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I have been thinking about how I, myself, struggle with drinking enough water during the day.  I wasn’t raised to consider that drinking water is a priority that we need to keep tabs on in our life.  I was like the sheep led to water once a day and I began to think that drinking water was just something you did when you had a break and you had nothing else to do.  I realized now that as I am trying to really work at this habit and how hard it is for me, that I’d really like my kids to have it easier.  I want them to drink water automatically more out of habit, other than because they have a headache or some other water related problem.

During this last year, I’ve done a lot of thinking about my health.  I wasn’t horribly unhealthy, but I started having a few health issues.  I’d go to the doctor and everything related to my issues came up normal.  Strange.  My husband did some reading and laughed and said, “It is your bad habit, you need to be drinking more water.”  I realized, too, that I have 3 of my 5 children that do not like to drink water, either.

Now, it isn’t like I have not tried to drink water, I just don’t think about drinking water.  I prayed and realized I needed to be more diligent about it.  I need to make deliberate choices, otherwise I am simply too busy for it to happen.

I wanted to share a couple reasons why drinking water is important for us as homeschoolers.  Our body is made up of over 70% water.  Our brain alone consists of about 85% water.  Water can prevent issues such as ADD and depression.  Water helps you think faster and helps you to be more focused.  You will also experience greater clarity and creativity in your thinking.  If you want to learn more, you can go to this website, Water Benefits Health,and read more, or simply search about water and the body’s needs.

If keeping hydrated is more than just flushing toxins out of our body, but part of helping us to learn better, we really need to keep on this and be deliberate in our choices of drinking water!  Now, I knew all this.  I’ve learned it in my nurse’s training, I’ve taught it to many during health seminars at church, it’s part of the NEWSTART principle we often hear about.  But that didn’t help me “do it”. I needed to sit down and actually figure out how to conquer my bad habit of not drinking enough water.  I also needed to figure out how to teach my kids to do the same, so that they would find learning more fun and less frustrating.

There are various rules for how much water you should be drinking.  Some say 8 – six ounce glasses a day, some say 8 eight ounce glasses a day.  Others say ½ ounce per pound of body weight per day, and still others say if you are active it should be 2/3 ounce per pound of body weight.  Whatever rule of thumb you use, if you are getting less than 4-6 glasses of water a day, I think it is important for us to up our intake.  This would actually make a good math and health lesson one day to actually figure out how much water you and your kids each need to drink and then figure out a plan to get it done.

I’m in the process of tweaking our plan right now, and thought that maybe you all might want to join our family as we seek to increase our water intake so that our brains will function to the best of their ability by giving them the water they need to work properly.

Feel free to share in the comment sections, ideas that work for your family to get all that water in each day.  I’m sure it will help others that are struggling to find a way to make it work for them!