Do you vow every summer to make sure your kids still read and write over the break?

I know I do. Then I am always thoroughly disappointed when no one wants to do anything of the sort. In fact, as a mom of all boys, I feel like all anyone ever wants to do is stare at screens all day. That is our battle as a generation.

Every year I enter in with delusions of grandeur, but that is okay. Yes, my intentions are good, and I do manage to get some work out of all of them, in spite of their protests.

I get it. This is summer. They don’t have to spend all day on writing, but five or ten minutes could help them stay sharp.

Here is a big lesson I have learned over the past fourteen years: The easier their work looks to them, the more likely they are to pour a little effort into it without melting into a whiny puddle in the floor.

My boys typically turn their noses up at all journal prompt books or even keeping a diary. However, when I simply hand them a simple looking worksheet, they can fly through that fairly quickly.

These journal pages are a little different than the usual writing prompts I have found online because they were tailor made for our house fiction writer. Once or twice during this past school year, of first grade, he cranked out twelve pages of a fiction story, so I would not call him a reluctant writer. Yet here we are in summer, and he is not writing anything at all. I made these journal pages to get his juices flowing again.

Next time I make a pack of these, I will do non-fiction pages for my nine-year-old. In our house we seem to have two who prefer writing non-fiction (which is me too, so I can fully relate to that), and then I have my two who enjoy fiction writing.

My best tip for encouraging summer writing:

Rewards, rewards, rewards! I do not mean big exciting rewards. Just use the one thing that they actually want to do to hold over their heads. ha! At our house, that is video games. You do your journal, brush your teeth, and do your chore, then you can play your games for a while, and I will leave you alone.

You know I have all boys and do not know a thing about raising girls, but I tried to make these pages usable for both boys and girls. Instead of going with a theme, I made them all completely different to keep it interesting. I thought the green one turned out odd, but my son said it looked like the most fun to him, so I kept it.

Good luck! I hope these will help you with that summer slump!

Click here to print all of them.

If you have a verbose writer, the lines will not hold all that they have to say. Encourage them to just flip the paper over and finish on the back. I wish we had that problem here. Instead, I have to say, “Can you write a little more details please?”

Click here to print the pack.

The post 5 Printable Summer Journal Pages to Get Your Kids Writing appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

So today, why don’t we take time to remember? Do we remember?

There was this movie called The War Room, which starred Priscilla Shirer, and Beth Moore even had a small role in it. In the movie, an elderly woman served as Priscilla Shirer’s mentor. She had something hanging on her wall that I’d never seen before: a list of answered prayers.

It was a powerful film. I hope you get a chance to watch the whole thing later, but for now, here’s a dramatic clip:

This movie was GOOD, but because it was Christian you didn’t hear about it much. Go digging for it on the internet. It’s well worth your time. I mean I saw it a YEAR ago, and I’m still remembering things I learned in this movie!

Amazon sells it for $10, or if you have Starz, you can watch it for free:

The other big thing that stuck with me was having a closet to go pray in.

Here at my new house I finally have both a list and a closet to pray in, and I am loving that.

I even made a pretty list to write my lists of answered prayers on. In only 30 minutes, I filled up four of these sheets, so if you want to use this, you may want to print 5, not just one. Yep. I turned it into a free printable, so I can share it with you.
Each list is the size of a sheet of copy paper. Click here to print it. : answeredprayerWord

I have a black and white printer, so mine didn’t have the pretty colors after all. Sad! But yours can so long as you have a color printer.

I feel like I’m living the longest answered prayer ever this year.

My list was long, and I won’t bore you with my list, but I do want to share this one with you.

I want to tell you about my support system this year. The hardest months were November 2015-April 2016. It felt like my physical body was crumbling. There were days I limped around with hip pain, and no one could tell me why. I would toss and turn, and I could not sleep because of that obnoxious hip, but no one could fix it. But the worst part was the fevers, because they would zap my energy and leave me feeling useless. Oh! And then the heart problem started. Then when they told me it was v-tach, and I read about v-tach, I thought, “Oh, great. I’m dying? I could just die any night in my sleep?”

Since my doctors couldn’t figure out my hip problem, they labeled me as having “many somatic complaints,” and they sent me to a counselor. Nice. So basically, if you have a sickness that docs don’t know how to fix they decide you need counseling. And there are lots of problems doctors cannot fix.

Many women would fall back on family during times like these, but when you live on the other side of the country from your family, you’d better hope you’ve made some friends.

It felt like a recipe for depression, my friends.

But that wasn’t how it turned out.

Sometimes God sends people who are the answers to our prayers. That’s what happened for me. I want to tell you about three people who were answers to my prayers.

Analise, my substitute

Analise

I hired Analise to watch the boys each Friday while I went to my weekly doctor visits and tests at the cardiologist, the rheumatologist, the counselor, the physical therapist, and the chiropractor.

Ladies, don’t ever feel like you are “just a nanny.” Analise was 1000 times more than just a nanny. That is a noble calling. I could not have made it through this year without her, and she was a source of happiness for my boys who were having to cope with having a mom that was “always sick.” She was fun and energetic, but she was also mature enough to handle two boys who were supposed to be doing their schoolwork, along with two pre-schoolers.

Analise was a gift from God. She was the answer to my literal cry for help.

My unofficial support group of friends: Every single one is a blessing. Laura is the one on the far right.

