Changed By Love

When God Changes Your Plans – August Newsletter

Sep.15,2023

Hello Safe Haven Family,

I hope you’re having a good August. My apologies for the lateness of this newsletter. The first of August came before I was ready for it. And last week had some unexpected challenges right after I finished the “Homeschooling Can Be Fun Challenge” that I had prepared for for so long. There were literal “Challenges” from Pedro Adao and Dachelle McVey, and there were relationship challenges that threw me for a loop. Don’t worry, everything’s fine with my family, but sometimes people can get upset about the strangest things.

Speaking of Challenges, the Homeschooling Can Be Fun Challenge was a great success! Many came and learned new ways to add some fun to their homeschool and how to take the drudgery and boredom out of it. You know that we want learning to be meaningful and enjoyable. This should be a time of bonding together as a family. These are the best of times. Let’s not turn them into the worst of times!

On Day 2 I talked about Familyschooling and Lifeschooling. These seemed to be the topics that had the most impact on those who attended the challenge. Several participants said that they will be applying these principles to their homeschool this year.

I also heard feedback about Day 4’s topic of Unleashing Their Creativity. We want to encourage our children to pursue their interests and passions. We also want to give them time and opportunity to be creative and develop their artistic abilities. We want to value right-brained abilities as much as we do left-brained abilities.

The world is changing, and we homeschoolers need to change with it. For more information about this check out Danielle Papageorgiou’s blog at Lifeschoolingconference.com.

I encourage everyone to pray about how God is leading you into new ways of thinking about things and doing things. He is doing a new thing! We are entering a new era. Things are being changed for the better.

It looks bad right now, because the terrible things that have been going on for decades or longer are being exposed. The crimes against children and corruption in government and all of the institutions that have been ruling over us have been going on for a long time. They are just now being exposed and dealt with.

We have been lied to by the media, by our government officials, by our education establishment, by church leaders, and by medical experts for such a long time. We have to learn to think in a whole new way as we realize the truth about our history and even the role our country has played in some of the worst travesties of justice.

We the People are finding out the truth little by little. Even now the 2-tier justice system is being exposed as the DOJ is trying to put their top political opponent in prison through all kinds of drummed-up indictments.

We are getting new revelation on Revelation. If you want to know more about that listen to Johnny Enlow HERE.

We are Opening the Sealed Book. You can find out more HERE.

I titled this newsletter “When God Changes Your Plans” because I saw Him do that a lot last week during my Challenge.

He changed my plans in the middle of my challenge. I had everything ready, I thought. But God highlighted some new themes to me that I knew I had to add. I knew that on Day 4 I was supposed to focus on unleashing their creativity, not just following their interests. And the last day I knew that I was supposed to speak about more than just how we shouldn’t try to do homeschooling alone, but also a better way to deal with evaluating our children’s progress than grades and tests.

And I felt much better about the quality of the information I covered during my challenge.

Then I had a free day planned on Tuesday, but I got a phone call from a friend asking if we could drive to the Dayton Mall area to pick up a package. We had just taken our son to work, and that put us closer to the mall, so we went from there. She didn’t tell me what was in the package. But we trusted her and changed our “plans”, and we ended up with a new Samsung Tablet for Gary! The Lord had told her to get that for him.

The next day, Gary and I met with a friend of my mom and dad at a coffee shop. We were thinking that it would be like an interview for Gary to do something for the church that my mom and dad had been so involved with for many years or for this man’s business. It kind of started out that way, but halfway through, Gary started speaking life and blessings over the man. He started telling him how he could do more for the Kingdom and how he could use social media to spread the Gospel. He told him how great God thinks he is. The man was taken aback. He didn’t really know how to take all that Gary was saying. His demeanor changed, and his all-business attitude became one of “Let’s see what the Lord might have for you to do with us in the future.”

Go ahead and make all the plans you want,
but it’s the Lord who will ultimately direct your steps.
Proverbs 16:1 TPT

Before you do anything,
put your trust totally in God and not in yourself.
Then every plan you make will succeed.

