Welcome
I'm Sara, the voice behind Chasing Jupiter, wife to my best friend, and homeschool mom to our two young boys.
Instagram
  • “When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love—then make that day count!” 🌿 • • • Young children are almost always excited to begin the day. They jump out of bed in the morning full of energy ready to play and explore. It made me wonder, what can I do to be excited for the morning? I want to wake up happy to see my children in the morning (preferably not until after 6am). I want to get out of bed and share in their excitement for the day ahead. • • • In the new year I began a few routines that help me enjoy my mornings a little more and make the most of the day ahead. 🌿 Making sure my house is clean before I go to bed. Laundry on, dishwasher on, counters wiped down, books and toys put away. 🌿 Laying out clothes for the kids and myself before bed, having breakfast ready to go, and school books prepared at the table. 🌿 I’m no stranger to the kind of stress and worry that keeps you awake at night. I have a time in the afternoon that I take care of bills and other worries, either by writing them down or talking to my husband. Then I make a conscious decision not to think about it again. (Stress doesn’t solve any problems anyway) 🌿 I plan one fun activity to do with the boys for the next day. Craft, art project, library trip, hike, movie day, anything that I’m excited to do with the kids. They help choose activities too. • • • My biggest struggle. Getting to bed on time. I love my time alone in the evenings so it takes a lot of self-discipline to get myself to bed at a good time so I’m feeling rested in the morning. It’s a work in progress. What about you? What helps you get out of bed with a joyful heart in the morning? 🌿
  • “If I have a friend with whom to share life I will have strength and support to hold fast to my ideals.” -Sally Clarkson 🌿 • • • Friends may be those we have coffee with on Sunday’s, or friends with children we plan play-dates with during the week, they could be people we only talk to on the phone every so often and other times we have friends we haven’t met yet but have connected with nonetheless. • • • Social media at its best, has offered a place to connect with likeminded people who encourage, inspire, and support one another. It’s wonderful to see women who have never even met still desire to see each other succeed in this homeschool journey. • • • Today for #followfriday I am sharing just a few of the homeschool accounts that I have found to be inspiring to me and I hope they will be an encouragement to you too! • • • @collinsschoolhouse for her inspiring activities and suggestions for books and a simpler homeschool. 🌿 @wandering__wild is a new friend and her beautiful family and photos are guaranteed to make you smile. 🌿 @amanda_henninger for her bright and beautiful pictures but most of all for her words. 🌿 @watsonhomestead shares beautiful photos of their homeschool days with words full of honesty about not just the good things but the hard things too. 🌿
  • “At any given time, we all have room to grow and bloom, no matter where we are planted. No matter our season of life, we each have opportunities to learn more, develop more, give more.” -Ruth Soukup 🌿 • • • There is a popular homeschool blogger I follow and not long ago I realized as I read her words and watched her videos I never left feeling encouraged to do better. Instead I would leave feeling content with “good enough”. A sentiment that has been spreading throughout social media for awhile now. Posts about unfollowing accounts that don’t make you feel good about your own homeschool days. Memes constantly reminding us we are “good enough” and that’s okay. But aren’t we called to more than “good enough”? • • • At the beginning of this month I decided I needed a change. I began to intentionally follow homeschool accounts that pushed me out of my comfort zone. Homeschool moms that shared photos of their clean house, their daily schedules, meal plans, and chore charts. Mothers who are striving for greatness while sharing the real life struggles of parenthood and refusing to be victims of their circumstance. • • • If my home is chaotic and cluttered and my days are overwhelming and stressful, it’s not because I am a homeschool mom. My days are (often) a direct result of my choices. If I choose to sleep in, or leave the laundry for tomorrow. If I let my kids watch too much television or ignore behaviour when it begins. If I skip lesson planning to “wing it” or leave the dishes in the sink for later, all of these little choices add up. • • • The seasons of motherhood and homeschooling look different for each one of us. But I truly believe we are so much more capable than “good enough”. When this season of motherhood is over I hope I can look back and say, I did my absolute best. That I strived for greatness more often than not, and I did the best I could with what I had and what I knew. 🌿
