Mom hints: What to do when kids drive you crazy!

 A joyful heart is good medicine,
But a broken spirit dries up the bones.
Proverbs 17:22

As the mother of a large family,  people will sometimes comment that I must have great patience.  These are always people who might not know me well, because my children will be quick to tell you that one thing I do not possess is a great deal of patience.  At least, no more than the average mom.
And while my children do give me great joy,  they can also exasperate me sometimes.  Sometimes more than a little bit.
In fact, sometimes, they can exasperate me a LOT!

I do try hard to be a good mom, so when these exasperations come, I spend a lot of  time trying to think of a way to fix it.

And sometimes, I have brainstorms that work pretty well.

I had four sons in my 30's, to be exact, I had four sons in eight years.  Growing up in a family of girls, these sons were a great mystery to me for a long time, and now that I have added two more sons to my brood, I still have trouble figuring out the male mind.  Female minds ( I also claim six of those) I have no trouble figuring out.  The only problem there is I have the same mind they do, so sometimes I'm a lot of help, and sometimes, I am part of the problem.  But that's another story.

So while in the midst of raising these aforementioned four older sons, who eventually all became teenagers at the same time, I had to do a lot of exasperation solving thinking.  And that brings me to a couple of my brainstorms.

My boys had a terrible time calling each other "nicknames" that would drive the nicknamed child up a wall, some of them more than others.  Gage didn't mind too much, his nickname came from an older sister who nicknamed EVERYONE (she's got a son who knows no other name but Beatle) and she nicknamed Gage Dude.  Max was next, and he was Fryguy to this big sister, and that didn't matter much, either.  But then Gage nicknamed Max "Toad" and it really stuck.  And Gage had fun with that once we got a computer, transforming pictures of a big ugly toad to have Max's head on it's shoulders.  I still have one of those today.  They were hilarious to everyone but Max.
Daddy (Bill) was responsible for Spencer's nickname of "Dancing Man" which came from a really cute picture he drew of himself "dancing in the dark" when he was about four years old.  Then, for some unfathomable reason, Max began to call Spencer, "Daniel".  All.The.Time.  And as you guessed, that one did not go over well.  Again, for some unfathomable reason I have never understood.  Why would one male want to come to blows with another one just because he was called Daniel?  It's a mystery - one of those boy ones.
Beau was called "Beaubeau the orangutang".  Don't ask me why about that one either, but one of the boys would probably remember.  Thankfully, Beau is the calmest, gentlest of my sons, and he answered to anything.  Now that he's bigger than some of his brothers, that might change, but he lives in Colorado so they are safe.
Poor Mary Susannah was called "America" by her oldest big brother.  Always.  And it made her cry.  One of those female mysteries.  I think it had to do with lack of power to do anything about it.  But it's hard to seriously get after a big brother when the tattle is "Mommy, he called me America again!!'

So I spent some time thinking, because this was becoming quite a problem and disturbing the peace of our house.  And then I had a brainstorm!

They were welcome to call their sibling names, but if they did, they had to pay them a dollar for the privilege.  It didn't matter if they "forgot" the rule.  If you call your brother (or sister) a name, you had to give him a dollar.
If you can imagine, this really took the sting out of being called a name.  One or two of the kids were getting rich, while others were running out of money and having to pay their debts by doing the offended siblings chores.
Max says Gage never did pay the money he owed him for calling him Toad all the time.  Gage, you owe Max quite a bit.  Now that you are a rich restauranteur and lawyer out there in Viet Nam, it's time to pay up.  I imagine what you owe him will pay for his honeymoon in June!!

My second brainstorm came about because these same boys had a terrible habit of calling each other liars.  Yes, these are my perfect children who did this.  Now this could not go on, because I felt like this bordered on sin.  So I sat them down one day and told them that as Christians, they had no choice but to give their sibling the benefit of a doubt.  That from that moment on, they were not allowed to call each other liars, but instead, they had to say this sentence, and they had to say it exactly:  "I am sorry, but I do believe you have made a mistake in saying that."  I said if they did not say the exact sentence, or something very close, they would be punished.  The wonderful thing about this is they usually could not get the whole sentence out before they were laughing.
To this day, a couple of them still do this.  Recently, I made a very large - ummm - exaggeration while I was telling Max something.  "Mom, that's the biggest mistake you've ever told!"  He exclaimed.

Well, maybe it was...

