Category Archives: Holmes Homeschool

Dream Big and Go For It!

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First, a heartfelt thank you to everyone who took the time here and on Facebook last week to “help my hook.” Unfortunately, it still needs help, but hopefully it’s a little closer now. Great suggestions all—from Lu Ann, catching a glaring error (Yikes!), to thoughts about whether or not to start with dialogue, and which direction the story should go. I really do appreciate the input.

I haven’t blogged much about homeschool lately, but we are still plugging away over here. January brought an exciting change, in that we added three hours of theatre to our weekly schedule (which means that we are now reading the history book late into the evening—disguised as a bedtime story—more than ever). Cramming this additional activity into our already bursting week has, in this case, been well worth it. But it was an experience we almost missed out on.

At the beginning of the year, on one of my many homeschool group lists, I read about a new theatre opportunity at the Covey Center. My daughter expressed interest, and since the play they were going to be doing was Annie, I told her she could try out if she wanted to. I hoped she might be able to be one of the orphans or a servant at Mr. Warbucks mansion.

The day before the tryout was Sunday, and I was gone much of the day. I asked my fourteen-year-old to read over the script with her little sister, so she’d be ready. Then, in the midst of other responsibilities that day, I promptly forgot about it.

The next morning Hannah reminded me when she announced at breakfast, “I’m going to try out for the part of Annie.”

My immediate reaction was, oh no. This will not be good. She will be crushed. There will be tears. Must not allow that to happen. But it was a Monday morning, and I was still half asleep, so I didn’t actually say all that to her right away. Instead, I thought about it.

Good thing.

Who am I, I finally decided, to tell her what she can and cannot aim for? Yes, she has dyslexia, making reading a huge struggle for her. No, she hasn’t ever been in a play, nor has she had any singing experience (I figured the annual primary program probably didn’t count). Surely those things would stack against her, but when we headed off to the tryouts, she had a huge grin on her face. She was confident and excited.

On the way to the audition, I did try to tell her—as gently as possible—that there would likely be many little girls there, all of whom would love to play Annie.

“And some of those girls may have been in other plays before. The directors may want to give the lead to someone with more experience.”

“I know, Mom. I just want to try.”

And she did. My worries came back as I filled out her audition paper and wrote none next to prior experience for just about everything. But she went into the audition smiling, and when she came out a while later, she was clutching a yellow call back slip.

“Not very many kids got these!” she said excitedly and then proceeded to tell me all about the song she sang and the parts she read. “They even had me read Miss Hannigan,” she told me. “And I did her all snarly.”

Who knew? Not me. Who’d have guessed that the girl who dreads reading could pick up a script and read with expression? I was starting to think that Hannah would likely get to be an orphan, and that this could be very good. I’m all about read aloud sessions that are not sheer torture, and she seemed to be getting into this script thing.

During the callback, the girls were asked to dance. This, Hannah could do. In fact, she’d done quite a lot of it at her previous dance studio (before her brother went to college and the money for dance lessons went with him). Now she was really having fun. I snuck down the hall and peeked in for a minute, and it was then I realized she might just have a chance at the lead.

For the next several days we waited anxiously. Then finally, the email.

“Hannah has been assigned the part of an orphan in scenes 1, 2 . . . and she will play Annie in scenes 5, 6, 7.” The directors had split the role, giving Hannah the lead for part of the play. She’d done it! And it was exactly what the teacher—me—ordered. A healthy boost to her self-esteem, and the potential for lots of reading practice. In fact, she is the one coming to me with script in hand each day, telling me it’s time to read. Love it!

In the weeks since then, Hannah has skipped off to rehearsal with joy in her heart. She loves the play. She’s made new friends. She’s happy in all the scenes, both when she is Annie, when she is an orphan, and when it’s her turn to get props on and off stage. I continue to marvel at our good fortune and at her can-do attitude. At first, I wondered where she got it from, but a quick look around the dinner table, and I had my answer.

My husband thinks he is some kind of superhero—or ironman. And he is, having run over a dozen marathons, competed in several triathlons, and completed an Ironman competition last year in 14 hours. He sets goals; he works hard; he achieves. Last year leading up to the Ironman, we all watched his intense and amazing training. And Hannah was right there with us at the finish line.

