Category Archives: Homeschool

The Advice of an MK (Missionary Kid)

Congo + Culture, Family, Homeschool

James, Joel & Anna are still traversing the globe emotionally and socially. Physically we have lived in the same United States for over a year now, but only settled for six months and still missing what feels like home: Africa. Some days the red dirt and smiling friends are far from their minds, but other days they wake up and want to sing in Swahili and plan a trip. Anna misses airports. What a strange thing to miss. Their whole lives have included travel, so there is a strange thing missing now.

We had the privilege to get to know another family just as they were heading out. Opposite direction. It was wonderful to be able to share a love of Africa and her gorgeous people with someone who just understood. As part of a writing assignment James decided to give advice to his new friend soon leaving for the motherland. I found some of his advice profound:

From One African MK to Another
by James, the African

Because I am an African missionary kid myself, I’d like to provide you a bit of advice before your upcoming move.

Play in the dirt. Mold houses, monsters, ornaments, figurines, etc. out of the red African clay. You can have a lot more fun in the dirt.

Play with every kind of bug! Interestingly, they make fun pets, and if you use them right, toys. My brother liked to trap two moths and pretend they would ‘fight’ with each other. He called it “Moth Wars“. It’s hilarious.

Learn the language better than I did and have fun playing with African kids, because they know all the funnest games and things to do there. In choosing your friends, money, skin color or houses totally don’t matter.

The trees there are awesome to climb.

Watch out for rabid dogs. They can kill you with one bite.

Eat piles of mangoes for me!

I chose a verse for you that helped my family when we first moved to Congo:
“The Lord replied, ‘I will personally go with you Moses and I will give you rest – everything will be fine for you.'”
Exodus 33:14 NLT

I hope you take my advice and love being a missionary kid in Africa.


Previously on tenfootfamily…

Congo + Culture, Family, Homeschool

What do you call those little clips from your favorite show that catch you up quickly on important plot developments? They might be annoying to some, but useful to others. The reason you missed our plot developments from the past 4 months has been that we didn’t write them down. We were too busy living them. But I will give you the “previously on…” sequence to catch up those who like it.

Seeing that my last post was the kids’ Back-to-School pictures…

School: 
Anna had a great beginning to Kindergarten and is much more comfortable with addition facts and reading these days. James is doing great with 4th grade Calvert. This is his first year with a correspondence teacher, transcript and grades, so there is more accountability to get least favorite subjects finished well. He went from a few painful sentences to writing a 3-paragraph essay on his own. He continues his grain-free, allergen-free diet and is doing well. Joel used to think of Spelling like pulling teeth. No. Fun. He is kinesthetic and Spelling is visual. These days he is acing Grade 2 Spelling thanks to All About Spelling – which emphasizes letter magnets on a white board (Check it out if you are looking for kinesthetic-friendly options.) Just ask him if he likes school. He will say, “Y-E-S!”

September:
At the end of September, I had the pleasure and joy of co-teaching a workshop for Congolese Literacy Experts and Translators to become checkers for publication. I had previously been the only certified checker in our organization and it was wonderful to pass the baton to so many. Lots more detail about this in our next newsletter! Our 4 years in Congo was quickly coming to an end and we wanted to make the most of it.

October:
In October, we started soaking up all the things we loved most about our home in Congo. We played more with our doggies. We ate more pineapple. Kim sang more often in choir. We spent more time with friends. We took one last week off in Uganda and started bringing out our luggage for “the move”. We were blessed with the mamas choir deigning to sing and pray over our living room. Part of me wanted to videotape everything, but the greater part of me just wanted to relish in the goodnesses God had given. I didn’t want to miss a minute behind a camera (or on a blog…?).

