Homeschooling in the UK - 3

We've been enjoying some amazingly warm weather here in the UK recently, and being homeschoolers we've been doing lots of nature walks and reading books in the garden. It's wonderful to have the freedom to do that, which is a point that I'll make in a future post. Today, however, I'd like to talk about extra curricular activities.

Pro: The Freedom to Choose From a Large Number of Extra Activities

When we lived in Russia there wasn't an awful lot for the kids to do, really. They enjoyed local art and dance lessons, but those had to be twice weekly. You see, when you committed to doing something, the ethos was that it was 'all or nothing'. Music lessons, for instance, were a five-day-a-week commitment at the special music school. Even swimming lessons were three times a week, with floats tied around the child with rope and an instructor with a stick (no parents allowed near the pool). We decided against the swimming!

Back here in England a whole host of possible activities opened up: Brownies, street dance, trampolining, choir... There was less pressure, but they were more expensive, and the kids were tired after their day at the local school.

Now that we're part of the homeschooling community even more possibilities have opened up. There seems to be something you could do in a homeschool group pretty much every day of the week. So far we've done a fantastic weekly art class, archery, meet-ups in local parks and a series of 'forest school' afternoons, where the kids learnt to whittle wood and toast marshmallows over a fire. Being homeschoolers we can also get a cheap rate at the local swimming pool during school hours, which we take advantage of regularly, and our local tennis courts have very few people around then either. In addition the kids have kept up their other 'after-school' activities: Brownies, Guides, Boys Brigade, football and gymnastics.

Homeschooling has allowed us freedom to chose from more activities, often at cheaper rates, at times that suit us best as a family, and the children are generally less tired and able to enjoy them more.

Con: Learning When to Say No and Stay At Home Instead

I suppose this isn't really a 'con', but sometimes you can have too much of a good thing! When we first got back into homeschooling I felt like I ought to be going to lots of homeschooling activities simply to meet people and for the kids to make friends. I used to check the facebook pages all the time to find out which events were on, who was organising a 'meet up', what new activities were being offered, and to be honest it was making me a bit anxious. It's never good to compare yourself too much to other homeschoolers -we're all different! Eventually I realised that our homeschool ran better, and I was much happier, if we didn't try to do too much. The kids still seem quite happy with their other, non-homeschooling friends, and we're not blowing our budget. I'm also learning to spend less time on facebook and more time just enjoying being at home with my children!

Do you have any thoughts on getting the right balance with extra curricular activities? Please leave a comment, I'd love to hear from you.


Abide in Him!


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10 Things I'll Miss About Russia - Part 2

This is the second part of my series about things I'll miss about Russia now that we're no longer able live there. If you missed Part 1 you can find it here. In Part 1 I started listing my choices in reverse order, 10 to 6. So now, let's kick off with number 5.....

5)      The Child-Focussed Nature of the Local Culture

I remember returning to England once when Sophie was still very small, and wondering ‘Why aren’t people cooing over my baby and wanting to hold her? Can’t they see how beautiful she is?’ I’d got used to living in a culture where it’s totally fine for strangers to want to interact with your children; for waitresses at cafes to whisk them off into the kitchen so that you can eat your meal in peace, and for sometimes quite random people at church offering to hold your baby so that you can concentrate on the service. It seemed to me that all babushkas had a supply of sweets stashed away in their pockets, ready to be whipped out whenever a small child appeared within 5m of them (although realising your toddler has chocolate smeared all over his face just when the church service is about to start was not always totally appreciated by the parents involved!), and all strangers, men and women, regardless of age, saw it as their duty to inform any poor, distracted mother when her child was showing any bare skin, especially around the ears, during the winter months. Whereas in England people in supermarkets can sometimes look annoyed that you’ve brought your toddlers there to disrupt their peaceful shopping experience, in Russia they would smile at them, offer them sweets and praise them for being such good helpers. I’ll miss being in a place where children are genuinely loved and valued by the whole community. Not that they're not loved and valued in England, but it was more tangible and obvious in Russia. Now we'll have to teach our children that it's no longer acceptable to accept sweets from strangers - if we'd taught them that in Russia, we would have offended a lot of people!

