This is a picture of my home schooled grand kids. And yes, even the infant and toddler are home schooled. These darlings are a handful and I treasure the fact that my daughter and son-in-law care so much about their children’s education that they choose to do it at home, every day in every way.

A newer study form the National Home Education Research Institutes website (http://www.nheri.org/Latest/Homeschooling-Across-America-Academic-Achievement-and-Demographic-Characteristics.html ) says that the average home schooled family is larger than most families. This says several things to me:

First of all, those children who are home schooled are able to move between grades and skills more easily. My toddler grand daughter has been playing with Montessori early stages manipulative activities. She does these often independently because they are available and because her big brothers are “doing school”. My middle grandson can begin reading when he is ready (RIGHT NOW!) because all those materials for beginning reading are in the house and ready for him to jump into rather than waiting until others catch up.

Secondly, the larger family research tells me that the “extra stuff” of school is perhaps too much for large families. I remember living in a town when my kids were in elementary school. They had the grades in public school in buildings such as Kindergarten through second one building, third and fourth in another building and 5th and 6th in the last building. Every building did a carnival. For an entire month we did carnivals. What a hassle and I kept thinking are they reading or only setting up ducks in a pond?

As public schools need more and more outside fund raising I can see where those choosing to Home School might feel they can do more with less at home. I wonder what we in public school can learn from going back to basics?

Today is my youngest daughter’s 28th birthday. She’s grown a bit. But this is still a favorite picture. This is my sister’s dress, I put my grand daughter in the dress and she was in a blog last week.

She loves family. She is in a tree with our oldest grandson. He’s still climbing trees although now without his Aunt.

And she loves travel. This is last year’s trip to Africa. What is that orang

Have you ever seen a pileated woodpecker this close. It is hard to do. You have to be patient. I’ve shown you pictures far away, but never this close. This guy is so big and beautiful and I’ve been trying to take his picture for a week.

I had to sneak up on him. He eats this suet but he is very picky. Out of the five kinds of suet we put out, he eats only two. And just like my kids, he picks the expensive stuff. When the wind is blowing, he holds on tightly to the feeder but my favorite is when the only suet left is on the bottom. He hangs upside down.

I have to be patient to find the best nuggets of faith learning, too. Sometimes I have to slow down and just look, see hear and smell to find faith lessons.

I’ve noticed that sometimes I have to sneak up on faith, and just like the big woodpecker-faith is worth the wait.