Inspire NOT Require Part One

[Finally getting it]
I've been a mom for almost 10 years now, and a HIP homeschooling mama for three years now. So, I'm a bit embarrassed to say that it hasn't been until this year that I finally feel like I've got my mom groove on. I'm not saying things are perfect, but for some reason I think I'm finally starting to understand and be capable of harnessing the power of INSPIRE NOT REQUIRE. Inspire NOT Require ts one of the foundational keys of I've started to live by for the past few years. Even though I believe it to be a universal truth, its been a hard one to live. It just seems that forcing yourself, or your child to do something whether its an educational thing or a work/chore thing is the easier way to go.

Once you start looking to scripture, and how God does things, its easy enough to realize that this isn't how God parents us. So why would we parent differently than God. Inspire yourself or your child is hard work, but not impossible. Its requires a system, rewards, consequences, lots of LOVE, tons of work, consistency, enthusiasm, a tremendous amount of trust, and passion.

[The Inspiration System]
This year, Scott and I created a simple system to help Inspire our children. The system has two main missions. First of all, it was to help them understand the importance of their daily required chores. I really need to have a clean home (or at least as clean of a home as is possible with so many little kids), and in order for our home to be a house of order it requires every one's help. After struggling last year to keep up, I realized this year I had to get my little ones to start helping out more. So that was mission number one. Mission number two was to motivate my children to want to study and learn. I understand that forcing my children to learn won't work, or would be far less effective than if my children chose to learn on their own accord. I wanted the latter to happen, so after a summer of reading, thinking, and praying I created a system that has worked in helping my children begin the life long journey of self-education.
[to be continued...]
I don't have time to describe my Inspire System right now. So I'll wait, and go into more detail and post some pictures of my system soon...

Share the LOVE....

Over the last few weeks, my kids have really been getting a kick out of a program on my iMac called Photo Booth. The computer has a built in camera, and allows the kids to distort their faces and make silly little movies. Seriously, its provided hours of hilarious fun for the whole family. Tonight we were having FHE at my mom's, and my family was in charge. Our Schnepf family theme for the year is 'Don't wait to be GREAT...' Each month we choose a different area to focus on. Like I said, it was my family's job to be in charge, and we were struggling to know what we should focus on this month, until yesterday. In between conference sessions we were letting the kids play around, and make some videos. Then much to my dismay, a fight broke out during the creation of a video. We decided for the month of October our theme would be 'Don't wait to be GREAT at being more patient and loving, and less easily provoked to anger.' We had a great conversation about it with the family, and Scott shared some thought from President Monson's Priesthood session talk regarding anger. What a great evening.

My sister Stacy requested that the 'anger' video we described at FHE be posted on my blog. She really wanted to see it so she could laugh at my family. I was happy to oblige as my family has some laughable thing happen most every day. What can you expect with six kiddos 9 and under. I am LOVING life even when the kids record themselves fighting...I hope you all enjoy.

An outdoor classroom!!

With the weather starting to turn cool...finally, I've been heading outside to do our 'school' time. What a treat!! I think by the end of this weekend its only suppose to be 80 degrees. BRING IT ON!! Anyway, last week we were on the back porch enjoying the weather when suddenly three of my little ones (5, 4, and 2 years olds) were begging to do 'school' like the oldest two were. So I ended up pushing together some foot rests, and side tables that came with our patio furniture set, and created a nice little space for them to do 'school' on. I LOVED to see the little ones excitement, and their desire to be like the big kids. POSITIVE PEER PRESSURE!!

I am trying, to figure out how to create a fabulous outdoor classroom. Planting winter grass is right at the top of the list, and I'll probably try to get my hands on a picnic table to setup outside. My mind is racing with the unlimited possibilities of setting up an outdoor classroom. I'll never forget a passage from Laddie where little sister is talking about how the perfect classroom would be one without walls. AMEN to that! If you have any ideas on how to create an awesome classroom please send them my way.

Peaches, peaches, and more peaches!

Last Monday, we had a home economics day! We canned 5 boxes of peaches, (4 of which were mine) and boy did we have a whole bunch of sticky fun! My Mom, sister Stacy, and sister-in-law Brittaney all came over to join in the fun. I had never canned fruit before, so I had no idea what I was doing. I know this probably sounds lame, but I must say I felt almost like I was re-living a scene right out of Little House on the Prairie. I think I'm in love with canning and feeling a bit more prepared today than I did yesterday.