Hannah’s brother dreamed of going to a college that costs $26,000 a year in tuition alone. Coming from this single income family of seven, that goal was farther out there than the Ironman. Along with the rest of us, Hannah watched the color rise on the chart on the basement door. She was part of it, giving up dance so he could get there. And there he is, and has been all year, at the school he dreamed of going to. He’s loving it. He made it happen. He’s been working on more scholarships to continue to make it happen.

Hannah’s sister wanted to get a job as a lifeguard. This was another one of those “mother’s mental cringe” moments. As, But you don’t even swim that well, trailed through my mind, I was telling Carissa it was a great idea and she should go for it. She did. She nearly drowned a couple of times attempting to pass the tests, but she did pass and in the process became a very strong swimmer. She’s still a lifeguard, and she’s the youngest CPR instructor the Red Cross has right now.

Hannah’s other sister is the youngest on her school dance team. Why wait until I’m a sophomore to try out? was her mantra. It was a good one. She’ll be heading to New York to dance with that team next month.

And the craziest thing of all in our family—Hannah’s mom thinks she can write books! She imagines stories, writes them down, rewrites them, rewrites them some more. She sends them off to agents. She collects rejections. She goes back and forth on edits with her editor. Her books are in the library. Hannah thinks it’s fun to see them when we’re there.

I’ve realized that we are a family of dreamers. We imagine we can do difficult things. Quite honestly, I think we are all a lot like Hannah in that we don’t see the obstacles as much as we see the possibilties. We may not always realize success quite so simply as Hannah did, but that never seems to stop us for long.

We dream, we believe, we achieve. We like to go and do. And when we’ve gone and done, we like to go and do some more. I’ve loved publishing in the LDS market, and I hope to continue, but I also have dreams of publishing nationally. It may be a long time coming, but those dreams still burn bright for me. My husband is already gearing up for another Ironman next year. My son is talking about Ivy League graduate schools back east. My daughter wants to be an EMT—within the next eighteen months. My other daughter has talked about dancing at Juliard someday (somehow I think next month’s New York trip is only going to intensify that desire). Are we all crazy? Maybe a little, but I think it’s mostly a good thing.

I really shouldn’t be surprised that Hannah wanted to be, and believed she could be, Annie. I hope, in the future, she’ll continue to think she can be anything she wants to. And the next time she comes to me and tells me she wants to be an olympic gymnast or be an artist for Disney, I’m going to banish those negative thoughts and tell her to dream big and go for it.

That’s a wrap!

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As I mentioned in a previous post, I love all things having to do with fall and the holdays. I feel a little giddy when September arrives and I notice the first color changes on the mountains. But by the time December and Christmas are upon us, I’m exhausted, positively wiped out from all this joyous season entails. It’s truly the most wonderful and insane time of the year.

As a result, I didn’t post about homeschool for October or November, nor have I posted anything about writing lately. So today’s summary is going to wrap all that up into one—including a note about an opportunity to win Covenant’s 2010 Christmas Anthology, Where Will Christmas Find Us? For more info. on that, keep reading. But first, a quick run-down of the craziness we’ve had around here the past sixty or so days.

With homeschool—science units on Oceanography and the Atmosphere, complete with a boatload of fun experiments. A field trip to the Scera to see The Reluctant Dragon, and another to The Covey Center to see Knuffle Bunny . We made more salt dough models (I think children will recall anything they learn if they get to make it in salt dough), read more of the Sarah Plain and Tall Series, the Fudge series, and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. We visited Pumpkin Land (where my daughter sadly informed me that this is her last year there, as she is getting too big), made Frankenstein Jello, and had a party that used up a good portion of our toilet paper supply.

For Halloween I sewed Woody and Jessie costumes for my two youngest, and on the 29th both started and finished Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head for my husband and I. On the 30th we had about 25 people here for our traditional soup and chili dinner before trick-or-treating. Those same 25 plus a few more joined us for a crazy, chaotic Thanksgiving. Throw in a school play here and a dance recital there, along with a trip or two to visit our son at college and whew! What a couple of months. It was crazy and fun and left me so exhausted that I’ve yet to remove the rotting pumpkins from my front porch. Maybe I’ll just throw some garland on them if I ever get around to decorating the outside of our house for Christmas.

