Rosh Hashanah and looking to Yom Kippur…

Perhaps not the title you would expect to find on an ‘On the Old Path’ post, but stay with me.

This school year may be categorized as the year we find ourselves.  I have not written a ton about Homeschooling for many reasons.  Frankly, there are some parts of our lives I seem to leave out entirely.  As a Homeschooler I have been at it for several years, I have looked at unschooling, classical, Charlotte Mason, Waldorf etc.  I have tried very structured curriculums, and the fly by the seat of your pants and figure it out as you go approach.  At times I can be a people pleaser to a fault, if I am going to embrace a teaching method I have felt on occasion that I need to go 100% or not at all.

The thing is many Charlotte Mason homeschoolers are diehards, Waldorf homeschoolers perhaps even more so than Mason.  What I am finding is there are bits and pieces of each that we love and other parts that just are not who we are.  I have several kids with dyslexia, and one with severe learning disabilities, which has sent us on a very different journey than I ever expected I would take.

I can still remember going to my first homeschool meeting before Elijah was even ready for Kindergarten.  I thought he would ever so easily pick up reading and we would have this picturesque adventure in learning together.  It has been anything but easy at times, I wouldn’t trade it for the world though.

Once it became clear that Joel was not going to learn like the ‘average’ child we began searching for something that might help him.  I am still looking, but we have a few things that seem to fit his style of learning.  This year Joel is learning about the Jewish culture,  we are looking at many Old Testament stories as well as the different festivals and customs of the Jewish people.  So as a family, in our own little way, we celebrated Rosh Hashanah.

Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish new year.  I love new beginnings, new years, new school years, a fresh journal, a fresh canvas.  As we welcomed the Jewish New Year we looked forward to what the next 12 months might just hold for us.  We thanked God for the past 12 months, and the multitude of blessings He has already gifted us.

A common practice is to wish folks a sweet new year, and apples and honey are often used as an outward visible sign of this wish.  We enjoyed some very sweet Honey-crisp-apples (that I thought were sweet enough all on their own) with Honey!  The kids loved the honey part.

We also made Challah bread.  I tried doing a roundish loaf I saw on Pinterest, mine however did not turn out quite the same, but was tasty just the same.  We enjoyed this with some pomegranates.  We read that one might wish another as many blessings as there are seeds in a pomegranate. (That is a lot of blessings).

Yom Kippur begins this Friday evening.  I still have not decided how closely our family will follow the tradition of fasting that accompanies this reflective time.  Yom Kippur is, The Day of Atonement. Obviously, as a Christian family this day will look different for us.  However, I think it is still a good practice to spend some time looking at our lives, praying, and considering what areas God might just be calling on us to change.

I am hoping to share more of our ‘Homeschooling Journey’ as we come into our own.  We are setting our own traditions. I am finally shedding the books and ideas that just don’t work for us.  I am leaving guilt and judgement behind, and finally spreading our wings and letting us all learn in ways that work for us even if it does not fit with the norm.