Tag: books

Fresh New Year

Who else is excited for 2019? Who else looks at the new year like a child on Christmas morning looks at presents around the tree?

December 31, 2018

Fresh New Year

“It’s still 2018, right?” asks Kimberly, working on her History.

“Yes, it’s the last day of 2018,” I respond.  Christina pipes in with, “and our Aunt’s birthday!”  (One of their aunts is born on December 31!)

This makes me think: (uh-oh, I just heard two kids say “Mom’s writing another blog in her head.”) Yes, my children know me!

Tomorrow starts a fresh new year.  We are given a new beginning each day as the dawn warms our skies and the sun rises to dry the dew.

In the service industry, all days blend together and all the New Year has meant for me in the past 8 years was a barrage of people calling to order reservations at 1am on New Year’s Day from the Bayfront downtown or 11pm from the Saint Augustine Beach peir (two locations at the times we can never promise) so then it turns into irritated people who don’t understand the simple line, “I can’t guarantee that time at that location, you can try to call us at the time to see where our cabs are.”

I’m so glad today does not involve dispatching!  I’m only answering questions from the school table – awesome!

In 2018:

  • I started working at WGV Gymnastics as a coach (LOVE this job).
  • We closed our taxi company in December.  It feels awesome to be able to shut off my phone and not worry about missing a reservation call!
  • I’ve finished, polished, and published four new children’s books: A Foundling Furball, Alena’s Baby, The Tightrope Dare, and Fibbing Fishermen!
  • I’ve rejoiced with the addition of my best friend’s 10th baby!
  • I’ve rejoiced with my sister who is due about the same time I am!  (They will be close cousins!)
  • I’ve mourned and rejoiced with my family after my Daddy passed.
  • I celebrated the first Christmas ever without him – that was his favorite holiday.
  • Christina achieved CAP rank of C/CMSgt, become Red Cross certified, started officially babysitting, started working as needed at what she calls “my somewhat part time job,” and completed her third college semester.
  • Becky completed her second college semester, bred and raised a few dozen chicks up to “independence” for clients, raised her batches of “babies” (aka Guinea Piglets), joined gymnastics classes (finally finding something to encourage her fitness!), and has taught most of her siblings the Latin terms for every body part since she’s been dissecting animals in her biology labs!
  • Kimberly joined gymnastics classes with her gung-ho attitude and is expecting great things from herself, was gifted a bunny (she’s been saving to adopt one for almost a year but her awesome big sisters beat her to it) and Minuit has never left her side.
  • Jaquline discovered the amazing world of Geometry and everything is now interpreted in shapes or gymnastics skills!
  • Jillian started losing teeth, is studying sketching (she’s getting rather good actually!) and digital art along with Becky, and getting herself lost in the world of reading!
  • Lucas started trying to write his name!

We are all expecting amazing things to come in 2019.  God has paths lined up for us that we may not even be able to see yet – if you’d told me at the start of 2018 that I’d be teaching gymnastics for an awesome Christian boss, be pregnant again, and have no taxi company, I would have laughed.

But (positive!) God knows the desires of our hearts!  He knows I love children, love teaching, and that gymnastics has always been a dream. (Dream job come true?  YES!)  He knows Lucas loves babies and is super excited about getting to “take MY BABY home from church.”  (All the other babies he’s been around are those of church family, so he can’t take them home.)  He knows that rebuilding hybrid batteries is something else I love – tinkering with electronics as Daddy taught me & a niche few offer around here so maybe that will be our main income soon!

I’m about to polish and release a few more children’s books (maybe an entire new series working around my budding illustrators’ work!) and my goal for this year is 12 releases.

Who else is excited for 2019?  Who else looks at the new year like a child on Christmas morning looks at presents around the tree?  I see each day as a gift from God to be opened at each dawn.  I see gifts we can’t even dream of yet sitting there, waiting God’s perfect timing for us to unwrap and enjoy.  I’m praying that certain things are there – which day holds the gift of my child’s birth?  Does a gift in that pile include a property or home of our own?  Is there a gift of being able to read my books before a class, teach a grammar workshop, or tutor another child?  Only God knows what each gift holds.  My Daddy loved seeing the smiles and squeals of excitement on Christmas morning as his children opened presents – I love this part of Christmas morning as a parent too.  I can only imagine God smiling as we open each gift and yelp with excitement!

