February Homeschool Journal

As we head into the lovely month of March and creeping closer to spring time I am drinking warm cups of coffee, devouring heart changing books, doing lots of writing and completing our February Homeschool Journal.

This last month was so full of learning for the kids and myself. Here’s a short overview of the subjects that we’ve added to our curriculum this month:

• Black History Month

• Small Introductions to Church History

• The Russian Invasion of Ukraine (improvised)

We have had many somber mornings praying as a family for the country of Ukraine, the continent of Europe, Russian protesters and many more. We’ve also had many days answering hard questions about our country’s history. Lots of thoughtful conclusions from a 3, 4 and 6 year old. As well as many joyful moments learning about courage, integrity and how doing the right thing is sometimes countercultural.

Here’s our recap on Black History Month:

We chose to participate in Black History Month this year. I Participated by taking the “Read Everybody Black Challenge” which is a prompt to read books written by black authors. I chose to customize it to suit my already rather full reading schedule through the month of February. The books that I chose were:

Jasmine Holmes and Jackie Hill Perry are excellent fellow image bearers to learn from if you’re interested in furthering your understanding of other Christians experiences in America and the Church as a minority. They also participate in Podcasts that I would highly recommend if you’re more of an audio learner.

Here are the books that I plan to read in this coming year as I continue in this endeavor of diversifying content that I ingest:

As for the kids curriculum, because we use a classical Christian style curriculum(which we love and highly recommend: https://www.memoriapress.com/) we know that it will be somewhat deficient in acknowledging and teaching black history. Therefore, I took it upon myself to compile resources for February’s history lessons.

We watched videos about significant black people in history such as Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., Ruby Bridges, Rosa Parks and more(We mostly used Home School Pop on YouTube for these videos).

Here’s a link to homeschool pops YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/qllIq284u20

We were also able to order a really neat book that tells the stories of black women in history in a way kids can understand. This book is from a book series called Little Leaders By Vashti Harrison. I recommend looking for these at your local library or ordering them online. These are compiled short stories about the significant roles these humans played in history.

Here’s a recap on what we discussed with our kids in regards to the Ukraine invasion:

When hard things are happening in the world(and even in our own homes) sometimes we want to put on brave faces for our children and pretend all is well.

But I think that’s unfair to them.

Don’t get me wrong, you know your kids better than I do. They may not be ready. Maybe they need an extremely edited version(as many children will for subjects like war) or it’s possible that they just need a break from the outside world.

Nevertheless, these kids are entering into a difficult world. Our example will be what they take with them into adulthood. If we deny anything is happening in the world, they’ll become avoidant. If we meet these situations with immediate criticism, they will also become harsh critics. If we meet these situations with empathy, logic and an immediate reaction of running to the arms of the ever sovereign God, they’ll learn to do the same.

So part of our homeschool this month was less formal. It looked like being in deep prayer throughout the day. It meant stopping whenever my 6 year old said “mommy, I think we need to pray for Ukraine again.” It looked like letting my kids see me cry real tears(instead of choking them back) when I saw that other people in the world were afraid and suffering. It meant letting them see what “break my heart for what breaks yours” looks like in real life.

Sometimes homeschool doesn’t look like book work and classical curriculum. Sometimes it’s life examples.

Here’s a recap on our gentle introduction to Church History:

We’re lightly starting this subject. Partially because I am easily overwhelmed and I need to ease into things. Partially because we already had a heavy history load this month and didn’t want to tack on too much at once.

The reason why we’re diving into this subject at all is that over the last year I have been learning about church history(a scrape off the surface on a deep subject). It’s been fascinating, eye opening and most of all, it places the modern church into a perspective that helps me work through difficult fears and traumas that I have taken away from my own church experiences.

I want my children to know where the church started, what it is, how to easily see the pitfalls in the church today, while also seeing the incredible value in the timeline that God has graciously continued with us woven in.

These are the resources that we used this month:

If you’ve made it to the end of this blog post you don’t win anything but you’ll definitely have a symbolic pat on the back from me! I appreciate you reading and being interested in the life/homeschool wanderings of the Preuss Family. If you need affordable resources for diversifying your child’s curriculum, check out your local library! Also, always check Pinterest and https://allinonehomeschool.com/ for some free homeschooling resources.

Goodbye February, Hello March and Happy Homeschooling!

I wanted to take a quick moment to explain why we choose to participate in black history month. It’s not that I think reading black authors and learning about black people should be condensed to one month a year. We wont limit it to an annual thing. This is just an excellent opportunity to choose to bring awareness to how well you diversify the perspectives that you as an adult are ingesting(and you are going to ingest content and perspective regardless of whether or not you want to. You get to decide if all of the perspectives are just a reflection of your own opinions and experiences or if you will choose to see something outside of your own experience). In turn, the way that we see people and the perspectives that we choose to ingest will affect our children who are learning how to treat people, how relate to people and how to speak about fellow image bearers based upon our example(i.e. if you’re expressions towards other humans are empathetic, your children will learn to be empathetic). During times that are polarizing and people are leaning into their reactionary opinions it’s our responsibility as believers to look for ways to bear with one another and remain unified in the body of Christ.

2 Corinthians 1: 3-7