4The Lord works everything together to accomplish his purpose.
Even the wicked are included in his plans—
he sets them aside for the day of disaster.
Proverbs 16:3,4

Within your heart you can make plans for your future,
but the Lord chooses the steps you take to get there.
Proverbs 16:9

I was kind of living in Proverbs 16 last week!

If you are intrigued by what I’ve told you about the Homeschooling Can Be Fun Challenge, you can still see the videos and check out the Facebook page.

The videos are all here:

Day 1 – Don’t Do School at Home

Day 2 – Learning is Natural – Keep it that Way! Develop a Homeschool Mindset

Day 3 – We don’t have to do the things schools do – We can make it a lot more fun!

Day 4 – Follow the Interests of your children – Unleash their Creativity

Day 5 – Should we use grades and tests in homeschooling? and Don’t do it alone!

And the Facebook page is here.

Enjoy the challenge for free.

Then check out my course on The Basics of Learning and Homeschooling.

And then check out my blog at Safe Haven Homeschooling!

I’ve written a new book called “Dear Struggling Homeschool Mom, I See You”.

We had “Planned” to have it published on Amazon during the week of my challenge, but you know how plans go. We are working on it, so be watching for my announcement in the next week or two.

Thank you for your support and encouragement!

If you have any prayer requests, be sure to hit reply and tell me what’s on your heart. It gives me great joy to hear from you and to pray for you and your family.

Your Homeschool Life Coach,

Penney Douglas, B. S. in Ed.
Safe Haven Homeschooling

linktr.ee/penneydouglas
Homeschooling Can Be Fun Facebook group
My books on Amazon

And join our Christian Moms Book Club August 16 when we will be discussing 1000 Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp.

My Favorite Living Books and Authors

Jul.11,2023

I love to read Living Books to children.

Charlotte Mason gave us some clues about how to identify Living Books. If you want to ascertain if a book is a Living Book or not, ask these questions about it.

1. Is the writing of excellent quality?
    2. Does it contain living ideas and knowledge suitable for the child?
    3. Does the child react with delight caused by the spark of ideas?
    4. Does it make an impact on the reader’s mind (shown by his narrations)?

I have read so many books that I feel meet these requirements.

Below is a list that I put together of some of my favorites, along with authors that have written excellent stories that have stood the test of time. I consider most of the books they have written Living Books. I suppose you could call them Living Authors!

Enjoy this LIST of LIVING BOOKS Selected by Penney Douglas

Safe Haven Newsletter for July

Jul.10,2023

Hello Safe Haven Family,

I want to welcome my new subscribers. Thank you for joining us on this homeschool journey. You are called and chosen to make a difference in this world! Thank you for answering the call to live a life separate from the ways of the world and to raise your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We protect their innocence when they’re young, and we help direct them into their calling as they get older. We support their efforts to step out into the world to do the thing that God has gifted and called them to while we are their safety net until they are established on their own.

Some of my readers are not homeschooling, but I know that you raised your children with godly values, so you are also making a difference in culture. And you have fought the good fight to keep your marriage strong. You have kept your children close to your hearts and taught them how to build healthy relationships.

The family is the building block of society. As the family unit has been weakened by society’s changing views toward marriage, divorce, living together, and the value of having children, society is losing all semblance of sanity and wholesomeness. One of the big purposes of marriage and family is to protect children. As marriage has lost its credibility in the eyes of the younger generations, children are coming into this world with no stability or security.

That’s why I encourage people to do Familyschooling. As homeschoolers, we can do this easily. All we need to do is focus on building a strong foundation by teaching our values, views, and habits and reinforcing them as we live our lives with our children. We can create a family culture that will make our children proud to be a part of our family and give them a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves. We can develop a Family Mission Statement so that our children know what our family stands for.

As a homeschool mom or a mom who is intentionally raising godly, caring children, you are making a difference in the world. You may feel hidden and unnoticed, but what you’re doing is building people of good character and values to carry on your legacy and to be salt and light in this dark world.