As for writing . . . are you laughing yet? Superwoman I am not, and unfortunately, my writing is the thing that suffers most in all this madness. And that, while as it should be–I have the rest of my life to write, but only so long with our children–is still painful. I miss my characters and creativity. Thankfully weekends like the earlier Authors Incognito retreat, allow me to see that the creativity is still there, hibernating in my brain until a later date when I am allowed more than two seconds at a time for coherent thought.

But I do have some exciting news. First, Covenant’s 2010 Christmas short story collection is now available in stores. Twelve authors, myself included, have shared Christmas memories about poignant moments in our lives. Today, over at Tristi Pinkston’s Blog, you can win a free copy as part of her Merry Month of Miracles countdown to her next release, Dearly Departed. I haven’t had a sneak peak at Tristi’s latest book, but you can read here, how much I’ve loved her other books. I’m looking forward to curling up with this next one on a snowy January day.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying hanging out at Tristi’s blog all month. She is one of those people that make me tired just thinking of all she does. From homeschooling all four of her children, to writing much faster than I do, to blogging, book reviews, editing etc. she is one amazing lady. The first time I met Tristi she was teaching a class at the Storymakers conference in 2007. What she said in that class, about being true to ourselves in our writing, so resonated with me that I felt I knew her well already and that she was a Kindred spirit. Congratulations Tristi, on your upcoming book and all that you do. You inspire slackers like me!

And speaking of slackers, upcoming releases, and miracles . . . Covenant will be publishing one of my historical romances this spring. More on that later. But now, I’ve got a math lesson to teach 🙂

Happy Holidays everyone. May your days be merry and bright, and may you get more sleep than I do at night!

Off and Running

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Last year my both my blogging habits and my blog reading habits changed quite a bit. Instead of spending what little time I had at the computer focused on writing, I found myself lurking on homeschool sites as I tried to hurriedly educate myself on the huge venture I’d undertaken. Many of those sites became my lifeline. Just knowing there were other moms out there struggling through the daily and, at times, overwhelming task of educating their children was an immense comfort. Even more than this comfort, I found inspiration in their ideas and enthusiasm. And now—a scant year later—I feel ready to share some of my own creative ideas and solutions. What a difference that year has made. Our days are certainly not perfect, and my daughter’s learning challenges continue to be many, but we are making this work. More than that, we are making the work fun.

So, aside from my monstrously big goal of finding time to write seriously again, I’ve also set a goal to blog about our homeschool at least once a month this year. It will keep me accountable, and just maybe some other “newbie” homeschool mother will stumble upon my post and find her own inspiration to keep on going.

And with that, here is a glimpse of our first month of the 2010-2011 school year. I’m happy to say that we are off and running.


As a review before our Science Unit 1 test on the water cycle, I filled up water balloons and wrote vocabulary words on them. The girls had several turns to be blindfolded and pick a balloon. If they could give the correct definition of the word on their balloons, then they were allowed to keep the balloons or pop them however they wanted to. But . . . if they got the definition wrong, I got to pop the balloons over their heads. It was a lot of fun, everyone aced the test, and I’m pretty confident they will remember what we learned for a long time.

Hannah continues to be a wonder with clay. One thing I learned last year is that it is important to have fun! As our budget is tight this year (son in college), we’ve had to cut back on a lot of the extra curricular activities we did last year. Instead we’ve incorporated weekly art, cooking, and sewing (she is a crafty type girl :D) into our curriculum. The morning is for being serious; the afternoon is still about learning but less with books and more with hands on.

Andrew is—not a baby anymore! Or at least he doesn’t think he is. Things are a little trickier this year, as he naps less and wants to do everything that we are. I’ve found it best if we let him help where he can. It takes longer to get through our day, but having a toddler around certainly keeps things lively. And no one will ever be able to tell me that homeschooled children are not able to focus like children in a regular classroom can. Have you ever tried taking a math test with a 21 month old driving his muscial fire truck around and around and around your desk?

To ease a bit of our mom stress, and to keep things fun for our girls, a friend and I are trading off teaching science and language arts this year. So far, so good. It’s nice to have friends around, and it keeps everyone on schedule. By the way, did you know that you can inflate a balloon by putting it over the top of a soda bottle and then very carefully unscrewing the lid? Just one of many cool science experiments we did during our Ocean Science Unit. Thanks Bill Nye!
Note: See my daughter with her uncombed hair and PJ’s still on? Some days are just like that—and it’s okay!