Laura

Laura was Daniel’s best friend’s mother. She had Daniel at her house about as much as I had him at mine, and I don’t know what I would have done if she hadn’t. I would also come home to little gifts from her all the time: bath fizzies, Bama cupcakes, and her signature sidewalk art.

Laura offered that touch that reminded me that I was still a person of value, even when I was sick and confused.

The incredible women in my home school support group. Paola is the second from the end on the right, on the sofa. Man, I miss these ladies!!

Paola

What you might not know about me is that I have this need to follow the rules and …..win. I like winning. That’s right. I too want to win and win biggly. (Hehe!) I crave success. So when I started failing, it was quite the avalanche of pride. Oh, what a humbling year it was.

I could not keep up as Joshua’s grammar/writing teacher. He had his computer program for math, but grammar was on me. But our grammar/writing tutoring sessions were every Monday afternoon. No matter how hard I tried, doctor appointments kept falling on Monday afternoon. And fevers. And just my general mess!

Fail. Fail. Fail. I felt like I was constantly failing. Joshua actually had to direct himself for most of his school work for most of that school year. I felt like I was setting him up for failure.

When we would make it on Monday afternoons, we’d be behind on assignments, because of me. Plus, JD’s entire day would be thrown off from the lack of nap at daycare, and Joshua would be in misery because he wasn’t getting much out of that class as unprepared as he was.

I didn’t have it in me to stay for Monday afternoons any longer. It took so much of my energy reserves to finish a Monday that I finally realized I could not keep it up.

We could handle the three-hour Monday morning tutoring sessions, but packing a lunch for all of us and staying for the afternoon became too much.

So it was with great humility that I wrote Paola (the Essentials tutor, Joshua’s teacher for the 2 hour afternoon session) a long note explaining why we had to drop Essentials with only five or so weeks left in the program.

And what I got from Paola was something I won’t forget. I’d back that woman up for any battle she may ever need help with. Paola gave me grace. 

She agreed that our course of action was best for us. She sympathized with all we were going through. She allowed Joshua to continue turning in his grammar charts to her, but she didn’t pressure us for anything at all. In fact, when the year was over, she congratulated me on persevering to the finish.

Have you ever known someone who gave you the exact encouragement that you needed and more? I felt like such a flake that whole semester because of all the “no’s” I was having to say. But Paola and the other CC moms accepted us right where we were in life.

It wasn’t just Paola that gave me support last school year. All of my fellow Classical Conversations moms were understanding and helpful. If only I could have brought my California friends with me to the South!

Sometimes God uses people to answer our prayers, and truly even to teach us what grace feels like.

Grace, hope, and love. I hope that he will use me to bless others as greatly as my friends and family have blessed me.

What a year of answered prayers. I can’t wait to see what God does next. I want you to all know that I am doing much better now. Thank you so much for loving us through the hard times.

Be sure to get the printable and share what God has done in your life.

The post A Place to Write Out Answered Prayers appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

That’s Daniel, 2 years ago. This photo just never gets old to me.

I’m flipping out today.

I’m a little bit stress paralyzed.

I thought I would start school on August 17th, but that’s not going to work. My grade book is set up for school to start on the 10th. The entire school calendar and all of my plans are set up for the 10th as the start date.

How did I get my plan so confused? I’ve got most of the learning materials ready, but I don’t have the cleaning and organizing done, which is just as important!!!

I want everything to look all bright and sunny and exciting for the boys’ first day.

Instead, my closet is a wreck. My office looks like a school supply store crashed into a library.

My mom isn’t arriving until Friday because I was thinking school started on the 17th.

Did I mention that I have a headache?

I have JD in my lap, Caleb and Daniel are across the street bugging the neighbors, and it’s 10:45 am already.

On a high note, I have accomplished 3 things today:

1. I read my Bible and prayed.

2. I actually got cleaned up and dressed. Thankfully, Alan was here for me to do that. Now he’s at the library.

Alan made fun of me for putting ‘shower’ on my to do list and checking it off. I stand by my list. Showering is an accomplishment for moms.

3. I created and printed Joshua’s seat work assignment sheet for the year. This is a home school life saver. Joshua is in 4th grade. He’s able to do a great deal of self-directed work. With this list, if I’m too busy to help him, he can simply look at his list and go to the next thing.

This list is sort of specific to Joshua, but if it helps anyone, I’m including it. Maybe it can at least help other home school moms get ideas.

What I do is print it, take it to Staples, and ask them to make me 100 copies.

100 should get us to April, since we don’t do seat work on tutoring days or field trip days.

I already did this for Caleb’s seat work template, so I know that to get these 2 sheets printed as 1 sheet front and back, times 100, comes out to $25, including tax. Huge time and sanity saver!

Click here for the printable: Essentials Seatwork

Once it’s printed, I just fill in the blanks of the specifics for what I want them to do, but at least I don’t have to write “Copy Spelling”, “Read”, “Copy charts”, “Write multiplication tables”, and “Handwriting”, etc., etc. etc. 100 times!

Okay, I’m watching my poor neighbor friend wrangle our two 4-year-olds. They are playing soccer in her front yard. I’d better go help.

*********

I’m happy to report that I got all 100 copies printed at Staples, as well as Spelling List copies. Now to get this place lookin’ good!

The post Back to School Stress and a Free Seatwork Printable for Your Home School appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.