The Start Of Summer! (and a rambling post to prove it.)

 

 

Well... it's officially Summer 2013.  So far not too hot, but the mosquitos are eating my alive and I remember why Fall is my favorite season and not this hot ole mess that we can barely breathe nor walk or function in! 

 

First thing I want to talk about on this random blog post is my kids doing this:

 I think it may be the most annoying thing in the world to here the words "whhhaattt?"  followed by that crazy face - although the minion above looks really cute while doing it, right?  The age old question of "what?" is sometimes even replaced with "why" or "how" and that is no better.

I can feel the gray hairs growing as I type. 

 

Onto my next rambling post photo... I wish that I could tell my sons this everyday and they knew, without a doubt, that I meant it:

 

Blaze has been showing some major signs of depression or low self esteem and I just wish I could show him who he is in the eyes of the people that love him.  Who he is in CHRIST.  But, as his mother I simply cannot.  That is something he will have to figure out on his own in his own time.  For now, all I can do is boost his self esteem, praise his work ethics and endurance, and teach him what my parents never taught me - that vision plus energy plus faith equals success. 

 

What will be the next random post photo on this post.. well here it is:



I would like to sell or trade the following books if anyone is interested.

I have books for Pre-K through second grade and I am looking for books up to fifth grade.

Contact me via ashleywilsonjackson@gmail.com if you are interested. 

 

 

Next random photo... we "skipped" our homeschooling lesson for the day when we heard that the Titans were in town.. just one of many pros to homeschooling I suppose!

 

And next on my random list are these books that I would like to giveaway to one lucky winner.  If you are interested in winning this prize pack, please email me, FB, or tweet me before July 5th.  I will choose a winner on July 6th.  Some of the items in the giveaway are Quick Math Quiz drills for third and fourth grade, a teachers notepad that sticks of your fridge, a large Science Is Fun book for ages 7-12, a Math Unit book for ages 6-8, a Reading Connection book for 3rd grade, the new children's book by Tiki Barber, and this ugly hotel bedspread! Okay, just kidding on the bedspread..

 

If you are still reading this long, crazy blog post then THANK YOU.  Now it's time to talk about something very near and dear to my heart (and a lot more serious than above.)  This little girl below is my precious angel of a God-Daughter named Karissa.  She has brought such joy to my life as well as my husband's.  I have been around her since she was born and I love watching her learn and grow - but as we watched her, we realized that she was not progressing like most little girls here age.

 

Her mother, my dear friend Tiffany, took her to a specialist who sent her for futher testing and diagnosed her with Lissencephaly AKA Smooth Brain.  It has a horrible prognosis and very large death rate with the average age of death being 3 years old and the longest anyone has ever lived with it being 22 years old.  Obviously, this is a devastating blow to all of those who love her.  We would really appreciate prayers and support as we walk this journey with her mom and the rest of her family.  I just know that if anyone can kick butt it's Karissa and I have faith that God's mighty healing hand will help this little girl have a happy and healthy life. 



So, as my random but wonderful blog post comes to an end, I want to leave all of you with this.  Please never change who you are and let people love you exactly where you are at in your life.  We can never be perfect, there is no such thing as perfect people... but good news! There is a perfect God, he loves you, and he sent his son to die so that you would have everlasting life.  My challenge for you this week is to stay positive, read your bible, pray, and just smile a whole lot.  I love each and every one of you and I would love to pray for you too! Leave a prayer request in the comments and I will lift you up in prayer this week. 

 



 

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present or things yet to come. nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the Love of Christ! - Romans 8:38

A New Direction For My Blog...

 

 

Over six years ago, I ventured into the wide world of blogging.  The day I started it was snowing and I had been stuck in the house for eight days straight - with a screaming baby, two kids I was babysitting, and a 4 year old with the attitude of a 20 year old.  I sat down and the words just flowed.. and flowed.. and flowed.  As I wrote, I had people come to me and tell me how their words lifted them up or helped them through a time in need.  To say that I have wrote everything from tragedy to triumph would be an understatement.  I had to write about my daughter's death, the disconnect between my family including my in laws as well, and even the rumors that can hurt when you live in small town America.  I had to tell my readers about the death of my Nana, then of my grandmother, and then for DJ's Granny.  But, along the way I felt that I was touching others.

