Single Homeschooling Mommas

Good Afternoon Ladies,

There are many single mothers in the world who need to earn an income.  They are up against the most desperate circumstances imaginable, much of which we will never know this side of heaven.  It is our responsibility to do what we can to help them succeed. 

James 1:27 says, “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”

The need is great worldwide. 

 I prayed and told the Lord this: “Lord you know I have nothing to give, I’ve written a little book on saving money.  The only thing I have for you to work with Lord, is a sewing machine and a computer.  You know what my bank balance isn’t and that I want to help somehow.  So it is ALL up to You.”

Girls, the only idea I have had for a long time is to donate 10% of the profits from my business, The King’s Oasis to organizations that help women around the world start and run home based or close to home businesses.  You can read about that here. 

 Our fellow sisters in Africa, South America, and Asia are just like we are.  They love their kids and want to earn a living and help others in their communities.  The only thing they need is a chance.  How about if we give them that chance?  Alone, I can do basically nothing.  Together, we can change one family at a time.

Definitely food for thought.

L.

Remember, you’re not alone in helping single mommas in business, we’re all in this together.

Copyright 2010

Ladies,

I am sharing my experiences with you so that when you get to the stage where you are a veteran homeschooling momma you might not have to struggle to figure out what to do with your lives.  Actually, I think you probably will.  This is my first year without a homeschooler in the house.  I asked The Grand Finale a few days ago if he wanted to do some homeschooling. 

He emphatically said, “NO”.

I laughed.  He graduated last spring.  The dog seemed happy to “do school”.  For him that always meant scratches behind the ears and the obligatory nap.  He still knows what “let’s go do school” means and will accompany me to the place of “education”.

So what is a momma to do when her youngin’s are all grown up?  I don’t know.  I have managed to kill some time and spend some time productively.  The housework and yard work has not ceased.  Bummer…..

I did quit my online job that yeilded me $3-5 an hour.  Be careful when researching online jobs.  I worked for this company for two years and each year was supposed to be better and not so time consuming.  Unfortunately that did not happen.   It was also one of the most stressful and unorganized companies I have ever worked for.

It was nice working from home, but I can make more than that in my sewing business.  Consequently, I hit the thrift shops today and purchased two garbage bags of fabric to make into napkins, tablecloths, table runners, and other small items.  Last night I talked to the proprietor of a small quaint tea shop.  She sells items on consignment in her establishment and is interested in looking at my sewn items.  Guess what I will be doing this weekend?  Sewing up a storm.  I have decided to catalog my new fabric with the thrift shop price, what I make it into, and how much I sell it for.  Might help for tracking purposes to help me become more of a savvy business woman.  I have very little money left, so I need to sell items consistently.  I know many of you are in the same boat and  totally understand.

Here I am rambling on.  Most of you have started your school years or will be after the weekend.  I so hope that you are off to a great start.  Remember to schedule fun things into each day and/or week.  School should be a pleasant experience for all involved.  Yes, it is hard work, but parents and students should also have enjoyable times too.

Have a great day gals,

L.

Remember, you’re not alone in figuring out what veteran homeschooling mommas need to do with their time, we’re all in this together.

Copyright 2010

Howdy Gals,

I started my Momma’s P.E. Curriculum.  I’m “writing it” as I go.  Last week I pulled my bike out of the bushes in the back yard one day.  The next day my son pumped up the tires.  Thus ends week one’s lessons.

Fast forward to week two’s lesson plans……I finally decided that if I do not make a point of stopping what I am doing and go and take a bike ride it would be winter and the roads would be full of ice.  So I took the sewing machine oil outside and oiled the chain on my bike until it looked oiled.  Or at least it was good enough.  I located my helmet in the garage and wiped it off.  I’m not really into the spiders in the hair look, so I made sure the only thing on my head was a cleaned off helmet.

