Abstract Parenting

I have been planning on writing a blog post about some of the the cool things my kiddos have learned in school this year, and of course, I wanted to throw in a thing or two that I learned myself, but instead, I am totally calling myself out on some seriously impatient teaching. Sometimes my kindergarten student knows more about her school work than I do. Seriously. In short, I have learned to listen, ask, wait, consider, and be open before I start judging, critiquing, or correcting. And the sad thing is, that seems like a pretty basic concept to me, something I thought I knew, but, ya know, I found myself to be quite the rashly critiquing Mama on several occasions, only to find out I should have waited to understand what my kid was working with. My most recent lesson on judging my children's effort quickly and poorly?...

Our favorite reading and writing lesson around here is to work with comprehending, copying, and narrating living books. So, my kindergarten student was copying a quote from her favorite scene in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis and drawing a picture of what she thought that scene might look like. I walked away from her for a few minutes, then came back to see an odd drawing swirled and scratched onto her page.
Well, I was pretty frustrated and disappointed. This was her writing journal, not some loose piece of scratch paper. This could not be erased and redone for goodness sake! (Well, it could have been redone, but you know, I was dramatic Mama in that moment...) I took a deep breath while contemplating my first words, trying to decide if I believed her main struggle there to be laziness, impatience to complete her work carefully, or indifference, but thankfully, before I began a lecture of some sort, I found some small piece of motherly wisdom hidden somewhere behind my frazzled imperfection and asked her about her drawing, (of course I was thinking that maybe she could see the error of her own ways without me pointing out that she wasn't even thinking about or caring about her work). And then, the little amazing creation of a kid says to me, "It's abstract art. So you can't understand what I was doing, but I can because I'm the artist, so I'll explain it to you." And then she continues on with an explanation of every little detail in the picture and why she made it a certain way and what it made her imagine and think. Okay, so wow. Taught me a lesson to always assume a student is lazy or indifferent just because the assignment was not completed exactly how I thought it would be. She followed all directions. She had a good attitude, and she even applied her last art lesson to her reading lesson, which is always cool to see subject lines crossed. And ya know, for all the doubters and funny people out there, maybe, just maybe she did speed through the assignment and then came up with a quick response later on, which was actually true and applicable. Well? Either way....planned or unplanned, I am totally impressed with this abstract illustration and the explaination I received. And with my attitude?...I was totally unimpressed. Yet, I know there is another day, and I know that I learned something from my child that day and look forward to applying a wait and see method more often than not with my children's education in the future.  I'm so glad she was in a situation that day which gave her the time and opportunity to explain to me that sometimes I don't understand everything and need to have it explained to me by the artist herself. 

Honey, I want to say to her, that's just like my parenting; it doesn't always seem to make sense, but I''ll do my best to explain it to you. I think I'll store that example away for our next stormy day.:)

And thank you to my kids' fabulous art teachers for opening up a world of creativity to them! They are listening and retaining. Great work!

Beautiful Day Bag of Tricks

So one thing about a great routine and a good schedule is that it is such a special treat to break away from it once in a while. Spur of the moment changes and activities become rewards or exciting field trips or projects, rather than chaos in the life of a family with a routine. Recently we had a fabulous spring day around here. I mean it was one of those beautiful, bright, sweet-smelling days when all of a sudden you see green all around you again, and flowers, flowers popping out everywhere. We had plans for that day, but thanks to a few wrenches thrown in our wheels, we had to scratch our plans and work something else out. But before I reached for our lesson plan book and pulled out some worksheets and pencils, I decided we would enjoy the day first. I told the little lovelies to get on some bright spring clothes, put on some shoes, grab a book, and get in the van. Mama was reaching into her beautiful day bag of tricks.