November:
November started out mundane enough, if anything is ever mundane in Congo. It brought the selling of our household items, packing and storing of others. Arranging for the absence between our departure and the arrival of a new family to live in our house. We scheduled my last Ladies’ Bible study, Thanksgiving with friends and the kids’ Fall Music Recital for the second-to-last week in November, but they were never meant to be. The town erupted in unrest Tuesday that altered everything about our last moments in our home. Most of our expat friends evacuated with their children. Our last chances for goodbyes were gone before we knew what happened. God kept us safe. Perfectly safe in a bubble of peace passing all understanding, but it wasn’t easy. You will hear more about this one day when we are ready to write about it. We joke now that our 4-year-term ended with a bang. 🙂

December:
We spent the first half of December visiting supporters in France where we studied, and where our Joel came on the scene, in 2003-4. We walked off the plane with a mountain of luggage, no coats or socks and only sandals for shoes. It snowed 2 feet that night. We felt like displaced Africans. We found warm clothes eventually. And enjoyed warm fellowship. We ate our fill of fabulous cheese and chocolate. We made it to the grand ole USofA and back to Gramma’s house for Christmas. It was lovely. And COLD.

January:
We quickly moved all our earthly belongings (except for the 2 boxes we forgot at Gramma’s house and the 4 barrels we kept in Congo that is…) into the same furlough house in Oregon we had in 2002 and 2007. Some of the upgrades we left behind were still there! After 6 days of frantic unpacking and repacking, we left for a ministry retreat in California. Here we had time to breathe. Time to think again. Time to grieve the home and life we knew in Congo. Time to realize which country we came from. Reverse culture shock is always a bit overwhelming. It comes in waves when you expect to understand someone or something. But you don’t anymore. It has changed. Or you have changed. Lots can change in 4 years…

So we are “home”!

We are just not “at home” yet.

School pictures are here!

Family, Homeschool
Trying to keep it serious with our wonderful teacher Katie.

Here are a few ‘outtakes’ of this year’s school pictures. With Anna in Kindergarten, we have three full-time students!

Having a stellar 4th grade year so far,
our almost 10-year-old James looking dapper
(and growing up too fast for Mom’s taste!).
I have the same teeth in my old 4th grade picture…
 
Last year was the year of no teeth for Joel, but this year they are coming in! Joel has recently taken up reading chapter books for fun, is the best coloring kid in the house and loves learning multiplication (believe it or not):

 Anna is really enjoying Kindergarten, but speeding ahead in math. She must have some math genes from Grandma… 🙂

There’s our winning lineup for the year!
It will be an interesting school year chopped in half by an ocean and travels far and wide. Katie’s help last spring and this fall are such a fun help for us all! The kids are all working on their French – we’ll see how far they get before we visit! 
I’m so cliche, I admit it – they grow up too fast!

Why? becomes What?

Family, Homeschool, Personal

A wise friend advised me that when Anna turned 3, she would begin the ‘Why?’ stage. Why do you cut carrots? Why do we use forks? Why do I have to wear that? Why do we eat vegetables? Why? Why? Why?! I really tried not to resort to ‘Because I said so.’ Thankfully the ‘Why?’ stage was scattered with cute hilarious toddler quotes that kept us laughing, as they tried to conceptualize a complex world.

It occured to me this week that we have switched gears. We are no longer asked ‘Why?’ about everything (and sadly most of the mixed up kid quotes are past as well). We are in the ‘What does it mean?’ stage now…
This past week I can remember:

What does ‘outrageous‘ mean?

Mom, what does ‘sacrifice‘ mean?

What does ‘defraud‘ mean?

What does ‘monopoly‘ mean?

At this rate, we won’t have to do much cramming for SAT words! 

On second thought, James recently said, “Do I know lots of words?”

Yes, son. You know lots of words.

J:  Do you know more words than me?

Yes, son.

J:  Really? Like what?

Do you know ‘copious’? ‘luminous’? or ‘amiable’?

J:  [with hunger to learn]: What do those mean?!

I rest my case.
The ‘What does it mean’ stage.

smiles and milestones

Family, Homeschool
Everyone together after church

Now you’ve had all the best ones from Sunday. I’ll need to dig out some other good ones! In other news, today Anna officially finishes preschool, Joel finishes Second Grade, and James finishes Third Grade.

