Have a Happy Heart

Welcome to the September Carnival of Natural Parenting: We're all home schoolers

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared how their children learn at home as a natural part of their day. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

Would you like to know how my Wednesday last week started? My youngest, Little Z, escaped from his diaper change and was running around the house naked. Sometimes I let him run around naked, but the morning is not a good time to do this. He routinely has a morning poop, so I was trying to track him down to make sure we got his heiny in a diaper before that happened. I turned the corner to find him squatting in front of DH's desk. Yup, there he was pooping on the Persian rug. I didn't want to scare him while he was pooping, but I also didn't want him pooping on my rug! I did end up leaving out a squeal, which startled the little guy so then he ran and he wasn't finished pooping, so there was poop now several places across the floor.So I  spent the next half an hour on poop patrol, diapered the baby and then moved us out to breakfast.  So we sat down and began to eat our oatmeal. Oatmeal down the pants! Well, the morning didn't get further along and we found pee on the couch, poo on the floor, oatmeal down the pants and there was snot bubbling out the nose. Ugh! I was "pooped" before the day began. ;-) Sounds like a perfect time to start school. Say what!?!
Have you had days like that? Clearly some days are easier to deal with than others. If you have children at home I'm sure you have a similar experience you could share. So how do we get our learning done on days when we're  feeling finished before we've even started?
  Family circumstances can make it easy to start a day with a bad attitude. I have quickly learned that my attitude can influence my children's attitude.  Duh, right? It shouldn't be a surprise, but this is something I've come to see a lot more clearly in the past few weeks. I've recently noticed Big Z sighing, huffing, and even saying certain phrases..oh wait! That's something I say, yikes! I think she just taught me something, again! I'm always telling her to have a happy heart, but it really starts with me, mom! What a difference it can make.
 It's not the easiest thing to do, but I certainly shouldn't expect it from my kids if I can't do it myself.
So, how do you get a happy heart? Deep breathing and lots of praying, that's a good place to start. I've also found that taking a morning break and getting outside in some fresh air and sunshine does so much for everyone's mental attitude.  Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in all of the things you need to accomplish in a day, or start feeling self pity and lose the joy in the day. I'm working so hard on trying to give myself a good dose of "perspective" ( to be said in the voice of the food critic from Ratatouille). Once I can take a step back and get some perspective it seems to give me some renewed energy and I can move on to a better place. So looking at my morning of pee on the couch, poop on the floor and oatmeal down the pants, I looked back and laughed, it was quite funny. It helped, we got outside and were able to turn our attitudes around and have happy hearts and be successful at getting our focus on our learning for the day.
So here we are starting a new year of homeschooling. Take a  deep breath, say your prayers, get a new perspective and have a happy heart. These are my goals for the new year. How about you?
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Visit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!


Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:


A is for Apple {But right now it's more fun to pick apples!} — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment has a four-year-old who wisely knows she must forgo the worksheets for now and do things with her mother if she's going to learn.

