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24 Days of Thankfulness: Day 9

Today Keeleigh called me into her room excitedly. She had a big orange balloon in her hand and said, "Look! The light is passing through it and it's just like our eye. The image is upside down on the other side of the balloon." Indeed it was. And this made me so excited.

I am a big-time homeschooling advocate. I love it (98.5% of the time). I believe in it but I don't always believe in myself. Sometimes when the doctor asks Jathan how old he is and he replies, "I don't know," I leave out that part about us homeschooling. Sometimes when Keeleigh sits staring at her language book for an hour claiming to have no idea how to form simple sentences, I wonder if it's me. Am I screwing them up?

But then! Then we have glorious moments when they see science inside of a random balloon! There was also a shining moment in math the other day when I understood the rule but not the concept behind the rule (it had to do with decimal place value). Keeleigh and I sat and studied it for a moment and then she said, "Oh, I get it." Then she proceeded to explain how it ties in with exponents and the fact that 10 to the 0 power equals 1. It was kind of awesome.

I read a quote from someone's FB status update last week that said, "True leaders don't create followers; they create more leaders." They asked, "What about your children? Are they merely following you, or are they passing you?" When Keeleigh got that math concept, I told her, "You're smarter than me!" That's a great thing! I hope I always empower my children to surpass me and my abilities and to be leaders themselves.  A friend told me a while back that she didn't want to home school because she looked at the homework her daughter brought home and didn't think she could do it. I tried to explain that I certainly don't have all the answers. I don't have a natural passion for math or science. But I do have a passion for my children. So sometimes we figure things out together. I've also been eager to see some good results come from our new curriculum choice. I felt like I was going out on a limb this year not using text books for science or history but time and again I've seen evidence that it's working! 


I am so thankful that we have been blessed with the opportunity home school! Thank You, God, for these affirming moments!

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