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During days like these in homeschooling, you may feel as though homeschooling difficulties have you swamped. Anytime there is a major change in your household, you may wonder if your children are learning what they need to know. However, homeschooling difficulties can sometimes turn into blessings in disguise.

Death or Illness

Although I haven’t experienced this myself since beginning homeschooling, many of my friends have had to care for an ailing family member or deal with death while trying to maintain a regular homeschool schedule. One friend of mine told me that when she cared for her mother for a year that she didn’t feel her kids were learning anything at all. There just wasn’t time or leftover energy to do the school work that needed to be done and she felt as though she was completely failing her kids. When her mother passed away, she pulled the pieces together and tested her children to see where they were academically. She was pleasantly surprised to find that her daughters were not nearly as far behind as she thought they were. They self-taught, read to one another and learned somehow through that year. More importantly, she feels that they learned the importance of caring for family and being kind to those who are ill.

Moving

Moving can put a real damper on homeschooling. We started homeschooling in the summer time, because we were “testing it out” as I attempted to convince my husband it was the right choice for our girls. Ultimately, he agreed with me when he saw how well they were both doing. However, this was a huge challenge. We were finishing a new house, living in a tiny apartment and trying to homeschool. In the middle of all that, it was time to move into the new house, so we were packing, unpacking and living out of boxes. The best advice I can offer with this homeschooling difficulty is to do a little each day but don’t overwhelm yourself or your children. We decided to focus on math, since it was summer, but during the regular school year, I would probably scale down to the three “R’s” and stick with reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmatic. Once the move was completed, I would then add in other topics one at a time, starting with science, history and then electives.

New Family Member

We recently had a 16-year-old niece move in with us. We’re thrilled to have her here, but it has been an adjustment to everyone. She misses her old school, old friends and home and we have had to rearrange things and make adjustments. The first week she was here, I scaled the girls down to math only for the week. They are nearly finished with their other subjects for the year, anyway and math is always our weak area, so I never want to let that lapse. I quickly decided that spring break wasn’t happening for us this year, unless we wanted to work most of the summer and marked that off our schedule, so we can play catch-up. My niece has now been here about a week and a half and we are settling into a routine, as I knew we would. I have started to slowly add back in other topics, starting with reading. I will then add writing, science, history and then art.

The main thing to do when you are having any type of homeschooling difficulties is to figure out what your key areas are that your children should focus upon. I would start with the weakest area first, because that is where your child is most likely to potentially fall behind. Then add the other areas back in from weakest to strongest in skills. Here are some subjects you will probably want to cover:

• Math
• Reading
• Writing
• Grammar
• Science
• History
• Bible
• Electives
  • Languages
  • Art
  • Music
  • Physical Education
  • Sports

What a day we have had in the Soard house! It is days like today, when you just grab on to your sanity and have to trust that the Lord is in control. I won’t go into all the details on everything as some is still a private family issue, but wanted to share a picture of our sweet baby Scarlette. Scarlette is a 13-year-old Golden Retriever. You can see where her face has turned gray in recent years. I think it has added some more character to her face, don’t you? Don’t ask me why she’s sticking her tongue out at the camera. My youngest daughter takes millions of photos of our pets and this one was really cute.

Last night, Scar-Scar (my nickname for her), kept wanting to go outside. I didn’t think much of it. I figured the kids had fed her scraps and she had the big D. I laid out some blankets in the bathroom and left her in there when I went to bed.

This morning, she wanted to go outside three times within 20 minutes. The last time, I followed her outside to see what was going on. She only urinated. Ten minutes later, the same thing. I went online and looked up info on a dog urinating frequently and what I read got me really concerned. I followed her outside yet again, and noticed a bit of blood on the snow when she urinated (just a tiny bit). I immediately phoned our vet, who was out of town, so I phoned a secondary vet we sometimes use. They gave me an appointment for 3:30 and asked me to collect a urine sample.

Have you ever tried to collect a urine sample from a dog? Think about how hard it is to get one of your own, add to that how hard it is to get one from a child and times it by about a gazillion. I can still hear my girls laughing as the dog and I walked in circles as I attempted to get her to pee in a little plastic container. After several attempts (she was going to the bathroom every 10 minutes, after all), I was able to collect a small amount, which I figured was enough.

In the end, the vet said she has a raging urinary tract infection and put her on antibiotics. However, he is a little concerned about bladder cancer. We have to go back in two weeks to see if the signs are looking better (lots of bladder cells in urine was the bad sign). I realize my sweet baby is thirteen and that is old for a big dog, but I’m hoping we have more time with her and this was just a bad UTI. It came on so fast! If it is cancer, we’ll just have to hope she lives a while longer and doesn’t suffer.

The moral of the story is that you should always err on the side of caution. Even though our budget was tight and the $116.00 vet bill was painful to pay, my dog now feels better after a couple of doses of antibiotic and seems to be resting comfortably. And, I have a little peace of mind in knowing that she isn’t in dire straights for today.

If you have a dog (or other animal), go give him or her a hug. Our pets truly love us as no one else does. A dog loves you when he stink; she loves you when your breath is rank; she loves you when you laugh and when you cry; she loves you when you don’t share your food but especially when you do; she is always happy to see you without fail; when you cry, she will comfort you and give you the sad-dog eyes to show you she understands; she is your best friend and your most loyal companion. Treasure the time that you have with these, one of God’s most special creatures, man’s (and woman’s) best friend. Sniffle. Excuse me while I go hug my dog.

