Susan's Homeschool Blog

ass xnxx se la entierro toda a mi prima.

Have a Restful, Refreshing Year

January 1st, 2020

How would you like to have the most restful, refreshing year you’ve ever had? You can make changes to your life that will result in less stress and more satisfaction with the life you have.

Unless God has specifically led you to do something, don’t do it, especially if it is stressful or draining. Make up your own list of things that refresh you. Doing more of what you love will cause endorphins to be released, which will help you have a sense of well-being so you can thrive rather than just survive.

Pay attention to activities that give you energy. Make your own list. Here’s mine:

Things that Relax & Refresh Me

Nature (ocean, lake, river, mountain, beautiful garden with flowers, waterfall, sunset, star gazing, cloud watching)
Art (painting, coloring doodle books, watercolor, mixed media)
Talking to friends (phoning/visiting family and close friends, talking about things that matter)
Reading refreshing books (non-fiction self-help in fun areas like gardening, Christian books that uplift rather than drag down)
Going to yard sales and resale shops (clothing that fits and is feminine, fun activities/homeschool stuff, gifts to give the people I love, how God has provided for me all these years)
Brainstorming fun blog posts & YouTube videos
Writing poetry
Planning something (the homeschool year, date nights/weekends away, the garden/backyard, one of my kid’s themed birthday parties)
Organizing things (seeing orderly rooms, drawers, shelves is satisfying)
Watching YouTube videos (building my learning in different areas)
Going on field trips with my family (adventures, family bonding time, hands-on learning)
A fire in the fireplace (s’mores in the fire pit outside, candles lit in the living room or dining room)
A hot bath (Epsom salt, bubble bath)
Writing from my heart (do more 10-minute writing prompts for the sheer joy of writing)

More Ideas for Making Your Life Less Stressful

“Fatigue, studies suggest, often has its source in emotional rather than muscular or cardiovascular exhaustion…” – Richard A Swenson, author of Margin. Find out how to create margin (space) in your life so that you are not always tired:

Make sure you get enough quality sleep:

Find a form of exercise that you enjoy (mine is Zumba), and do it several times a week. You will feel way better and think with a crisper mind and not feel bogged down. Here are some ideas to get you started:

Exercise and Fitness Articles

Have more fun with your spouse:

32 Date Night Ideas for Married Couples (with PDF)

If spending time with friends energizes you, work that into your week. But if being around people all the time drains you, reduce the amount of time spent with people. You can still invest in the lives of others by writing encouraging notes to the people you love instead. Most people I know keep every encouraging note they’ve ever received, and often you minister more to people with something tangible.

Don’t feel bad if you have to drastically reduce the amount of time you spend with groups of people that drain you rather than refresh you. Ask God how you can thrive given the limits of your personality.

I’ve been reading a book called Psychology Through the Eyes of Faith, and one of the chapters talked about ways to bring about more happiness in our lives:

Break the cycle of negative thinking.
Compare ourselves with those less fortunate.
Take pleasure in the moment.
Focus beyond self.
Exercise, sleep, and silence create a sound body.
Give priority to close relationships.
Take care of the soul.

Have a More Restful Homeschool (+ Giveaway!)

Many of you who homeschool feel pressured to do more and more activities. One of the homeschool blogger friends I met at the 2:1 Conference this year (Aimee Smith) wrote a book called The Restful Homeschool Resolution. I’m giving away a copy of her book.

Here is a blurb from the back of the book: With personal stories, spiritual insight, and practical next steps, The Restful Homeschool Resolution helps you discover deep soul rest as you learn to trust God’s perfect plan for your family’s homeschool. Your resolution to seek Jesus first will transform your homeschool as your own heart grows more restful.

Along with this new book, I will also throw in two gently used books to go along with this restful theme: Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives and The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life.

Finally, to start the new year, I am giving away two refreshing audios to everyone who signs up for my monthly newsletter below: “Overcoming Burnout” and “Relieving Stress & Tension.”

Overcoming Burnout: Do you wonder why you never have any energy? Do you feel guilty for not being able to give more to your husband and children because of tiredness? Leave the guilt behind while listening to this refreshing one-hour audio, which gives three examples from Scripture of people who were exhausted, why they were exhausted, and how they overcame their exhaustion. I also give practical ideas from my own life, to help you avoid burnout in the future.

Relieving Stress and Tension: This one-hour audio workshop will show you:

How to get immediate relief from tension by pressing trigger points, minimizing noise, and other simple tactics.
How to get long-term relief from tension by trusting God, nurturing your marriage, and connecting with your children. Practical ideas to accomplish these. This section includes a short talk about intimacy.
How to build rest into your day, your week, and even your year, so that you don’t feel constantly depleted.

If you would like the gift of these two audios at no cost to you, sign up for our refreshing newsletter below!

