extensive essay about Historical Criticism (not a favorite topic or class right now-BYU 314), and played ping pong.

Alex: Read his scriptures, reading in the church handbook, worked on our investments, spent several hours working for the Republican District Committee where he serves as vice chair, went to work, played ping pong, and he's listening to The Ranger's Apprentice.

Family Home Evening:
Songs: We'll Bring the World His Truth and The Spirit of God
Testimony Bearing: Alex, Deanna, Olivia, Jared and Luke
Character: 21 Rules of This House- #3 We do not lie.
Strength of Youth: First Presidency Message (restarted again)
Proclamation to the World on the Family: 1st paragraph (restarted again)
Article of Faith: 11th
Lesson: Gifts of the Spirit by Alex from Gospel Principles
Activity: Sorry!
Refreshments: Homemade Tapioca Pudding (by Olivia) and fresh curds

What's the most important? My brain on paper.

2010-01-22T22:36:00.005-07:00

The beautiful thing about home schooling is that we are able to study and learn about anything we want! We can also focus on anything we want.

I've read so many wonderful blog posts and articles about some of the things that others have done. They have inspired me to great ideas within my own family. I love it! I have read about nature study, composer study, history of all shapes and sizes, science of all shapes and sizes, science experiments, music theory, art study, biography study, art techniques, creative writing, grammar including diagramming sentences, spelling, time lines, life skills, violin study, piano, a multitude of other instruments, literature (this list is huge!), money management, geometry, algebra, astronomy, Shakespeare, Greek, Latin, Sign Language, Spanish, French, Geometry, PE, logic, rhetoric, and the list keeps going and going and going......

I've been thinking what are the most important things for my family. I feel that I only have a short time with my kids before they are gone and I'm no longer their teacher. I need to narrow this list down! I've simplified it to the most essential and then identified within that what is the most important. I don't know what to label these?

Level 1: Core Phase Behavior
Level 1B: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic in it's basic sense

Level 2:

Life Skills: House hold management
Theology: Specifically narrowed down to the Gospel Principles Manual
Literature: Greek classics, Shakespeare and Dickens
Math: Money Management and Geometry (if our roof is X size, how many shingles do we need?, etc)
Music: Piano and specifically Music Theory

Level 3:

History: Specifically American History
Science: Physical Science?

Level 4:

Art
Astronomy
Foreign Language

The farther down the list you go the less I've actually thought about it. I have put a lot of thought in the first two levels though. A lot! What is the most important? If I didn't teach them anything else what is absolutely essential for our family.

My husband and I absolutely love history and so do our children. We don't even have to teach that subject in our home, they just know it. It just is. That is why that's not more of a focus. Science? I just didn't think it was the most important for our family to focus on. I'm certain that some families will have that focus instead of music like we have.

I'm not saying that we won't do science or art, I'm simply identifying my focus. Everything after that is a bonus. I just need to get my bases covered. I'm still thinking. Like I said, "My brain on a paper."

So have any of you narrowed down your focus and really thought about what is the most important for your family to know and understand?

Home Schooling Day on the Hill

2010-01-22T20:30:00.005-07:00

Today Caleb and I had the house to ourselves! Alex and the kids were in Boise to attend "Day on the Hill" for home schooling kids. I'm afraid Caleb and I were slobbed out and didn't do a whole lot that was beneficial.

Family Scripture Study: 1 Nephi 18
Weekly Family Scripture Memorization: 1 Timothy 4:12
Chores/Animal Care

Alex, Olivia, Jared and Luke: Awoke in Boise at their cousins. They had a great visit. Went to the capital. They had a tour of the newly rededicated capitol. They meet and talked to several legislators. They each had to argue a bill that they had written. Luke was so scared that when he sat down he was shaking and crying. He rallied after that to ask questions and debate bills after his. Lots of good public speaking opportunities. It was a long day, but they loved it and they learned a lot about our government.

Caleb: Read his scriptures, read in the Ranger Rick to me, started a blog, learned about bears from his Animal DK book, wrote a post about bears on his blog, coloring, played Money, Money! with me, played Book of Mormon Who?, played Stratego, watched a science video, watched a Miss Spider video, watched a Clifford video (all from the library) and went on a walk with me.

Deanna: Read my scriptures, wrote in my journal, wrote a conference talk, word of the day, practiced the piano, read and finished Trojan Women, read in Othello, went on a walk, played ping pong, made dinner for a family, and made food for a 4-H project tomorrow.

State Testing

2010-01-22T08:46:00.003-07:00

I am happy to report that we are still plowing on course for a leadership education. There have been some bumps in the road but we are still on course! Yeah! The kids are happy, I'm happy, dad's happy....

There is one "thing" we still do though that has us occasionally showing up in the public school world. The dreaded state testing. I know several of you wonder why we are still doing it if we've chosen leadership education. It does seem contradictory.

