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Surrender {2026 Focus}

14 Jan

The word I’m choosing for this year is Surrender. It’s similar to my word for last year: Peace. And the 9-month update I wrote about my word for last year is extremely relevant for this year’s word too.

Surrender was inspired by this quote that I saw on Instagram:

“God can do far more with your surrender than you can do with your control.”

We are discussing some big changes to our kids’ schooling and family life, and as much as I want to figure out a plan right now, or cling to the things that are familiar, I need to be reminded to surrender all things to God.

“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, 21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Ephesians 3:20-21).

I am also dealing with some behavioral issues with my kids — sibling fighting and bad attitudes. Surrender also reminds me that all situations and circumstances are from God. I think of this quote from “He Leadeth Me” by Fr. Walter J. Ciszek, S.J.:

His will for us [is] the twenty-four hours of each day: the people, the places, the circumstances he [has] set before us in that time. … We [have] to learn to look at our daily lives, at everything that [crosses] our path each day, with the eyes of God; learning to see His estimate of things, places, and above all people, recognizing that He [has] a goal and a purpose in bringing us into contact with these things and these people, and striving always to do that will — His will — every hour of every day in the situations in which He [has] placed us.

So when the kids wake up and are fighting within 5 minutes, or someone throws a fit over their math assignment, or no one wants to go outside, or my living room is taken over by a fort again, I will seek to surrender, and accept my specific circumstances as God’s will for me in that moment. And if that means our school day doesn’t get finished, or I have to break up sibling squabbles yet again, or bedtime takes longer, then I will seek to trust God, instead of seizing control to make happen what I think should happen.

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What Works for Us: Paper Filing System

18 Jun

This is the second post in the series What Works for Us. (See my post on our laundry system here.) This post has been seriously delayed because while I can type the content on my phone during naptime in my kids’ room, I have to take the pictures in person, and finding time to do that is hard. These photos are not Pinterest-worthy, but they show what I’m talking about. Anyway.

In this What Works for Us series, I am posting lifestyle and home management tips that are working for us, while homeschooling four kids. And what do kids produce every day, besides laundry?

Paper.

The paper clutter with kids, whether they are in school or homeschooled, is insane! I swear, my kids produce 15 pieces of paper a day, 365 days a year. Besides having a very sizable recycling bin right in the bottom of my pantry for the things that don’t make the cut, here is what I do with these mounds of paper:

School Papers and Artwork

I regularly go through papers created at home or brought home from church. Whatever is worth keeping (even if it’s just the kids saying they want to keep it), I put all of the papers in two bins in an upstairs closet (my two older kids share a bin and so do my two younger ones). Labeling them with the dates and child is helpful (especially when I am not sure who created what), but I sometimes don’t have time or care enough (and often, I can tell who made it by just looking at it, or now that my kids are older, they know who made what). I like this system, because in the craziness of everyday life, it only takes a few minutes to file their papers and get them off the kitchen counter or homeschool table.

Regardless of whether or not I label them, the papers are stacked in relative chronological order. Sometime after the end of the school year and before the beginning of the next, the kids and I go through all their papers at once, weeding out the ones they no longer care about, hole punch the stuff they want to keep, and put all the keepers in a 3-ring 1-inch binder, one per child, per grade. After using a variety of binder sizes that I got for free or at thrift stores, we have found that the 1-inch size is the sweet spot for us.

We also use the pockets in the front and back of the binder, plus some page protectors if needed for things that are weirdly shaped. I keep a 3-ring binder for the artwork my husband and I have created with the kids too, because I plan to give all the kids’ binders to them when they graduate, and then I will still have some things to look at for the memories.

The kids have enjoyed getting their binders back out and looking through their past creations. Having all the stuff in a binder makes it easy to do!

Buying that many binders could get pricey, but people are giving away binders for cheap all the time! Keep your eyes open at thrift stores and garage sales.

Each kid has a tote that will fit all their binders K-12, plus have a little extra room for some art projects. I have these stored in our utility room. It is a little extra effort and space to save things, but I think it will be worth it in the long-run.

As a side note, six or seven years ago, I went through all the things my mom had saved from my childhood. Things I did not want to keep included tests and quizzes (even ones I scored well on), greeting cards that were only signed with a name and no special message, and cookie-cutter art projects. Things I truly valued were things that showed my creativity, imagination, and personality. I try to keep those insights in mind when deciding what to keep of my kids’ papers.

What about those things that the kids bring home, but aren’t done with?

Each kid has a folder in their homeschooling bin for things like this. When they’re wanting something to color while I’m reading aloud for school, they know there are options in their folder. That way, they know where it is and it’s off the kitchen counter.

Bills & Important Documents

My system for adult papers (bills and important documents) is actually not that different from my system for kid papers.