 

It wasn't until I met a lifelong friend Courtney, all over a blog post, that made me realize just what the blogging world has done for other people - and what it does for your soul to write it all down.  I wanted to start this new blog with the new chapter in my life of homeschooling, so I shut my other one down and put my personal writing aside.  Since then, almost daily, I am asked why I no longer blog about personal stuff and only share my homeschool life now.  The answer is that I felt I was violating other people's rights and feelings or invading their privacy by sharing my stories.  Some of the things I said really hurt the people that I wrote about - but unfortunately, it was my story, the truth, and couldn't be edited to fit in the box certain people liked to keep themselves in. 

 

Today, however, I picked up my journal and began to write and somewhere along the way God put it on my heart to share my stories again - the good, the bad, and yes, the ugly but truthful.  Ashley's Little Classroom won't just be about my homeschool life anymore, but also about my real life.  The real, very unperfect life, that will be featured in the book I plan to release in 2015 titled "Picture Un-Perfect: From Tragedy To Triumph."  This book will include a lot of my blog posts that are featured on my old blog beautifullifeofashley.blogspot.com.  You are more than welcome to go to that link and read the words for yourself.  They are very deep and very personal, but have helped many people sort through their own emotions and for that, I am very grateful.  God does a beautiful thing when he gives us a gift and I truly believe that it's a slap in the face to him if we do not use that gift for his glory so I will not let my gift go to waste anymore. 

 

I'm looking forward to this journey and to writing again.. and to meeting and sharing with a lot of you what life is really like behind my closed doors.  Hope you will be there to read along the way...

 

See Ya Soon.  

Ace is 7 Years Old Today!

I want to wish my youngest son a very happy 7th birthday!

His only wish... a tweet from Josh Freeman, QB of the Tampa Bay Bucs.

(He got his wish, yall.  Huge mommy moment for me!)

 

 

And somewhere in the middle of Mr. Landon Ace Jackson turning the big 7, he began to look

a lot more like his mama.  I kinda like finally having a kid that looks like me. :) 

 

Baby boy, I cannot begin to tell you how much joy you have brought into my life.  I couldn't even put the words onto the blog.  I will always love you, protect you, and care for you.  You will always be my baby boy, my youngest son, one of the three loves of my life.  I hope your birthday was the best one ever!  Now, stop growing please.  Love, mommy 

Warning: Moving While Homeschooling Isn't Fun!

When we first decided to move, I completely forgot that we were continuing to

homeschool until August and I would have to try to find a way to figure it all out.

Silly me, right?

 

Homeschooling is not the easiest thing in the world but if you add moving into the mix

you might as well shoot off your big toe! It would be a lot less painful, trust me.  However,

I am learning to find the positive in things so look at the picture below and you will

see my beautiful fixer upper I have purchased and plan to gut and remodel inside

and out - and yes, all while I continue to homeschool.  In the summer.  With two wild boys.

And no mommy friends, And still no church family.  Again, let's shoot off our big toe...

 

 

To be honest, we made a bold move of moving before DJ found a new job..although

he had a few offers before getting here, we still weren't sure what we would do for money,

But, as always, God provides much more than we could ever imagine,,

and my husband just happened to have a friend that had purchased a home after being hurt

while in the military, but due to unemployment still did not have the funds to live there.

He wanted someone to come in and rent, fix the place up, and then possibly either sale it to that person or move back in it and credit them 75% funds of what they had spent on the remodel.

Either way, it will be a very good deal - but of course we hope that the Lord puts it in our landlord's heart to allow us to purchase the home after we put in all the effort to make it "ours". 

 

We would love to have prayers on that from our wonderful blogger friends.  :)

 

So now you get to see the bright orange room that I will attempt to turn into a homeschool room.

And I get to tell you the story about how a mom couldn't wait to get a 3 bedroom finally

so she could have her own office.. and somehow, still did not get an office.

They convinced me to allow Ace to have one room (post on his room to follow along with the before pictures of the rest of the home) and then Blaze to get this bright room.  In return, I could use 25% of Ace's room for my babysitting needs (playpen or baby stuff) and 25% of Blaze's room will

be for homeschooling (mainly just one wall to hang stuff up plus room for two desks".

 

I will also have my own space in the living room, in a small corner, to fit a corner desk

and hopefully some bookshelves and plenty of extra space for those crazy homeschool days you all non-homeschooling moms love to hear about.  It is going to be a long, stressful summer but

it will also be full of blessings and joy .. and I simply intend on focusing on the good. 

