Has God ever used homeschool parenting to teach you (the parent) a lesson?  Of course, He has! We all have experienced it.  Sometimes we find working with our children to be frustrating and certainly not an opportunity to draw nearer to God.  But recently as I have been dealing with a difficult personal situation and feeling really out of sorts and cranky at best, God has used a teaching opportunity with my son to teach me.  I kept asking God to please give me some answers as to how to deal with this problem as it seems too big to handle right now.  God seemed very oddly silent. 
   Just the other day, Joshua was struggling to memorize his multiplication facts.  He was getting discouraged trying to remember that huge stack of multiplication cards.  But I knew he needed to commit those math facts to memory or everything else in math would be so much harder.  Then God placed an idea in my head that is used to some extent in Math It.  I suggested to Josh that because he already knew his multiplication facts for the 1s, 2s and 3s pretty good, he should separate out just the 4s next.  With just those few cards, it didn’t seem to daunting to him.  He found a quiet corner and within a few minutes committed those facts to memory.  That same day he mastered the 5s (which are easy), and the 6s.  Because he did them in small doses, he could handle it and memorize it.  Then he stacked them all up all the 1s – 6s and showed me with great delight how he had mastered them.  The next day he mastered the 7s.  The next the 8s and 9s.  What he discovered was that he had already mastered some of the “harder/higher” numbers already in the 3s, 4s, 5s and 6s.  So he had only a few left to learn.  The 10s were a breeze and the 11s are almost mastered.  Now all that remains is a couple of 12s.  He is so excited and math will be so much easier for him.  He used to spend so long trying to figure out a problem because he didn’t know for sure what all his multiplication facts were.