African American Homeschool Mamas

I gotta tell ya, being a minority within a minority is really hard. Why? Only a person that is, or at least thinks they are, part of the majority would ask such a question. When it is "Black History Month", I want to go with other people that understand the looks of pity, that some people give when the tour guide mentions slavery. I want to be around people that share the same history and background as I do so that we can teach our children accurate history rather than the same 3 famous African Americans (Dr. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Harriet Tubman) and slavery. I don't want you child hair molesting my child because my child's hair is the polar opposite of your child's hair. It is also hard to be a minority within a minority that is within yet another minority because I am what is considered to be a African American secular homeschooler. I have experienced firsthand that not all groups that say "all are welcome" mean it. I can't honestly say if it was my skin or that I didn't belong to the church that apparently they all belonged to, but I drove 30 minutes to a park day where the people wouldn't talk to me and their kids totally ignored my children. For the record, my children are very hard to ignore. All that to say, I found one homeschool Mama online in a group that lives here and I met another at a birthday party. Although my children attended school with the second Mama's children, we had never formally met. Anyhoo, apparently I needed to vent and express my joy in finding other Afrikan Mamas in the area. Now, I hope that we actually have something in common.

Africentrically eclectic with a relaxed unschooling bent!

I apologize for my slackness. I have been really busy and learning quite a lot. I have finally decided on the type of homeschoolers we are. We are Africentrically eclectic with a relaxed unschooling bent. I like it. It's ours and ours alone. LOL Anyway, I had to come up with something since we live in a world of labels.

I have thrown in the towel finding a history curriculum that is accurate so I have teaching from all the facts that I already have floating in my head and the ones that I am learning. I have also thrown out my third or fourth attempt at a curriculum. Now, I just write a plan so that it we come upon a brainfart moment we will have something to draw upon. I spent yesterday afternoon learning about their learning styles and multiple intelligences. It was interesting and showed me why some stuff just wasn't working and wasn't going to work. Reading, writing, and math are required.

I have gotten on the dreaded Face book and I have a true love/hate relationship with it. It takes up a lot of time, which used to be spent blogging. I have, however, learned a lot and met a lot of interesting and knowledgeable people. Catch 22.

We have also begun really using and focusing on Swahili. We ordered it from Rosetta Stone. It is expensive, but if you want to learn a language and learn it fast this is an excellent program.

I have also made a vow to buy as much second hand/consignment and handmade as possible. Except shoes. Second hand shoes gross me out. We are also using our old jeans to make different things. It's been really fun so far.

At the park...again.

Yes, I was spinning and fell down. Actually, I rolled down the hill head-over-heels and when I stopped I was so spin drunk that I didn't even know that my wonderful Sunshine was taking this picture.

Television...to see or not to see? That is the question.

Your thoughts?

Shhhhh...Artists at Work.

Slime Time!

Petrified!!!

I am petrified. There I said it. I have this whole schedule set up and then here come my children with these bright ideas. Spike wants to learn about dinosaurs and Sunshine wants to learn about the tallest people on earth and how girls around the world live. This is not a part of my schedule!!! Didn't they see my nicely worked out schedule that I did for each of them individually in their favorite colors? Didn't they see how I put it all in a table with a detailed description of each topic. I even ordered "What you 1st/4th grader should know". I thought at the most I might have to change to unit studies or something like that.

I have a sneaky feeling that we are leaning toward deschooling/unschooling and eclectic something or other. I don't do well with labels and I hate rules, but I love learning. I know I was being a little dramatic for fun in the beginning of this blog, but I have to admit that I am a little scared. I don't trust my children to just learn things on their own like I do. Afterall, I didn't start doing that until after I was out of school. Yes, I said it. I don't trust them to learn if left to their own devices. I know some of you want to jump on me, but I am new to this. I am learning too. I would never tell them I don't trust them to learn, but I am venting it to you all because I know you love me. LOL Tonight when they told me what they wanted to learn about I paused. Sunshine quickly said,"Well you said we could learn about whatever we wanted and you could just make it fit into all the subjects that we need." Gotta love that young memory retention. NOT! I am going to give it a try. We have 2 years before the North Carolina Department of Education can come out and see what we've been up to so here goes.

Yay!!! I'm almost done...I think

I have revised my schedule for both children thanks to http://donnayoung.org. I will mostly stick with the way I was doing it anyway, but I think that I am going to just incorporate somethings into other subjects. For example, when we study African History we will study the music and art along with it. With my dd, I would love to see her have more of a concentration on art because that is her favorite subject. I haven't gotten to the point, of course, where they are working independently yet. My ds doesn't seem to want to work at all...go figure. I have also added www.time4learning.com which I think is wonderful!!! I really like it, and it is wonderful for beginners with a great price.

Crab Fight & Shell Change

I have been trying to post this since last week. I thought it was kind of cool. Anyway, this video is of our crabs fighting over the pink shell. The one in the blue shell was originally in the pink shell, but decided to change to the blue. The green one then decided that he wanted the pink shell, at which time the blue one decided he wanted it back and the fight ensued. I really hope you enjoy it, because I have been praying that this video would upload. LOL

What Is Your Goal?

My goal for dd and ds is what is living according to the 4 L's. Live, Love, Laugh, Learn.

Live in the moment. Enjoy where you are right now. Don't worry about what has happened or what will happen. Just be right here right now. That is all God is asking you to handle.

Love deeply. I have prayed to God that he let people feel loved when they are around me. I want my children to learn this too. I am reading a book that is teaching me the 7 points of love which are: Kindness, Patience, Forgiveness, Humility, Courtesy, Generosity, & Honesty. If any of these is missing in a relationship it will be found lacking the fullness of love. We will be working on these constantly and asking in every situation, especially difficult ones, if any of these is missing.