We used to have an old-school, two-drawer filing cabinet downstairs, with a hanging file folder for every different category, but literally years went by without us needing a single piece of paper in it. Meanwhile, I grew lazy and busy with parenting, and didn’t have the time or desire to run papers downstairs to file. So I started putting papers we wanted to keep in one giant accordion file labeled “To File” that I kept in a smaller, cuter file cabinet we have in our dining room (that we also use for electronic cord storage and coloring books).

Not surprisingly, I never got around to actually filing those papers. But we discovered that this system actually kind of worked, so we just kept using it. The beauty of it is that it’s super quick to file things—we open the mail and if there’s something bill-related we need to save*, it goes right into the back of the accordion file. Done.

* We have signed up for electronic billing when and where possible, but some things just don’t qualify. I also don’t include person-specific medical records or important papers such as birth certificate copies in the accordion file — just bills, statements, and such.

Another benefit of this system (if you can call it that) is that when files become obsolete and no longer need saving, you don’t have to comb through a bunch of different file folders. You just take the front of the stack out of the folder (looking at dates), quickly page through it, keep anything still relevant, and shred the rest.

I will admit, it takes longer to find specific things in the big stack than if we had a detailed filing system but I think in the 6-7 years we’ve been doing this, we’ve needed something out of there only a handful of times. Then why do we keep those papers, you may ask? Because you never know. And I do not have time to scan things into digital files.

In our dining room filing cabinet, I do have a few specific files still (as you can see in the photos above). Each family member has their own medical file, and I have school/community/program information in its own folder, plus folders for HSA receipts and current year tax documents. But we shredded all of our old files, got rid of the massive filing cabinet, and haven’t looked back!

These paper systems work for us. Hope you found something helpful in this post!

Up Next: What Works for Us: Kid Chores

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Our Homeschooling Year: What Worked, and What Didn’t

22 May

We are finishing up our 2023-24 homeschooling year this week with standardized testing. This was our fourth full year homeschooling (not counting the end of the school year in 2020 during COVID). Our year definitely wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but I do feel like I figured out some things this year that made it work so much better for us.

A little context: I never expected to homeschool. I knew nothing about the nitty gritty. In January 2020, I was working part-time at our church, and my kids all attended our local public school (1st, Pre-K, and daycare). After six months of discussion and prayer, my husband and God had successfully convinced me to try out homeschooling. So I turned in my notice at work (for the end of the school year), told the kids’ teachers at conferences that they would not be coming back the following year (though we loved their teachers!), and I started reading Charlotte Mason’s books. Then COVID happened. We tried distance learning for one week and decided to pull the kids out early. And here we are, four years later!

So, without further ado, here are the things that worked well this year, and the ones that didn’t:

WHAT WORKED

We Switched to a Block Schedule

For two of our homeschooling years (the first and the third), we tried to follow the Charlotte Mason (CM) method with the short lessons and variety of daily subjects. But it was just too much transitioning, and there were certain subjects that we just never got to. So this year, instead of scheduling science/nature study for, say, four days a week for 20 minutes, I scheduled it two days a week for an hour. That worked better with our curriculum, too. I also did this with Spanish, History, and Geography. What a difference!

I Ditched the “Charlotte Mason” Books

There is certain “living literature” that other people in the CM community seem to really like, but which I and my kids find extremely dull. Enter the Dallas Lore Sharp and Arabella Buckley nature study books. (Sorry, not sorry.) Instead of forcing ourselves to slog through these “classics”, I gave myself permission to not like them, and instead, we bought a science curriculum that incorporates a lot of notebooking opportunities (written narration) and experiments. This year, we have been using the Apologia Earth Science curriculum. It’s pretty aggressive in timeline (and we didn’t always get to it… see What Didn’t Work later in this post), and we only finished half of it, so we will be continuing on with this next year!

I Liked the Curriculum I Chose

The one year that I didn’t try to follow Charlotte Mason was the year we tried Sonlight. I thought it would be nice to have someone else tell me what to do instead of having to make all the decisions myself. Well, it didn’t take long for me to realize, I don’t like being told what to do! And Sonlight was not a great fit for us. So I went back to the CM Method the following year, using up some Sonlight things and looking at Ambleside Online (AO) for other resources and ideas. Well, this year, I finally decided to branch out a little further and go for some curriculum that wasn’t necessarily “Charlotte Mason approved” but that looked like it would be a good option anyway.

And I’m glad I did! I’ve already mentioned Apologia Science. We have also used The Story of the World by Susan Wise Bauer for history over the last two years, and this year, we added the Activity Book that has coloring pages, suggested activities, and book lists for further reading. We only made it through half our book this year, partly because subjects in the afternoon were hard to get to (see below), but mostly because we took extra time to do related activities and read extra books. I personally like taking a deeper dive and covering less, than covering it all but only because we only read the textbook.