For more information about these ideas, check out 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families by Stephen Covey and The Successful Homeschool Family Handbook by Dr. Raymond Moore.

I also have a couple of blog posts you might want to check out about Familyschooling and writing a Family Mission Statement.

We had a wonderful Intentional Homeschool Planning Conference! During the conference we talked about Familyschooling and Lifeschooling and Relaxed Homeschooling. Plus a whole lot more. Everything you need to know about homeschooling high school was covered in our 28 workshops. If you missed it live, you can still get the whole conference with the replays of all the speakers and the bonuses. But get it soon. Some of the bonuses have expiration dates. And the videos will be available until the last day of December. The price will also be going up soon, so act fast! Get it here:
Intentional Homeschool Planning Conference

Here’s a great unit study about the 4th of July which is full of wonderful ideas for books to read and activities to do to learn more about this holiday and why we celebrate it.

FamilyFaithLegacy.etsy.com
4th of July Unit Study for K-3

And the book we will be reading this month for our Christian Moms Book Club is Wait and See by Wendy Pope. The description on Amazon says this: “In Wait and See, Wendy Pope guides readers to focus on the Person of their faith rather than the object of their wait. Pope draws on the story of King David, who was anointed king nearly twenty years before he took his throne. This hands-on guidebook invites readers to record their own waiting discoveries.”

Please join us this month, July 19, for our Book Club.

Have you heard about the movie about global child trafficking that will be in theaters starting on the 4th of July called Sound of Freedom? Find out where it will be showing near you, and try to go on the first day, July 4th.

Thank you for reading, and as always, please let me know if you have any prayer requests. Just hit reply and tell me how you’re doing. I would love to hear from you!

Love,

Penney Douglas, B.S. in Ed.

Safe Haven Homeschooling

Safe Haven Homeschooling blog
linktr.ee/penneydouglas
Amazon.com/author/penneydouglas
Homeschooling Can Be Fun Facebook Group
My Pinterest
Kingdom Homeschool Mom Facebook Page
Safe Haven Homeschooling Facebook Page
Instagram
E-course called The Basics of Learning and Homeschooling
Changed by Love blog

You CAN Homeschool High School!

Jun.2,2023

Some people think of homeschooling as something that is only for young children, and then at some point you need to put them in “school”.

I disagree. I think the best thing we can do for our kids is to homeschool them all the way through high school.

If you desire to keep that warm, close relationship that you’ve been building with your teen instead of sending him or her away just because you’re afraid you can’t do a good job of covering the high school years, I’ve got good news for you. It’s not hard to homeschool high school. By the time they’re in high school, they can do everything independently. All you have to do is find out what they’re interested in and let them major in that. You can find curriculum for the basic subjects like English, Math, Science, and Social Studies and let them work through it on their own.

Just think about what high school was like for you. Did the teachers really teach you by their lectures, or did you learn by reading the books? Or did you really learn at all? Or did you just do whatever you had to do to pass the tests and make good grades.

Homeschooling your child through high school is your best chance to let them learn what they really need to learn in life. And to keep them from losing all of the values and ideals you worked so hard to instill in them. To me, putting them in school is tantamount to undoing all the work you did up to that point. That’s how I feel about it.

So to help you feel more confident about homeschooling them through high school, I’ll give you a few tips.