I wheeled my granny bike out of the back yard and onto the sidewalk.  I then took off.  My friend suggested that I ride over to the empty Target parking lot and make three laps around it.  I did.  It was exhilarating.  The wind blew on my face and I made it three times around.  I saw the broken tables, dead carpeting, and broken bucket others have left behind the Target building.  I actually viewed them three times tonight.  Hey, it was something to look at.  I chose the Target parking lot because it is huge and relatively flat.  I need a flat place to ride until my newly acquired muscles are in better shape.  I walk everyday but biking has always proven to me that I have new muscles that I have not used in a while.

I love biking.  I used to ride bikes all the time as a kid.  Right now I want to be able to ride more than three times around the old Target building; however, that will be a feasible goal for this week.

What are you girls doing for your Momma curriculum this week?

L.

Remember, you’re not alone in your momma curriculum, we’re all in this together.

Copyright 2010

Hello ladies,

It is a strange day indeed.  For the first time in 21 years, I do not have a homeschooled student in my house.  We typically started our homeschool year on this day-ish.  Usually the 23 or 24 or the Monday closest to those days.

It just seems so weird to not be doing homeschooling with a youngin’.  I have spent the summer trying to figure out what I’m going to do “when I grow up”.  Still working on that.  This morning I decided that I am going to “homeschool” myself this year in stuff that I like to do.  I pulled out my old bike with the big “granny” seat.  Plan on riding that in the evenings.  I think I’ll call that P.E.!!  I still need to teach myself how to use Excel spreadsheets on the computer.  That might take all year or longer since I do not soak in computer info that quickly.  I think if I try hard enough, I can come up with some type of curriculum for ME.

I’ll keep you posted.

I hope all of you gals, are having a nice start to your school year.

L.

Remember, you’re not alone in your strange days, we’re all in this together.

C

Howdy gals,

I have had a lousy day.  I know you all can relate.  I have not had work for over two months and the work I have had this month is not enough to make a crack in the bills.  It just doesn’t end for us single mommas.

I was all spiffy clean when I was making breakfast and splattered pancake batter all over myself and the kitchen.  Then I dumped a pan of stuff, for the compost hole in the garden, by the back door.  The day just kept getting worse.  My customer this month did not have work when I dropped off my order.  I’m looking for work and there is none to be had.  The Lord has been hearing all about it.  I might as well tell Him because He already knows the whole story anyway.

I saw this blurb on the news and thought I would pass it on.  Nice piece of music to listen to.  You might need a hankie.

Pianist Liu Wei  Hop on over to YouTube and cry away.  Might do a body good.

L. Rose

Remember, you’re not alone in your bad days, we are all in this together.  We can even be together in our love of a good story and fine music.

Copyright 2010

Hi ladies,

My first book called @Home: A Frugal Momma’s Guide to Saving Money is now for sale over at www.thekingsoasis.com  You can find it on the tab-Homemaking e-books.  I hope you enjoy it.

Good afternoon ladies,

Today’s post will be about our experience with a home school/public school options program.

There are many homeschool programs now that are offered by the public school systems.  I am glad that there are different choices for families to make who chose the public school route.  To many kids fall through the cracks and the various options afforded to families of public school children are definitely something for them to consider.

I love homeschooling.  I think it is wonderful.  When one of my younger children was in Jr. high she decided that she wanted to go to public school and began expressing that desire to myself and her father.  He was behind it 100% and had developed a different world view from my own.  Between the teenager and the father, the pressure they were exerting, made for a very stressful situation for myself.  I prayed and asked the Lord to show me what to do.  The decision I made was meant to “keep the peace” for all parties involved.  (It is hard to make everyone happy and divorced parents are required to make decisions that our married friends do not have to go through.)  I enrolled my daughter in a public school option program with classes one day a week for her 8th grade year.  For her 9th grade year, the program became 2 days a week with a horrible class schedule.  If she was not in a class then I had to go and get her from across town and “babysit” in the parking lot for an hour until she went to her next class.  It put such a damper on our homeschool at home and my work schedule.

Here are my pro’s and con’s on that experience.

Pro’s:

Excellent computer teacher and classes

Excellent science teacher and classes

O.K. Geography teacher and classes

My daughter made a close friend and the girls were inseparable during high school.

