#2 thing I wish I had done........

We have six kids.  They all went to school for 13 years each.  I had a few that started school a year after a brother or sister graduated......I found myself going a lot of different directions.  Sometimes circles.

  I always enjoyed it.  We had bad days, but most were good. We have a conviction, not a preference about how children should be schooled, so there was never a question about whether or not we would home-school. Because of the monstrous amount of time, energy, thought, planning, and work that went into it......I evidently wasn't looking towards the day that they would all be graduated and gone....and maybe just maybe I would like to have ALL their records in ONE notebook to look back on.

I am sentimental about some things, I like to look back on SOME things, keep a few reminders  and save a few papers that will take me back to when I couldn't leave sharp things on the cabinet!  Now we can leave scissors, knives, GUM and candles in glass containers anywhere we want. Now it is quiet in the house.

I look at my kids now and try to think back to when we were immersed in school, the whole household was geared for it.  Now we only have one in school and things are pretty different.  Lots happened with Sara and Lydia and everybody in between.

So, the #2 thing I wish I had done is keep ALL of the school records of each child in ONE place.
As each child finished their last year, I had a box I had been keeping for them all through their schooling.  From coloring the A-A-A apple in Unit 0, to their last Saxon math book.  The box included the record for each year.  Because I am a random person, I kept records different each year.  Sometimes they would be very involved and sometimes not.  I would use a little date stamp, graph paper, report cards, regular notebook paper, pens, pencils, magic markers,calendars, colored pencils, note cards, RED pens and who knows what else?  Each child has their *box* of school.  Except for Lydia.  She is still attending McEntire Institute for Higher Learning.

I am keeping the books from Rod and Staff that each of the kids learned to read with.  They all know how to read well..........I guess that I should smile at that proof and just go on......

Keeping all the records in one place instead of going into the *box* each year would have helped me to know what  to buy (or not buy)  for the other kids when they got to a certain grade.  We didn't stick to one publisher.....we used very random books: Nutrition for Dummies, Red Cross First Aid, doctrinal books from Book Heaven, leftover books from a missionary family, Texas Wildflowers, George Washington copy book, Finding Favor With God and Man, lawn care and landscaping, Menu Math, Reader's Digest plumbing, very old public school hard-back English books, Dover coloring books and I made up a list of *Most Misspelled Words*, compliments of my own children.  If we had ONLY done A-Beka, then thinking back would be pretty much just one thought.  A-Beka.

I wouldn't want my one dream *record book* to see who did the most or who got the best grades, but to have a memory that I can look at and hold.  Now that our kids are grown up and mostly gone I think it would be nice to see the list of books they read when they were little, what time we started school in 92, what did I use for Bible for four kids and what did I buy at the home-school book fair?