Home School as a Place for Manifesting Miracles.

Whoever said home school was going to be easy should be taken out into the back alley for a little whoopin’! We have mostly great days, but occasionally, a real “dog downer of a day” comes along and we need a miracle to pull us through. A miracle, by definition, is an achievement by a person or group of people of an impossible goal through specific thoughts and actions. Successful home schooling, I am finding, is contingent our ability to manifest miracles.

Each day, we enter the room with our collective “stuff”. Not our physical stuff (i.e. books, computers, etc…). But our metaphysical stuff--our attitudes, our moods, our worries and responsibilities from outside the classroom, our sibling rivalry, our distractions, and our expectations. If I walk into the room with even a hint of this metaphysical baggage, they are on me like a hound dog following a scent trail at a crime scene. Somehow, by the grace of God and my own will power, I must package up all this stuff and put it aside in order to allow the miracles to come forth.

I have a new found respect for teachers and the teaching profession. I have a newfound respect for any home schoolin’ mama who has been doing this successfully for more than a month. Any teacher or mom who can hold a child’s interest and respect for an extended period of time has creative skills that could make them millions if they had chosen another profession. They must have a higher purpose in mind.

As human beings, we have a dichotomy of needs including the need for certainty and uncertainty. We need a little “meat and potatoes” and we need a little “spice”. The trick is balancing the structure and repetition with the plain old fun. Repetition is the mother of skill, but repetition can quickly create boredom and frustration which (in our house) gets expressed in interludes involving rolling and writhing on the floor in protest, picking on siblings, and storming out of the room for a little added drama.

On these days, I do the only thing I know how to do…plead to the powers that be (the kids of course) for help. Getting a healthy dose of “kiddie criticism” allows me to find opportunities to improve my “techniques”.

Evidently, per my children, Jeopardy, is desperately needed in our home school if we want to progress in the miracle manifestation department. I don’t even watch Jeopardy, so this all seems a little overwhelming. Never mind. I have enlisted their help to create the Power Point template that will allow me provide a weekly outlet for fun. That counts as computer class, right? It sounds thrilling. It sounds creative. It sounds like a small miracle will be needed to make this happen.

But I am now a creative and resourceful home schoolin' mama. I can manifest miracles daily!