Our Bucket is Overflowing!

Our Homeschool Bucket that is! I asked my husband to help me out with a better way to title my post instead of "10 gallons of (p**p) in a 5 gallon bucket". He was no help so this is what I came up with.

Only when I constantly remind myself that I have eleven to twelve more years to fill my children's "educational" buckets, do I not feel like I need to be doing more. Sounds pretty ridiculous huh! Yep, I agree! I have recently decide that I spend WAY too much time scouring the internet (blogs, pinterest, publishers, etc.) for cool things to add to my kids' days, than I spend actually doing those cool things with my kids. My uptight type A personality is slowly deteriorating into a more laid back type A. Oh now don't get  me wrong. I still have to have all of my i's dotted and my t's crossed, but I may be able to put a cute heart to dot my "i" or a squiggly line to cross my "t". What this boils down to is putting more joy into our days. So how do I plan on doing that you might be asking?

Not worrying so much about "Fitting it all in!" a.k.a. Filling the bucket, but rather "Lighting the fire!"

As homeschoolers we know that there are certain academic things we need to teach or children. What has taken me a while to get is that I first need to teach to and train my childrens hearts. I should not say it has taken me time to get that concept. It has just taken me time to get that it is not something separate from their academic education. I think in doing so we are lighting the fire of life in our children, which flows over into academics. And me as the educator needs to find ways to keep the fire burning by building on their interests.

Of course when they are little they need to get exposed to many things in order to learn about the world and actually find their interests. They don't know if they are interested in something that they have never been exposed to. The opposite of that is true as well. So what I have learned is that I may have a beautifully laid out plan for the week/month and it may be a huge hit or it may be a huge flop. That is okay. We can then either cover the basics and move on or we can drag things out longer than planned until they are ready to move on.

I will keep filling their pails with ideas and stoking the fires as they come up. We will get all of the important things in and probably some not so important things too. I want my little ones to grow up with a sense of wonder and awe, and the desire to understand how to fit it in -to their lives- NOT just into a bucket. Buckets have a finite amount of space, our lives and hearts can hold a whole lot more.

This post went in a different direction than I planned. I guess that is what happens when it is 11 o'clock at night and I let my thoughts freely flow. I think I will set a reminder to read this once a month.

The Schoolhouse Review Crew is linking up for a Blog Cruise on the topic "Fitting it all in". Click on the button below to read the other crew members take on the subject.