Cons:

There was a “dumbing down” in the academic standards compared to the work we did at home.  My daughter really noticed it.  (Mom gets a point here, since I had forewarned her of that possibility.  It was nice that she eventually saw that.)

Class selection enrollment was doled out based on who you were and who you knew.  The rest of us got what was left over.  If your child did not get the necessary classes in their high school program, they could not graduate.  This seemed so unfair, since many classes were not available to all the students to begin with.  I hope that in the last 7-8 years they remedied that situation. 

What started out as a homeschool program quickly became a regular public school, thus losing its original purpose for more parental involvement.  Every year the government control became greater.

With the lower academic standards came lower behavior rules and double standards in the disciplinary system.  While my child was not a behavior problem, other families expressed their concerns about the situation.

My child who “pushed” the rules and attitudes at home now found an outlet  for more of this with this public school program. 

Parents were required to volunteer 40 hours of time at the school cleaning, helping with office tasks, and other chores.  This is a good idea and I supported it.  However, the volunteer hours were given out first based on ”who you knew and who you were” with the rest of us scrambling to volunteer on the days our kids were in class so we did not have to make extra trips back to the school.  This part was extremely frustrating.  Parents could opt out of the volunteer work by paying a size-able fee to the school.  Not an option for a single momma.

The school was a ways from home and necessitated numerous trips there during the days class was in session.  Frequently, my other child and I sat in the car and did school work while we waited.  This was not fun in the hot or extremely cold weather.

Staff, teachers, parents, and students were not allowed to talk about God.  This school seemed overzealous in this area and took away student rights in my opinion.  Remember, this is my opinion only.  It seemed so ironic to me that the school met in a church and yet God could not be mentioned.

The music program was pathetic.  My daughter was in the music program.  Her spring concert was a memorable event.  After a year of musical instruction, the band played selections such as “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”.  (The homeschool co-op we joined had a more demanding program which my kids excelled in.)

The second month into my daughter’s 9th grade year in this program, she begged desperately to be un-enrolled from the program.  Knowing her father the way I do, I told her she had to finish out the school year.  She was also learning valuable computer skills which I could not teach her at that time.   I took her out of the school over the summer and she then happily attended classes at our homeschool co-op until she graduated.

As the first and only single homeschooling parent they had ever heard of, I was interrogated frequently over everything from my curriculum at home to my work schedule to my living conditions.  The top brass did the constant questioning.  In their minds, only married folks could successfully homeschool and placed all homeschoolers in a square box of their making.  (Girls, I know you understand the constant struggle to have to prove yourself, your family, and what God has called you to do.)  I kept telling them that I had been homeschooling since 1989 (longer than all of them), that I owned my own business, car, and had even bought a house with a real mortgage.  It was such a novelity to them.  For me the questioning got old very quickly.

My overall views on the option program we were in:

I thought it was a major waste of time and taxpayer dollars.  I hope that some of the problems that plagued the school have been worked out and that the present students have a more pleasant experience.

The computer and science classes were excellent and I am glad my daughter made such a close girlfriend.

If I had to do it again, would I?  It is always easy to say “I should have or shouldn’t have” after the fact.  The bottom line is that I had to deal with dad and the court system and had to follow the divorce decree.  So I made the best decision that I could at the time.  It was an OK experience with it’s good and bad points just like any other experience.  For my daughter’s sophomore year, she turned 16 and that was the mandatory age at which a student could drop out of school if they so chose.  When she did not want to go back to the public school option program, I made her tell her dad her reasons why.  While he did not like it, he accepted it much better from her than from me.  She very happily finished out her formal education at home and loved our homeschool co-op.  I will be writing about the co-op experience in my next post.

If I did not have to deal with an ex-husband, I would not have used this program.

I still made my daughter complete her curriculum with our regular work at home.  The “dumbing down” academic standards really bothered me.

Now girls, some folks absolutely loved the public school option programs and let everyone know that.  I really respect their choices and their happy memories. 

It just was not for us. 

L.