Enjoy your daily gifts in 2019!  Happy, blessed New Year!

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

Homeschooling Challenge: Their Own Pace

April 12, 2018

Homeschooling Challenge: Their Own Pace

One of the challenges I’ve discovered in our home school journey comes from my philosophy to never keep one student back for another.   I allow them to advance at their own pace – if this means we spend eight weeks constantly studying and restudying one concept until we find a way to understand it or flying through a subject because it instantly clicks, we learn until we truly understand.

For instance, in our classroom (aka my kitchen table) right now:

Kimberly is working 7th grade arithmetic, 5th grade language, writing reports from a 4th grade science book, and studying high school vocabulary,

Jaquline is working 3rd grade arithmetic, 2nd grade language arts, a cursive writing K5 workbook, and 4th grade vocabulary,

And Jillian is working 3rd grade arithmetic, 3rd grade language arts, using a K5 manuscript writing practice, and reading 2nd grade readers.

This example would be easy if Jaquline and Jillian were twins.  Nope.  Jaquline is 8 and Jillian is 6.  Jaquline chooses to do “the bare minimum” (aka, only what mom assigns) for bookwork.  She is more interested in tagging along with her 12 year old sister when she’s watching her online Mastering Biology lectures.  She can tell you all about Mendel’s peas (the latest lecture subject) and can explain genetic color crosses in chickens (Rebeccah and Kimberly’s continuing project) and how to avoid genetic defects (aka crooked toes, hooked beak).  When she does her division, she does it all mentally!  She never has a carrying or borrowing error in operations (this was the most common error for mom, Kimberly, and Jillian).  She reads unabridged Tolkien and Hodges and loves them.  She has a very active imagination and writes with a neat calligraphic scroll.  So, when she is working, she does very well.

But she just isn’t interested in sitting down for bookwork.

Jillian, on the other hand, is at the “gung-ho” stage of elementary school.  She’s been doing workbooks since she started reading and flies through her work.  She sometimes has to go back and redo a concept (like carrying and borrowing numbers, greater than and less than, etc.) but once she’s gone through it for five or six times, she gets it and then we will hear her “teaching” Lucas or her dolls the newest understood concept.  Jillian often does the next days’ lessons just because, “I want to do more.”  She even does extra work from the back of the books “for fun!”

Jillian loves doing sit-down bookwork.

Improperly handled, this “younger child in higher grade” could cause contention in our home.

With the first instance where we had a student (our second one) surpassing another (our first one) in a subject, it caused concern for my husband and I because we didn’t want to “make learning a race” or “pressure” anyone.  Then we noticed the elder asking the younger how to figure out a problem.  They weren’t racing each other or fighting, one wasn’t irritated that the other was “over” her: they didn’t see it that way.  They treated each other as individuals and helped.  So now, we don’t worry about what “grade level” one child is at compared to another.  We continued to allow them to move through our “curriculum books” as they are able.

I’m careful to emphasize to my students that they are not in competition with each other; they are in competition with themselves.  Learning is competing with yourself.  We are to work to the best of our personal ability and strive for our best.   This is the same for anything in life!  We are to edify (build up) each other.  We don’t brag because that is cutting others down.  We rejoice when others succeed.  We rejoice when we succeed.  We are happy when we help each other.  We are thankful when others help us.  As iron sharpens iron, so we are to help each other and build each other up.

When love guides your life and reflects in your homeschool world, you foster a culture of mutual education where each student is treated with respect.   Your students learn to help others, rejoice with others, and ask for assistance when they need it without fear of ridicule.  That is part of my ultimate goal – teaching them to live in love.

Thanks for reading!

Type at you next time…

~Nancy Tart

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