Structured and Unstructured

Party! Party! Party! This weeks carnival of homeschooling is a party edition hosted by Misty at Home School Bytes.com. She has asked me to contribute an article, as I had submitted one last time she hosted.

I actually started this post yesterday, until I realized that it was my last day to blog about the book One Million Arrows (Which, by the way, tells some excellent stories about home schooled families.) That is what happens to the avid procrastinator, you put off Peter to meet Paul's deadline. Or in this case Peter is Misty and Paul is Julie. Well enough with the nonsense, let's get this party started.

I am constantly fighting between myself as to whether my home school personality/style should be structured or unstructured. I have always been a fly by the seat of my pants kind of guy. At times it has been a necessity. When I was a missionary in Russia, more than once I was asked to give remarks or a sermon 5 minutes before the service started. Doesn't the Bible say "always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you." (1 Peter 3:15 ESV)?

Ah! There's the key word, prepared! Often when I am unstructured, it is precisely because I am not prepared. I roll with the punches, rather than put a few jabs in of my own. Most people, like myself, who think they like getting things done at the very last minute are just fooling themselves. They like it because it's the only thing they've ever known.

Unstructured maybe a good style for some. but if unstructured is just a euphemism for lazy, then you have big trouble!

So here I am making a good argument to be structured. But here is the problem, when I try to be structured, I drive my kids and myself crazy. The problem is that when I structure myself, I am a very unforgiving master. If school is supposed to start at 9 and we don't start until 9:05 then the whole day is ruined! There are constant disruptions in our class day. It's the kind of thing you would expect when one of your students is nicknamed Destructo!

What I have been learning the hard way these past 2 years is that structure is good, but too much structure is suffocating. I think structured and unstructured can be on the same boat as Pete and Repeat, if you have good understanding of what structured and unstructured mean.

To me, structured means being prepared and unstructured means being flexible. This is problematic in our house as I have described my procrastination trouble in the past two posts and one of my student's has been telling me for years "I'm not flexible!". Problematic or not I see that I need to be prepared and flexible at the same time. Not unstructured because I wasn't prepared or structured because I'm inflexible.

I, like all of us, am a work in progress. On this past Friday, I got the idea for this post as I was both structured and unstructured at the same moment. On Friday, the last thing Emma does at the end of the school day is to work on her blog. The problem was she had just taken her spelling test and had not done as well as I would have wanted. We were running late (says the inflexible teacher), and I wanted her to move on to her blog, but I also wanted her to write sentences using the missed spellings words. That's when structured and unstructured were sitting in a tree s-c-h-ool-i-n-g. I told her to write a blog post using her missed spelling words.

Here is what my Bunny Girl came up with . . . (This is also available at her blog by clicking here)

I will create a story using these five words: allegiance, geometry, appearance, biennial, and disturbance. Get ready for a cool story about bunnies right now!

At school By Alice

Told by Jenny the Bunny

I was at school, during geometry when there was a sudden disturbance. "Jenny!" said my brother, Benny. " We just saw the appearance of Nero!" I whispered to him, " That cat is for show and tell. He is for the biennial of Whiskers!". Nero is my cat. He is a ancestor of Whiskers, the most famous cat in the B.S.B! I told Benny to bring me Nero after we pledge allegiance to the flag. Mrs. Honey told us to write a report of famous cat or the ancestor of a famous cat. She told us to bring a ancestor of a famous cat or draw one. After we pledged allegiance, Benny came in with a basket. A yowling basket! "Benny! What are you doing?!" I asked. Mrs. Honey asked me,"Will you please do show your show and tell please?" I looked in the basket, put it on the desk and said," Look in the basket. What do you see? The one in the middle is my pet cat, Nero. It looks like she just had kittens. Nero is related to Whiskers. And so are her baby kittens!"

The End.

By the way, B.S.B stands for the Bunny States of Bunny world. Good Bye!

So what do structured and unstructured mean to you? What other interior struggles does home education bring out in you? Please fell free to comment and let me know. Also hop on over to my daughter's bunny blog (pun intended) and let her know what you think of her story. Then do the hop back to the party at Homeschoolbytes for the rest of this weeks carnival.

