I have been reading in Deuteronomy recently and last night at church Pastor spoke on Psalm 78.  Both passages, the one I've been reading and Psalm 78, talk about remembering what God has done in the past.  As I've started my last year of homeschooling, I've been thinking a lot about what God has done in my heart and life over the last 20 years of teaching. So, I think it might be appropriate to share some of those things today.

He has provided the funds to buy curriculum.  Sometimes, I used extremely expensive curriculum that was approximately $1,000 per child per year.  At other times, I've used less expensive curriculum.  However, no matter what the cost, He has always provided what we needed.  Notice, I did not say everything I wanted.  I always had a huge list of curriculum including needs and wants. The needs were always crossed off, sometimes He supplied the wants as well. 

All of my kids have been educated for all thirteen years of their schooling if you count kindergarten.  As I said we haven't always used the fanciest curriculum with all the bells and whistles, but none the less they have all been able to take the ACT and make a decent score.  Some of them even scored high enough for a scholarship.  Branwen still has her ACT to take this month, but I don't anticipate her bombing it. 

We have had experiences that we look back on now and laugh about.  Those experiences have bonded both the children and I, and the children to each other.  There was the year we were doing a unit study on indians and we made vests, headbands, loin cloths, and leggings.  You know the kind,  the ones made from paper bags.  We very carefully followed the instructions in the curriculum.  Of course, some of the kids were better than others, but we all worked together on it.  Then, later that year, Preston was reading a book on indians and discovered the leggings we made were for girls! 

Another time, I was doing Chemistry with Preston and I needed lye for an experiment.  I went to the local hardware store to locate some, and, to my chagrin discovered they didn't sell it at that particular hardware store because it is used to make meth.  I called around and finally found a store that would sell it to me, but not without a lot of sideways glances.  The next year Branwen was doing a workbook where she was to look up a specific word in the dictionary and find out the answer to a question.  The word was "lye", and the question was, "What do you make with lye?"  Not wanting to do more work than she had to, she talked herself through to the answer and finally shouted out, "METH!"  I am sure the publisher of that curriculum intended the answer to be "soap" and not "meth"!  We still laugh about that to this day.

Not all experiences have always been so funny however.  There was the time when Gilbert was in kindergarten and struggling to learn how to rhyme.  We had been working on rhyming for most of the year and still he could not understand how to rhyme.  I was frustrated.  He was frustrated.  As usual, when people get frustrated voices raise, tears are shed, someone gets hurt.  Five year old Gilbert looked up at me from his desk and said, "Mommy, can I sit on your lap?  Everything is always better on your lap."  The Lord was showing me that while education was important, my children were more important. 

I have done more history than I care to think about, gone beyond any level of science I ever wanted to learn, and corrected more English grammar than, even now, I feel competent to grade.  We have homeschooled through pregnancy, surgeries, cancer, and the death of parents.  The lessons I've learned have been many and precious.  I haven't gotten it right many times, but the Lord has been gracious, and He has worked with me even with all of my impefections, and I wouldn't trade a day of it!