Homeschool Friday

It has been an off week.  We did not “do school” this week.  The main reason was because my full time pupil was struggling off and on with a fever.  We took her into the doctor and found out she has bronchitis.  Having David’s birthday activities did not help the cause for school, nor did Knut’s absence for Harvest.  He’s not there for school, but having him home in the evenings normally is a help to me.  We notoriously have trouble with whatever child is in the age 2-3 range during busy farm times.  At that age they are old enough to miss Daddy, but not old enough to understand why he is gone so often.  So Elias has been requiring some extra snuggles this week as well.  Only Solveig has been chill, besides her lovely new habit of waking up for the day at 6am which is normally inconvenient for me since the parent who loves mornings has already left for work.

So we didn’t “do school” this week.  I know I mentioned this last week that I needed to work on my new chunk of lesson plans, but that did not get done until near the end of the week.  I didn’t even have a list available to tell me what we should have been doing.

However, there were moments.  Lots of them in fact, where I wondered if this week of no formal school was exactly what we needed.  Even though Silje had a dull fever at times, and hot other times, she loved to sit on the couch and read.  One afternoon I was playing with Solveig on the floor and she had brought her school map over to the couch to look at it.

“Mommy, if Italy is shaped like a boot, I think Norway is shaped like a spoon.”

She then proceeded to move about Europe with the relaxation of a child laying on the ground looking at clouds passing by.  She went through country after country, saying what the borders of each country resembled, and occasionally stopped and we talked about that country.  This whole spontaneous exercise lasted 45 minutes.  It was fun.

We did a lot of talking like that throughout the week.  We just talked about stuff.  Some was important, some was not.

The most amazing conversation happened about midweek at suppertime.  I’ve found that the kids (and/or I) am fairly close to meltdown near suppertime.  It’s when it sinks in that Knut won’t be here for it, and I have to feed these 4 kids by myself again, and then try to keep them from destroying the house for another hour, and then attempt to get all 4 to bed by myself.  The kids are hungry, so not on their best behavior, and each one is really wanting some serious attention so they’re just hanging on me and I get so overstimulated.

I have found in recent weeks, that if I put some of our old VBS song music, or our new favorite “Hide Them In Your Heart” kids music which is basically memory verses set to song…we’re all a bit calmer.  It’s the strangest thing, but when I have music on the whining stops.  The kids offer to help.  I don’t get overwhelmed, and even at supper the fighting and interrupting are down.  So music it is.  I save it for those times when things start to fall apart, and it seems to jolt us out of it.

Here’s the best part of this post.  One night when we were sitting down to supper and the music was on, David asked “Mommy, why did Jesus have to die on the cross?”  While I was chewing, Silje attempted to answer for me, though she was struggling to explain that the soldiers killed him, although he was stronger than them and angels could have saved him.

When I had finished chewing, I started talking to David about justice.  I asked if he liked getting disciplined.  He said no.  I asked what he would think if his sister punched him in the eye, and I did not punish her for that.  He looked wide eyed and said “well that wouldn’t be fair.”  I said that’s right.  When someone does something wrong, there must be a punishment for there to be justice.  That is a rule God has that reflects God’s righteousness.  We spent a few minutes discussing God’s holiness, and righteousness.

To me, that is so essential to understanding the gospel.  Not only that, but the concept of justice and being fair is one that is very easy for kids to understand.

Then we talked about Jesus dying to take our punishment for us, so that we didn’t have to go to hell.  “Jesus died so that people don’t have to go to hell?”  David asked.
“Yes.”
“So there’s no more hell anymore?”
“Well…there’s still a hell…” Now how was I going to explain this one?

I talked a bit about judgment day, and how God will judge each of us for our sin.  I told them that since God is so holy, so righteous, that if someone has done even one sin in their whole life, He can’t let them into heaven.

Before I got to my next sentence, Silje and David had huge deer-in-the-headlights eyes and Silje said nervously, “But Mommy, all of us have sinned.  I can’t think of one person who hasn’t done something wrong before!”

“That’s right.  We’ve all sinned.  We’re all in the same trouble.  So here’s where Jesus comes in to save us.  When God is judging us, Jesus speaks for us.  He says ‘I know them, and have been living in their hearts.  I talk with them and help them.’  Then, when God looks at us, He sees that Jesus covers us, just kind of like a cloak or coat covering us up.  When he looks at us, He sees Jesus who is perfect and has never sinned.  Not only that, but Jesus clean off all of our sins.  The Bible says that He washes us so that we are white as snow.”

Relief and awe swept over Silje and David.  They know Jesus lives in their hearts.  They talk with Jesus and believe His words.  They both sat silently for a few minutes as this huge truth soaked in.  Jesus covers us.  He cleans us.  He took our punishment.  I’ve never seen either of them grasp this concept as concretely as they did that night.  Then the conversation turned to heaven.

This wasn’t the first conversation I’ve had with my kids about this.  About 2 weeks ago, Silje and I were studying the beginning of Islam in our history, so I went into some detail about the differences between Islam and Christianity, which touched on this quite a bit as well.  Islam teaches something very different about judgment day, and how our good deeds and bad deeds will be weighed against each other on a scale.  Even then, that was not our first conversation either. 

When I told Knut about that particular conversation when he got home, he asked if I had explained original sin to them as well, not just the act of sin.  I told him that I wasn’t able to explain our whole Lutheran theology in one big stroke, and we’ll get there.  He laughed and then made more plans for studies to do with the kids this winter.

This week was full of little moments like our dinner conversation.  Our days were full, but not very rushed.  The kids and I talked a lot throughout the day about so many topics.  You may understand why I say a bit tongue in cheek “We didn’t do school.”  Part of me thinks that even though we didn’t cover math, Chinese, Latin, grammar, history, our formal geography lesson, phonics, and the like, we learned every single thing that God laid out for us to learn.  All the fevers, the lazy conversations at home, and the celebrating, worked together for such good.

If you’d like to share your thoughts on homeschooling, or your experiences this week, feel free to link up!  Put a link to this blog on your post, and leave your link on the list here.  It’s like a teacher’s-lounge-party-thingy.