• Baby Talks — Amy at Anktangle talks, talks, talks all day long to her preverbal baby, about simple things and complexities. (@anktangle)
• Baby University: Little Man, My Teacher — The ArtsyMama shares how her relaxed and patient "teaching" at home resulted in a confident little one when she returned to work.
• Creating a Sensory Garden — A sensory garden has given Marita at Stuff With Thing and her girls practice in math, science, budgeting, fine motor skills, and more. (@leechbabe)
• Despite the Big Yellow Bus — Seonaid at The Practical Dilettante has surprised many friends by sending her kids off to mainstream schooling — but their learning doesn't stop there. (@seonaid_lee)
• Down on the Farm — Megan at Purple Dancing Dhalias describes the multitude of skills her children learn by homeschooling on a farm.
• Early Childhood Education — First Do No Harm — Laura at Laura's Blog provides an incredible list of tips to facilitate learning at home.
• Education Starts At Home — Luschka at Diary of a First Child was happy to realize that learning at home isn't limited to older children. (@lvano)
• Every Day Is A School Day — Summer at Finding Summer lists the ways her family learns in this poem of a post. (@summerminor)
• hands on — the grumbles at grumbles and grunts read her little one Sherlock Holmes in utero. She'll continue to make learning fun now that he's on this side of the womb. (@thegrumbles)
• Have a Happy Heart — Erica at ChildOrganics has days of poop on the couch and oatmeal down the pants when sending her children to school seems like the perfect solution — until she regains her perspective. (@childorganics)
• Home Sweet Home Schooling — Check out CurlyMonkey's Blog for a photo montage of how her kids are learning anatomy, architecture, and more — all at home. (@curlymonkey_)
• Homeschooling — My Needs? — Do you homeschool for the kids, or do you do it for you? Read some thoughts from Home Grown Families. (@momtosprouts)
• Homeschooling: A Way of Life — Kimberly at Homeschooling in Nova Scotia has children who meet learning with enthusiasm and are becoming self-sufficient at a young age. (@UsborneBooksCB)
• How We Homeschooled — Deb at Living Montessori Now details in retrospect how her two lifelong learners spent their homeschooling years. (@DebChitwood)
• Learning at Home With a Preschooler and Toddler — Need some inspiration? Michelle at The Parent Vortex shares her tips and resources for lifelong learning. (@TheParentVortex)
• Learning at Home: Are We All Homeschoolers? — Kristin at Intrepid Murmurings incorporates homeschool ideas even though she plans to send her kids to school. (@sunfrog)
• Learning From Life — Mamapoekie at Authentic Parenting doesn't even have to think about how her daughter learns. She just does it. (@mamapoekie)
• Learning Through Play — What better way to learn at home than through play? Dionna at Code Name: Mama lists the many ways children learn through play, whether they know it or not. (@CodeNameMama)
• Learning With Savoury Pikelets — Deb at Science@Home breaks down how cooking facilitates learning. (@ScienceMum)
• Lessons Learned by Bowling (Yes, Bowling) — What life lessons can you learn from bowling? Ask Jessica from This is Worthwhile. (@tisworthwhile)
• Life is learning, learning is life. — Kristin, guest posting at Janet Fraser — Where birth and feminism intersect, defends the truth that children are hardwired to learn. (@JoyousLearning)
• life learning... — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children found that structured schooling is about teaching, whereas unschooling is about learning, and her family resonated with the latter.
• Live to Learn Together — RealMommy at True Confessions of a Real Mommy knows that children learn in all different styles, so only one-on-one attention can do the trick.
• Natural Parenting and the Working Mom — Jenny from Chronicles of a Nursing Mom shares how natural parenting in the Philippines — and learning at home — includes "yayas" (nannies). (@crazydigger)
• Not Back to School: How We Learn at Home — Denise at This Holistic Life has learned to describe what unschooling is, rather than what it isn't.
• Our Learning Curve — Andrea of Ella-Bean & Co. has a special bookshelf set up where her daughter can explore the world on her own terms.
• School at Our House — Where is learning happening at Kellie at Our Mindful Life's house? It is pouring all over the floor. It is digging down deep in the earth. It is everywhere!
• Schooling Three Little Piggies — Despite the mess and the chaos, Melissa at White Noise lets her children into the kitchen.
• SuperMom versus The Comic Books of Doom! — Mommy Soup at Cream of Mommy Soup realized that if "getting the kids to read" was the goal, it didn't matter what the kids read. (@mommysoup)
• The joy of learning at home — Heather at Life, Gluten Free has a daughter who sees magic in the stars and understands the honeybees. (@lifeglutenfree)
• those who can't teach — Do you need a superiority complex to homeschool? Stefanie at Very, Very Fine wonders.
• Too lazy to unschool? — If unschoolers aren't lazy, Lauren at Hobo Mama wonders if she's too lazy to live her dream of free-form education. (@Hobo_Mama)
• Unschooling the School of Me — Rachael at The Variegated Life considers what she's teaching her son about work as a work-at-home mother — and the extreme work ethic she doesn't want him to emulate. (@RachaelNevins)
• What We Do All Day — Alison at BluebirdMama discovered that it's easier than she thought it would be to quantify how her child learns all day. (@childbearing)
• Who taught that kid ‘exoskeleton’? — Nervous about how you will facilitate learning at home? Don't be - they will absorb things on their own! Joni Rae at Tales of a Kitchen Witch Momma shares her story. (@kitchenwitch)