One Homeschooler's Transition to Adulthood

What's it like having a kid about to leave for college?

It's a time of transition. 

Some days I am excited.  

Some days I do a lot of crying realizing how much I'll miss her. 

I have always homeschooled her, and I was always a parent first, but in the last several months to a year, my daughter has become a true friend and intellectual companion, so it will be a real loss for me when she goes away.  

She's graduated, but she actually has just a few more Physics assignments to complete for me before June, so she's technically not entirely done with her academic work. 

She's working (almost full time) to pay for college tuition and housing next year. She'll be going to school without taking any loans and accumulating any debt. So she's trying to manage her Physics, household chores like laundry, and hobbies like piano in the time left over at the end of her work days. I'm giving her some advice about that, but also giving her more space to fail than I have ever given her before. Managing life and work will be a life-long struggle, will it not? I didn't make my bed on a regular basis until my thirties. I hope things will be different for her, but I realize they may not be. 

She's driving herself to work now and taking trips to church or friends' houses by herself, enjoying that freedom, but also experiencing the responsibility that comes with it, too.  

We're helping her formulate a budget and starting to give her access to credit and debit, etc. Lots of important, practical conversations are being had. 

She applied for a lease on an apartment with the other freshman girls at her college. She's actually too young to legally be on the lease for at least a few months still, but we couldn't be more proud of the way she's stepping up and handling her business, coordinating with property managers, etc. 

She's been a reader since she was four, and she is still reading enthusiastically. Her pre-ordered copy of Wes Callihan's Iliad came in the mail the other day. (See picture below.) 

And she's been a writer since she was in grade school. She still writes creatively in her free time. She's up there now, typing away at another story.   

She often talks to her siblings in the evenings, too. And even though they seem to get loud at just the time I wish the house were getting quiet, I let them talk anyway, since I recognize the time is precious and I love that they love each other and are actually friends. 

She's generally setting a stellar example of what it means be an excellent young woman for her younger siblings who are watching and rightly admiring her. I honestly think parenting her siblings is easier for me because they watch and see her respect me and then they emulate her. 

While there's some anxiety, of course, there's also an abundance of peace knowing who she is in her character and where she's headed and that the Lord is certainly with her. 

 

Prescripts Cursive Passages: Poetry

We do a little reading, piano, math, and handwriting throughout the summer. For handwriting, my Challenge student is currently working through Prescripts Cursive Passages: Poetry. In it, she recently copied "Death, Be Not Proud" by John Donne in beautiful cursive script. After completing the assignment, she drew this separate picture. "I love this poem. I used daffodils, because they always remind me of the Resurrection," she said. 

April and May in Books

Books, audio and printed, that I finished reading in April and May:

Strange New World 

The Garden of God 

Teaching From Rest

Another Sort of Learning 

Mere Christianity 

Oedipus Rex 

The Complete Poems of Keats

Skyward 

Starsight 

Books, audio and printed, I am reading or rereading:

Brideshead Revisted by Evelyn Waugh

Cytonic by Sanderson

Plutarch's Lives

The Great Tradition by Gamble

The City of God 

Camping at Macedonia Brook State Park

My husband Dwayne was planning a camping trip with some male friends from church, but the friends had a family emergency, so our family decided to use the site for an impromptu camping trip instead. 

The girls stayed in their own tent for the first time ever. Shown below is their attempt to put it together without our help. The eight person tent we bought when the oldest was a baby was too cramped the last time we all slept inside it, so it was time they graduated to their own tent. 

Apparently, a tree fell over the road and was cut away. Its large root base remained behind holding on to garnet rocks and a huge pile of fresh dirt. The base started sprouting various weeds and mosses of all sorts. I thought it made an interesting picture. 

The temperature was up into the nineties, so we enjoyed splashing in the very chilly brook. 

This is one of my summer reading goals to improve as an educator over this break. 

Funny, we checked the weather where we lived, but not forty-five minutes away where we planned to camp. What an amateur mistake! So we were not expecting the rain the first night. We had to eat dinner inside the grown-up's tent. 

Our old Ford pick-up truck came in handy for carrying supplies and wood. The family enjoys it so much. It's a charming classic. 

"One look and my stone heart crumbled; It was a valley as green as jade. I swear it was the color of hope. You've turned a stone into a rose. Hosea!" -Lyrics from "Hosea" by Andrew Peterson

There's one day in spring, maybe two, when the leaves are new, when they are still unfolding, when they are the exact color of jade. I tried to capture it in pictures. 
 

Family Visits

We enjoyed a lot of time with family during Norah's graduation. My mom and sister flew in and stayed with us for a week. Dwayne's sister and her husband Steve also came up. They stayed in a cabin a few minutes away. We shared meals and good conversation. My sister and mom were a lot of help with my house and the kids. I'm thankful family was willing to come to share the occasion. It certainly would not have been as meaningful or memorable without their presence. 

Challenge 4 Graduation

My Challenge 4 class graduated. That includes my Norah. “Lord of yourself I crown and miter you.” Teaching this group through their last two years of high school has been/ will always be one of the greatest privileges and joys of my life. One part of our Theology studies this year was reading and learning about Psalms. The pictures how the Psalm that Sam, Laura, and Norah composed together and surprised parents with as part of the ceremony. I still can’t believe we are already at this point in life. It feels like yesterday that I was teaching pre-school Norah her letters. But here we are. I testify that God is faithful, anything is possible for those who believe, His grace is sufficient, and His power is perfected in weakness.