Kelly Crawford

Terry at Breathing Grace did a great job articulating the urgency of the state of our country.  We are simply obligated to understand what is happening and to use what power we have left to combat it.  (“To him who knows to do right and does it not, to him it is sin.“)

“We interrupt this blog break to ask those of you who are not rich, white and male to please speak up so that you can retain your liberty! I hated posting this. I wish that our nation wasn’t too apathetic to see and care what is happening. This stuff should have been beaten back decades ago….

I am so sick of people painting this in terms of liberals and conservatives. This is so much bigger than that…”

Read the rest at Breathing Grace

MUST watch:  Video of Mark Lloyd, our new Chief Diversity Officer, extoling the “exaggeration” of free speech.

Every year our home schooling looks different.  That’s the beautiful thing…depending on the stages, seasons, needs and demands we can tailor our learning to fit those.

This year our oldest is taking an in-depth World History “co-op”  class, taught by a friend/church member.  She will be covering a lot of material and reading some heavy literature, but we are all looking forward to the challenge.

In addition to that, my husband and I talked about what the rest of her education should look like.  Since we are such “relaxed learners“, it’s always a struggle to find the balance between academic expectations and our educational goals.

And with the assumption that the government will be increasingly more “involved” with homeschooling requirements, we have become a little more concerned with making sure we can jump through their hoops if required.  I believe with a little forethought, relaxed learning can accommodate the possible need to be able to answer a test, and certainly we can wait until they are older to focus on that aspect.

I was so excited to find a few great websites that we will be using as her “tutors” this year.  They are math.com, nationalarchives.gov.uk/latin/beginners/ for Latin, and dowlingcentral.com/MrsD/area/literature/Terms/alliteration.html for teaching literary terms and uses (actually this site is all things related to English, grammar and composition).  We still take a literature-based approach to learning, but we’ll use these resources to help fill in those testable areas.

Not only do these seem to be simple yet thorough instructional sites, she will be totally “self-guided” through her work this year, freeing me up to concentrate with the little ones more.  She’s looking forward to the variety as well.

Just wanted to share those few gems with you.  By the way, if you don’t already know, there is enough information and resources on line that you could get away with never buying anything.  There are flash cards, writing paper,  alphabet charts–I just printed off a US map that we’ll tape together and hang up–just about anything you can imagine is available for free!

(For more about relaxed learning, check out Think Outside the Classroom.)

We just got back from our “family vacation”.

How does a family of 10 take a cheap vacation?  Ingenuity!

First, don’t own a pool.  That way, your kids think swimming is the most awesome thing in the world.

Second, don’t vacation often 😉  Really, it’s all the more wonderful when you do.

Thirdly, don’t have cable or satellite.  That way, a hotel room seems like a really cool place to hang out.

Finally, don’t get out much.  That way, a continental breakfast seems too good to be true.  My daughter points to the orange juice fountain and asks, with her eyes wide:  “Is that orange juice?” “Yes.” “Is it F-R-E-E?”

For a much needed, short “vacation”, we took the kids a whole 30 miles away, and stayed at a hotel with an indoor pool, since we expected inclement weather.

My first concern was that we were going to have to pay for two rooms–the limit for one room was 5 people.  This doesn’t help families like ours!  So, I asked.

I called the hotel, told them we had “a unique situation” and that even if we paid for 2 rooms, my kids would all want to sleep in the same room, and she said “no problem”.  Score!  We’ve already cut expected expenses in half!

Then, we packed snacks and one night’s supper and lunch and ate in the room in our pj’s while we watched movies.

The night we went out to eat we ordered “The World’s Largest Seafood Platter” for $18.95 and split it between myself and all of the children.  Aaron ordered his own 😉

We bought a few end-of-the year water toys on sale, loaded up, and you would have thought we took them to Disney World.

This would also work for a great winter get-away, since the pool is indoors.

So that’s our favorite family get-away idea…I think we’ll make it a habit.  Oh, and we’ve also done the same thing for just 1 night as a spur-of-the-moment treat.

P.S.  If you like the t-shirt, we have some for sale!  Drop me a line.