4)      Experiencing Different Cultures

Living in a culture that’s not your own is difficult, but incredibly enriching. I feel so blessed to have had this opportunity to live in a place where very few foreigners have ever lived, to learn about traditions that are so different to my own, and to have my eyes opened further to the beautiful diversity of culture, people and language that exists in God’s world. Some cultural habits will be hard to shake off, like wanting to take your shoes off when you enter a house, or wanting to 'bob' up out of your seat when somebody sneezes. Other cultural habits we hope we won't shake off, such as the respect shown to elders and the generosity and hospitality shown to guests. It now seems natural to us to want to take a gift whenever we are invited somewhere, and to want to give away toys to the children who come to visit us.

3)      The Weather

OK, so I’m British, and ‘the Weather’ has to be somewhere up there in my top three! Last year we were back in England for six months, just in time to hit the wettest spring/summer on record (going back 100 years!) It seems like the national dress has now become waterproof jackets and wellies. When we returned to Russia in August (I need to point out that we lived down in the south of the country) we experienced more sunshine in one month than we’d had in the whole six months in England! We’re going to really miss the heat, the sunshine and the clear, blue skies! We’re going to miss not having to think about taking a sweater and an umbrella with you everywhere you go. We’re going to miss all those summer evenings of eating outside in our garden, and our kids being able to splash in the paddling pool all summer long.

2)      The Ex-pat Community

Living in an often difficult cross-cultural environment understandably brought all of the like-minded Westerners together in a special way over the years. It was such a privilege to be a part of this amazing group of people, all doing amazing things, and we benefited so much from their practical help, emotional support and spiritual encouragement over the years. We know it’ll be hard to find such a group of people back in our ‘home’ country.

1)      Local Friends

We found the people in our part of Russia to be incredibly warm, friendly and hospitable. In fact, many of them are generous beyond what they can really afford, and I’ve learned so much from them about hospitality over the years. With some particular local friends we have fond memories going back ten years, and it was very difficult to have to say goodbye and possibly never see them again. We’ll particularly miss our local church, where we were so blessed by the fellowship and the worship. However, my heart bleeds most for my children. For me, I know that if I have the opportunity to visit my friends in two or three years time then they won't have changed that much, but for the children it feels like their whole childhood experience up to now has come to an end and will never be regained. They were so blessed to have wonderful friends living right next door, with whom they played almost every day, and they had lovely, local friends in their Sunday school group at church too. I know they'll make new friends here in England, but I still can't stop the tears coming to my eyes when I look at photos of the friends they left behind in Russia.

Qu: Have you moved a long distance away and had to leave close friends behind? How did you help your children work through their loss and start building new relationships? I'd love to hear your thoughts.


Abide in Him!

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10 Things I'll Miss About Russia - Part 1

We've been back in the UK nearly two weeks now, and are slowly recovering from the two day journey with 15 large bags, 9 items of hand luggage and 3 small-ish children. We're gradually, albeit a bit reluctantly, adjusting back to life here in England. It's lovely to be reunited with family, to have more conveniences on hand, and to already be making use of the wonderful health care system, but at the same time we feel very much in limbo and are afraid of getting sucked into materialism and just the 'mundane-ness' of life as we experience it here.

So, before I go too far along the transition process, I wanted to remember and record all the good things about our life in Russia. Things that we really appreciated and will really miss. I'll write this over two posts and in reverse order:

10) Village Life

Back in Russia we lived in a village that was situated close to a main town. It was the best of both worlds,
really. We loved the peaceful, slow way of life in the village. I loved the fact that the kids and I could see so many animals on our walks 'around the block'. There were chickens, geese and turkeys just out and about on the streets or behind wire fences where we could see them and observe them. Every evening the cows would amble home from the pasture, and we watched in amazement as each cow knew exactly where she lived and would peel off from the rest of the herd, stand at her own gate and moo until the owner let her in for the night. There were of course lots of dogs and cats (pets and strays) around, and occasionally we would see a horse and her foal munching grass by the side of the road.

9) Beautiful Scenery

We were lucky enough to live in a place where we could see a range of snow-capped mountains in the distance. On a clear day the view was stunning. I named our homeschool 'Mountain River Homeschool' and our special verse was Psalm 121 v 1,2:

"I life up my eyes to the mountains. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth." 

When we were in need of a break, then a few hours drive and we could be up in those mountains, enjoying a family picnic or walking beside mountain streams.