 

I will leave you all with a photo of my life, my world, my three boys.  They are why all of this work seems like just another day in paradise :) 

"May" We Have Joy In Our Hearts!

For May, we really wanted to focus on God's love and how it applies to everyday life.

Children have a hard time applying life principles just by hearing them over and over..

or sitting in a classroom and being "taught" about them. 

I decided it was time to teach my children that not all children have a loving home, a faith based church, love and support from family and friends.  Not all children have a home, have a roof over their heads, or have a car to get to and from the store or where they need to go.  We learned about kids all over the world whose only wish is to go to school. 

My kids were floored.

The thought that there were children in the world who wanted to go to school is something my kids just didn't want to believe.  But, we got on the Internet, started exploring, and my kids learned fast I wasn't just trying to get them to enjoy school more - they saw they were blessed.

 

Sure, it didn't stick and ten minutes later they were whining that homeschool was running over time and that their brains were freezing up from all the things of the day, but the lesson was learned and I know that it stuck with them so that is the best I can ask for. 

 

 

One thing that we learned about that most public school kids probably didn't was - the NFL draft.  My friends thought I was crazy that I would use this as a teaching tool, but we actually found it very beneficial.  The kids watched as adults cried over finally seeing their dreams come a reality.  They quickly said "I can't wait to be up there" and that was the start of our discussion.

You can't get anywhere in life without working hard.  And sometimes you will fail.

After all, did you know that Micheal Jordan couldn't even make the varsity basketball team at his high school? (You're welcome for that bit of info!)

I think instilling in the kids that they have to work for everything and chances are not going to just fall into their lap is just as important, if not more so, than doing all of our school work.  Sure, we need to know Math, but what will Math help if you do not even know how to act in society? Especially in today's world.  And that leads me to my next topic...

 

How have you tackled the manners situation? Although my children have been taught from birth to say please, thank you, maam, and sir, my kids are around children all the time whose parents do not have the same standards for their own children.  It has made playdates awkward and babysitting a real challenge, not to mention it gives me less and less hope for this generation.  I am not sure why people don't feel the need to teach their children to use kind words.  Why is that such old fashioned values? I couldn't tell you how many times this month alone I have been stopped by older people telling me that my child held the door for them, said a kind word, or did something nice without being asked.  They seem so surprised that a kid in today's world would even act like that - and that really hurts my heart.  To think that my children are growing up in such a cruel world with low standards and getting worse by the day makes it hard for moms and dads really trying to live by the standards of the bible and our moral beliefs as a family.  I will tackle this situation again heavily in a future post. 

 

As we are now halfway into May, we have been working on Money.  Of course, the boys love to wear their money PJ's so we wore them while learning how to count money and give the right amount of money back for change.  We plan to have a yard sale this summer where the kids will do all of the work and have to count their money and give back their own change.  I hope this further teaches them what we have spent about seven days learning this month.  Blaze has excelled and is counting money much faster than a third grade level and Ace is right on his level as far as the public school standards are concerned - not that we follow those anyway :) 

And, sometimes, you've just gotta pull out some board games and bribe your children to be good for the week to get what you need done.  A housewife's work is never done, then throw in stay at home mom and she has two full time jobs, but then as you finally throw in that final job of 100% homeschool teacher, and somedays we are just overworked and underpaid.  I just keep saying "I Am Blessed, I Am Blessed, I Am Blessed" 

 

 

And, because of the hard times my family seems to be going through right now, I leave this post with my favorite verse.  God has made a promise to his people so if you are one of his children then hold tight to that promise and if you are not, please know that the best thing that could ever happen to your life is Jesus and accepting him is so simple yet life changing.  He wants to carry your burdens, he wants to take away your pain, He will listen even when nobody else cares.  Nobody else in your life is going to that for nothing, but he will.  All he asks is that you give him your heart and that you live the right life.  So, do it now :)

 

Jeremiah 29:11 - For I know the plans I have for you, Says the Lord, plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  

Grades For Winter and Spring 2013

 

The boys asked me to blog about their amazing grades the last two semesters! They are so proud to now both be honor roll students! What a difference homeschool makes for our family!!

 

 

Blaze - A in Math, A in Reading, A in Bible, A in English, B in Social Studies, A in Science (Spring 2013) and in Winter 2013 Blaze made Straight A's!! Way to go buddy!!

 

Ace - B in Math, B in reading, A in English, A in Social Studies, A in Science (Winter 2013) and in Spring 2013, Ace made all A's except for a B in Math!