Next Time: More about One Million Arrows

One Million Arrows Blog Tour

Sunday March 7th, 2010

12:34 p.m.

I have never been very good at deadlines. I am a champion procrastinator. I could even be a better one, but I keep putting off practicing.



About a month and a half ago, Julie Ferwerda contacted me about reading and reviewing her book One Million Arrows. She even sent me a copy of the book. I began reading it at once; the first two chapters were amazing. I set it aside expecting to finish it soon. Life happens, as it often does and as 2010 has been a busy, stressful year so far, it got missed.



I was supposed to go to church, visit my new nephew and go to an Oscar Party today. But I have been sidelined with a sore throat and other illnesses and opted to stay home. I may try to make the Oscar Party tonight if my health improves (Hey, I have my priorities). After resting for a few hours, I checked my e-mail to receive Julie's reminder that today is the last day of her blog tour. Seeing as I have some time on my hands without the pitter patter of my darling rug rats (for the record we have a wood floor), I will read as much of the book as I can in the next few hours and report back in.

4:33 P.M

I have read most of the book and I can highly recommend it to all. It is a book about, if I could quote the Flash Dance theme song for a moment, taking your passion and making it happen. It's actually a book about taking God's passion and making it happen. It tells the story of M.A. "PAPA" Thomas and his vision of using orphans to change the world.

The book is broken up in 3 parts Gather, Sharpen and Launch. Each section tells a little of Papa's story but generally give practical insights and inspiration from other believer's whom Ferwerda calls arrows.

The book reaffirms some basic concepts that I already believe. One is that we should not let the church raise our kids but have the parents take that responsibility. As a father, I have been failing too long in taking the leadership of our home. I would like my children to make an impact in this world for Christ. In order to do that I need practical insights on how to do that. I believe Mrs. Ferwerda does just that. I also need to just do it (first Flash Dance, now Nike).

I recommend than you read this book and then take one thing and start applying it. I am going to start working through the Westminster Catechism with my 10 year old as one of the Arrow Makers in the book does.

Head on over to OneMillionArrows.com to see how to get a copy of this magnificent book. The book is available at Amazon for $ 13.95. As a regular Amazon shopper I know that with any qualifying purchase of $25.00 or more that there is a free shipping option. So you might want to consider buying a copy for a friend as well. Click here to go to the book's page on Amazon.

That's enough being salesman Joe, I now revert to blog guy Dave to tell you this . . .



Next Time: Structured and Unstructured

Six Word Saturday

Every day as part of our school day we read aloud from a book a chapter at a time. We are currently working on Winnie the Pooh. This week when Emma was reading to us the part where Pooh gets stuck in Rabbit's door my mind drifted to the animated version.

The movies introduces a character name Gopher, who happens to be a gopher. Gopher has the signature line "I'm not in the book." The line actually has a double meaning. The straight forward meaning is that gopher's excavation services are not listed in phone book. The second meaning is that since the character was created for the movie, he is literally not in the book.

I have always appreciated children's entertainment that also has adult humor thrown in.

Which brings me to today's six words . . .

When did adult lose a letter?

When I said adult humor a moment ago perhaps some of you thought of risque or inappropriate humor. I actually meant the second definition of the adjective adult found in my Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary which states " of relating to, intended for or befitting adults, ex. an adult approach to a problem."

Webster's offers a third definition of adult as dealing in or with explicitly sexual material. But it seems that these days that is the most common definition. Adult used to mean mature, deep, grown-up. Adult has become a four letter word.

So here I am a 45 year old who does not swear (use adult language), drink alcohol (adult beverages) or watch pornography (adult videos). No wonder my parents often sit me at the kids table at family gatherings.

Seriously when did the word adult become strictly a euphemism for things we don't want kids to do? Aren't there more adult uses for the word adult?

Not sure exactly where this diatribe came from or where it's going. It's been brewing in my cranium for some time and I thought I would try to let it out. If you would like to see more Six Word Saturday head on over to Show my face dot com and join in.

Next Time: Structured and Unstructured