Tags: organizing, refreshing, rest, time, time management
Posted in Organization | 12 Comments »

How to Pray for Missionary Kids

December 6th, 2019

Many churches and individuals who support missionaries pray for those missionaries. But have you ever thought of praying for the missionary kids? Because they are more vulnerable to spiritual attack, missionary kids have a higher chance of experiencing despair or rebellion. Having grown up as an MK myself, the majority of MK’s that I knew rebelled against their parents, and many of them today have denied the faith and walked away from God. I have wept over many of these MK’s personally because they were my friends.

Do not neglect praying for the missionary kids. This is imperative for a missionary family to function and thrive for God’s kingdom wherever God has called them to serve. You might not know the struggles that MK’s go through in their lives, so I will tell you how you can pray for them.

Pray that they will not be bitter against their parents for being forced to live in a country where they don’t fit in. Pray that they will have godly friendships that will stand the test of time. Pray that they will not withdraw like a recluse from others after having their hearts crushed by saying good-bye so many times. Pray against spiritual attack, because even if the parents’ faith is strong, the children will have thoughts planted into their minds from the enemy who is seeking to destroy the parent’s credibility and thereby their ministry.

Pray that the girls will not be attacked by locals whose skin is darker, and who seem to think white-skinned girls are stunningly beautiful, even at age 12. Pray that the constant whistles from evil men will not distort the girl’s mind towards men in general and her future husband.

Pray for the MK’s especially as they become teenagers and have to live through all the hormones that come with that. Pray that they will not be tempted to do evil for the sake of fitting in, because MK’s more than normal people, have almost a desperation to fit in that is only magnified by hormones. This makes it nearly impossible to follow God unless their faith is incredibly solid, so pray that God will strengthen their faith and trust in Him.

And pray that the missionary kids will not abandon their faith when they leave home, that their strength and belonging might come from God, and that they will grow in their relationship to God instead of walk away.

If you would like to follow my Missionary Kid Facebook page, click here.

See my most popular MK memes and pins here.

To watch the video playlist on YouTube of our Guatemala Adventure, click here.

Buy the MK book here.

Tags: Christian Living, Growing Up as a Missionary Kid, missionaries, missionary, prayer
Posted in Growing Up as a Missionary Kid | 8 Comments »

The Insane History of Psychology: Goofy Skits

November 15th, 2019

If you are looking for some goofy skits depicting the history of psychology from ancient to pre-modern times, you have come to the right place. Today we will be taking you on a whirlwind tour of the history of psychology, including the thoughts of ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and onward to the 1800’s. We stop abruptly before Freud was born, which we will pick up in the next episode.

This is the fourth episode (fifth chapter) of our psychology course from 7 Sisters (link at the bottom of this post, if you are dying to see what it is…)

The History of Psychology: Goofy Skits

Ancient History

Since ancient times, people have been trying to understand the psyche, wanting to figure out the mind and how it functions, and why some people have mental illness. It used to be that people would cast out demons, and in New Testament times, this actually worked, curing the person… especially if Jesus was the one that ministered to them. Of course, Jesus healed physical ailments as well as mental ones because He is God. His disciples also had this power to heal physical and mental sickness.

But before the time of Christ, some people who blamed strange behavior on demons thought it would be a good idea to drill a small hole in the patient’s skull to let the demon out. It seems that the people trying to “help” were more insane than the so-called crazy person. Seriously…

Ancient Egyptians

Besides exorcism, the ancient Egyptians tried to make “medicines” made out of sheep dung and wine to cure the ailments of the mentally ill.

Ancient Greece, Hippocrates, Plato, & Aristotle

Along with exorcisms, the ancient Greeks would treat their patients kindly and gave them theater to entertain them. Hippocrates felt that mental illness had more to do with what was wrong with the brain. He divided brain disorders into mania, melancholia, brain fever, and hysteria. (The malady of hysteria was a woman-only disease.)

Plato and Aristotle believed that the mentally ill should be kept out of the public eye and be treated gently. If they committed a crime, Plato and Aristotle believed they were not responsible for their behavior.

Later Greek and Roman Ideas

Asclepiades divided mental illness into two categories: acute and chronic (short-term and long-term illness). Cicero believed that emotions could cause mental illness. Aretreus felt that normal personality traits taken to an extreme were what caused mental illness, while Galen believed that injuries to the head, adolescence, alcoholism, or a relationship break-up could cause a person to go insane (or have other mental illness like depression, which makes sense).

Middle Ages: Mass Manias

In the Middle Ages, besides taking the mentally ill to monasteries, they had two crazy mass manias of the public: tarantism (people thinking they had been bit by tarantulas) and lycanthropy (people thinking they were possessed by wolves). These two mass manias probably had natural causes, but historians are still trying to figure out what caused them.

Renaissance & King Henry VIII

During the Renaissance, people were taken to mental institutions called madhouses, and sadly, they were treated like animals. Henry VIII changed a monastery into a madhouse. Some of the mentally ill were exhibited at circuses, and others were sent out to the streets to beg.

Europe, Humanitarian Reformers, & Mesmer

Finally asylums were constructed throughout Europe where people were taught life skills and given fresh air and exercise. They were taken to the countryside to recuperate, and many patients were healed with this much more humane treatment.