So this brings us to today, and a whole new crop of kids.  Once again, I have accumulated four kids in the space of just less than eight years.  I have a girl 10, a boy 9, a girl 7 and a boy 6.  No, that doesn't add up to eight years, and they didn't join our family in that age order, but that's how long it was from Luke's adoption to Selah's.  And they can exasperate me and try my patience very well.  But the main thing that is driving me crazy these days is the sentence: "What (name your item)?"
As in, in the space of about two minutes this morning - and yes, it was Selah, which will surprise no one who knows her, but they are all masters at this - as we tried to get ready for a homeschool meeting:

Me: "Selah, I put your clothes on the table.  Go get dressed."
Selah:  "What clothes?"

Shortly thereafter:
Me: "Selah, I saw your shoes in your room this morning.  Go put them on."
Selah: "What shoes?"

Now if you don't have children, this may seem awfully minor.  But it you do have children, you will understand what I mean.  Multiply this by 50 times a day...

Me: "Tommy, go pick up your coat from in front of the door."
Tommy:  "What coat?"

Me:  "Luke, go get your shoes out from under the table."
Luke:  "What shoes?"

Me:  "Angel-Leah, pick your books up off the couch."
Angel-Leah:  "What books?"

GAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH...........................

What shoes/books/clothes/coat do you think I mean???  I told you specifically what it was and where it was.  YOUR coat, by the door.  YOUR clothes, on the table.  YOUR shoes, under the table.  How can you ask me, what coat, what clothes, what shoes???

Literally, it is about to make me a raging maniac!

Oh, wait, I already am.  You know how people always say, "I'd go crazy if I had 12 kids?"  Well, I did go crazy, and most of the time, life is a lot more fun that way.

Except when they say, "What clothes...."

So as I gritted my teeth this morning, and willed myself to be calm, I had a brainstorm.  I called them all together and told them exactly what they had been doing, and how and why it was making mommy insane.  Because I had already explained to them exactly what to get, and exactly where it was.  And to say "What (item)" was being lazy and procrastinating.
So from this moment on, I said, they were not allowed to ask me that question.  I told them I realize sometimes I make mistakes, and maybe what I asked them to pick up WASN'T where I said it was.  Or maybe it was Tommy's instead of Luke's, or Angel-Leah's instead of Selah's.  In that case, they may question, but they have to say these whole two sentences:  "I am sorry, mommy.  I looked for my clothes where you told me to look, but they are not there."
I told them if they didn't and resorted back to "What clothes/shoes/coat/books," they must pay me a quarter to tell them again: the clothes/shoes/coat/books on the table/couch/by the door/ under the table.  And that when I got enough quarters, I might buy myself a big bar of chocolate and eat it all myself as a reward for not losing my patience.  Kind of like having to pay your brother a dollar for the privilege of calling him a name.  It takes the sting out.

So next time you see me at the dollar store, counting out handfuls of quarters for that big bag of peanut M&M's, smile with me, because you know I deserve it!!

Sisters

My daughter, Mary Susannah, wrote a beautiful tribute to her little sister Angel-Leah, on the day before Angel-Leah's ninth birthday! 
Check it out, here:

http://suesuesstories.blogspot.com/2012/09/little-angel.html

rethinking priorities

Lately I've been rethinking priorities in my life.  I have to admit I'm getting a bit older, and maybe everything I wanted to do in my life isn't going to happen-the main thing being having a real working farm.  I'm not strong anymore, and the big kiddos in my life don't share my passion for it.  So I decided to "get real".  What can I do easily?  What have I done successfully, and what dream is it time to let go of?

I had the big idea recently that I would raise goats again.  But my first buck died. Then the next little buck I had gotten from a friend, bottle fed so carefully for weeks, and had finally moved to the big goat pen, out from under the protective shelter he had been raised in, succumbed to the freeze last Saturday.  It was quite a blow to find the little guy dead.  That was when I began to think, hmmmm...This isn't working...

So I decided to just stick with chickens.  They have been my most successful venture.  I've got a fairly good start on them this year, my "chick room" in the barn is full:

My bigger hens, the ones I hatched out here at our little farm last year, are laying now, much to the delight of my little boys.  Luke grabbed a little basket he's had for a while and has dubbed it the egg basket.  Now he and Tommy search for eggs every morning:

Have you ever had a chance to see a freshly laid, free range chicken egg?  There is just no comparison with a store bought egg, either in the way they look or the way they taste.  A store bought egg has a pale yellow yolk and a runny white part.  A freshly laid hen's egg has a firm white and a bright orange yolk, in fact, the better they eat (as in the more grass, seed and - let's face it - bugs) the brighter the yolk can look:

See the difference?  The one on the left is an egg one of my hens laid yesterday.  The one on the right is a store bought egg, bought just last week...