8) New Food

One of the most interesting aspects of travelling is trying out the local, ethnic cuisine. We'll miss the local pies, the wonderful variety of salads and the varied assortment of cakes. We'll also miss some local foods that came to be a natural part of our diet and that are hard to replicate here, such as the wonderful seasonal fruit and veg (I doubt we'll see watermelons that size again for a long time), dairy products such as smetana, grains and legumes such as buckwheat (it doesn't seem to be quite the same in my local supermarket in England) and a certain pear-flavoured fizzy drink called 'grusha'. Over the years I adapted my recipes to fit the local ingredients and there were fewer and fewer things that I hankered after from the UK (with the exception of peanut butter, marmite and custard powder!) I'll miss the local farmers' markets.

7) Reduced Health and Safety Restrictions

OK, this one might sound a bit strange. I mean, what kind of mother would like slacker rules on health and safety? But there are a few things that we find have been taken to an extreme back home in England. Road works is one. In England, the whole road could get closed off, causing annoying disruptions. In Russia, you just drove around it, and if your car fell in the hole, well, that was your problem. There were no restrictions on photographing your kids in public places. You could let your children go and play on the street with their friends from a really young age because you knew that they would all be under the watchful eye of some babushka standing on the corner. And, although we almost always strapped our kids into car seats, you knew that if necessary it would be totally OK to hold a child on your lap while you were giving friends a lift home.
 
6) A Gadget-Free Childhood

Every time we go back to England we’re amazed at how many toys and gadgets children have. And whilst we provided our children with more toys probably than many local children in Russia were able to have, we’re still very thankful that our kids have grown up in a culture where it’s normal to spend your afternoons riding bikes, setting up a home for your dollies in the garden shed, picking flowers and climbing trees rather than playing computer games or watching cartoons on the iPad. We’ve also appreciated not being pressured by our kids to buy ‘the latest thing’ or a particular brand of clothing that everyone else is wearing, simply because that wasn’t important in Russia, at least not among their peers. Somehow I get the feeling that life will be a bit more expensive here in England, in terms of what we will need to buy for the children!

I'll let you know my top 5 things in the next post, which you can find here. But in the meantime: 

Qu: If you've ever been to Russia, what were some of the things you appreciated about life there? Or if you've lived overseas somewhere else, what are some of the things that you would miss/have missed about life there?

Abide in Him!

Linking up here:

How Building A RAFT Can Help In Times of Transition

We’re now into our last few days of living here in Russia before we return to England. This week we’ve moved from concentrating on selling/packing/getting rid of all our stuff (and when it’s been accumulating for 11 years there’s an awful lot of it!) to saying painful goodbyes.

And it’s not just saying goodbye to people that’s painful, but also to places and activities that have been special to us over the years. Yesterday, for example, I had my last visit to my favourite café in town. Situated in the park, it’s been so peaceful being able to sit outside in the summer-time especially, and I’ve spent many an afternoon there re-charging my batteries and re-focussing my vision for the week ahead. I’m really going to miss it!

Many people have shared with us the RAFT principles of transistion times such as this. It’s a tool offered by the late Dave Pollock, who wrote a seminal book about TCKs (check it out here: Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Among Worlds, Revised Edition). RAFT stands for:

R – Reconciliation

Try to heal any broken relationships and resolve any tensions before you leave.

A-  Affirmation

Tell people how much you’ve appreciated them and been blessed by them over the years. Thank them for their kindnesses.

F- Farewells

Make sure you make time to say goodbye not just to people but also to places, possessions and pets.

T – Think Destination

Be realistic about what it’s going to be like when you return and how you’re going to cope with all the adjustments.

Following the principle of Affirmation, I felt moved to write a comment in the comments book at my favourite café. I thanked them for many things, including the fact that they have the best toilet in the whole town! This may sound like a trivial thing, but when you’re faced with the alternative of dirty holes in the floor and open-topped baskets overflowing with discarded, used toilet paper and other unmentionables, the clean, white toilet seat, the automatic soap dispenser and the continuous stock of paper towels seem like they’ve been sent from heaven!

So, if you’re going through a time of transition, moving from one place to another, I encourage you to build a
RAFT too!

Qu: Have you had experiences of good transitions using this model? Do you have any advice to add about how to make transition times smoother? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Abide in Him!

