Well, tomorrow morning marks the official end of this season of homeschooling. The big first day o’ school arrives at 7:45 a.m. The kids are excited and happily nervous…I’m happy for them. The Lord gave me a sweet time of reminiscing this morning during worship at church on this time of our life…we didn’t do homeschooling perfect…but we didn’t screw up our kids for the rest of their educational lives. If I was grading me, I would heartily give myself a solid B. We did it! We might do it again! Who knows? The more I think about the education of our kids, the more I think about how strongly I need the Lord to lead me. I am so thankful for this time of homeschooling…our kids have learned to love reading books, and if it took two years straight of reading books to them for that alone, I am beyond thrilled! (Jack loves me reading to him, but still..there’s some love there, and that’s what counts!)
The 2nd week of DTS was full of exciting ministry opportunities…our students are helping at a cafe where they are getting to know young Thai people and tell them about the hope of Jesus. One of our students, Caity, is a horse guru/whisperer and she is working with a hippotherapy ministry here…they LOVE her…said she “has been sent from heaven to us!!” They already have her training two horses and want her to help every day! I love when God plunks us down right in our sweet spot! One downer was that Nathan L. headed to the hospital after a losing battle with dehydration and some mysterious illness. He’s out of the hospital and doing a lot better…on the mend and we will be glad to have him and Megan back with us. Thank you for your continued prayers over these young people.
A small, silly part of our lives…at night, a whole bunch of big ole’ (crunch when you step on them) ants come out to play. They are jerks! I thought I would take a picture of one of them crawling up our wall with a bird feather…(compliments of the cat). Despite their serious gnarliness, I was reminded of all the good things that Solomon had to say about ants…despite their size…they can do great things! Every time I crunch one, I am training myself to remember that God can do great things through little ole’ me!
Lastly, for the dear nerd friends I have out there, I thought I would include the books we read over the summer, in case you need some ideas:
By Andrew Clements: (I picked these because they’re all about school and thought I should give my kids a heads up!)
1. The Report Card
2. Week in the Woods
3. No Talking
4. Lunch Money (favorite of all these was No Talking)
5. Frindle (fun book!)
By other authors:
6. Magic Half (Good – but watch some of the language…probably favorite book of all summer)
7. Lemonade War (again – language stuff)
8. Socks (Beverly Cleary – fun, silly book about a cat…really, nothing more than that)
9. Horse & His Boy – C. S. Lewis
10. Sammy and His Shepherd – Seeing Jesus in Psalm 23
11. The Saturdays (we just started this series – shout out to Shannon Stark!)
And that’s it from the Homeschool Nerd…tomorrow I’m the “Kids-go-to-school” Nerd. Signing off!