Here's my a few of my big chickens.  They are camera shy (and people shy) so I never seem to get a picture of anything but their back sides:

And last, my goats.  I'm not sure what I'll do with these ladies.  They are outliving all the husbands I get for them.  Seems they are destined to be childless...  But they sure make great lawn mowers!

I still have plenty to keep me busy.  Life is pretty good.  I do have the small farm, even if it won't ever pay the electric bill.  It's a great place to grow little boys and even girls if you have enough kittens.  I love my house and my family. 

So I'll reshift my goals, and we will do what we can do easily and what's fun, and quit worrying about having a "real farm."    This is close enough, right??

My daughter has her own blog now

Mary Susannah has started her own blog now. It's partly for her school essays, and mostly for fun.

Here's her link:

http://suesuesstories.blogspot.com/

What is a Quiverfull Family?

Sons are a heritage from the Lord; children are a reward from him
Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth.
Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies in the gate.
Psalm 127:3-5

My husband and I did not start out our married life being a ‘quiverfull’ family. We had grown up during an era that taught the zero population group theory at school. Having more than the two children it took to replace you was selfish, our teachers said, and was taking the resources that belonged to someone else in our overpopulated world.
So as we prepared to be married, we agreed that we would have two children.

Those two children, both girls, were born by the time we were 24 and 28 years old. Although we thought we had completed our family, I never wanted to do anything permanent. I loved children, and knew if I did that, I would regret it. The birth control pill was cheap and easy to get, so that’s what we did. Life went on, and since I did wish I had a houseful of children, we became foster parents for the state of Oklahoma, and filled our home that way.
It backfired though, when a newborn boy came to live with us. I feel in love with this child, and longed to adopt him, even though the state had made it clear that foster homes were not allowed to adopt. (This has since changed) My heart broke as I gave back this little boy when the time came. I begged my husband for one more baby to fill my empty feeling arms, and soon our son Gage was on the way.
Two years later, we were blessed with a surprise, and son Max was born. Two boys and two girls seemed perfect.

We moved from Oklahoma back to our home town in Texas, giving up our foster license in the process. In going back to the church we had attended before, I met a new group of ladies. They were homeschooling mothers of many children. They intrigued me, and one of them gave me a book to read: “The Way Home” by Mary Pride.
This book was amazing to me. It said what my heart had also always said, that children are a blessing. Not only that, but God actually wants us to desire children, and have many of them. In fact, Malachi 2:15 says “Has not the Lord made them one? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring.”

We were convinced, and decided to let the Lord plan our family from then on. At this time, we were around 34 and 38 years old, so it seemed we didn’t have a lot of child bearing years left. I was soon pregnant again, but my first quiverfull pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. This was devastating to me. I didn’t understand why God had let this happen. Wasn’t I trying to please and obey him? A miscarriage is a sad and lonely grief, as usually only the expectant mother is bonded with the child. My conviction wavered somewhat, but I still stood on what I had learned, and seven months later, I was pregnant again. Another son was born, followed by another miscarriage, and then another birth, giving me my fourth son in a row. Then in my forties, I had a baby girl. We now had seven children, and this little girl ended my childbearing years. I entered the next phase of life happy and fulfilled, knowing I had used my body the way God intended for it to be used.

Even still, God was not finished with our quiver yet.