Field trip report: Took advantage of Thanksgiving Point’s two buck Tuesdays in August. The museum was crazy crowded, the farm was fun (especially when Andrew tried to climb in with the cows and sampled the goat’s food), the gardens were gorgeous.
We also attended a back-to-school picnic with Alpine Online. Now, if I could just find those scraps of paper that I wrote down all those other moms’ phone numbers on . . .

Loving Literature: I introduced Hannah to Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. I thought she might be able to identify with the main character, Peter, and his frustration with his pesky little brother, Fudge. I was right on. After that we devoured (and I mean devoured, for three days straight we pretty much ignored other language arts related work so we could READ!)Robin McKinley’s Beauty. And that, I admit, was my choice for personal, writing-related reading. Since I really want to write in this genre (and want to make what I’ve already written in this genre better), I am revisiting favorites to see just what it is that makes them so great. Beauty, I am pleased to say, was just as splendid as ever. My daughter summed it up nicely this morning when she sighed and said, “I’m so sad we finished that book.” I couldn’t agree more, though it was the perfect way to spend a couple of rainy afternoons in early October.

The Learning Curve

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It was about this time a year ago that I was making the agonizing decision of whether or not to pull my daughter out of her charter school (a great school that I really love) to homeschool her. Ultimately, after quite a lot of prayer and pondering, I (we, though my husband left this decision largely up to me) decided we would teach her at home. I’ll go into the reasons in a future post, but with the first year behind us, I feel strongly it was the right thing to do. That said, I have to admit the learning curve was pretty steep for both of us. Here are a few things we’ve discovered along the way.

-Starting homeschool the same year you’ve had a baby, are building a home, and will have to move twice is probably NOT a good idea.

-Once started, there is no going back (literally in our case, as our previous charter school has a long waiting list), so it’s best to dive in and plow through whatever obstacles you’re dealing with.

-Having a set schedule is vital.

-Following that set schedule everyday is unrealistic. And that’s okay. If, for example, the opportunity presents itself for you and your child to see a crane in action (as it lifts the trusses onto your future home) you should put away the science book and head outside to witness some firsthand engineering.

-Math is best done first thing in the morning before you are both too cranky.

-It’s okay to eat marshmallows while you do that math.

-It’s generally not okay, however, to wear your pajamas while you eat marshmallows and do math. What you’re wearing really does affect performance.

-P.E. is important for both teacher and student, or—in this case—mother and child. Units on rollerblading or Tae Bo are perfectly acceptable.

-Aside from unique PE activities, homeschool encompasses learning in other, unusual ways. Because Hannah learned at home this year, she finally had time to take piano lessons (and did awesome at her first recital last night) and was able to realize her dream of being on a dance team. She also learned how to make her own pancakes, eggs, and cupcakes (a ten year-old’s favorite food groups), change a diaper, and navigate her own laptop. These might be simple things for many children, but for Hannah each was a significant victory.

-Curriculum is hugely important. Saxon Math, Core Knowledge, All About Spelling, and K12 are all excellent choices.

-Field trips are fun and a real perk of homeschool. This year we . . . visited the Thanksgiving Point Museum, farm, and gardens, went to This is the Place State Park and Old Deseret Village, hiked in Provo canyon, spent a very cold morning at Hee Haw’s, attended a Utah Valley Symphony concert, attended two plays at the Scera theater—Stellaluna and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie—went rollerblading at Classic Skating, went ice skating at The Peaks, visited the children’s museum in Carson City, Nevada, visited the Rosenbruch museum in St. George, went on a space camp mission, and went to Hogle Zoo. A big thank you to Alpine online for providing many of those experiences.

-Getting through all that great curriculum and going on all those field trips took a lot of time—about 1080 hours. That’s 1080 hours that had to come from somewhere. In other words, I had 1080 less hours for meal planning, cooking, cleaning, shopping, baking, sewing, ironing, laundry, organizing, bill paying, blogging, and writing.

-The upside: I spent 1080 more hours with my daughter.

And for us, that upside says it all. I’ll be the first to admit that homeschooling is not for everyone. There were several days this year I thought it wasn’t for me. But it is, I’ve discovered, very good for my daughter. A year into this I’ve noticed her stress decrease, her confidence level soar, and her enthusiasm and love of learning take flight. To say the least, it’s been a bumpy ride, but as I look back over the past nine months, I want to pat us both on the back. We made it. We accomplished amazing things, and we’re in this for the long haul.