Brea enjoyed some 'play' time with the cousins. Its so fun to watch them play together.


Megan manned the lid station for three hours! She was such a trooper.



Cooper and Hyrum were awesome at blanching the peaches, and were able to also help with the cutting for a tiny bit.


Jarom rotated between blanching and cutting most of the day. I was so impressed with how long he stuck with it. He is turning out to be such an amazing boy!


We ended up getting over 90 jars of peaches done! WOO-HOO! I just put them on my shelf yesterday and was so thrilled to think about how yummy the are going to taste for the next year.

Dissection time...at 10pm?!

So, I came home from a book club at around 10pm a few weeks back, and much to my surprise all my kiddos (except the one year old) were up dissecting a frog. It had been a week of dissection, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by the excitement and enthusiasm the kids displayed, as they cut open the poor little green thing. Last year, I purchased a dissection kit complete with all the tools you'd need, and quite a few specimens preserved and ready for dissection. However, I'd wimped out when it came time to actually do it. So there its been, sitting on the shelf for year now. Thank goodness Scott came to the rescue and pulled it down to check it out with Jarom.



Early that same week, Jarom had dissected an earth worm, starfish, and owl pellet. So, even though I couldn't believe the whole gang was still up at such a late hour, I couldn't help but smile, as I watched my older kids' eyes light up with intrigue and excitement. Science at 10pm at night...sounds pretty awesome to me! Okay, and it sound a bit crazy too!

First Day of School Pictures...

I decided that just because my kids don't have to leave the house to go to school they still need a 'first day of school' picture. So today I rounded them up and we took a 5 minutes to document what all the kids looked like on our first academic day of the 2009-2010 Martineau family school year.

It was to hot to go outside so I did the best I could inside...I guess they turned out okay. The important thing is that we took them...right?!


Hyrum 4 years old...enrolled in the Martineau Family Preschool! Currently using the Slow and Steady Get Me Ready book as his guide for the year!

Rebecca is 1 year old, and currently enrolled in the Martineau nursery class. She is focusing on learning how to walk right now!

Cooper my big 5 1/2 year old is a proud Kindergartner (although we don't really call it that) . He's my little core phaser who's focus is learning how to work, read, write, do a little math, and learn about science and ancient history with his older siblings.

Brea's my big 2 year old is also a core phaser. Brea really just needs to learn to stop screaming! If she can learn to just talk and not scream this year I'll be happy!! :)

Megan is my big girl in the house. She's 7 and is officially in 2nd grade, but to me she's transitioning from the core phase into the Love of Learning phase. SO EXCITING! She wants to focus on reading, writing, science (she can't wait to learn about bugs this year), history, and oh yes she wants to learn Latin!!! Gotta love a girl who is as excited as Megan is to learn everything.

Jarom is getting old way too fast. He's officially in 4th grade and is 9 years old. However, I prefer to think of him as being in the Love of Learning phase. He's becoming an amazing reader and is always excited to learn anything about plants and animals. He's also a great helper around the house and is super excited to get started with this new school year. He's also started to make big plans for what he wants to learn this year. WOO-HOO!!

[DAY ONE]
This is our first academic school day. It's been great so far.


Our binders for the year!! This was such a great project to do with the kids. It took a few hours for them to do, but now they understand what the different noteb0oks are for and I think they'll be more likely to use them. We created three binders for Jarom and Megan. A Literature Binder, A Science Binder, and A History Binder. I got the idea to do the binders from a couple of different sources...A Thomas Jefferson Education book, Charlotte Mason, and The Well Trained Mind. They each had a little different approach to how they implemented the binder system so I took bits and pieces from each of source to create a customized binder system especially created for the Martineau Family! I think its going to be great!!