Part of me feels next year with a 4th grader will be the beginning of ‘real academics’. It will also be the first year James has a long-distance ‘real teacher’ and ‘real transcript’. Bring it on! We’re ready. That is, if we can keep our brains from melting over the summer…

Nostalgia & Pain – Part I

Family, Homeschool, Personal

That old familiar friend stopped by this afternoon.

Nostalgia visits often, but particularly around landmark events.

Next week is the end of this school year. Ah, how much we have all learned.

The end of this school year marks the end of me teaching a preschooler (I always dreaded the preschool years – I so enjoy the thinking of ages 8, 9 and 10. So after more than 6 years of preschoolers around, what will I miss ?) Ah, these years were so much more fun than I feared.

It also marks the end of our last full school year in one place for a while. Next year is another ‘on the road’ year. Ah, this peace has been good.

So many milestones. The inches gained. The words written, rehearsed and practiced again. And sometimes still misspelled. Oh how it’s hard to watch them struggle. Oh, what a joy when they succeed.

As the home manager, it will take me months to emotionally and physically move out of this house by the end of this year. We will have lived here almost 4 consecutive years! This is the longest we have ever lived anywhere. And it feels more our home than any place we have ever lived. And I don’t mean ‘our home’ only because we did all the ceilings, wiring, plumbing and tiling ourselves. . .

Our home rich in memories. Our home with tropical bugs flying through, dust piling up everywhere, visitors chatting on the porch, a gorgeous garden, swing in the tree, socks lost under the couch and children growing up. Their height scrawled on the hallway corner: Mom, how tall am I now? Their favorite nooks and crannies for curling up with a book. These things don’t pack well.

But Time, he doesn’t wait around. There is always some end or beginning around the corner. And I don’t want to spend today on tomorrow.

Anyway, Nostalgia and I aren’t quite ready to treasure up all these fabulous memories and move on. The pain is fresh.

But then we don’t have to.

Not just yet.

— shared on Velvet Ashes link up —

Randomess

Congo + Culture, Family, Homeschool, Personal

I meant to title this ‘random-ness’ but mistyped ‘randomess’, and our life is messy, so I’m keeping it. Life in the raw and real with all the messy parts is life ready for redemption.

The kids have just finished their homeschool assignments for today and are making quick work of a craft project involving lots of cutting and pasting bits of paper. These bits seem to have magnetic attraction to our carpet and few of them obey the glue and stay on the page. The laughter and fellowship between Joel and Anna curled up over bits of paper on the carpet makes me at least temporarily blinded to the mess. It also makes me want to stop time or videotape everything.

I have joined the ‘mama’ choir at our local church, and each time I meet with them to sing, pray and praise God I am astounded by their courage, strength and perseverance. It was very humbling this morning to sing the equivalent of a prayer: ‘Jesus take me by the hand’ while holding hands with Congolese sisters who have been widowed in their 20s with three kids to support, or who have 7 kids to feed and school each day and still manage to care for 3 others. I feel honored just to know them. I think they’ve given up on trying to say ‘Kimberly’ and dubbed me ‘Mama Anna’ which is fine by me. I like it better than ‘Madame Kent’ anyway.

After 9 months of life without sugar and flour, Kent has finally PERFECTED the best pancakes in the world. He’s trained the boys well how to flip the pancakes and the boys are in charge every Friday morning to give Mom a break. It’s fun. I’m serious though, these pancakes are better than any I have eaten for years, flour or no flour!

Other random facts:
We haven’t had running water come in from the city for about 10 days, and it is not likely to come for several more. The city water pipes are being replaced on our street. Experimenting with buckets of cloudy rainwater for just about everything…

Our kids don’t remember much about living in France as babies, but two things stuck with us: a love for trains and the call to eat “A table!” I can call that out from anywhere in the house and they will come running from across the compound. Such a useful little phrase…

Lightning destroyed one of our battery chargers 2 weeks ago, so we’ve been low on power for the first time in a few months. You know those little glass fuses? Well, it wasn’t black. It wasn’t cracked. It was exploded. Tiny. glass. pieces. A replacement is on back order from another country for the foreseeable future…

We are blessed immensely that a lovely mission-minded young lady will come and help out in our homeschool for 2 months! So exciting!