My oldest daughter and her husband became foster parents. I really enjoyed her foster children, but soon, there were two that I grew especially fond of. When the courts ruled the mothers rights to these children would be terminated, my husband and I decided to get a licensed again as a foster/adopt, especially now that the country had decided that foster parents could adopt their foster children. We had begun the process when it was discovered the mother of these children was pregnant again. She soon had a premature baby boy and the state granted her an extra six months to try and get her children back. We offered to adopt the whole sibling group if she didn’t make it, and sat back to see what would happen. In the end, she got her older two children back, and relinquished her baby. We received our foster/adopt license and when this child was a year old, we were finally able to make him our adoption placement, and finalized that when he was eighteen months old.
Since we had our license again, we began to foster. Two little girls came to live with us within a week of each other, not related, but they certainly looked alike with their blond hair and blue eyes. We became very attached to them both. For a while, it looked like they would both be freed for adoption, but after twenty months, the end came: we adopted the older girl, and the younger one was sent to live with relatives in another state.
Although I have fostered more than fifty children in my adult life, I was devastated by the leaving of the younger girl. I knew it was good her family was able to have her back, but that did not dispel my grief. And in the midst of it, six days after she left, Child Protective Services called and asked me if I would take the five month old brother of my four year old adopted daughter.
Although I was physically exhausted with grief, I was still a quiverfull mother. I knew that God was placing this child with us. I knew he would give me the strength to take care of him. So I said yes. Three weeks later, he moved in with us, and one year later, we finalized his adoption.

My husband and I are now 55 and 59 years old. Our foster home was closed with our last adoption because we were maxed out with the number of children they would allow us to foster. They did ask us however, if we would like to keep our adoption license, just in case the mothers of one of our adopted children had another baby. Since we are close to the family that is most likely to happen too, and could work something out privately, we declined, and let them close our home.

Does that mean we are finished and will not have any more children? No. We are still a quiverfull family. If God should happen to send another child, I know we wouldn’t turn it down. While we are not actively seeking more children, our hearts and home is still open. And that’s what being a quiverfull family really is. It’s not a contest to see just how many children you can have. It’s just being open to what the Lord sends.

And I can testify it’s a blessed life!

Should You Teach Your Children to Believe In Santa?

I am a mother of ten children, ages 33 to 2 years old. I've run the gamut over the years on issues like Claus, the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy, and all those make believe things that people do with their children.
As a child, Christmas was always like a fairy tale to me. I can remember a magical glow about it. I could hardly wait for Santa to fullfill my every desire. I also remember during a frenzy of ripping open gifts during a time when my conscience was awakening to Jesus, suddenly feeling a conviction that something wasn't quite right here. I stopped in the midst of my materialistic glut, got my mind off myself for a few seconds and whispered "Happy birthday, Jesus!" and then went back to tearing into my presents.
I grew up and had children of my own. My husband, who had come from a conservative family, thought I was crazy for the way I went about holidays. He didn't like it, but I overruled him, and showered my children with gifts from Santa. In fact, there were years where the money for Christmas was hard to come by. However, since we had taught our children that there was a Santa Claus, they just assumed our financial status didn't matter, since Santa would be bringing the expensive items. In order to keep this myth alive, we would have to go into debt to get them their hearts desires.
As the years went by, my children didn't quite develop the moral sense I thought I was teaching them. Trouble erupted in the teen years, and I began to seriously take stock of what I had been teaching them. I soon came to see that my fruit was not what the Bible promised. So I turned to God in earnest, crying out to him to save my family, which was growing larger all the time. I asked him to save ME! I promised to open my Bible, and if He would teach me, I would do anything He said.
As my Bible study grew, one of the things that became clear was that God does not like lies. In fact, He tells us that liars will not see His kingdom (Rev. 22:15). As the Christmas season approached, I knew I could not tell my children that Santa would be making a visit to our house. To tell them there was a Santa, or an Easter Bunny, or a tooth fairy, was to tell my children a lie. Pure and simple.
Wow. Now what? Was I going to crush them? Would this cause them not to believe me anymore? Was it going to spoil the holiday season?
No matter. If I loved the Lord, if I was going to save my own soul, I could not lie to my children. So I gathered them all together, and told them the truth. I apologized to them for lying to them. And I told them there was no Santa, no Easter bunny, and no toothfairy. Then I waited for their reaction.
Their reaction, if I had really thought about it, shouldn’t have surprised me too much.
They looked at me with their big, beautiful eyes, and said, "Will we still get presents?" I looked back at these children that I loved so much, these children whose souls I was so concerned about, and I laughed. "Yes." I assured them. "You will still get presents."
All was right with the world. Christmas came and went without the fat jolly man in the red suit, who, if you think about it, the world gives all the attributes of Jesus. We dumped the artificial, the fake, and the inferior and gave the real thing the place He requires.
I don't lie to my children anymore. They can trust what their mother says is real. They have not suffered a bit from the lack of Santa Claus, the Easter bunny, or the tooth fairy. Christmas, and Easter have a different slant now, and it's not only just as good, but its better. The focus is back where it belongs, without the distraction of the untruth. How can Christmas and Resurrection Day be God honoring if it's based on lies?
Be strong and of good courage, mom and dad. Give your children, or continue to give your children, a gift that will stay with them all their lives: the truth!

