Life with this one is pure joy.....

I don't need to write much when there are pics of our Jubal. His face and life expresses so much. He is doing so well and is loving life...just as he should.

Feeling Loved

Some of the flowers we got on Valentines Day 

Lila showing off our cookies 

Paul had all the boys write notes to the girls . I think that was one of the sweetest parts of our Valentine dinner

They boys and Paul dressed up and made dinner and served us a delicious meal.

We had a special breakfast in the am ( complete with donuts ) and we stayed home and had our own church. We have been listening to Steven Furtick online for our sermons. We actually stream it thru our big tv... and I have to say the kids have understood and really " gotten " it when he has shared. He is the pastor of Elevation Church in NC if anyone is interested. Then Ben and Angie came up for the day and participated in our Valentines Surprise the guys had done for the girls. They had set the tables special , placed their notes , gave each one of us a rose, and we even danced....It was a special time and all of us girls felt loved and special. Thank you Paul and all my boys for this memory and time.

The Cost of Homeschooling is this....

The cost of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it...by H. D. Thoreau

I was asked by a friend about our home schooling and so I thought I would write about how it works for us here at , Faith Works Home School. This year we have been teaching 25 children in our school. Notice I said "we" because it is not just myself who gets it done here. It is actually a very supportive and excellent group of us who get it done as they say. This number includes Mary Kate's and Keith's children as well as 17 of mine.

We changed our schedule this year and it is working well for us. I have divided the children into groups according to age/ability. There are 6- ages 4 and under including Jubal - Mya is the head instructor with a group of teens who help her plan activities for them. Then We have 5 kindergartners that I teach with the help of Isaac and Luke. We begin school at 10 am for our main academic work for all the younger kids. We have oral reading from 9 to 9:30 done by several of the older middle elementary kids. We have music ( led by Abraham and Anna ) from 9:30 to 10. Nine of the children are upper elementary and they help in the mornings with the younger group. At 11we have craft taught by Tia and Lily with help from others. Then from 11:30 to 12 is PE taught by Anna. Lunch is from 12 to 1. Quiet time for the younger group - some read for one hour, some take naps and the older kids begin their academic work until 4 pm.. The younger thru elementary age will have science, history, Bible and catch up after 2 pm.. We try to finish everything by 4 but if not they stop and catch up in the evening after dinner. We do a full schedule M thru Thursday and only do spelling, math and reading on Friday. We have 6 teens in grades 8 thru 12th.. They do the majority of their work in the afternoon from 1 to 4pm..

Andrew has to be managed thru our day and we have a chart for that. He loves being outside and part of his time is walking, jumping on the trampoline, playing , swinging or riding in his wagon. He is the most difficult part of our days to manage because of his behaviors and winter is the most difficult because he can't always go outside which seems to help him when he can. I probably should do a post just about Andrew sometime so those of you will understand him more and what we walk thru with him each day and nite.

We moved our boys out of our large addition on the main floor in Sept. and made that room our main school area. This has worked out well and I am thankful for our very large home with so many options for us to be able to use.

I am gone sometimes and our school rolls just fine without me...I have delegated and given responsibilities to the children and they learn well thru our system. Grouping the kids together in teams with one of my older kids to be the main teacher/checker works for us. I am floating around and used when needed after I teach the kindergartners.

We do extras like the " Week of meals" where the kids are in 7 teams and they plan and prepare our dinner. For some funny reason we have dessert every nite that week : ) We joined the Frontier Culture Museum for a year membership and that adds to our history lessons all thru the year . We go to church and participate in activities there as well . We attempt some field trips but never do as many as we would like to. In nice weather , which is most months out of the year we are outside a lot. We have 2 pools, 2 trampolines, 2 large play sets for the kids, soccer goals and enough kids to have teams : )

Home schooling is so much more than teaching academics to our family...It is learning and experiencing life together and developing our spiritual lives with the goal of being obedient to the will of God in our lives. We feel learning at home works the best for our family especially since we have so many special needs children and older teens who need the consistent walk daily in a family learning about themselves and life in a safer environment than any other school setting would be for them. If I had to be honest though one of the main reasons that we home school is that I love being around my children. I have them for such a short time and I won't apologize for my deep feelings of enjoyment that come from sharing life with them as much as we do because we homeschool.

I saw the title at the top on fb the other day and it made sense to me. I believe that we live and share our lives together discovering the love of Jesus as our family walks this journey called life. These moments and yes even the difficult ones are costly and priceless as we exchange a lot of life in our home.... And I would not want it any other way.