Photo credit: freedigitalphotos.net/baitong333 and cbenjasuwan

You Know Your Child Is A TCK When.....

It's now less than a month until we have to say a final farewell to our home of nine years here in Russia and head on back to England. The last few weeks have been filled with sadness and stress, but also we've sensed God's peace and people's prayers throughout it all.

I can't help wondering, of course, what it'll be like to assimilate back into British culture, and especially how my children are going to cope with that. For those of you who live overseas you may be familiar with the term 'TCK' or 'Third Culture Kid'. For those of you who are asking: "What are TCKs?", let me explain:


Our children don't belong to their parents' culture (since they've lived overseas nearly all their life) and they don't belong to local Russian culture either (because they're clearly foreigners who don't speak the language fluently). Instead, they belong to their own 'third culture', which only their siblings and other TCKs can fully understand and appreciate.

I thought, after the heaviness of the last few posts, that it was time to have a more light-hearted one, so here goes some funny (well, at least I think they're amusing!) reflections on the life of a TCK:

You know your child is a TCK when....

.... they've been on 17 flights before they're even born (Sophie)

.....their first steps are taken not in the family home but in an airport (Charis, in Berlin, on our way to Moscow)

...... their first proper sentence contains the words 'skype' and 'Grandma' (Nathaniel)

.....they list as their top three favourite foods 1) smetana 2) khitchini and 3) grusha

.....they can't understand why, when you're visiting your home country, you can't 'pause' the TV to allow them to go to the toilet (because they only ever watch English language TV on DVDs)

..... they return to your home country and are shocked to find that the children around them are speaking English.

...... they automatically kick off their shoes when entering people's houses in England

...... they're amazed to see dogs living inside people's houses and not outside in the yard

...... they know the Russian term for 'Hide and Seek' but can't think what it is in English

...... they have no idea who Justin Bieber is, but they're quite happy, thanks to your husband's influence (!), singing songs by Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion.

Qu: Are your children TCKs? If so, please add some more funny observations in the comments below!

Abide in Him!


Photo credit: freedigitalphotos.net / digitalart

Has Homeschooling Become An Idol?

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been trying to listen to what God might be teaching me as our time here in Russia draws to a close and I pack up our life here after nine years. If you haven’t already, I think you might need to read the previous two posts to understand what I’m about to say. You can find them here and here.

A thought occurred to me as I was sorting through the craft cupboard. Now, I have to tell you that, despite not being a particularly crafty person myself, I’m very proud of my craft cupboard! For years I’ve been stocking up on goggle eyes and lollipop sticks, sheets of felt, pipe cleaners, and colourful foam shapes. And since I know that those items are impossible to find in our part of Russia, I’ve been using them very sparingly. It seems to me ironic, now, that my kids will never get to use most of the items I’ve been storing up in those lovely, matching, clearly labelled plastic containers. Which is why I suddenly wondered, have I been storing up my treasure in the wrong place? Has my homeschool room become an idol to me? Has my homeschooling dream been pushing out some of the other dreams that God has been wanting me to embrace?

I’m still processing this thought, but now I’m more open to spending this next year listening more closely to what God wants of me. It may well be, and I really hope so, that He will reaffirm my calling to be a homeschooling mother, but I have to be open to the possibility that He won’t. And even if He does, I need to be sure that I’m storing up treasures in the right places. 

Perhaps I’ve been focussing too much on completing schedules and ticking boxes rather than making sure that my children are really learning and enjoying the experience of learning. Perhaps I’ve been more obsessed with ‘looking the part’, with the neatly labelled but generally unused boxes, than with allowing my children the freedom to explore and learn through their own, often messy discoveries. Have I let rigidity and rules take the place of relationships? How often have I filled in something myself in the nature diary or the Book of Centuries because allowing the children to do it would take too long and wouldn’t be ‘as neat’? How often have I been more worried about other people’s expectations of me than working at the pace my child needs to go at?

Now, before you start to object, I know that children often need to do things that they don’t enjoy. Personally, I'm not an ‘unschooler’ – I choose to follow a fairly set curriculum and daily timetable, and I believe children need to learn to persevere at tasks they don’t find easy or necessarily enjoyable sometimes. However, I think these are questions all homeschooling mums need to ask themselves from time to time.

