Sparks and Cubbies Begins

Danya and Gloria have begun a new year in the Awanas club at our church. Danya is thrilled to finally be a Spark and Gloria is overjoyed to be a big girl Cubbie. We even broke down and bought Gloria a brand new vest for Cubbies instead of just taking the patches off of Danya's old one. They both memorized their verses for this week and proudly said them at church tonight. Danya excitedly told me that she didn't say all of John 3:16 correctly, even though she had it down pat before she left for church tonight, but that it didn't matter. She said, "My teacher says that all you have to do is TRY to say the verse. It doesn't matter if you can't say it all!" I'm afraid that I'll have to nip that in the bud. 13 years of public school will teach most kids that excellence doesn't matter as long as you make a half hearted attempt. But that's one of the very reasons we're homeschooling. I'm sure not going to encourage that mentality. I know that she is not only capable of saying the entire verse correctly, but that she is actually good at it and enjoys practicing at home. So I'm going to let her know that her dad and I expect her to always do her best and not do a shoddy job at something just because you can get away with it and not much is expected of you. The bible tells us to do all things not as if we are doing them for man but as if we are doing them for God. I may not always do so well at that myself, but I'm working on it and I want my kids to do the same. I'm glad the girls are in this program because it encourages our whole family to memorize scripture together. Also, it's a good "classroom experience" for the girls and of course provides that "socialization" that the anti-homeschooling group is always going on about. Then again, I'm not too worried about socialization. I mean, we're Americans. We're supposed to be a Republic. It's that other country that's supposed to be the Socialist Republic, not ours, right? Anyway, we've decided that at this age our girls don't need to be in 5 different activities each so this is the one that they'll be in. With our finances what they are and Daniel's shift changing so often we have really truly come to value our family time. We're not willing to hand it over to some weekly athletic team or whatever. And at this age the girls don't really understand most sports anyways. Well, it's after midnight, so I'm off to catch a few hours of sleep before our next busy day of homeschooling begins. I'm really looking forward to next week when my homeschooling friend Betsy is going to teach us all how to bake bread!