Hello, all. I've been busy, even if it seems from this site that things have stagnated again. I have two new posts at the Wordpress site. No offense to the keepers of this domain, but I'm just more inclined to work on my posts when my mobile application is working on my iPod, and for some reason Blogger just doesn't like mobile uploads. So here are the latest links...
Without You
Saying What He Said
I'm writing from Atlanta where I'm accompanying our Pastor on a church visit. The fellowship has been nice, but I'm feeling a little beat after dealing with the loss of our dear friend Mr. Wilkes Kemp on Monday. Mr. Kemp was Marcus' godfather and a constant presence in their early lives. He and his wife watched the kids for many a day while my wife began working. Their granddaughter and our kids grew up side by side, and Mr. Kemp helped mentor Christopher through the youth program of the fraternity Phi Beta Sigma, called the Sigma Beta Club. In all these things Mr. Kemp was the consummate gentleman, Christian and role model. His homegoing on Monday promises to be an emotional day for our church and family.
Of course, life has gone on, and I'm also taxed by the family and ministry concerns of the week. But I don't want to spend time magnifying my problems when others have much more do deal with - plus the fact that I'm definitely not prepared to maintain 2 blogs, much less three (my music site has been quiet for months!) So please click on the following link if you wish to subscribe to the RSS feed for Wordpress. I'll leave this link active as long as needed for others to find my new address...
http://homeschooldaddy.wordpress.com/feed/
Thanks again to everyone and may God bless you according to His riches in glory...
Looking unto the hills,
homeschooldaddy
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Ready or not...
OK, it's time for the perfectionist in me to move over. I've toiled and tried theme after theme in the Wordpress site and still, I don't feel like I've gotten the look I like, but it's been two weeks and even my wife is questioning my commitment to changing the site. Blogger looks better with the new header, huh?
Anyway, it's time to unveil the Wordpress site and let you be the judge. Yes, it doesn't have many of the gadgets I have in Blogger, but I like the chat feature and the overall look. If I don't get major feedback on the positive side, well, maybe I'll leave it here. Or, more likely, I'll start learning how to create my own template so I can have exactly the features I want. The site address is the same, except "Blogger" is now "Wordpress."
http://homeschooldaddy.wordpress.com/
I've placed "Back to Basics - Part 2" in the Wordpress site. All of my former posts were also imported for archival purposes. Again, please let me know if you approve of the new design. I could be swayed either way at this point.
Looking unto the hills,
homeschooldaddy
Anyway, it's time to unveil the Wordpress site and let you be the judge. Yes, it doesn't have many of the gadgets I have in Blogger, but I like the chat feature and the overall look. If I don't get major feedback on the positive side, well, maybe I'll leave it here. Or, more likely, I'll start learning how to create my own template so I can have exactly the features I want. The site address is the same, except "Blogger" is now "Wordpress."
http://homeschooldaddy.wordpress.com/
I've placed "Back to Basics - Part 2" in the Wordpress site. All of my former posts were also imported for archival purposes. Again, please let me know if you approve of the new design. I could be swayed either way at this point.
Looking unto the hills,
homeschooldaddy
Thursday, October 02, 2008
On the Move....
I'd like to take a moment to thank any and all of you that have been so gracious to spend time reading my ruminations. It's been incredible just looking back over my old posts and realizing how much I've changed, how my children have matured, and how our family has become stronger and closer through this wild ride of family learning. As I was inspired by the blogs I mentioned in the last post, I've also been inspired to update the look and feel of the site, and I can't figure out Blogger's advanced features enough to make any major changes. So, I'm making a major change of my own and moving the blog to Wordpress.
I'm not totally done with the transition yet, and when I'm done the blog will appear in this space but won't be updated anymore. I may do a few more posts to make sure that everything is in order, and of course I'll post links and RSS Feeds to the new address. I will probably leave my other blog (Help, I'm a Church Musician) in Blogger as well since I'll still use Picasa and other Google services.
Hope this won't throw off any long time readers (all 3 of you...) Keep living, learning and loving.
Looking unto the hills,
homeschooldaddy
I'm not totally done with the transition yet, and when I'm done the blog will appear in this space but won't be updated anymore. I may do a few more posts to make sure that everything is in order, and of course I'll post links and RSS Feeds to the new address. I will probably leave my other blog (Help, I'm a Church Musician) in Blogger as well since I'll still use Picasa and other Google services.
Hope this won't throw off any long time readers (all 3 of you...) Keep living, learning and loving.
Looking unto the hills,
homeschooldaddy
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
Back to Basics...Part I
I've been inspired and maybe a bit chastised by reading some great homeschooling blogs as of late, including from Charlotte Mason experts and fatherhood proponents. Perhaps my last few entries have strayed from the purpose of detailing how this homeschooling dad makes it through the day.
I thought I might detail the basics of our family learning philosophy, as fragmented as it may be, to provide context to the examples of our curriculum and activity choices. There's no formula that I picked up in any one book or manuscript here; rather, it is the combination of all the learning and experience of the last three years that we have taken this journey. Here's the first and most important -
1) Knowledge and learning are gifts from God, and are to be used for His purposes.