Transition times are hard, but they do offer us the chance to step back a bit and take stock. I pray that we would all have the opportunity to do that from time to time, because motherhood is a lifelong learning process, and if we stop learning we stop growing.

Qu: How about you? Do you feel that sometimes homeschooling can become a bit of an idol in itself? What lessons have you learned through the homeschooling journey?

Abide in Him!

Giving Up Your Dreams For A Season – Part 2

In my last post I described how our family embarked down the path of homeschooling, all with great expectations and enthusiasm.

Unfortunately, the nature of our chosen way of life meant a return to England for six months in the spring and summer of Sophie’s first year, for ‘home leave’, and I found it a struggle to finish Year 1 with all the disruptions of travel, living out of suitcases and having to leave most of my resources behind in Russia. Still, I consoled myself, Year 2 would be much more settled.

However, that was not to be. Our time here in Russia has sadly and unexpectedly come to an end, and we’re busily preparing to move back to England for the short term while we wait and see what God has in store for our family next. For various reasons it makes sense to put Sophie (8) and Charis (nearly 6) into mainstream schools for the year. I am still coming to terms with the fact that we will never properly finish Year 2, and in all likelihood will be missing out completely on Year 3. Nor will I be able to start Charis off in Year 1 with the greater confidence that comes from starting down a road you have already travelled.

And so, as I pack up the books and the craft materials and the homeschool supplies that it took me five years to build up, I not only feel overwhelmed with sadness, but I realised that I'm also feeling afraid. I’m afraid of many things:

-         I’m afraid that I’m losing my dream, a dream I've held for five years now.

-         I’m afraid that I’m losing my status; the thing that defines me. For at least a year I won’t be ‘a Homeschooler’ anymore.

-         I’m afraid I’m losing my ‘niche’, my ‘passion’.

-         I’m afraid of getting sucked into the 'normal' educational system and of not being able to pull my family out again.

-         I’m afraid my children will be assessed academically and found to be lacking.

-         To be honest, one of my biggest fears is that my children will enjoy mainstream school more than they enjoyed doing school with me and won’t want to return to the dream life that I had envisioned for so long.

As always, I want to ask myself what God is trying to teach me through this experience. What lessons can I learn? How should I use this situation to draw closer to Him and deepen my faith?

But I think it’s too early for answers at the moment. All I know is that God has good plans for us as a family, plans to prosper us and not to harm us, plans to give us a hope and future. (Jeremiah 29v11) In a previous post I talked about having to go through hardships, and this is just another aspect of the one our family is called to walk through right now.

Qu: Have you faced the situation of having to give up one of your dreams for a season? 

Abide in Him!



 

Giving Up Your Dreams for a Season – Part 1

It was a little unexpected, actually, how fast the tears began to flow once I began to tear down my schoolroom. 

I knew it would be hard to pack everything up and sort through eight years’ worth of children’s books, artwork and craft supplies, most of which would have to be sold, given away or thrown away. However, I didn’t realise that, internally, this was signifying not just a move and a change of scene, but actually the end of a dream.

Let’s back up a little. When Sophie, who’s now eight, was just two years old, I enthusiastically embarked upon a low-key pre-school curriculum. For half an hour a day we would sit at the living room table and start learning letters, numbers, motor skills and all about zoo animals. As a teacher myself, growing up in a family of teachers, a good education was critically important to me. Ensuring that my children had the best possible start in life academically was not just a duty of motherhood but something that I was excited about.

About a year later I discovered the world of Charlotte Mason and Homeschooling, and as I avidly devoured books and trailed through websites on the subject, I eased up on Sophie’s academic pursuits. I began to understand the benefits of allowing ample time for a proper childhood, and instead I redirected my time and energies into planning and preparing myself for that wonderful day when we would start ‘properly’, the September before she turned seven.

Living overseas presented its challenges in terms of gathering materials, and those were the days before I discovered the wonders of Kindles, and so each trip back to England involved stocking up the suitcase with a few more books and craft materials, manipulatives and wall posters. When our third child, Nathaniel, arrived, we kicked Daddy out of his office in the house into the spare room adjoining the garage, and turned his office into our schoolroom. I need to add that he went fairly willingly (the increased noise and interruptions in the house were affecting his productivity levels) and he did a great job of repainting the walls a colourful orange and putting up shelves ready to hold all those wonderful books and other materials.

