The Hidden Beauty of a Simple Home Life

[Music] after of water scour as if it were the morning of the would be a question to raise [Music] [Applause] [Music] I hope I can encourage you this week that your home school can be simple and yet be very good one of my favorite quotes is one by GK Chesterton he said how can it be a large career to tell other people's children about the role of three and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe how can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone no a woman's function is laborious but because it is gigantic not because it is minute I will pity Mrs Jones for the hug hugeness of her task I will never pity her for its smallness if you're new here my name is Sherry I'm an everyday homeschool Mom married to my high school sweetheart and thankful mom to 10 kids I love encouraging other moms in the great work you're doing in your homes with your family my daughter Holland loves this game it's so simple it's a Dutch Blitz game we don't play it the normal way I just put the colors out and then we turn one card over at a time and we decide which pile it belongs on and this is really fun for her because she's at the age where she's learning her colors so far this morning we had breakfast we did our morning work and we all have finished up chores and right now everyone is getting started on their independent work one thing my kids did this morning during morning time was to work a little bit more on the maps in the simple morning time notebook that we've been doing all year long you can find this on the blog rli homeschool.com um we're working on North America writing in all the countries and then also all the major physical properties our oldest son is graduated but he still lives at home he's working today our second son works one day a week even though he's a junior so he is working today as well and then our older girls we kind of had a busy weekend they were at a youth retreat all weekend we had a birthday party we had Church they were sick so they are sleep sleeping and recovering and I just had my younger half today so volume again no and then I go to practices and review no that is not nice do you want to do a puzzle oh you want play with cards here come here what do you want to play with you play a puzzle what do you want play you want play with pu no okay well you with the truck you do you need truck wait no no no no no can I this it goes yeah this it starts here well I already read [Music] that of the he marched around the city of Jer wait no j watch seven times now your turn on the seventh time Joshua called the the sh contains water to a depth of 15 what's this why did they say tank 2007 and and then um you would just do 40 whatever that equals you would do 40 uh * 25 again and then um times um something would equal the other number which yes I once read an article written by a young gentleman where he told about his simple education at home this was before the internet this was before the explosion of homeschool curriculum his mom used something very basic they had a library card and he considered his education to be excellent I've since looked for this article and have not been able to find it if any of you know what I'm referring to or maybe have had this experience yourself I'd love to hear about it but what this article reminded me was that the simple rhythms of a loving home life it doesn't have to have all the bells and whistles is very good for children home is a wonderful place to learn and grow [Music] [Music] springing [Music] is together get on bedy the the plane goes faster but we're not going to go that simple homeschooling for us has looked like staying home more often being involved in fewer extracurricular activities doing Less in general we're involved in a co-op we're involved in our church we have friends in the neighborhood but our home life is Central to every everything we do it means that we may not always be up on the latest trends in curriculum and instead we use the basics like library books a globe an abacus flash cards counting tiles just common kitchen items not to mention of course the internet we live in the internet age so really you can learn anything you want to online and this is something that we have Within Reach right at our fingertips and it's something we certainly take advantage of in our home school one thing that I think has been lost in our culture today is free time for children nothing will stifle a child's imagination more than running around from activity to activity kids need free time time to be bored when children have space in their day they begin to wonder and ask questions with free time kids can pursue their interests and hone their skills and this is when some of the best learning happens as a newer homeschool mom I remember spending too much time worrying about if we were doing enough did we go on enough field trips did we do enough science experiments our home school seemed just kind of ordinary we didn't do a ton of uh exciting fun crafty things and I always thought you know maybe we're just not doing enough or this is just too simple and I think what I have come to realize is that by homeschooling our kids we are giving them access to the real world and one of my favorite quotes is by Susan Schaefer McColly she said the children are hungry they have an appetite for knowing and experiencing it's the strong real world that interests them so much where the unexpected can happen and there is wonderful mystery this strong real world is what we're offering our kids by homeschooling them these daily rhythms time to pursue interests I think we greatly underestimate the unrivaled beauty of a simple home life we have two birth days today our oldest son turns 20 and our youngest son turns two so so we had our oldest and youngest were born on the same day which is kind of cool Ty asked me to make million dooll cake which is a really popular cake for us this is something that's kind of in the family it's a pretty easy cake to make it's just flour sugar baking soda eggs pineapple coconut and um then you just top it with a cream cheese icing this is something that that we often make for birthdays around here and then he also asked for dinner to have Hy Stacks which is another pretty common meal that we make around here it's rice and then you put a layer of beef barbecue and then a layer of peas and then a cheese sauce on top so this is a typical birthday dinner that kids will often ask for some years we do a themed party with friends but this year is just going to be family dinner and something key these simple rhythms cooking together cleaning up doing chores reading books together going outside they may seem insignificant but they provide a very secure environment and I think kids thrive on [Music] this we forgot the coconut oh yeah a whole cup M okay you want to pour it in here you want to do it yeah I can I know hold the oh oh what a around the he pass we have had some of the most beautiful sunsets here winter is a great time for us to see them and and I just couldn't help but step outside and get a little bit of this one I think when we bring our kids beside us we are just meeting a very deep need that they have for relationships even I just like watching some of the planet Earth videos or just some of those nature videos and you can always see the babies want to copy everything that the moms are doing or the dads are doing and I think that's so true with kids they just want to do what adults are doing they want to see how things are working in the adult world and they want to copy it I thought of two examples of people who had a very simple upbringing one was Laura Engles Wilder she grew up in a Wilderness Area sometimes living on the Prairie or in a Dugout and she lived each day working without modern tools she was churning butter handwashing clothes making her own candles she had access to few books yet she grew up to be an excellent writer she has a way of expressing thoughts and processes in a way that are easy to understand another example is Frederick Douglas he was born in slavery he grew up in a supremely dismal literate environment yet when he es escaped slavery as a free man he became one of the greatest ERS our country is ever known where did he get this training in public speaking as a young slave he taught himself over the years how to read when he gained his freedom one of the first books he ever owned was a book of famous speeches and he memorized them so it doesn't take the best tools or plans to help kids learn it takes desire I think this should be a big encouragement to us moms who think our homeschool is just ordinary we need to just establish good daily routines working clean cleaning cooking gardening reading being outside together taking advantage of some of the opportunities that come our way listening to our kids what are their interests how can we take them from where they are to where they want to be and they'll show they'll show what their interests are they'll voice what they want to do and then just trust that this is enough and let's not forget the difference it can make in our kids' lives to be a peaceful mom no matter how many fun activities and learning experiences you've planned for your kids if you are frazzled and overwhelmed these exciting plans may have the opposite outcome kids learn best when they live in a secure loving environment with parents who are fully engaged heavly father thank you for a good day thank you for keeping us all safe today well we really enjoyed celebrating Ty and Ben's birthday it's I just can't believe how quickly the time has gone by not everyone was here our two daughters were sick on the couch so they missed it but it was it was a nice little celebration all the same to happy birthday to you happy [Applause] birthday happy birthday to You2 y if you'd like more homeschooling resources and encouragement head on over to the blog rli homeschool.com I have a ton of free copy work book lists and so much more over there and if you'd like to see more videos like this take a look at the video I did last week on playing the long game why moms need to look Beyond today thanks for watching I do one video a week on homeschooling encouragement for everyday moms [Music]