There's no doubt in my mind that the Father is the source of all knowledge. Not only in the theological sense that He knows all, but in the practical sense that everything we think about had to have a source in someone else's mind. As babies our thoughts are formed and shaped by the environment and experiences of our parents or caretakers. We slowly come to a consciousness of our own conscious, but we never forget that it was formed and developed through contact with others. In the same way, our thoughts and ability to think was generated by the initial contact of the Creator, not by some leap of evolutionary biology. C.S. Lewis talks about this in the moral sense when he points out that without some source of the concept of "good", we would have no idea what constituted right behavior, except that which pleased us or made us feel a certain pleasurable way. But it is clear that even morally bankrupt people have some idea of a standard. No culture ever decided that being dishonest to your neighbor was a good thing, or that abandoning one's children is admirable. This standard wasn't simply developed in a vacuum, it was placed there by the Creator to remind us that we have a higher standard to reach to. As Romans states, "They are without excuse".
This impacts our family learning decisions in that I always consider how my educational choices impact my children's spiritual development. It may seem that only would affect science (creationism vs. evolution), but it has much wider impact. When choosing the language arts component, I noticed most traditional workbooks had a very liberal view of business - meaning, every time businesses were mentioned, the connotation was negative. That doesn't square with the scriptural principle that God grants us the wisdom to gain wealth. I didn't want my kids constantly reviewing a concept that was at its heart against the work ethic that Christians are to aspire to. Also, we have spent many days discussing how we should challenge ourselves to do better than the norm - even when we are ahead of our peers educationally. The question is not whether we are doing better than others, but whether we are learning and producing work "as unto the Lord" (Col 3:17). Since He is the one that gifted us with the ability to learn, isn't it His purpose and His approval that matters?
This is a very freeing concept in this day of testing and accountability. My daughter may not learn her time tables as fast as others, but in God's sight she is striving as mightly as Paul was 'toward the mark'. Marcus may be sometimes impatient with his ability to get every problem right, but in God's sight his mind is "fearfully and wonderfully made." It reminds me every day that it is not my approval either that counts. When God is the source and the standard of our learning, all of my efforts become secondary when viewed in light of the superior teaching ability of the Holy Spirit to guide them. When I remember to always trust His plans and His purposes in my children, I can rest in the fact that He that began the work will complete it. Whatever their eventual career choice, I will know that their education was designed to give God the freedom to take them anywhere He feels they will glorify Him the most.
When viewing family learning in this light, the final exam is not the test at the end of the book, nor even the SAT or the MCAT. It is the test from the parable of the talents, in which those that did the most with what the Master gave them heard the words, "Servant, well done." That is the statement that will determine whether I was successful in my homeschooling efforts, and of course, it is one that I pray and trust my children will aspire to and one day hear for themselves.
To be continued,
Looking unto the hills,
Homeschooldaddy
I thought I might detail the basics of our family learning philosophy, as fragmented as it may be, to provide context to the examples of our curriculum and activity choices. There's no formula that I picked up in any one book or manuscript here; rather, it is the combination of all the learning and experience of the last three years that we have taken this journey. Here's the first and most important -
1) Knowledge and learning are gifts from God, and are to be used for His purposes.
There's no doubt in my mind that the Father is the source of all knowledge. Not only in the theological sense that He knows all, but in the practical sense that everything we think about had to have a source in someone else's mind. As babies our thoughts are formed and shaped by the environment and experiences of our parents or caretakers. We slowly come to a consciousness of our own conscious, but we never forget that it was formed and developed through contact with others. In the same way, our thoughts and ability to think was generated by the initial contact of the Creator, not by some leap of evolutionary biology. C.S. Lewis talks about this in the moral sense when he points out that without some source of the concept of "good", we would have no idea what constituted right behavior, except that which pleased us or made us feel a certain pleasurable way. But it is clear that even morally bankrupt people have some idea of a standard. No culture ever decided that being dishonest to your neighbor was a good thing, or that abandoning one's children is admirable. This standard wasn't simply developed in a vacuum, it was placed there by the Creator to remind us that we have a higher standard to reach to. As Romans states, "They are without excuse".
This impacts our family learning decisions in that I always consider how my educational choices impact my children's spiritual development. It may seem that only would affect science (creationism vs. evolution), but it has much wider impact. When choosing the language arts component, I noticed most traditional workbooks had a very liberal view of business - meaning, every time businesses were mentioned, the connotation was negative. That doesn't square with the scriptural principle that God grants us the wisdom to gain wealth. I didn't want my kids constantly reviewing a concept that was at its heart against the work ethic that Christians are to aspire to. Also, we have spent many days discussing how we should challenge ourselves to do better than the norm - even when we are ahead of our peers educationally. The question is not whether we are doing better than others, but whether we are learning and producing work "as unto the Lord" (Col 3:17). Since He is the one that gifted us with the ability to learn, isn't it His purpose and His approval that matters?
This is a very freeing concept in this day of testing and accountability. My daughter may not learn her time tables as fast as others, but in God's sight she is striving as mightly as Paul was 'toward the mark'. Marcus may be sometimes impatient with his ability to get every problem right, but in God's sight his mind is "fearfully and wonderfully made." It reminds me every day that it is not my approval either that counts. When God is the source and the standard of our learning, all of my efforts become secondary when viewed in light of the superior teaching ability of the Holy Spirit to guide them. When I remember to always trust His plans and His purposes in my children, I can rest in the fact that He that began the work will complete it. Whatever their eventual career choice, I will know that their education was designed to give God the freedom to take them anywhere He feels they will glorify Him the most.
When viewing family learning in this light, the final exam is not the test at the end of the book, nor even the SAT or the MCAT. It is the test from the parable of the talents, in which those that did the most with what the Master gave them heard the words, "Servant, well done." That is the statement that will determine whether I was successful in my homeschooling efforts, and of course, it is one that I pray and trust my children will aspire to and one day hear for themselves.
To be continued,
Looking unto the hills,
Homeschooldaddy
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