Our first term of following Year 1 of the Ambleside Online curriculum was so positive. Of course we had our bad days, our days of interruptions, grumpy children, or, more frequently, grumpy mummies, but finally I was doing what I’d been waiting to do for so long. Finally I had a label: I was a Homeschooler. At social gatherings I could now reply to the question “And what do you do?” with the answer “Oh, I homeschool our children.”, which sounded so much better than “Oh, I’m just at home with the kids.” I was loving it! I don’t know if Sophie was learning much, but I was learning all about the Roman Invasion of Britain, the persecution of the early Church,  and the Vikings.

I was soon to discover that homeschooling is not a smooth, predictable path, because it depends so much on family circumstances. Stay tuned as I continue the story in my next post…

Abide in Him!

Are You A Carrot, An Egg or A Coffee Bean?

Things have been a bit quiet on the blog recently, because shortly after experiencing my third miscarriage we were informed that we no longer have permission to stay in our home here in Russia, which means we have just three months to pack up and sell a house we've been living in for nine years and say goodbye to all our friends and neighbours....probably for ever. Consequently, I've been thinking a lot about hard times and trials that God allows us to go through and grow through this side of heaven.

I don't know anyone who hasn't experienced some pain in their life. For some it's a long, debilitating illness; for others financial troubles, or difficult relationships between family members or with friends. Sometimes it's a string of 'failures' at work, or serious set-backs in their career or their husband's career. Some people battle with addiction, either personally or through someone close to them. And for some it's the grief of losing a loved one. For many it's simply the daily grind of trying to cook, clean, feed your family and make ends meet in less than ideal circumstances.

The Bible tells us we will face hardships

"Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, 

as though something strange were happening to you. 

But rejoice insofar as you share in Christ's sufferings, 

that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed."

1 Peter 4:12-13 (ESV)

Anyone who tells you that being a Christian means that God will sort out all your problems and life will be a bed of roses is lying. The Bible is clear that Jesus' followers will experience trials and hardships in this life. It's to be expected. I'm not saying that we should go looking for them, or thinking something is wrong if God is blessing us with a period of stability at the moment, but we shouldn't be surprised when they turn up.

The Bible tells us that God is with us in the hardships

 "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 

the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 

who comforts us in all our troubles, 

so that we can comfort those in any trouble 

with the comfort we ourselves receive from God."

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 (NIV)

It's not that God doesn't care. He feels our pain, He is tender with us and wants to comfort us. Jesus Himself experienced horrible things when He was living here on earth - poverty, abandonment, loss of loved ones, pain, imprisonment and ultimately an excruciating death - and so He knows what we're going through. He can sympathise.

We need to allow time to grieve. God doesn't expect us to put on an 'everything is fine' facade and walk about life as normal, and it might take us a while to get out of that place.

The Bible tells us we should embrace the hardships

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters,

whenever you face trials of many kinds,

because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete,

not lacking anything."

James 1:2-4 (NIV)

OK, this is hard. It's one thing to accept troubles, to do our best to cope with them and get through them with minimal whining and self-pity, but to embrace them? To give thanks for them? To accept them with joy?

God doesn't let hard things happen to us by chance. He always has a greater purpose in mind.

Some of the things I noticed coming from my recent miscarriage:
- a greater desire to cling to God through prayer and reading His Word
- a greater appreciation and thankfulness for the gifts He has already given me
- a greater and sweeter connection with others who have gone through similar trials
- a greater awareness that my life is in God's hands and consequently....
- a greater intentionality about how I can best use my life to serve Him

And lessons I'm learning from having to pack up home:
- thankfulness for all that God has provided over the last nine years here
- a reminder that our true home is in heaven
- needing to resubmit to God's will concerning the plans He has, which may differ from my own

There's a lovely story about a young woman who was going through a difficult period in her life and complaining about it to her mother. Without saying a word, the mother took three saucepans and boiled some water. In one saucepan she placed an egg, in the other a carrot, and in the third some coffee grains. After a few minutes she turned off the heat.
"What happened to the egg?" she asked.
"It got harder." the daughter replied.
"What happened to the carrot?" asked the mother.
"It got softer." answered the young woman.
"And the coffee grains?"
"They mixed in with the water and turned into 'coffee'."
"They each went through the same trial," explained the mother. "The egg hardened, and in the same way some people allow painful experiences to harden their hearts. The carrot softened, and others allow hardships to make them weak and to give up on life. But the coffee: it embraced the hot water. It mixed with it and allowed it to change its nature, and as a result it has produced a pleasing aroma that fills the room. In the same way, darling," said the mother as she looked kindly at her daughter, "It's not the troubles themselves but how you respond to your troubles that is the important thing."


