A Week of Renewal

Spring has begun and it is spring break, which means the kids are off “school.” The term gets fuzzier every day as I watch learning and life mesh more and more. On their own the kids have still been doing reading, piano lessons, dance class, political discussions, grammar lesson, piano practice, discussion for starting a business and learned about bills, laws and how common people create change, writing and drawing. They are also meeting friends to go ice skating later. They’ve asked me if we could also take summer off, except for me reading to them-sure we can be “off.”

So while we are living life this week, and I am still working I am also taking a little time for my own much needed renewal. I have been feeling a little overwhelmed lately, mostly because I am not doing all the home making things I am craving. So this week I am cooking, baking, organizing and beautifying, while listening to audio talks. Today I listened to “The Biggest Gap in Education and How to Fill it,” by Rhea Perry. It can be found free here, http://talk-a-latte.com/. It is over on the sidebar. I loved this! She talks about raising here children with respect and allowing them their individuality. The education should conform to the child not the child to the education, with and emphasis on entrepreneurship. Her husband was a public school teacher, and she was trained to be one. As her husband taught he began to encourage her to not send their kids to the schools. She did bring them home to learn and had a difficult time until she starting asking them what they wanted to learn and letting them lead. They moved the family to forty acres and told the kids they could do any project they wanted, but they would have to finance it and take care of it. Some awesome things resulted.

She also talks about some problem areas and how to keep the children’s hearts. I need to listen to this again with a pen and paper. This time I was baking.