Remember you’re not alone in your decisions, we’re all in this together.

Copyright 2010

Good evening ladies,

We made it to the place were the wedding was to be held with about two minutes to spare.  We quickly sat down  in the white chairs  for the outdoor wedding.  Soon after the grandparents and parents were seated, the groom looked spiffy, and the bridesmaids came down the isle.  The bride was radiant in her lovely gown with the beaded and sequined skirt.  Her veil and hair were perfect.  The flowers were lovely.  It was a beautiful setting for an outdoor wedding.  Now it had been a few years since I had seen the bride and I knew she would have changed some as an adult.

The person presiding over the ceremony started the service.  When the vow exchange happened, the officiant said that Kristin and Cory would exchange their vows.  I looked at my son and said, “Is that Sarah?”  He was doubled over in his white wedding seat trying so hard not to laugh or ruin the couple’s special moment.  I thought that the person from the military who was officiating the wedding had the names wrong. 

Well girls, Kristin and Cory were their names.  My son sucked in some air and whispered to me, “Mom, we’re at the wrong wedding.”  At that point in time, I struggled to keep a straight face.  Thankfully, Cory and Kristin’s ceremony was super short and there was no music or anything extra.  They were hitched and we were dismissed. 

Our party smiled and walked to the exit.  I grabbed the gift I had brought on the way out.  It was labeled “Sarah and Jeff” any way.  My oldest went and apologized to the father of the bride who thought the whole affair was hilarous.  The rest of us laughed in the parking lot until we cried.  We got in our cars and went the extra 1/2 mile down the road to the correct wedding for us; and watched Sarah and Jeff declared husband and wife and saw their first kiss.

There is no way we are going to tell Sarah and Jeff that we were at two weddings in about 15 minutes time, until sometime after their first anniversary.

We laughed through the reception and had the best time.

So girls sometimes a body can make it to two weddings, a half of a mile apart, in just a few minutes.  We saw both couples get married.  Two handsome grooms and two lovely brides.

Sometimes life is just plain funny.

L.

Remember, you’re not alone in your “double” weddings, we’re all in this together.

Copyright 2010

Tonight I saw a father driving his child around in a Jeep, ladies.  While this is not unusual and many dads do just that, this one was different.  Dad had a Jeep that had the metal protective thingies on it instead of a top.  The Jeep boasted an “umbrella” that was a tarp type thing stretched across the top to provide some shade for the occupants.  Now dad obviously is into some serious 4-wheeling, mud flinging driving sometimes.  However, tonight was different.

Dad drove like he had fine china in the vehicle.  He did actually and drove ever so gently.  His passenger, I am assuming, was his elementary school age son.  The child was strapped very carefully in the seat and loving the drive.  Only his seat was designed for someone with physically disabilities.  He had a neck brace/head rest and other accomodations

Why did I notice this?  As the parent of several special needs adults, I notice special needs folks more frequently.  The father was giving his son the normal expereinces of life.  The son was able to feel the warm summer breeze from the Jeep and perhaps an ocassional bug or two, just like the rest of us.  He could be up close to the neighborhood lawns and watch people go about their evening activities, just like the rest of us.  No doubt, dad probably had the ball game on the radio for the two of them to enjoy, just like the rest of us.

I do not know where they were going or where they had been.  The only thing I know is that they were enjoying the summer evening, just like the rest of us.  Yup, our special needs kids/adults need normal activities and to get out of the house, just like the rest of us.

Maybe we all need to take our special needs kids or someone else’s special needs kids for a Jeep ride on a nice summer evening.  You never know what type of adventure lies ahead.

L.

Remember, you’re not alone in your Jeep rides with bugs and breezes, we’re all in this together.

Copyright 2010

Good Evening Ladies,

I’m grateful.  This week I have had two and one/half days of work.  I have not had work for two months so making a little money is really nice.  It feels good to be tired after sewing for 12 hours today.  I think my brain fell asleep several hours ago.  Time to join my brain.  Night gals.

L.

Remember you’re not alone in your gratefulness, we’re all in this together.

Copyright 2010