I’ve been doing this for years and I’m still not great at wearing head scarves. Tying them in various ways is no trouble, but keeping them on so they don’t slip? Notsomuch. Sunday, my friend Sylvie was helping me out. She’s new to foreigner’s slippery hair. She said, ‘Your hair is just not habitue [accustomed] yet to the scarf.’ The thought that my hair will just decide to be sticky one day on its own makes me smile.

Keeping up with the Jameses

Asperger's, Family, Homeschool

Most parents who homeschool seem to want one of two things: To give their child all the good parts of a ‘normal’ education (without wasting their time on the stupid parts), or to unschool them and let them follow their own interests and motivations to in-depth studies of just about anything. These are gross over-generalizations, and we could get into details, but let’s not. We are fans of the idea of traditional school – as long as it involves Truth, just in case you were getting worried.

The one thing that both Kent and I struggled with in our school years was feeling bored. There are only so many days you can sit in your sixth grade honors class watching the substitute teacher mispronounce the weekly French dictation. One day I logged over two hours of doing nothing while my teacher tried to deal with discipline issues. I have vivid memories of watching in utter disbelief while she (into her 60’s) actually tried to chase down my unruly classmate – a hyperactive 12-yr-old boy. Around and around the room they went. The rest of us got little but entertainment out of many a school day.

(Insert Disclaimer here: I do recognize that social development is not a waste of time, and do not promise to homeschool forever – one year at a time.)

All that to say, one of my motivations for educating our children well is not wasting their time. Childhood is short enough already.

All three of our kids are ‘smart’ and often I feel it is less my job to teach, than to direct their energy and get out of their way. We’ve been too easy on them allowing them to answer things orally instead of writing things out (and complaining), so the rest of our year is going to be ‘writing intensive’. The first day of school in ‘writing instensive-land’, James was going to earn a game of chess with his Dad after school as a reward. He happily wrote all morning long.

We came to Greek mythology, and it was time to study the contest between Arachne and Pallas Athena (both good weavers and proud… you can probably guess who lost and was banished to spinning webs…).

“Oh Mom. I already read it.”

“Really? When?”

“Last week sometime.” (and proceeds to describe every detail of the story)

“So, how far did you read?”

“To the end.”

“You finished the Greek mythology book for the year?”

“Yep. And the American history book too.”

The speed, voracity and accuracy with which he reads, no devours, history and math books scares me. He has corrected me on the details of Old Testament history! He reads it super fast and then can recall every detail. Freaks me out. I have to remember that God has great plans for these gifts and I need to direct here and there and then just get out of the way! Looks like he also stole the Roman history book off my desk this week and finished it when I wasn’t looking.

Not sure what he will do with a head full of history and math, but I suppose we don’t really need to know yet… During his Asperger’s diagnosis last year, they told us he was “charming and very bright” but his scores (as is normal) were vastly varied. Working memory: 90, Visual processing speed: 135, etc. With the improvements in his diet and the elimination of quite a few distracting sensory issues, came a faster clarity of thought (still pauses before multiplication/division facts) and less difficulty focusing during school.

He finished his afternoon jobs/chores, and curled up on the couch with a book about traps to set for a chess opponent.

At the big match of the day, they enjoyed setting up our new hand-carved African soapstone set. They began playing. I could tell Kent was wanting to go easy on James. At some point, he bailed on that plan and tried to save his game!

James played him well into the end-game and was 1-2 moves from a stale mate when he lost. Kent is no casual chess player; he played on a chess team (albeit years ago). There I admitted it. Kent lettered in chess. James blew him out of the water and challenged him with a real game at age 9!

I think both of us will have to have supernatural wisdom in raising and keeping up with James.