 

We are now starting our Summer semester which will end on August 16th.  If the boys continue to do this well for the rest of the year, they will both advance to the next grade.  We will continue with my own home made curriculum as that is what seems to work the best for our family.  If you are here reading and have questions, comments, or concerns about the grading process, I am here to chat.  I want to help others that are attempting homeschool and need help!  You can also e-mail me at ashleywilsonjackson@gmail.com for help! God Bless!!



All About Our Umbrella School, Daniel One Academy!

I have had so many people ask me a million and one questions about homeschooling that I thought it was important to give direct details and information that pertains to the way we choose to educate our children.  We have had some legal issues (post to come) but overall this has been a wonderful experience all the way around.  I stand firm on my decision to homeschool and my decision to use the umbrella school, Daniel One Academy, of Cookeville, Tennessee. 

The website to the school directly is www.d1academy.org .  Here is a little info about the school provided by the website -

Daniel 1 Academy is a church-related school committed to enabling parents to educate their own children. Parents can register their children with D1A to satisfy Tennessee’s legal requirements for homeschooling. Daniel 1 offers its parents opportunities to help themselves and their children make the most of their home education experience.

Daniel 1 Academy is a member of the Association of Christian Schools International, ACSI, and is a Category IV (private) school. The founders and administrators are Jack and Cindy Holman. The Holmans have 2 grown children that they homeschooled K-12 grades. Together they have been helping other families homeschool since 1992.

I know firsthand just how wonderful that Jack and Cindy are.  We had some issues with paperwork due to a move, a death in the family, and some communication issues.  There was some missing information that was very valuable and the school could have easily either turned us away or just given up.  My grandmother passed away on March 30, 2012 as most of you know and she had me put all of my family's most important paperwork including birth certificates, social security cards, health insurance forms, life insurance forms, etc, into her safe.  After her death, I had completely forgotten about the items.  When I removed the children from their former school, I was under the assumption that their former school would help get the necessary paperwork to their new homeschool, but I was unfortunately very wrong.  They had me do a Withdrawal check list including paying lunch fees, returning books, talking to teachers, and picking up all of their purchased items.  I signed them out and completed the list assuming that they would help me help my children get the very best education possible.  I never expected them to be so difficult with anything and everything pertaining to children.  When a school boasts that they want to help the children, doesn't that include the process to help the children exceed even if they are no longer at that school? It floored me as I was told it was my responsibility and not the former schools.  They had access to this paperwork, yet instead chose to withhold it thereby delaying my children being legally enrolled in this school program... but as always, D1 stepped in, stayed calm, listened to my concerns, and helped me with anything and everything I could have asked for.  Cindy was especially helpful while listening to my concerns and guiding me in the right direction.  I cannot thank them enough for their positive attitude and willingness to help us get the most of our homeschool experience.

If you are considering enrolling your child for the 2013-2014 school year, their enrollment will be opening on June 1st.  They give discounts to those who enroll early so if you are able, go ahead and do it now!

The thing that I found the most wonderful about this school is their basis for starting the program.  It's all about JESUS!  Everyone who works for or is on the board is a Christian and professes their beliefs.  This was something very important to me as I want my children being raised on the morals and beliefs I stand and build my family upon.  On the school website they discuss their beliefs by saying:

D1A is a Christian organization meaning it was started by a group of Christians, the board members are Christians as well as the staff. It is run on Christian principles and uses and promotes Christian homeschool materials. We do not allow things in the newsletter, on the website or taught in workshops that would contradict Christian values.

If you are wanting to homeschool but possibly not interested in the Christian faith or not a believer, D1 will not turn you away on that alone.  Even on their site, they say this in regards to those who believe in homeschooling but may not share the same faith values:

However, we believe all children are given to their parents by God and therefore, all parents, regardless of religious beliefs have the God-given responsibility to educate their own children. We do not require parents to sign a statement of faith in order to homeschool under D1A. We do ask that all parents respect the Christian foundation of Daniel 1 with appropriate behavior at all school events.

If only all people of this world could profess that same statement and love one another without judgement! What a wonderful place this world would be!!

So, for those of you who were asking me to blog about our homeschool choice, I hope that this post will help you find the school that we have chosen.  For those of you who do not feel D1 is a good fit, I will try to find more school resources and post them at a later time! For now, I must go because we are studying the sun and it is about to set for the evening!