Homeschooling. Yep. Never something I thought I would be doing and look, here I am on top of my roof with three kids homeschooling. Now how did that happen?
And would you take a look a my yard. What a yard!
The wonderfully fun part about painting is that I can make my world however I want it to be. I can create my reality. And once I create it visually, the physical world follows quickly after. So, ok, not that all the houses in Vancouver are going to disappear so that we have a beach and mountain view, but that the stress and rush of the city disappear. The beauty of the natural world around us is all we can see.
We are reading a book together because one of these days I am going to be able to read a book to all three kids without Fiona screaming all the time and completely distracting us. We’ve been trying to make our way through the sequel to Nim’s Island, called Nim at Sea. As soon as I open the book, Fiona starts jumping on top of us all, screaming and grabbing the book away. But one day…one day we will be able to all sit together peacefully reading a book.
We are high up on the roof to maintain our homeschooling perspective about why we choose this in the first place: to nourish my children’s spiritual development; to have time to develop their unique God given gifts, talents and interests; to teach to their learning styles; to create greater family unity and deeper and more meaningful friendships; to slow the pace of life down so that “normal” is feeling relaxed and happy, not stressed and rushed; to foster a deeper attachment and love with my children; to remember that children learn through play and that they naturally desire to learn and progress.
One of the things that I tell my children often is that the way we learn is by copying others and making a lot of mistakes. If we never made mistakes, we would never learn anything new. So this is the stage I am in right now with homeschooling. It is so new and I am going to make a lot of mistakes, but that is how I will learn and they will learn and we will find our way. And when I let go of the controlling perfectionist in me, then I am relaxed, playful, joyful, creative and we have a great time together.