Making a transcript is not hard. I have made transcripts for many people. I have a template I use that makes it very easy.
You don’t even have to keep grades in the different subjects unless you want to. I estimate grades for the transcript based on the student’s effort and their interest in the subject. The grades given by teachers in schools are often subjective and don’t always reflect the level of knowledge of the student. You may need to think differently about grades and how important they really are. Give your student a grade that reflects how well they learned the subject, not how well they did on tests.
Let your teen help plan what they want to study. Give them the chance to take the reins and make their education their own. This is their education, not yours. All you need to do is facilitate. Help them get whatever supplies, courses, or opportunities they need to dig deeper into the things that they are interested in and may want to do as a future career. You can even help them with hobbies they enjoy and give them time to enjoy them.
There are ways to get your kids into sports if they are great athletes, and it means a lot to them. There are some schools that allow homeschoolers to play, some Christian schools. You just have to research and find a way to make it happen. It may not be easy, but God will guide you and help you find everything you need for your children.
They can get a job, and their employers will love them, because they are available at times other students are not available to work.
You can find a group that has a nice graduation ceremony if that’s important to you. Again, just research and find out what’s available in your area.
And you can get a nice diploma for your student. I like to use Homeschooldiploma.com. I have used them many times, and their diplomas look very professional and authentic. You don’t need to feel like you aren’t qualified to give your child a diploma. You are more qualified than the teachers who would have barely known your child and could only assess them based on a few hours in their class. You know your child. You know the time and effort they put into their studies. You know their interests and their hopes and dreams. You are the most qualified to pronounce that they are ready to move on to the next stage of life.

So I hope this helps you to feel better about your ability to homeschool your child all the way through high school. It may take more work to find some of the things that schools provide, but, in the end, it will be a much better experience for you and for your child.

Here’s the Transcript I like to use.

If you have any questions, email me and I would be glad to help you! penneymaried@yahoo.com – Use the subject heading “Homeschooling High School”

June Newsletter from Safe Haven Homeschooling

Jun.2,2023

Hello Safe Haven Family,

I hope this season is going well for you and your family. Are you busy with weddings, picnics, graduations, and gardening?

I looked at the Almanac and saw that there are some fun days that we can celebrate in June besides the main ones that may not be something we would want to celebrate, if you get my drift.

Just for fun you could celebrate:June 1: Say Something Nice Day
June 3: Chimborazo Day
June 6: National Yo-Yo Day
June 8: Upsy Daisy Day
June 21: Go Skateboarding Day
June 30: Asteroid Day

I had never heard of Chimborazo Day, but here’s what it is:
Chimborazo Day is celebrated on June 3rd every year to honor the highest point on Earth, Chimborazo mountain, located in the Cordillera Occidental range of the Andes in Ecuador. The mountain measures 20,000 feet, which is less than Mount Everest, which is more than 29,000 feet. It is also a day for hiking enthusiasts to hit the closest trail.

So you could go hiking on June 3 and say that you’re celebrating Chimborazo Day. Just for fun!

National Upsy Daisy Day is a sweet one.
National Upsy Daisy Day is celebrated on June 8 every year to encourage people to face the day positively and wake up each morning feeling grateful, glorious, and gleeful. It was created in 2003 by Stephanie West Allen to remind people that every day is a gift and it is important to start our day with a good attitude and a smile on our faces.

These are much better things to celebrate than what the culture is telling us we are supposed to celebrate in June. Of course, Flag Day is good. And Summer Solstice is nice since it’s the day with the most hours of daylight. We don’t have to go along with the woke holidays that the media tries to push on us.

My family went to a circus in our little town of Farmersville. We really enjoyed it! Those circus performers are in great shape!

No, this is not a picture of the circus performers! It’s my family.

Have you noticed that I haven’t said anything about current events yet in this newsletter? I thought I would give you a break from the serious stuff.
——–😇😇😇———–

Okay, break’s over!

Well, there’s some good news. The Durham Report finally came out! It’s full of evidence that the Clinton campaign and all of the Russia, Russia, Russia conspirators made up the whole thing to interfere with an election and to try to unseat a sitting President.

And Marjorie Taylor Green is going to impeach them all!

Have you thought about what the word “conspiracy” means? It means “a secret plan for accomplishing evil or unlawful ends”. Is there anything in that definition that says a conspiracy is automatically FALSE? No, there isn’t. In fact, there are evil people that have been conspiring together all throughout history. It’s not a theory. It’s a proven fact.

This transgender movement is a conspiracy between some people who have been planning this for years. This is part of their plan for depopulation. Protect your children as much as you can from all of the propaganda. It is insidious. It’s treacherous. It’s everywhere!