Here's the plan for today (and so far we've actually stuck to it...its a miracle).
Today's Schedule:
8:00-8:30 breakfast
8:30-9:00 devotional
9:00-9:15 pictures
9:15-12:00 create school notebooks and plans with Jarom and Megan
9:15-12:00 little kids free play (no electronics)
12:00-12:30 lunch then little girls down for naps
12:30-2:30 quiet time (kids up in rooms reading books or playing with toys in playroom)
2:30-4:30 family time (play games with kids...100% focusing on kids doing what they want to)
4:30-5:00 dinner prep
5:00-5:30 clean up/pick up house
5:30-6:00 final dinner prep/free time
6:00-6:30 dinner with the whole family
6:30-7:00 FHE
7:00-7:30 family activity
7:30 Brea and Becca in bed
7:30-8:00 bedtime routine for the 4 oldest kids
8:00 Lights out for Cooper and Hyrum
8:00-9:00 Quiet in room reading time for Jarom and Megan
9:00 Lights out for Jarom and Megan
10:00 Lights out for Mom and Dad

Well quiet time is over in just a few minutes time for me to get off the computer!

Homeschool Nesting continued

Until this last week I'd only felt that crazy unstoppable urge we fondly call nesting (you know the urge to clean every nook of you house and organize every single item you own) when I was pregnant and a month or so away from delivering. So it was CRAZY WEIRD to feel like I was nesting because I'm not pregnant!! I couldn't shake the urge so finally I just went with it.

BEFORE:

Of course having a room that looks like this can sure help bring on that nesting feeling!! Here's my 'school' room's before picture. We had to much furniture in here and lots of stuff that had been piling up all summer long.

AFTER:

I thought it would take a day or two, but I ended up getting so detailed and particular it took a whole week...LITERALLY!! I started Monday and spent a good chunk of everyday all the way through Saturday. Scott actually took Tuesday off work to help me out because I was so neurotic and needed help with all the organizing projects I'd put on my list! By Saturday the list seemed to be growing...but thanks goodness with a TON of help from my amazing family we actually got everything done. It was a miracle.


Here is what we organized and cleaned last week...

• The Pantry
• The Fridge
• The Kitchen
• The Laundry Room
• The School Room
• The Craft Room
• Everyone's closets
• Everyone's rooms
• The Bookcases
• The Toy Room and Closet

Scott cleaned, fixed, or put up:

• Our family picture
• A broken door nob
• A broken kitchen cabinet
• Replaced a missing cabinet nob
• Put up our huge new world map (with wallpaper paste)
• Fixed the broken Garage Door opener (I can now use my clicker)
• Fixed a broken light in my Laundry Room (so now I can see the clothes I'm folding)
• Fixed the central vac
• Cleaned out the Garage and organized the bikes

Some of our projects...

The MAP was quite the project. When I purchased it from National Geographic I had no idea what I was getting myself into. In the end it's pretty sweet and I'm glad we got it, but hanging wallpaper is not my thing!!



The NEW and IMPROVED Craft Room. I didn't take a before picture...too bad because it was pretty awful. We had one little table from Costco piled with random stuff. So to create the Craft Room I moved about half the furniture from the School room into the Craft room. So this is a new room with NO cost!! LOVE IT!!


The Closet
The Craft room had this great closet that was just another junk area. So I cleaned it out...took like 4 hours with Scott's help and turned it into the perfect homeschool storage closet. Just what the doctor ordered!!

The Kids...were actually really great during our crazy work re-organize the entire house week. They all helped out as much as they could, and when they couldn't help or were taking a break they found things to keep themselves busy with. We were trying to keep the electronics off so they really had to entertain themselves, and they did a great job!

Among other things they of course built a fort or two...

Brea discovered ways to keep Rebecca happy for me...like pushing her in the wagon. They had a really great time for about an hour...shocking. :)



In the book Leadership Education they talk about the need to do:

• a purge of all your stuff every 6 months
• a inventory of where you are spending your time every 6 months

Of course the 6 month purge is basically an organizing de-junking session. I do mine every July/August and December/January. A 6 month inventory is a precursor to my 6 month NO and 6 month YES! I give myself permission to say NO to things that are getting in the way of my personal and family BIG goals. The 6 month YES is helping me identify the things I need to be doing to help me achieve my personal and family goals.

Its an amazing process! So now I'm done with my 6 month purge and can feel myself naturally now being ready to do my 6 month inventory!! Leadership Education articulated this process so well. The idea of every 6 months doing a physical and mental inventory, purge, and plan is a great way to keep life in order and in harmony.