Laugh hard, loud, and often. This is among my favorites because I love to laugh. I think most things are funny. When my husband I get into a heated discussion it always ends in laughter. I love to hear other people laugh especially my husband and children.


This is a birthday party we had for my husband, which is why I have on that outfit. LOL

Learn as much as you can while you can. I have learned that I am an autodidact. I love learning, but I am self taught. I haven't finished my associates degree, because I hate taking classes that I am not interested in. For the sake of finishing what I start I am going to finish it, but I know more about myself now. I know now that I will probably never have a higher degree, but I will always take classes and be self taught. I want my children to grow in their desire to know. I want them to want to know any and everything. I want to stir up that curiosity that has been put into a dormant state by large classroom sizes and one size fits all learning.

How Petty Can I Be?

Okay, so it was July 1. It was the day that our letter of notification was suppose to go in the mail. This wasn't the last day to mail it, it was the first day. I have had it filled out, enveloped (Is that a word? Spell check didn't catch it so let's go with it), and stamped since at least May. I was working with a client and remembered that it needed to go in the mail. My DH told me that the mailman had already run. I was so upset. After I realize the light weight of the situation, I took a breath slapped myself for being so petty and went on with my day.

I was just so excited. This is the dawning of a new day for us. An opportunity to do my best by my children.

Reasons to Homeschool

First day

We watched 2 movies today, because my niece was over and we wanted to entertain her first. Right now they are doing there spelling work. David has a list of 8 words to write 3 times and Mari has a list of 15 to write 3 times in cursive. Next we do math, geography (using What Your K/3rd Grader Needs To Know), and then on to learning sign language.

I also plan to have all of us learn Swahili. They can learn Spanish later. I would like to honor something closer to our heritage first. I will probably go over numbers with ds and do multiplication drills with dd and then we will be finished for now.

Earlier I took my little niece outside to play in a new kiddie pool that her mom bought and she was having no parts of it. Of course dd and ds were playing in it. They had fun although they looked silly with the both of them trying to fit.

Y'all please feel free to give as much advice as possible. Thank you so much in advance.

Next Week!

Okay, so next week we will begin hs. I tried yesterday, but everything that could go wrong went wrong. All my little plans just feel apart and I was feeling quite defeated. If it were not for the sisters on the yahoo homeschool group FOCUHS, I would have still been struggling with what went on.

*Shameless Plug*
If you want to meet some of the most supportive, loving, praying, God reflecting women on the planet, join this group. They are the absolute, total, and complete bomb!

I see now that Mondays are going to be our review day, because I have two teachers come on that day for my niece. That means that it will be near impossible to do anything else on that day. I am normally my worse critic so I am going to have to learn to go easy.

Singing in the Rain

The pond is finished...as it's going to be.

Okay, first let me say that I am fully award that the pond is not fully submerged. Look, we are in North Carolina which means this is red clay country. We really intended on making hole deeper, but to add insult to injury the tree roots were a beast. I aske my dad for the pick ax, but he sent me a plain pick. I am not the most patient person in the world so I just made do. Anyway, I still think it turned out really well. It will look even nicer once the clay soaks back into the grass. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

y a

Opposition

I was talked to a family member today that strongly opposes homeschooling. I wrote a whole rant about it because I was hurt/angry. Then I decided to put on my big girl panties, so this is all the air time it will receive.

Thanks Subscribers

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone that subscribes to this blog. I am so happy, because I thought I'd be alone here for a while. LOL I hope you enjoy it and I hope to be as helpful as some of you are one day. Enjoy this new journey with us as we get to know one another again.

"Relationships are a mess worth making."
( I can't remember where I saw that quote, but I like it.)

The Opposition-The One I Didn't Publish.

You may ask why I am publishing this now. I am doing it because I still feel the same way, minus the anger. I think that it may help someone along the way that encounters the same thing when they make the decision to take the time and care to educate their children at home.

Well, this morning I got a taste of opposition about homeschooling. It was really bad too. I was so frustrated by the situation. It is almost impossible to argue a point with someone that has even less experience and knowledge than I do. I don't understand the thought processes of people that feel like they know both all the "other options" and all the outcomes. This is just beyond me. I am in no way claiming to know what I am getting into, but I do know that God is able to help us in what we are setting out to do. If I didn't think that He wanted us to do this I wouldn't even attempt it. My own mother wasn't this set against it.

Of course most of their argument was about socialization, when I put that to rest it was about the lack of maturity of homeschoolers. I thought that was the dumbest thing that I'd ever heard. So you are going to tell me that you think that children are immature from being exposed to a larger range of age groups as opposed to hanging out for 6+ hours with children that are all the same age. Our children's lives are made richer by being around different people of different ages, just like we are made richer by those experiences. The other thing that she said was that "they just need to learn to deal with negative situations, because after all we survived them." Yes, we did survive, but you couldn't pay me to do it all again. I realize that it is the societal norm to not deal with our kids all day everyday, but it doesn't mean that it is the norm everywhere. It also is not the norm for a husband and wife to work from home in part to prevent their niece and nephew from having to attend daycare, but we do it because it is important to us. Yes, we all need a break and I have to say that we don't get many, but lately we actually have fun with the children. Why/How? We had a change in attitude. I have noticed that time is flying by. Our children are getting so big. We can never get this time back and that is important to us. No, our parents didn't homeschool, but does that mean that we shouldn't. We all try to do what we think is best for our children and that should be okay. Again I say that we can do this.