Things that Warm my Heart

So ever since we decided to do this home school thing, I am noticing that our family does a lot of learning all time. Its like second nature--I don't even realize that we are doing it. Take yesterday, for example. I went to the library to pick up some books--and ended up getting some books on knights and princesses from the Middle Ages. One of them is a book of Medieval art and what it shows about the life and times of being a knight. And why did I get them? Well, Friday is J's birthday party and it is themed on knights, so I thought that we should know some stuff about them. Now we know what the weapons looked like (yeah, like I needed to give any incentive to like violence) and what the different decorations on knight's shields said about them. During church, I went a bit further in my thinking and found a couple passages that talked about God as a shield and putting on the whole armor of God--perfectly related for a boy who loves this stuff. I can't wait to share that with him tonight. We plan to somehow translate that to our party this weekend.

But over the past week, something happened that just warmed my heart and almost made me cry. It also gave me every bit of ammunition that I needed to justify my decision to home school. Friday I was diligently making my grocery list when J said he wanted to help write the list. I thought I would write one word and then he would copy it--not so. I told him that I needed milk--before I could spell it for him, he sounded out the first letter and then wrote it down. He was able to accurately do this with just about all the consonants. I gave him the vowels. I was so proud: to know that the way that we live encourages him try new things, things that are hard; to know that i can guide him to learning new things; just to know that we can do it. K also played along, drawing pictures of the things that I needed for her own grocery list. It is amazing and humbling and wonderful and fantastic to see this growth in them. I am excited for a thousand more moments like this as they each learn something that excites them--whether it be in art or music or math or science or nature or reading or history.