  • “He just needs a good spanking” is what a person I barely knew said to me a few years ago. It made me sad and angry all at the same time. Sad because spanking was even recommended to me by a fellow mom. And angry because she didn’t know us and yet in front of my son she said he needs to be hit for having a problem that he simply needed help navigating. This is not the kind of relationship I want with my children. • • • I refuse to parent by fear and punishment. Instead I’ll give respect to earn it. I will show patience before I expect to receive it. And I will offer grace and mercy first so they know how to offer it in return. And I will remember that there is a big difference between punishment and teaching discipline. • • • My goal is not to have the most well-behaved child in the room. It’s not to have a child who is seen and not heard. And it is certainly not to have a child who never thinks to question. When our days are more difficult than the last I will remind myself that respect gained by demands will no doubt fade with time but respect earned through trust binds relationships that last. • • • I don’t want to be left struggling to repair or rebuild a frayed relationship when my boys grow to be men. I want to cultivate this relationship today, and tomorrow, and the next day. I want it to be built up so high and so strong that it carries them into adulthood when they go out on their own. • • • There are days when I mess up and I react poorly. I am human just as they are. I am learning just as they are. And there are days (more often than I care to admit) that I need to humble myself and ask for forgiveness from those very children I am raising to be men. • • • Parenthood doesn’t come with map or a manual. But we do have our example. We can make a choice to live just as we want our children to live. We can guide by example, through gentleness, empathy, mercy, and grace for the ones we love most in this world. ❤️
  • Patience is a learned skill. It needs to be taught and then practiced daily. It’s an extremely important trait to have in this microwave culture. That said, there are some things in life that I believe don’t deserve our patience. Things like learning. —————————— We have had a slow start to the 2019 school year. Starting tomorrow we will be getting back into our regular routine of math and language arts. I’ve been putting together plans all weekend. My son completed his math months before I thought he would so I am also piecing together the next level until our new books arrived. ———————— My husband looked at the papers and books I had spread across the kitchen table, both the completed work and the work we were preparing to begin. He said “Imagine if he was in school right now. Imagine how much waiting he would be doing. I don’t think he would have the patience for that.” I agreed. ———————— And once again it struck me. How thankful I am for the gift of homeschooling. Patience is a virtue but when it comes to learning no one should ever be held back and be made to wait. Let your child travel at their own pace. If they want to read high school chemistry books in kindergarten, let them! If they want to jump ahead and master long division before they reach the grade they are meant to learn it, cheer them on. ————————— My son may not be learning at the pace I had planned. He may not even be learning what I thought he would be learning during these homeschool years. There are even times I secretly want him to slow down and just learn something the way I had so carefully planned out... but that is not the kind of patience I want him to develop. ————————— Telling any child to have patience and wait to learn something later because of some arbitrary grade is kind of crazy if you think about it. As parents it is our job to help them meet their full potential. And yes, patience is a virtue and we all need to wait sometimes but when it comes learning, let’s learn to have the patience we need to follow their lead. 🌿
  • How often do you play with your kids? I know as homeschool parents we spend almost all our time with our kids, but how often do you just play? It’s a question I’ve been asking myself lately. ——————————— I’ll admit I don’t always do well with simply playing with my children and I don’t do it often enough. There is always something to be done and in all honesty, there are things my kids enjoy that I just don’t. (I’m talking cars, lego, superhero’s and Minecraft 🙊) ——————————— But maybe I don’t have to do those things with my kids. And honestly, children are smarter than we give them credit for. They will notice if you aren’t having fun. (Let’s face it...playing lego for five minutes can feel like an hour... and I’m sure they notice when I check the time every few minutes) —————————— Here’s the thing, I love spending time with my boys. But the