The money. Sometimes things always come down to money, huh? We get several thousands dollars a year from the state to buy curriculum (if we test) of all sizes and shapes. We can get computers, internet, classic books, math books, games, art supplies, office supplies, copy paper, on line resources, magazine subscriptions, reading resources, music lessons, etc.
The accountability. Even though I'm a fairly motivated person it's nice to know that I have to keep inspiring, keep asking them to play games, and just plain keep going because I've got a report to fill out at the end of the month!
I still get to do everything my way. I just have to give a monthly report, a year end report and state test.
Testing is real world. In my husband's occupation he regularly has to take tests of all shapes and sizes from state testing, national testing and business testing. We just have to take tests in this world. So in our family we find it helpful to have them experience it.
Protection. In our world you never know when the law is going to come down on you. Since we are technically enrolled in a public school we feel a sense of protection.

Those are some of the reasons. I think it really depends on the family. Leadership education is family led, so we each get to structure our learning based on our own needs and desires as well as what we see in the future that our children need.

I also wanted to throw in that we don't practice to the test. We just show up and take the test. It's not a big deal. it's just what you do. No stress. Secure, Not Stressed (the 8th Key to Great Teaching).

I hope that answers some questions I've been getting. I love the personalization of home school. Homeschooling is the best!!!

Another Thursday

2010-01-21T19:17:00.004-07:00

Thursday's are nuts around here and today was no exception. Scholar school is on Tuesday's now and so that should help!

After dinner Alex and the three older kids left for Boise where they will spend the night and beat the snow storm. Tomorrow the kids have a home schooling day on the hill where they will learn about the legislative process at the capital.

Family Scripture Study: 1 Nephi 18
Weekly Family Scripture Memorization: 1 Timothy 4:12
Animal Care/Chores
Greek Myths/Read-a-Loud: We read 3 1/2 chapters from Percy Jackson and the Olympians #1.
Book on Tape: Listened to Farmer Boy for two hours.

Caleb: Read his scriptures, read several books with me, read Sir Circumference and the Dragon of Pi: A Math Adventure, practiced fractions, tally marks, addition, subtraction, telling time, played Turtle Mania with me, played Guess Who with me, shoveled snow, watched a science video about fish, and drew a big animal mural that he's going to hang on his wall.

Luke: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, drew for several hours in his sketch book, listened to the Hardy Boys #1 while he drew his pictures, he learned about ancient Egypt, painted some hyroglifics, wrote a blog post, used the dictionary, went to scouts and played with a friend.

Jared: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, made a time line that includes events from his life, shoved snow, practiced his division, played Music Ace, read in Peter and the Shadow Thieves, wrote a blog post, wrote a silly story, and went to scouts.

Olivia: Read her scriptures, practiced the piano, worked on her loom, read in The Screwtape Letters, made breakfast, worked on some things for her pen pals, saved my life and made dinner for me because grandpa was coming over and I couldn't be home to cook it, and went to activity days.

Deanna: Read my scriptures, wrote in the journal, read a conference talk, practiced the piano, played ping pong, had a scout meeting, practiced singing with some other women for a ward activity, and read The Trojan Women.

Alex: Read his scriptures, went to work, played the ping pong, and listened to The Ranger's Apprentice.

State Testing

2010-01-20T22:00:00.002-07:00

We had to leave for state testing at noon. Since it's an hour away we stayed and went grocery shopping and ran errands while we were in "town."

Family Scripture Study: 1 Nephi 17 (finished last half)
Weekly Family Memorization: 1 Timothy 4:12
Chores/Animal Care
Testing: Luke and Caleb had state testing.
Library Trip
Lots of Grocery Shopping
Music Store
Book on Tape: Harriet the Spy

Caleb: Read his scriptures, played Raz-kids, worked on a phonics game for an hour, shoveled snow, learned how to play Stratego, looked at and read several books.

Luke: Read his scriptures, practiced the piano, worked in his sketch book, read in The Ranger's Apprentice, wrote a blog post about his day, played Risk and Stratego, read a book about World War II, wrote a blog post about what he learned, played Rush Hour, Jr., and worked on a lot of math problems dealing with double and triple digit addtion and subtraction.

Jared: Read his scriptures, practice the piano, read in Peter and the Starcatchers and the Shadow Thieves, played Quarter Mile Math and was quizzed on his typing skills, played Raz-kids, learned about the Periodic Table from a short science video, and played Stratego and Risk.

Olivia: Read her scriptures, practiced the piano, read and finished The Red Scarf Girl, finished her scarf that she made on a loom (it took her a couple of weeks), did a lot of price comparison and helped me a ton with the grocery shopping, played Stratego and Risk, and read several articles in a horse magazine while she waited for her brothers at the library.

Deanna: Read my scriptures, wrote in my journal, word of the day, practiced the piano, read and finished Agamemnon by Aeschylus, and started The Trojan Women by Euripides.

Alex: Read his scriptures, read in the church handbooks, word of the day, went to work, attended a district scout meeting, finished 10 Great American Short Stories and started The Ranger's Apprentice.