God is like a potter, and we are like the clay in His hands. Sometimes He wants to mold us in a way that is painful, or He might want to turn us into something that we don't want to be. But we need to trust Him and allow Him to mold us in the way He thinks is best. Will we be like the egg, the carrot or the coffee grains?

 Qu: How do you usually respond to hardships? Like an egg? Like a carrot? Or are you learning to be more like a coffee bean?

Abide in Him!

Making the Most of the Holiday Season

It happened a few days ago. It was a strange feeling, a little unexpected but not unwelcome. My husband doesn't feel the same way, and thinks it's too early, but the kids have been feeling this for some time now. What happened? I started getting excited about Christmas!

Back in October I was following Cheri Gregory's 'A Holiday-Ready Heart'. I love her witty but poignant way of writing, and would recommend you have a look at her posts for the 31-day challenge over at The PURSEonality Challenge Blog. However, because we don't celebrate Thanksgiving (being British) the holidays seemed like a long way away back then.

Then came an invitation to celebrate Thanksgiving with some American friends, and I started thinking about what we could do to embrace the meaning of this celebration with our own children. I settled on Ann Voskamp's Thanksgiving Tree idea (you'll have to skim down to her entry for Nov 7th). Our leaves are all cut out and ready for writing on tomorrow!

And I guess once I'd decided to do that, I started remembering all the fun crafts we would be doing in December to prepare for Christmas, and that was it. I'm now thinking about where to put all the decorations this year whilst unconsciously humming 'Hark the Herald Angels' to myself.

If any of you are like us and live overseas then you've probably had to send out your 'Christmas present request list' to your families back home already. And if you're anything like us then you're resigned to the fact that most of these precious parcels will arrive in January or February anyway! Once a Christmas parcel arrived in sweltering hot June, containing a hand-knitted woolly sweater from Grandma. I put it on the baby, took a quick photo, and promptly took it off again!

So as we start getting excited about Christmas with our families, here are some things that I'm finding helpful and inspiring:

• A good place to start, if you're a perfectionist like me, is with a Christmas planner. There are some good ideas over at 'Christmas Your Way'.
• I'm really looking forward to doing Truth in the Tinsel again! It's a fun way to talk with your children about the meaning of Christmas whilst doing some simple crafts. I highly recommend buying the ebook if you haven't got it already. I've found it a good alternative to the more widely known 'Jesse Tree' idea, which just seemed a bit too much for my preschoolers.
• We're also looking forward to making our advent wreath again and lighting a candle every Sunday whilst reading some Scripture as a family together. There are different ways of doing this, but here's one link that explains what the wreath is. The first Sunday of Advent is the 2nd of December, so we need to have our wreath ready by then.
• Christmas music of course is a must! We have a CD of children's Christmas songs, and a more classical 'Carols from King's College, Cambridge' which we love. This year I'm looking forward to buying Kari Jobe's Bethlehem album.  I bought her two other albums while we were in England earlier this year, and I just love her voice, her lyrics and her music!
• Finally, I'm looking forward to joining in with the Christmas Bible study over at Good Morning Girls to prepare my own heart for the Christmas season. It starts on 26th November, so go and get subcribed if you haven't already!

Qu: What special things are you planning to do with your family this Christmas?

Qu: What special family traditions do you have around this upcoming holiday season?

Qu: How do you manage to keep Christmas meaningful amidst all the stress and commercialism?

I'd love to hear what helps and inspires you!

Abide in Him!

Linking up here:



Photo Credit:
small candle - freedigitalphotos.net/ graur razuan ionut
star ornament - freedigitalphotos.net/ suat eman

Homeschooling Overseas Part 4

In my previous post in this series on Homeschooling Overseas, I talked about the kind of answers I would give to local people asking me why I homeschool. Those answers are often quite different, for various reasons, to the answers I might give to friends and family back home.