For Spanish, we used La Clase Divertida Level One, and really loved the DVD/CD format. I had tried teaching Spanish to my oldest two (I majored in it in college), and had tried to use CM recommended books, but nothing was inspiring, so we skipped it quite a bit. But this curriculum was exciting, and the workbook and crafts/recipes/stories that go with each lesson make it really enjoyable. We were also easily able to practice in the car on our way to activities, which helped check off school on those busy days.

We have used Singapore Math since the beginning, which we like. We used Sonlight Language Arts for two years, and this year, used Spectrum workbooks for Language Arts and Spelling. I like that they have the directions and exercises together (so that my kids could hypothetically do them on their own), but I do feel like they might leave some gaps (though that might just be because we weren’t super consistent in them…).

Morning Time Routine

This is our second year of using this rotation for Morning Time, and I really like it. I try to keep Morning Time to no more than 30 minutes long.

Mondays, we read the Bible based on the AO timeline, for the opposite Testament as Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) — this year, BSF studied the gospel of John, so we read Exodus and Journey to the Cross (a book I would highly recommend!). We also do Singing (songs from AO), Poetry or Nature Study, Recitation, and Character lessons.

Tuesdays, we read When Faith is Forbidden, a book by Voice of the Martyrs about persecuted Christians. We pray for the country the chapter is about, then do Singing, Poetry or Nature Study, and Artist or Composer Study.

Wednesday, we do the Kids’ BSF lesson. It usually takes about 30 minutes, so that’s all we do that day.

Thursday, we have BSF, and Friday, we read Trial & Triumph (another AO recommendation) about church history, plus Singing, Poetry or Nature Study, and Recitation.

WHAT DIDN’T WORK

Finishing School in the Afternoon

There’s definitely a balance between having your kids involved in extracurriculars, and being home enough to get school done. This school year, my two oldest had gymnastics on Monday afternoons and piano lessons on Tuesday afternoons. Thursday mornings, we went to Bible Study Fellowship and didn’t get home until lunchtime. All of this would’ve been fine, except that I also had a toddler (who just turned three about a week ago) that needed a nap from roughly 1 to 3. The subjects that suffered the most with this were Science, History, Geography, and Spanish. I’m not necessarily going to change anything for next year, except to hopefully not spend two hours of the afternoon getting my toddler to sleep/falling asleep myself.

No Art or Handicraft

Last year, we did an art project about once a week, and my kids LOVED it. But it also pushed out time for the more essential subjects. This year, we really didn’t do art at all (except for some Art Hub for Kids videos), and I think everyone really missed it. So that’s on my list to change for next year.

Starting Early

In the fall, we were intentional to get the kids up at 7 AM, to start Morning Time at 7:30. We got all our core subjects done by 10:30 AM. It was great! But over the course of the school year, and especially after Christmas when my oldest two and I would stay up way too late reading Harry Potter, getting up at 7 AM was just not happening — for them OR me. Then our whole schedule got thrown off. So for next year, I’m going to look at making things work with a later start perhaps. It’s a hard balance!

Prioritizing Housework

This is something that God has been convicting me of. Many days, I prefer to do housework (laundry, dishes, tidying, organizing) over school, or at least feel like it’s most urgent. I have a really hard time ignoring the mess to focus on what I really should be doing. But I need to do that. I just read A Mother’s Rule of Life by Holly Pierlot, and it inspired me to see doing what I should be doing when I should be doing it as a matter of obedience to God and His call on my life. Anytime I give in to just “doing what I want” weakens my will and makes it harder to obey in the future.

I also have those days when it feels like all I ever do is housework, and then when the kids make yet another mess, I lose it. My summer goal is to develop a loose or block schedule that is realistic, actually works for me, and helps me to give everything a time to be done. Like Holly writes in her book, “Knowing that tidy-up came just before supper made me stop tidying up constantly throughout the day. Knowing that the laundry was going to be done in the morning stopped the pressure of seeing dirty laundry in the basket every evening. … Because there was a time and place for all, the moments I didn’t have scheduled for chores became ‘free.’ I stopped thinking about all the responsibilities I had weighing on me and was able to concentrate on the present moment, fully and freely. … Life was not all work or all play, but a healthy interweaving of both.” (pg. 25)

Along with that, I plan to assign the kids more chores. They already help do chores after dinner (transferring and sorting laundry, setting the coffee for the morning, putting away shoes, loading the dishwasher), but there are other cleaning tasks that they are more than capable of helping with. So I will be adding that into the schedule/routine as well.

BOTTOM LINE

Overall, it was a good homeschooling year! When people ask me if I like homeschooling, I usually respond, “I like it enough to do it again next year.” Do I LOVE it? No. Is it incredibly challenging? Yes. Is it worth it? Absolutely.

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