time I’ve spent with them lately has been on school work, chores, cooking, and library trips. All of these count and all these times are important. But I want them to grow up also remembering the times we just played together. No agenda, no limits, or lessons, just having fun. And I think sometimes as parents we need to be intentional about play. ———————————— So I made a list. What is my idea of fun and when and where does it overlap with theirs. Here is what I came up with, I enjoy drawing with the boys and they love art too. I enjoy card games and board games and they get so excited to choose a game to play as a family. And I absolutely love getting outside and running around them. Hiking, hide and seek, tag, sledding, jumping on the trampoline... etc. ——————————— These are the things I’ll be intentional about this week. When they are downstairs playing lego or cars together that will be my time to complete my tasks for the day. When they’re watching a show or playing Minecraft I’ll meal prep. But when they go outside, I’ll head out with them too. In the morning while I have my coffee I’ll draw with them. And once the chores are done after supper we’ll play a game. ———————————— And I hope they remember these days and the times we simply played together because I really, truly wanted to... not because I had to. 💕
  • Most of our “at home” learning is through play. Art, board games, experiments, rabbit trails of learning, and little DIY projects like this homemade “moon dough”. We spend hours outside (if it’s at least -5 and up... anything below that is just... nope 🥶) We read a lot of books that might look like school but not for my kids. LEGO building is a daily activity and yes we even play games on the tablet. —————————————— For two (sometimes three) hours during the day though we have official school work to complete. You know, all the subjects that go into the end of the year portfolio. Math, Language Arts, Geography, and Science. “Real school”... as someone called it the other day. 🙄 —————————————— It’s the “real school” portion of this homeschool life that I struggle with the most. The never ending bombardment of curriculum every time I scroll through Instagram. My indecisiveness when it comes to choosing books and then my constant second guessing when we’re halfway through said books. Does anyone else struggle with curriculum choices? 📚 —————————————— But then there are moments like this, watching the boys playing with the moon dough we made yesterday. I listened to their conversation as they played. My oldest asking for 1/2 of the sand while explaining to his little brother how to divide it correctly. My youngest one talking about how he was creating a “desert habitat” and my oldest said he was designing a “grasslands habitat”. They continued talking about which animals belonged where. —————————————— The unit study on habitats was months ago. It was also from a science curriculum I decided just wasn’t right. But somehow through the days they learn, and they continue that learning, not through testing and the perfect curriculum but through play. And as I watched them play I thought, “this is homeschool”, and for now I won’t be purchasing any more expensive curriculum. We’ll use the curriculum we already have and continue to play. 😉
  • “There are no dress rehearsals in parenthood (or life for that matter). No edits, cuts, or retakes. This is the live show. Unpredictable and dramatic. It’s a spectator sport with highs and lows and an audience ready to applaud or boo your efforts. We move on and try to do better tomorrow. But that first show, it will never be erased. Locked in a memory (or a picture… or a video on a smartphone) just another moment in time for the books.” - A Story of Anxiety, Bravery, and the Power of Understanding. Visit the link in my bio to read the rest of this post. If you have you have a moment pop back over and share your thoughts and maybe your own story. ❤️
  • “...And that’s life, in a nutshell, isn’t it? As children, we spend our days thinking if we just finish our school work, get the chores out of the way, we will finally be able to get back to what’s really “important”. The obstacle right in front of us is simply that, an obstacle. Something preventing us from our “real” life. Not much changes as we grow up. We quickly realize that life is still a series of interruptions and challenges. Our purpose becomes clouded as the monotony of our day grows. The big picture drops out of focus and out of reach.” (the rest of the post can be found on the blog!) ————————————— I wasn’t going to write a New Years blog post this year but my writing was influenced by a difficult week and it turned into a New Years post after all. Looking for a little bit of encouragement this week? I hope you can find some there, and if you have a moment let me know what you think! Link is in the bio! ❤️

Follow Me!

Facebook
Facebook