Busy Boy Goes to School

Family, Homeschool

Several of you have busy little boys like our Joel. He preferred motion to stillness from the womb! Once he learned to walk, he never stopped.

So when it came to schooling, I knew we would struggle with a conventional 6-hour-desk day of learning ( you may recall…).
Here’s an update on how my kinesthetic second grader is doing at his desk:

– The older we get, the better time we have had being able to focus for short periods sitting at his desk. Good thing too! The older we get, the more material there is to cover!

– To ease his issues with focusing for longer periods, last spring (end of First Grade) we slowed down his math. He is no longer a full year ahead of grade level, but he is less frustrated and more confident. With a summer birthday, just turning 7, he is extremely young for Second Grade this year, so we’ll see where that goes.

– One way we continued to get him enough physical activity, was to have him run laps around the house between subjects. We never skipped his recess time, and it was mandatory to spend recess outside unless it was raining. Then he could play Wii inside. I also used to divide up his math page into 4-5 sections. We called it ‘Travel Math’: #1-5 sit in the bathtub; #6-10 on the couch; #7-15 in the hallway and #16-20 on the top bunk. He loved this funny way of doing his math practice in so many ‘weird’ places!

– Joel’s reading really took off over the summer and while he doesn’t LOVE it obsessively like his brother, he is a good reader and enjoys reading for his little sister. This fall I began to notice he would read something well on one page and get distracted halfway through a second page, his voice trailing off while his mind was on the pictures or something else. We are not sure if he inherited the ADHD tendencies, but we have taken him off all dairy to see if his focus improves. So far, it seems to be working (3 weeks now).

So my not-so-little Busy Boy Joel is able to sit for an hour at a time through a normal school morning and complete his work without stress and frustration!! This is so exciting to me. Part of this success is due to ‘just growing out of the wiggles’ and part of it could be cutting dairy foods. I don’t really care which, as long as it works and we can get some work done!

Not surprisingly, his least favorite subject is still handwriting, and his most favorite subject is science (hands-on experiments!).

Busy Boy SITS in School!

Back to School!

Family, Homeschool




(our school room, ready for another year)
One of many reasons we homeschool is that it allows us flexibility to stay together as a family despite Kent’s somewhat mobile life/work. We have various reasons to travel most of the month of September, so we started school a couple weeks early this year. Anna has moved up to ‘real preschool’ and kindergarten math, but likes to sit through Latin and Zoology with the boys. She has a real desk of her own and loves it!

James moved up to a larger desk,

for as you will see, he is growing like a weed!

The gapped grin, dimpled cheek and huge front teeth are eerily familiar…

He almost looks like a teenager to me in these pics, and not a third grader…

We even have the right slump!

Really, aren’t we done yet Mom?

I didn’t edit out my studio for you…

yes, it is a dining room chair in front of a fleece blanket on our front porch.

My sweet Joel is in Second Grade!

…and that second front tooth will soon be gone! He’s pretty proud of being almost 2 inches taller than his brother was going into Second Grade. He’ll catch up with him one of these days…

And our resident princess,

in the midst of trying to grow her hair out like Rapunzel,

is starting preschool!

And of course, we had to take a new silly-face picture, at right.

The kids then all insisted that our puppies get their portraits taken too… If you thought getting young children to sit still and pose was a challenge, how about 2 9-month-old puppies who think they’re missing breakfast??! I had fleeting delusions of getting the dogs to take their turns sitting on the chair.

yeah, notsomuch

Then moved the chair hoping they would agree to sit with our kids petting them nicely.

dream on

Then just wanted to get them all the way in the frame…

you can see how things degraded:


So Nella, our sweet black lab mutt, who flops over for a belly rub at the sight of you, gives me her rump. That’s what she thinks about portraits!

But her brother Samwise, who is usually hyper, was eating up all the attention he could get. We took lots of pictures and the kids got up, and he was still laying there like, “What? It’s over already?”

(I just love the expressions! We love dogs!)

Maybe we should be called the ten-foot and eight-paws family…