Cloth Diapering Your Baby

When you are expecting a baby, one of your first big decisions is going to be whether to use cloth or disposable diapers. When the baby showers roll around, diapers will be on top of the gift list. Before you make a decision one way or the other, educate yourself on both options.

As a mother of ten, and a foster mother of more than 50 children, I have used cloth and disposable diapers over the years. Some of my babies have been completely cloth diapered, others completely disposable diapered, and others were a mixture. It’s just something I decide depending on what’s going on in my life with each individual baby.

The first thing I found to be most important when cloth diapering is to buy good quality diapers. Changing diapers is a messy enough job without having to use cheap, stained, nonabsorbent diapers. The best diapers I ever found were from the Home Life company owned by Mary Pride, a homeschooling mother and owner of a homeschooling magazine. They were thick, long lasting diapers.

If you can only buy one size, get the large ones. Babies grow so fast, and the small ones will soon not be big enough. You might buy one dozen of the small ones, and plan on using them for burp pads or mattress pads when the baby has outgrown them.

One of the messiest chores of diapering is when the baby has had a bowel movement. You can buy diaper liners, but I found that the cheapest way to take care of this was to use old material. You can use your families out grown, cast off clothes, old flannel blankets you find at garage sales, scrap material after you sew, worn out towels or any source of material scrapes you can find. Cut the scrapes into rectangles that will fit inside the folded diaper against the baby’s skin. When you change the baby, if the diaper is only wet, toss the material diaper liner into the diaper pail along with the wet diaper to wash and reuse. If the diaper is dirty, simply toss the diaper liner in the trash. Problem solved!

To cut down on the odor of the diaper pail, pour a little vinegar or baking soda into the pail. Tea tree oil is also a good thing to use to disinfect the diapers. When the pail is full of soiled diapers, take it outside and pour off the water into the flower bed or grass. Then you can put the diapers into your washing machine, and run them through a short rinse cycle before you wash them. Rather than dry them in the dryer, you should hang them on the clothes line to both bleach them in the sun, and deodorize them. If they are stiff, give them a short spin in the dryer to soften them up.

Disposable diapers are great too, if you can afford them. Don’t be fooled into thinking you must buy the most expensive diapers on the market. Remember, your baby is just going to potty in them. The cute cartoon characters on the front are fun to look at, but not worth paying extra for. They are going to be covered with clothes anyway. If baby seems to be a little allergic, try coating their diaper area with Vaseline, powder, or diaper rash ointment first. For some boys, it seems to be especially important around the front waist line area of the diaper. If this doesn’t seem to help, then switch brands, but again, go ahead and try another cheaper brand first. Many times one diaper will work where another will not.

Diaper wipes are another thing that does not have to be a big expense. You can make your own wipes. For the solution, you can use a cup or two of water, however much it takes to wet your wipes. To the water, add whatever you like to use for your baby’s skin: baby shampoo, baby oil, aloe vera, or any other kind of skin moisturizing product you like. For the wipe itself, you have several options. You can use cheap washcloths from the Dollar store, more of your scrap material, or cut up squares of flannel. If you want disposable wipes, buy a roll of white Bounty paper towels. Lay the paper towels on their side, and cut them in half. Place one of the halves in a round Rubbermaid container, and pour the solution over them. When the paper towels are completely wet, you will be able to pull the cardboard roll out of the middle, and then the towels will unroll from the middle, too, just like the ones you buy in the store.

Diapering your baby is a big part of caring for your child. It doesn’t have to be something to dread. Pick whichever method is most comfortable to you, and don’t feel guilty. Enjoy your baby!

CASA and the playhouse

When a child is removed from his or her parents and comes into state custody, and is placed in a foster home, there are many people who will be assigned to watch out for the child’s well being, and will make sure that the best thing happens for them, whether it is being returned to their parents or another member of their biological family, or in some cases, whether the child ends up being relinquished for adoption.
Usually, these people include a caseworker, a guardian ad litem, which is the attorney for the child, and they might receive a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) worker.
In my experience as a foster mother, a child who has a CASA worker is very blessed indeed. These workers are volunteers, and can be very dedicated to watching out for the child. Some of my foster children have had wonderful CASA workers. I can hardly say enough good things about them.