It’s actually quite heartbreaking how horrible the mentally ill have been treated, from ancient times to pre-modern times. Our next episode will introduce Freud, Adler, and Jung, three of the most famous psychologists of all time. Sign up for our newsletter below to not miss a single post in the series! (Our series will pick up again in January, so stay tuned…)

The psychology curriculum we are using can be found here: {affiliate link} Introduction to Psychology by 7 Sisters Homeschool.

Tags: 7 Sisters Homeschool, high school, history, homeschool, psychology
Posted in Psychology | 16 Comments »

What Makes You Creative: Nature or Nurture?

November 8th, 2019

What makes you creative: Nature or Nurture? Today we will find out if genetics is all-important, or if learning wins out in making people who they are. We are studying high school psychology, the third and fourth chapters of our curriculum from 7 Sisters. (See link at the bottom of this post.) The third chapter is about genetics. Back when we studied biology, we did a super fun activity that I made up with Mr. Potato Heads and a gigantic punnet square:

Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head had four children. If Mr. Potato Head has a mixture of Bb (dominant brown eyes and recessive blue eyes) in his genes, and he marries Mrs. Potato Head with bb (recessive blue eyes), they will have two children with blue eyes and two children with brown eyes. (That’s because the recessive blue-eyed gene in the man combines with the recessive blue-eyed gene in the woman to create recessive blue-eyed children.)

If Mr. Potato Head had only dominant BB genes (brown eyes from both his parents), all four children would have brown eyes, even if the mom has blue eyes, because blue can’t win over brown. It’s like a game of rock-paper-scissors, where one is dominant over another and wins every time those two are together (like paper being dominant over rock every time).

We inherit a lot of physical characteristics from our parents, including capacity for thinking, creativity, and personality traits. Have you noticed that kids act a lot like their parents? The question is: is it only biological, or did the kids learn to act a certain way because they were conditioned by their environment? As far as creativity is concerned, you have the capacity to be creative because of the brain structures of your parents, and the fact that your mom wasn’t on drugs while she was pregnant with you. Nature plays a role in your capacity to be creative.

Nature or Nurture
by Rachel Evans

Years ago there was a battle between the scientists of psychology: Nature or Nurture? This battle was fought with valor and wit, until finally, some guy said that both sides were right! But seriously, the whole argument was about whether a person’s physical attributes and in-born abilities determined how they would act (Nature), or if a person’s upbringing and events that happened to them as a youngster affected how they would act (Nurture).

Truly, I am glad they figured out that both are true. But as to where I stand, I believe Nurture has a bigger role in it. If some guy Henry loved math because when he was six his math teachers were awesome, that is most definitely Nurture. If Henry never had those teachers, he might have been born with the ability to do math easily; but without finding out how to have fun doing it, he would’ve never become a world famous calculus professor. In my book, Nurture wins.

Pavlov, Skinner, & Bandura (goofy stuffed animal skits)

In this video, we will give illustrations of Nurture, which is when a person or animal is able to learn from his or her environment. Stuffed animals seem appropriate actors for this third psychology episode, since experiments were performed on animals (and humans) to see whether a specific response could be taught:

Pavlov, Skinner and Bandura
by Rachel Evans

If you refer to them by their last name, surely they did something cool. And indeed they did. These guys were psychologists studying behavior, such as what is learned versus what you were born with.

Pavlov‘s experiment is known everywhere. He took a dog. Whenever he fed the dog, he’d ring a bell right before. Eventually, even before showing the food, by ringing the bell the dog would get excited and salivate for the food. It was a learned response, a conditioned one.

Skinner‘s experiments also had to do with animals. He plopped a mouse into a box. Running around, the mouse would eventually find a lever and knock into it, dispensing a pellet of nom-noms. After a few times, the mouse learned that hitting the lever gave him yummies, therefore, the mouse was conditioned, taught, to hit the lever.

Bandura studied social learning. That is, if a child watches another child get rewarded or punished for a behavior, the child learns what to do and what not to do. This is why it’s also called observational learning. I theorize this is the main cause for violence. A person doesn’t learn to control his anger because, over the course of his life, he was rewarded for bad behavior. Therefore, he uses fighting as the answer to every problem, making the world worse for everyone.

Overall, there’s a lot to learn about behavior and learning in psychology, and I’d love to see what they have to discover next.

Getting back to the original question about creativity, even though Nature plays a role in the capacity of your brain to come up with creative thoughts, how we are brought up greatly affects our ability to think outside the box and be creative. Opportunities throughout childhood to be creative contribute to expanding the mind and enabling an adult to possess greater creativity than another adult who never had the same childhood opportunities to be creative.

In case you are wondering what curriculum we are using for psychology, we are studying {affiliate link} Introduction to Psychology by 7 Sisters Homeschool. We are having a ball with this curriculum!

Coming up next… the goofiest history of psychology you’ve ever seen! (Sign up for our monthly newsletter below if you don’t want to miss a single episode.)

Tags: 7 Sisters Homeschool, Bandura, behaviorism, genes, high school, Pavlov, psychology, Skinner
Posted in Psychology | 10 Comments »