Again, I'd like to stress that I'm not suggesting that homeschooling is in any way superior to other ways of educating your children. I believe it's a decision each family needs to make, and this is just the decision we felt was best for our family given our current situation.

However, as I reflect upon all that I've read and experienced, I've come up with, perhaps, my top ten reasons why we think that homeschooing is such a great thing to do:

1)      Homeschooling means I can instill in my children the beliefs and values which are important to our family, rather than placing them in the hands of someone else whose beliefs, values and teaching styles may well differ significantly from mine.

2)      I have freedom to decide what we should study, and make time for subjects such as Bible and Scripture Memorisation. I can talk about my faith in God as we discuss History, Geography, Literature and so on.

3)      I love the Charlotte Mason approach of using Living Books. I know that my children are not wasting their time on meaningless activities just to keep them quiet for 40 minutes (yes, I’ve been there and done that as a mainstream schoolteacher I’m ashamed to say!) but every day they’re being fed with interesting and challenging ideas. Even though I loved school myself as a child, I wished I’d had a chance to learn some of the things my children are learning through the Ambleside Online curriculum. I’m learning so much myself from having to teach it!

4)      Homeschooling is wonderfully flexible. You can work around important family events or crises or illnesses without your child having to miss out or fall behind. You can adapt the schedule to the weather and have spontaneous field trips if that’s your kind of personality. You can turn seemingly ordinary events, like shopping at the supermarket, into learning opportunites.

5)      Homeschooling helps you to work alongside your child in a way that a teacher with a class of 36 children simply is not able to. You can review material or push ahead as needed. You can follow your child’s interests. If they have a question, they know they’re going to be heard and have the chance to have a long discussion about it if necessary (usually culminating with a quick look for a suitable video on youtube!) The length and sequence of the lessons can be designed to fit your child’s mood, learning style and attention span.

6)      Homeschooling avoids the hassle of the school run, worrying about uniforms, needing to do homework in the evenings, and the time that is wasted at school by having to walk between classrooms, take registers and wait for the teacher to deal with disruptive pupils. There’s no need for parents evenings or school board meetings.

7)      Socialisation? Yes, we get to avoid many of the negative effects of that. We don’t have to worry too much about bullying or peer pressure. Our children have less exposure to the latest fads and trends and ‘must have’ expensive items. They have less exposure to unhelpful influences, coarse language, unsuitable images on cell phones or the pressure to start showing an interest in the opposite sex before they’re ready.

8)      Socialisation? Yes, what great opportunities exist in that area for the homeschooled child! They spend their days with people who are not all exactly the same age as them. They learn from older siblings and teach younger ones, and yes they learn skills of diplomacy, teamwork, delegation, leadership, forgiveness and consideration for others by being around them all the time! There’s more time in the day to get out and enjoy different interests, either joining in extra-curricular activities with other children, or following Mum about on daily errands or on her visits to friends and neighbours.

9)      It’s a cliché that people always say: ‘Enjoy them while they’re young because they grow up so fast!’ but we all know it’s true. I don’t want to just have my child for the first 4 or 5 or 6 years of their life. I want to spend as much time with them as I can before they leave the nest. I love to be a part of their growing and learning. I love that they’re so close to their siblings because they spend so much time together.

10)  Being a homeschooling mother is never boring. Yes it’s hard work, and some days can be really difficult. It requires self-discipline, consistency and great patience. But it is so rewarding. What a great feeling when your child starts reading on their own for pleasure and you know that it’s mostly thanks to you and your patience over their stumblings in the early days of ‘cat, sat, mat’! How wonderful to witness your child’s creative works of art take shape, to see the smile on their face when they’ve finally understood something or mastered some skill they used to find difficult!

"The noblest calling in the world is that of mother. True motherhood is the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions. She who can paint a masterpiece or who can write a book that will influence millions deserves the plaudits and admiration of mankind; but she who rears successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters whose immortal souls will be exerting an influence throughout the ages long after paintings shall have faded, and books and statues shall have been destroyed,deserves the highest honor that man can give."                                     David O.McKay

Qu: What would you add to the list of 'top ten reasons for homeschooling'?

Abide in Him!