Recently, I had in my care two little girls. One became my daughter by adoption, the other was returned after 20 months to her foster family. The little girl who went back home had a really good CASA worker who came out to our house often, brought her presents on holidays, and worked with her family to help her go live with a great aunt and great grandmother. She also did much to ease my very hurting heart during this time. There was also a CASA supervisor named Tonya who worked closely with us while this little girl was with our family. I really like this lady, and saw her often in court hearings and permanency meetings. We also emailed back and forth, and I enjoyed talking to her.

CASA has fundraisers during the year to raise money for the children, and one thing they do here in our county is raffle off playhouses at Christmas. These playhouses are really nice, well built houses, and are displayed in the main part of town. While I was not involved in any way with the raffle, my foster and biological children certainly benefitted from it one year!

Tonya called me and told me they had raffled off a castle playhouse. She said the lady who won it wanted to donate it back to a foster family. Since I had two foster children for this county, she thought of me, and wondered if I wanted the playhouse?
Wanted it? We were thrilled to be chosen! She thought they might want to take a picture for the newspaper, although later that didn’t work out, because the picture included the foster children, and could not be published. At the time, though, that was just part of the excitement, and sure didn’t seem to me to be any kind of price to pay for such a wonderful gift.

A date was set to deliver the playhouse. I told my eleven year old biological daughter, Mary Susannah, that I thought we should make cookies to give the workers when the playhouse was delivered, so we did. Then we waited.
In a while, Tonya called. She said they were a bit delayed, but the Sherriff’s department was already on its way. Okay, I said, and hung up. Confused, I thought “Sherriff’s department?” About that time, I looked up to see a jail truck pulling up in my driveway, and several big men in orange jumpsuits get out, along with a couple of men in uniforms – and guns!!
My sense of humor slipped into play, and I tried to imagine what my neighbors were thinking about all this!! I also tried to imagine what I would have thought seeing these men pull into my driveway, had I not had the couple of minutes notice I had had. The inmates got out of the truck and stood in my driveway, smoking, as they waited for the playhouse to arrive. Evidently, the idea was for them to set up the playhouse.

In a few minutes, another truck came down our country road, with a huge, lavender castle on back. There was much talk about the best way to maneuver this big structure into our fenced front yard, which is where the young foster children played. Thankfully, part of the fence was temporary, and the trailer containing the playhouse was driven into our backyard, and the inmates took down the temporary fence and began to unload the playhouse. The children stood, very excited on the front porch and watched. It was interesting to see them get the playhouse off the trailer and into the spot I wanted it in.

When they were close to being done, I got the cookies, and asked Mary Susannah if she would like to pass them out to the inmates. She said yes, and did this under my supervision. It was obvious they were not expecting this, and they eagerly ate the cookies. It was a fun, unusual experience for us. It’s a nice memory.
After the playhouse was settled in our front yard, my temporary fence was replaced, much straighter and nicer than it had been setting before.

Now, much to the dismay of my older boys, I have a large lavender castle in my front yard. My oldest son, Gage, says it reminds him of Bowser’s castle in the old Mario Brothers Nintendo game. He’s right, it does!! We live on a major highway, and the castle is a landmark now. “Just look for the purple castle!” I tell people who want to know which house is mine. The boys ask me often when we can get rid of it, since the children the castle was intended for prefer to play in the ditch in front of our house most of the time, now that they are older and I let them out of the front yard, but now I have a new little boy, a beautiful blond haired, brown eyed fireball, who is learning to love the playhouse. He’s only eighteen months old; he’s got some time to enjoy it. So the castle will stay as a testimony to a generous person who gave away a really nice prize.

Whoever you are, thank you!!

