I'm a wife, mom to 2 beautiful children and one angel. We have moved more times then I care to count (good times in the Navy), we have amazing friends in multiple states (and countries). When we first got married I hated moving, I hated getting to know new people, I hated learning new roads...but now I'm finally starting to embrace it (well most of it). I still get nervous to meet new people, although I must hide it well, because most people I know don't believe me when I say that. I still dislike driving in unfamiliar places and I am always afraid of getting lost. My favorite part is now getting to know a variety of people, and getting to know a new place...really go see what it has to offer.
Before all of this I was just a plain jane girl. I was average in just about everything. I played sports and that ruled most of my time. I loved every minute of it until I played in college, and I haven't played anything since. Maybe that will change someday. I am the person that always heard things like "you have so much potential if you could just...." I heard that so many times. In a way it feels good to have such potential, but eventually when you never fully tap into that potential and you can't for the life of you figure out how...it gets frustrating. I still feel like that is my own catch phrase. I feel like that all the time. My mind goes a million different directions at any given time and I can't seem to do any one thing really well (or as well as I would like), but I can do a lot of things fairly well. In my business I started by making purses, then I got bored with that (and with good reason, back then my purses were boring!), then I learned to knit and crochet, and I always seemed to have someone interested in buying that stuff, especially for babies. I always wondered if they were good enough to sell, if I was charging too much. Now I have started making kids clothes for more than just my two kids. I think I like it most right now because it's slightly more challenging (measurement-wise) than purse making. Purses can be cut in a variety of ways, but in the end they are all basically the same. Clothes you can also just make them all the same, but the fit is almost always different. I wish I could come up with a business plan...do I want to sell the patterns I design, do I want to exclusively sell my designs, do I want to eventually design for another company, do I want to manufacture a certain number of items and then sell them online or door to door, I have no idea. I wish I did. It's nice to have goal to reach for. For now, I'm just trying to get my stuff out there. Let people see it and feel it. Hopefully at this craft show I will get some much needed face to face feedback about the clothing. We'll see. It's getting close and I keep letting things distract me from making more to take to the show.
So how does all of that pertain to a blog that is also supposed to be about home schooling my children.....well I'll tell you! I don't want my kids to feel like they are full of potential, but never able to use it. I don't want them to feel like the things they are interested in are a dead end, or not important. I want them to HAVE the confidence that I pretended to have. I hope that they don't just skate by in their education because they want to play sports. I want them to want to learn. If you think back to your school days, when was the last time you remember being excited about learning....can you think of one?! My last memory of being truly excited was in 3rd or 4th grade, and I loved writing, especially creative writing. I felt like it was the one time I got to write whatever I wanted and I tried to make the biggest, craziest story I could think of. I also remember getting papers back that said nice story but....you can't start a sentence with And... you had a paper full of run-on sentences (nothing's changed, huh?)...where was the climax, who was the hero, and so on and so on. I told my teacher, after she said you can't start a sentence with and, that I had just finished reading a book that was full of sentences that started with and. You know what she said....'when you are a famous writer, you can write any way you want, and even start your sentences with and.' But I was done. The phase had passed, I didn't care for writing in the next grades. From junior high through college the only papers I wrote were essay, exams, boring things of that nature. I feel like the only chance you get in public school to have any creativity is in elementary school, but after that they start molding you for the 'real world', where they say there is no imagination, where you are expected to find an 8-5 job, sitting at a desk like every other jo blow.
Well, not my kids. I want my kids to know they have the freedom of choice. They can pursue their dreams as far as they want to. I want to encourage them to think outside the box when it comes to their future jobs. I don't want them to think, "I have no idea what I want to do....I guess I'll just..." That attitude is what makes a crappy teacher, or a crappy train driver, or a crappy clerk, or just a plain crappy employee. I was that person. I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I picked a job that was available and that I assumed I would be good at, and sometimes I was good at it, but I didn't like it. It made me open my eyes and be honest with myself, that I was not meant to be a teacher. Not in a school. I am not organized, I didn't want to be charged with other people's children's future livelihood. But I am ready to accept that challenge for my own children. I'm just still deciding how I want to do that.
At first I drilled our daughter to learn the letters, and she did. I don't think I like the way I did it though. I don't think it was always fun for her sometimes...and then sometimes it was. I'll admit that my patience can be short, and so is hers. Sometimes when I should have just let her scribble, I was trying to help her draw shapes or letters. With my son I didn't push it as much because he didn't speak until much later than she did. I just felt like he couldn't communicate as well and it would be impossible to get him to try....and it was :) This year they are 5 and 4, and I thought we would start 'kindergarten'. Adelyn knew her letters and the sounds, which seemed like a perfect opportunity to use our new curriculum and learn to read. Reading was the hardest for her, but she was getting it. Slowly but surely we made progress. It can be frustrating though because there are times when she wanted to sit down and read, but once there she just pretended like she knew nothing and couldn't even sound out any letters. That frustrated me, and I frustrated her. I feel bad about it now, and since have given her a break from it. I haven't forced them to do any school work in a while. I encourage drawing, writing letters (especially to Dad, who is deployed at the moment), Steven wakes up first in the morning so sometimes we play with letters and sounds. Adelyn usually enjoys puzzles and games. Steven mostly wants to play video games, some educational, some are not. I still worry about what people are thinking when it comes to what I'm 'teaching' them. But the more I read about unschooling and just letting nature take it's course, the more I love it.
We were in California for a few months last year. We spent so much time outdoors and with lots of different people, adults and kids, and I can see how that experience was very educational. We traveled a lot, and there was always a map around, we talked about numbers on exit signs (or in cali, the lack of numbers on exit signs), we saw so many different plants and animals, tons of orchards, groves, fields. We hiked and biked, and really enjoyed nature.
The fun continued on our drive back across the US to South Carolina. We spent even more time outside, added kayaking to our outdoor activities. One of the kids favorite things to do was paddle out to 'our island' and look for shells. We found probably a hundred hermit crabs in our adventures out there. The island was only visible at low tide, at high tide it was completely immersed, and all you could see where the reeds. We would go at high tide to fish, then stick around through low tide and play on the island. It was muddy, and pretty stinky, but we found so many treasures out there. Golf balls from the nearby course, empty shells, shells with crabs, shells with conch, blue crabs, tiny little bitty crabs, huge sea turtles. So many spiral shells you just wouldn't believe!! We saw sharks, we saw fish jump, we have been up close and personal with dolphins...one swam so close to my husband's kayak that it brushed the side of it and pushed it sideways. We saw baby dolphins jumping and playing with it's family. We got to watch how they hunt fish in packs, surrounding the fish and each taking their turn diving in. Those are such amazing things that we saw almost daily! When my parents came for a visit my mom and I saw a manta ray jump out of the water, I have never seen anything like it. Truly amazing.
Next post I'll tell you about how we are not only crazy home schoolers, but we also decided a couple of years ago that we would live in an rv rather than a house. Yes, we are trying to defy all convention and make our path vastly different from what is 'normal'...hence the Road Unknown!!
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