One thing you can do to help shield your kids is to affirm their identity in Christ. Tell them they are fearfully and wonderfully made, and that God made them just the way they are. Read Psalm 139:13-18 from The Passion Translation to your children.

I’m about to boycott the library. I can’t believe the flood of “pride” books and activities they are promoting. Here again is that flood of dissipation! It makes me sad (and MAD) because the library used to be one of my favorite places to go.

These terrible things that are happening in our nation and around the world are all related and come from those conspiracy folks – the ones who have truly been conspiring to carry out evil plans. The prostitution, pornography, human trafficking, child trafficking, pedophilia, transgender, and homosexual agenda are all linked. Their next goal is to decriminalize pedophilia. All are a perversion of God’s gift of sexuality. And all are meant to keep people from living the life God has called them to.

The enemy has captured a lot of victims through these methods. It’s time for us to take these victims back for the Kingdom.

1. We can decree and declare that those who have been taken into this bondage are delivered and set free.
2. Pray for individuals that you know who are in bondage to pornography to be delivered.
3. Pray for a spirit of repentance over this nation and the world.
4. Pray for the children who have been kidnapped and forced into slavery. Pray for their escape and their rescue.

Well, I couldn’t keep from talking about this issue since it’s in all of our faces every day. I pray that you and your families will be protected from this evil agenda. I have friends who have been affected by it, and it’s heartbreaking. Let’s all pray for our children and the children of the world.

Let’s not allow this younger generation to be lost to the woke agenda and the absolutely twisted view of right and wrong. Homeschool your kids or find the best possible alternative to public school. It won’t guarantee that your kids will escape this crazy world’s entrapment, but it increases their odds.

Speaking of which…

~~~~~~~~~~~~Homeschool Corner~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jessica Anderson is the founder and host of this conference. This is the third year we’ve done this conference, and this will be the best one yet!

This year’s conference is focused on providing parents and students with a Christ-centered approach to homeschooling that emphasizes the importance of identity and purpose. We believe that by unlocking their potential through a personalized homeschooling plan, students can thrive academically and spiritually.

I have been privileged to help Jessica with these conferences, and I can tell you that Jessica has a pure heart and a burning desire to help homeschool families and children. We both want to bless the homeschool community and to bring the best speakers and the best experience for those who are committed to homeschooling their children all the way through high school.

You don’t want to miss The Intentional Homeschool Planning Conference if you are planning to homeschool all the way to graduation (and beyond)! You will learn the nuts and bolts of homeschooling high school and be encouraged, inspired, and fired up to carry on with this homeschool adventure and to finish well. We can give our children the best possible education with God’s help and His wisdom.

Come and catch the spirit and enthusiasm of homeschool experts who will pass on their knowledge and settle your doubts and fears about homeschooling high school.

Come and join us for an exciting time of learning and fellowship!

And now let’s talk about BOOKS!

A Book Club, that is!

Another great opportunity for learning and fellowship is our Christian Mom’s Book Club. We have such a good time discussing some great books about homeschooling, parenting, and discipleship. We have even been blessed to have some of the authors come and visit us when we talk about their books! Keep yourself refreshed and motivated by joining us for our Christian Mom’s Book Club .

Mom’s Book Club

And here’s a freebie for you! My Copywork Journal that gives you a place to keep your child’s copywork and also provides some ideas for finding good selections to copy!

Thanks for reading! Have a Blessed June and a Glorious Summer!

If you have any prayer requests, hit reply and let me know.

If you have any questions, hit reply and I’ll give you more details about the conference or the book club or whatever else.

Don’t forget to check out my books on Amazon and my curriculum on Teachers Pay Teachers!

Love,

Penney Douglas, B.S. in Ed.
Safe Haven Homeschooling

Changed By Love – my personal blog
linktr.ee/penneydouglas
Homeschool Books I’ve written – on Amazon (other books I’ve written too!)
Homeschool Curriculum I’ve written – on Teachers Pay Teachers
Homeschooling Can Be Fun Facebook Group