Life of Learning

So this year we decided to sign Karilee up for online public school. It's not exactly homeschool because we do have the support and structure provided by Venture Upward, but in a large part, I'm responsible for making sure the work gets done and helping her learn it. I plan to also do several units of study myself to help her learn more--mostly literature-based. I really want to take this year together to learn about things she's really curious about, develop some new skills, and help her love of learning grow. I want to post here about what we're doing and keep track of her progress. We're going to be using IXL to plan some additional curriculum to help keep her at or above her grade level. We plan to do this all school year, and if it goes well, maybe long term. Who knows?  Currently, I want to do a weekly rotation for some skills that we want to work on. M-Handwriting, T-Spanish, W-Art, TH-US Geography, F-Animal Science. She also mentioned wanted to work on Time,...

This week in Parenting we learned about pornography, screen time, and how it affects our children. It does really affect them--the changes that happen when viewing pornography in the brain and body are crazy. Even just regular screen time can rewrite the way a person thinks. I want to take the information that I learned and apply it to my family. My children get way too much screen time, although its less now that we have a yard. I'm a student so I don't know exactly how to be a parent while I'm working on school work. Things are crazy with the coronavirus too. I just need more resources about what people do to limit screen time every day. I have a good grasp on pornography--only one of my kids is old enough to talk to about that and we have. She doesn't have any access to it now. We're very careful and aware of those kinds of things. 

This week in parenting we talked about the influence pyramid and how we can respect other's agency while also influencing them to make good choices. It's really important that we teach our children to respect each other's agency. I want to be parenting after the manner of our Heavenly Father. I want to use natural consequences and controlled circumstances to allow my children to make good choices and bad choices. Then they can learn from what they are experiencing the same way that we learn here on earth.  The Anatomy of Peace is all about how we can only change ourselves first and then make way for a new and more complete relationship with those we love. It doesn't allow for people to dominate each other or manipulate each other into certain actions. I think that the world could use a good read-through of this book. They need to stop objectifying each other and start doing what they feel is right towards each other. 

This week we learned about boundaries and money. I think boundaries are a really important discussion to have before you get married and certainly before you live with someone. Almost all arguments happen because someone overstepped into someone else's boundaries. When you have a roommate you need to have cleanliness boundaries and food boundaries. When you are newlyweds you need to have communication boundaries and relationship boundaries. When you go out with friends you need to respect the boundaries that you have agreed on. If my husband went to school to work on a project with a group, but only the girl in the group showed up and he spent an evening alone with another woman--that would break one of our relationship boundaries. Even if it wasn't on purpose I would expect him to ask me to come or to postpone the meeting until more of the group could be there. That's just part of our relationship and it goes both ways. Another boundary that we have is that we always a...

This week in Parenting we learned about a book called Mindset. It's about the research of this one lady into how and why some people keep learning and some people stop. It's really important for parents to read because they can foster certain traits in themselves, but also in themselves. There are two mindsets--a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. A fixed mindset person would say things like--A person is only born with so much intelligence, I can't learn that because I'm not a that-person, or I won't try because I might fail. A growth mindset person is much more likely to try new things, think that they can keep learning their entire life, and more likely to focus on the learning than the outcome. I wrote two papers this week--one about my friend and I and our mindsets. And the other about my daughter and how I praise her and how I can be better at fostering a growth mindset in her instead of a fixed mindset. It's never too late to change or to help her chang...

This week in marriage skills class we learned about a new way to communicate. It's called the Speaker-Listener Technique. It entails having one person speak at a time while the other listens and asks if they are understanding correctly. It's a little clunky when you're not used to slowing down and speaking in a way that is easy to understand, but that helps people avoid getting heated emotionally. It is also an effective way to communicate because it gives people time to explain and even re-explain themselves.  I tried this speaking method with my daughter. It was actually really helpful to get some information from her and ask her for clarification. I also really liked it because it meant that we had each other's undivided attention if only for a short while. She got distracted after about 5 minutes, but that's pretty normal.  I was talking to my husband about the method and I mentioned to him how people were talking about doing the method without someone el...