The last few days I have felt great un-rest in my spirit when it comes to schooling times at home.  I have been on a tangent increasing the table time with Nathan as he is now in the fourth grade and it is time to step it up a notch. Praise the Lord, he really came around the bend with reading last May.  We joined a reading program with the school district during the summer.  We used the whole summer with few breaks to really focus on getting the fluency level increased.  Add to this that he took an ESD test this spring, and my brain was a little warped to making sure he would be able to take it.  He did really well in math, and pretty good for the Language/Reading parts considering at the time he was still sounding out each and every letter of every word.   So, now it is the 3rd week of September.  Fall is in the air, and I should be in my happiest of happy spaces as a home educator enjoying the freedom of learning with my boys in a relaxed style and merrily going through each day as an experience to be savored.  So why is it that I wake each morning with my eyebrows pinched as I plan the day’s schedule, prepare the meals, and half heartedly clean my home. Waking the boys early so we can get started early puts us all off to a grouchy start.  I can picture a cartoon of a mom in a bathrobe with curlers in her hair and fuzzy slippers pushing two little tots down the hall while they dig their heels in the ground and keep their backs ridged with a look of fear on their little faces.  We have been sitting at the table from 8ish to 2ish each day, and still can’t seem to get all the topics in that I’d like to cover.  No TV or Electronics for mom or kids til the homework and chores are done. By afternoon, I am an exhausted mess and the boys are ready for fun projects and excitement.  So I drive them to a friend’s house for them to entertain them or to a park where I can veg in a lawn chair.  But the temperature is dropping quickly, and there will soon be fewer and fewer places to veg outside .

So, yesterday, I did alot of soul searching as far as our little school is concerned. I contacted some friends who helped me set up our school back when Nathan was 3 and 4. They convinced me that we need a break from school. I called another friend here in town and she reminded me that we had not taken summer vacation off, and we needed a break. I think my brain was so focused on this being the fall and the prime time for learning that I couldn’t give myself a break. 

Yesterday I prayed. And sought wisdom from friends. Then called another friend, or she called me rather, and received a word from the Old Testament.  Read it.  The first chapter of Ecclesiastes.   We are going to take an academic pursuit break.  Let the boys live, still w/o mass amount of tv or electronics, but also without me starting the day urging them in which direction they should go. We used to be an unschooling sort of family, delight directed, creative, curious and adventurous.  As of late, we haven’t had any time to be creative or curious about anything that doesn’t involve the three r’s. 🙂  I will take the advice of a mentoring friend who told me last night, "I am too dern lazy to teach something they have a good chance of picking up naturally."  She was speaking in jest, and she was also following up on an amazing spelling example from her teen son. But I really liked what she said.  I am going to be "lazy" in a sense, and not spend allot of busy time on teaching topics that will come up in life, or going to activities just because "everyone else goes", or teaching for the ESD test.  And that’s when it hit me late last night.  I had been teaching to the test.  A claim I said We’d never do at Petra School.  I had spent the entire summer and fall teaching to the test that my son will not take until May, and of which his score from last year tells me he has already passed.  Last April, I could say with an honest heart that I really didn’t care what number percentile he got on the test as long as he passed.  But now, my heart had changed, and had grown greedy and proud.  I knew if I shoveled info in, that he would be able to spit that info out.  Oh, the prayer of repentance that I am praying now.  My focus was off.  How quickly I burned out of wanting to homeschool when my focus strayed from their character and on to their grade.

It is my urgent desire that my son never measure up the the World’s standard, and that I never pursue that as a goal. I can see, especially as the urgency for prep for high school and college comes around the corner into view, that the worldly need to be standing tall when judged by their standard will skew my focus.  For those of you in my family and prayer circle are reading my ramblings, make note of this urgent prayer request.  I do not want to compete with the world’s standard. I do not want to have my children as pawns in some sort of game, to compete with their scores.  I do not want to feel pride of a high score or defeat of a low score.  Satan slipped in unawares, and planted this seed. Praise be to God that he did not let my spirit rest within me until it was plucked out.   I pray that I will continue to put the ol weed and feed in this area of my life whenever the tiny sprout raises up. And I pray that I can stamp the root of the growth so that it doesnt’ com back, but I can see that this will be an area to watch for new seeds yearly.

So, I’m going to trust where the Lord directed Petra School from the beginning. When we were just Petra Farm, growing children as Plants Grown Up (http://www.doorposts.net), and learning to trust the Lord that he will direct our paths.  Funny, that’s Nate’s memory verse for awana, Show me Thy ways O Lord, Teach me Thy Paths. 

I am ever grateful for a Loving Lord who Moment by Moment directs our ways and paths.