Well, it’s official. We all have cabin fever. I know! I know! It’s only been one day. How can we possibly have cabin fever? Our weekends are usually busy. Either the girls have friends over or they go to someone’s house. We do things on the weekends. We have church on Sunday, and youth group, and usually lunch with friends. Instead, church is canceled and we’re stuck in the house. We should probably play board games or do something really memorable, but I think we’ll just cozy up in our jammies and watch some movies. We refer to this as “vegging out” and it probably lends to my crazy night owl tendencies.

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I am officially dubbing this the Blizzard of 2008, because it is the closest we’ve come to one in a good long while here in Southern Indiana. We woke this morning to white swirls floating down gracefully and collecting on the ground like a group of women gossiping on a Sunday morning.

The snow hasn’t accumulated much. Maybe an inch or two, but it is soft and powdering, creating pretty drifts up against the sides of the houses that resemble Mount Everest’s peaks. One can almost imagine a tiny person climbing those powdery drifts in a struggle for life.

They are forecasting up to 10 inches more overnight, again with drifting. It is one of those days when you just want to snuggle up in your house. I thought it might be fun to share with you what the Soard family does when this weather hits. Poor Dad has to try to make it home from over in Louisville, while we snuggle up and just enjoy our snow day.

The next few days will include these activities:

Playing in the Snow - One of the great things about having kids is that sometimes you get to be a kid. When we get a lot of snow, the girls and I bundle up and we go out and make snow angels. Our Golden Retriever, Scarlette, loves the snow almost as much as we do. She will frolic alongside us, make snow doggies (she even rolls on her back) and she loves to stick her nose down into the snow and fling it up in the air, especially when it is this powdery. We love to have snowball fights, but this snow probably won’t be good for that.

Building a Snowman - Even though this snow is powdery and not good for building a snowman, that won’t stop us from trying. The fun part isn’t really in the building of our somewhat awkward snowman. The fun is in dressing the snowman or snowwoman. We love to add scarves, twig arms with gloves, hats, carrot noses and so on. We even put a boa on a snowlady one time and a big red hat.

Hot Cocoa - When we’re done playing outside, we’ll come indoors and make hot cocoa. Recently, we’ve gotten into making things from scratch and homemade, so we won’t use a packet mix. As we sip the hot cocoa, we’ll talk about other snow days from the past and other snowmen and good times. Even though the girls are getting older, they still want the traditions we’ve always had. If I forget something like the cocoa, they start asking questions and wanting to know where the cocoa is. Or maybe they just like chocolate.

Hot Soup - Dinner has to be something warm like chili or soup. Tonight we had chili. Tomorrow we will have some “hobo stew” which is my specialty. Hobo stew is a mish mash of leftovers. I keep a container in the freezer and add that one tablespoon of green beans here and another cup of leftover corn there. Hobo stew never really tastes the same twice, but is always yummy. When I’m ready to make hobo stew, I either make a pot roast the night before and use the juices and leftovers for the soup, or I add some hamburger and beef base. I actually prefer it with the hamburger. There is nothing better with hobo stew than homemade bread. We now make bread from grinding our own grain and baking from scratch. This is much healthier and it tastes wonderful. It took a few tries to get it perfect and I’ll share about that another time. Making this bread does take some before thought of several hours. I usually grind the grain in the morning. If the bread is in the bread machine by noon, it has time to rise and is ready for the oven within a couple of hours. I let the bread machine do the kneading and rising work and then I pull it out of the machine and bake in the oven in metal pans. It is soooo delish!

Imagine a cold, blustery day, but inside you have warm soup and hot, fresh bread dripping with a little butter. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Jammies & Movies - Another thing we love to do when it snows is to take our showers and put on fresh pajamas, which we stay in all day. we put on slippers or warm and fuzzy socks and we pile up in bed and watch movies all day.

These are our favorite things to do when it snows. One thing that a blizzard can make you do (or even just a little snow) is to slow down and appreciate your home. You are stuck inside for a change, instead of running here and there and everywhere. Here are some tips I leave you with this winter:

• Take a minute to just enjoy your home life.
• Take the time to hug your kids.
• Play a board gam.
• Appreciate life’s blessings, such as a hot bowl of soup.
• Bake something. The smell will make your home seem warmer and more comforting.

Even when kids are grown and have children of their own, they remember the smells of home. I remember the smell of biscuits baking in the oven. The smell of cornbread still reminds me of my great grandmother. What smell will remind your children and others of you? Pick a signature scent. Mine is the homemade bread. Yours might be as simple as Pillsbury cookies baking in the oven.

Hi folks!

This is completely and totally unrelated to anything else, but I’m excited and wanted to share with you. You know I’m the Cheapskate Queen and there is nothing better than free stuff and free money. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it is very exciting! I know that many have been opposed to Paypal for a number of reasons, one of the main ones being that they take out fees if you have one person pay by credit card.

If you’ve been online for a while, you know exactly who Steve Case is. He is the man who started AOL. Well, he has a new venture, which is a payment service similar to Paypal but completely free to send and receive money. If you remember when Paypal started, they gave a bonus if you signed up and a bonus if you referred people. It was great. We all got a little free money (think dinner out or movie out, not a second income LOL), and it was an exciting new service where we could send money or receive money in a heart beat. This is very similar. You get a $25 sign-up bonus (I’ve already gotten mine. I took the girls to a movie today, Penelope, which was very cute) and then $10 for each person you refer.

If you’re interested in signing up for the new service, just e-mail me. I’ll send you the link and an article you can read about the new venture. I always do my research to make sure things aren’t a scam, because you have to be careful these days. I believe this is the real deal. I plan to use this to send gifts to family and friends and avoid those fees for them.

Cheers!

Lori Soard