Prayer

Its hot outside! May 13th and 93+ F. I wish it would rain. It seems like its been forever since it rained. There is a 30 percent chance this weekend. I pray it does.

As I was watering my garden this afternoon I prayed that God would send rain and then I remembered a story I heard about two monks. Each of them had a small olive tree they were trying to grow. One of them prayed for rain, prayed for frost, prayed for sun, basically all the the things he could think of that the plant needed to grow. Eventually his tree died, but his brother monk had a flourishing tree! He asked his brother what he had prayed for his tree and he said "I just prayed that God would give it everything it needed to grow into a strong tree and He did!"

I think sometimes it is perfectly OK to pray specifically for what you want or need, but how many times might it be much better to simply pray "Lord, you know what is best, please provide for my needs".

Hope this makes someone feel better

And I hope no one thinks badly of me after reading it.

Our homeschool day, in reality...right now anyway.

8:30 AM Wake up

9 AM Listen to Adventures in Odyssey while eating breakfast

10 AM Start school with P.E. outside

10:30 AM or maybe 11 AM
Start another subject, perhaps Math, perhaps Science, or perhaps gardening
(we planted bell peppers, parsley, lettuce, and snow peas today) usually 2 subjects during this time.

11:45ish Go up the road to check the mail

Noonish Lunch

1 or 2 PM More school work, math, or reading, or writing, or home ec. (today it was math)
usually 2 subjects. Yesterday was an all History day.

3:45 PM Play outside (Michael had a headache so he took a nap)



Not the schedule that you might guess huh? At least we are doing some school work. We are learning a lot during the in between times. Gideon helped Jason write numbers today. Michael looked up an article online about rockets yesterday and he's working on writing a story in his free time. The other day they created space suits for themselves out of plastic bags with holes cut in them. We practice AWANA almost daily, memorizing scripture. Tomorrow Gideon goes out with his daddy for breakfast and then to the tax assessors office. Last Thursday we went to Wal-mart for Gideon to spend his birthday money and talked quite a lot about how much he had and what combination of Lego sets would be within his budget. Michael was behind in math a few months ago and now he is ahead!

My point is, they are learning! We may not stick to a strict schedule, we may not cover every subject every day, we may not be what you might expect from a homeschool family, but my kids are learning, a lot!

My main goal for the education of my children is to teach them how to learn. As of now I think they are well on their way! Sure, there are plenty of other things I want to make sure they learn before they leave my care, but they will learn those things. I am sure of it.