Homeschool curriculum: the Robinson curriculum

As a busy mother who has homeschooled her ten children for eighteen years, I’ve always been interested in ways to teach my children to learn independently. Remembering my own public school experience, I wanted them to love learning, and not be bored by it, or dread it.
I began like most homeschooling moms, and bought and bought as I went to book fairs, thinking “Oh! I need this! I need that!” As the years went on, however, I found that just like myself, my children were bored with textbooks, and weren’t learning as happily as I wished they would. I thought about myself, knowing I learned easier after I had finished school by studying what I was interested in, than I did while in it, forced to study what the teachers put in front of me. Before long, I began to quit buying science and history books on a regular basis. Instead, I scoured library sales and garage sales, and bought novels, biographies, magazines and anything else I could find that I thought my children might just pick up and read out of curiosity, knowing they would retain the information a lot better than if I made them read it out of a text book. I subscribed to nature magazines. While we still had a TV (that was removed about eight years ago), I rented history and science movies and documentaries from the library. I got yearly passes to the local museums and the zoo, and took my children often. We visited state fairs and stock shows, and went on field trips with our local homeschool group.
I wasn’t totally sure how I was doing, since I didn’t have my children tested on a regular basis, but we seemed to be doing very well. This was finally proven when my oldest son, who had been totally homeschooled, passed his GED and SAT tests in the top 1 percent, and after two years in the local community college with a 4.0 grade average, was admitted into Georgetown University in Washington DC. Most of his friends there had been to prep schools, and were shocked that my son had done so well after living a very sheltered life. That son is now in his first year of law school at the University of Virginia.

Years went on as I homeschooled my ever growing family, and I amassed a large library of books for them to read. I tried to buy high quality books that taught good character building morals and a good work ethic. These books were always available to my children, when one volume got worn out; I just bought a new one. Sometimes I would buy a book that would set on the shelf for years before a child came along that was deeply interested in the subject and would read it. There were times when a child would tell me they had read everything we had, and couldn’t find anything else to read. That would spur me on to try and find new reading material for our library.
As our library grew, I bought less and less textbooks. I had many already on our shelves, but I didn’t force any of them on the children, except for Math, and some English and Grammar. I encouraged them to write, always keeping fresh notebooks and fun pencils and pens ready to use. As they got older, they were allowed to write on the computer, which would actually correct their work for them, thus saving me even more time.

After a while, people began to ask my how I taught my children, because they were smart, knowledgeable, and seemed to love doing school. As I explained one day, someone remarked that I used the “Charlotte Mason method”. I looked that up, and it did seem to line up with the way I was teaching them naturally.

One day, I read in a homeschooling magazine about the Robinson Curriculum, a self teaching curriculum. The father of a large family, a scientist named Arthur Robinson, had developed this for his homeschooling children after his wife died of a sudden illness. Using his method, children can actually teach themselves. It intrigued me. But having already accumulated a large amount of homeschool books, plus my large library, I hesitated to spend another $200, even though this set promised it was all you needed to teach grades 1-12. I soon discovered a site for it online at http://www.robinsoncurriculum.com/. I read about it over and over, and learned how it worked. It seemed simple enough, and almost what I was already doing. The child was to start right after a large breakfast. They would do two Saxon Math lessons a day, write a short one page essay on anything they wanted too (which would be graded for spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc.), and spend another two hours reading a book from the list included with the curriculum. I thought I would give it a try, just on my own, and that’s the course we followed the next homeschooling year.
I loved it. I wanted the rest of the books on his list. I decided to buy it, and I did, online.

I received for my $200 22 CD’s. On these CD’s were 250 high quality books. I could either have the children read them online (not recommended), print them out at a cost of around $9 at most, or I could buy them on ebay or at the half price bookstore – IF I could find them. Some are out of print and a little harder to find. So I printed out the list and decided if I could find them for less than about $7, I would buy them; otherwise, I would print them and put them in three ring binders.
My children were thrilled with this, and eagerly looked forward to the mail or trips to the book store for their new books.
Also on the CD’s are the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, the 1913 Webster Dictionary, Science texts for the older child, SAT style examinations, Language skills, Phonics and Math flash cards, 6,400 Vocabulary words, and a course of study.

This curriculum includes everything you need to teach your child from grades 1-12 except for the Saxon Math books, and they sell these at a discount. I also use the book “How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, a book I already had on hand, and really like to use.

This curriculum is not divided into grade levels. The child just moves ahead at his or her own pace. The child is usually finished by the age of 14.

Having used this method for almost two years now, one year without the actual curriculum, and now with it, I can’t imagine that I will ever do anything else. My children were already using Saxon Math, so I have most of those already on hand, and it’s familiar to me. I’ve enjoyed reading the essay’s they write, especially the ones of my 12 year old daughter, who is quite a writer. I am just beginning with my five year old daughter this year, and she loves the reading part!

I highly recommend this curriculum. If you are interested, there is a lot more information at the website, http://www.robinsonscurriculum.com/. You can buy this curriculum used at the link on the left hand side of this page, also.