If you spend much of your time caring for young children, whether you realize it or not, you usually develop a bag of rainy day tricks. You have go-to activities you pull out when things get boring or kids get stir crazy when stuck inside. Maybe this is an actual bag full of good stuff, or maybe this is just a group of ideas. Maybe when it rains, your kids get to play with special toys you keep hidden on most days, making the toys more exciting on those grey days, or maybe rainy days at your house mean making cupcakes or a tea party (you know rain  must equal a tea party at our house...as does sunshine and snow and windy days and pretty much any day there's some kind of weather coming our way...). Anyway, you get what I mean by a bag of rainy day tricks. Well, once spring sprang this year I  wanted  some go-to ideas for not-so-rainy days, too.  And now I am the pleased owner of a not-so-real bag of beautiful day tricks. Okay so they aren't exactly "tricks"' but it seems, for whatever reason,  I am stuck on that phrasing today. Anyway, when the weather is absolutely stunning, we get all prettied up and we go out into the day, books in hand of course, because, as my children are told on a regular basis (the poor dears), you never know when you're gonna want a good book with you.

So back to that first stunning spring day: first out of the bag was a trip to the coffee shop, for so many reasons. One being that Mama needed a little organic iced  coffee with agave and too much cream. Mmm. So good, and honestly, I'm not sure if the energy/mood boost comes from the caffeine in the drink or from that fabulous first taste that transports me to a happier version of my morning. And another reason being that we were able to bring in our books and read them together, while soaking up the sunlight and lovely view of a little stream and new spring growth right outside the shop. The girls shared some ginger cookies and discussed their books. They were a little book club in training, complete with a few moments of disagreements and seemingly aware that literature often brings out strong and differing opinions in a group. All in all, this was a great start to our day. And their book choices weren't too shabby either. Which leaves me wondering: Will it happen soon that I can pull my own book out of my bag and sit and read quietly while my girls do the same? Seriously, I am asking you seasoned mothers out there, even if your answer is that I should already be able to do this...

After the coffee shop, we buckled up in the van, rolled down the windows, put on some good music and then went for a drive in the country. We took some unexpected back roads and looked for spring blooms we had been learning about. How many redbuds could we find? Pear trees? Dogwoods? And then we spotted a new waterfall, which is always a treat for our family. We love waterfalls.

One trick we didn't do after our coffee shop and waterfall excursion is a new favorite art project of ours. We're looking forward to incorporating it into a spring day theme soon. It's a pretty cool project because it helps us to use up crayon pieces we might not have used up with regular picture coloring. As you can surmise from the photo, we've been making our own crayons. Which is fun on its own, but incorporating it into a seasonal lesson is my new idea. After spending time outside and taking in the colors of the season, we can come inside and reach for our mason jars of broken or used crayon pieces, we will peel off any remaining wrapper, and then each kid will be given a muffin wrapper to fill up with colors she saw outside. We'll then place them in a muffin tin and melt at a low temperature in the oven until they melt down into a cool new crayon to remember the day by. So simple, so useful, so easy, so not messy, and so fun. The kids loved every part of crayon making from picking out colors to coloring with the new, funny shaped crayons with ridged edges and smooth centers. And on upcoming spring days, the pictures they will color with these will become a snapshot of each of those beautiful days. So many project possibilities here!

And a third trick I want to mention from my beautiful day bag is this: We can enjoy the day in the morning when I have the most energy, the kids are ready to do something new and exciting, and when the temperature is nice and sun isn't too impressive on the skin, saving the classroom time for the afternoon. I wouldn't want to do this often, but every now and then it is kind of nice to mix it up. And we have discovered that school in the afternoon works pretty great for the kids when they are a little calmer and a little more in need of some one on one time with parents. Not to mention, the timing of afternoon school sets us up for preparing supper as part of a math lesson, to be followed up by a little extra reading practice at bedtime story time. In the life of a mother of young children, the little things like good timing for small tasks and a neatly wrapped up end to the day can really bring on some happiness, and happiness is something we try to require around here.

Happy Spring.

I think we're just going to go ahead and read the story.

We've always been those crazy parents who read to their children straight from big books, really big books like classic novels and histories. And when we read to them from the Bible, we read straight from the Bible, like from the big leather-bound, grown-up looking book straight off the nightstand.
And you know what, we're gonna keep on being those crazy parents, because what started out as an inkling and a cool idea in our home, has turned into a way to educate our kids, based on hundreds of years of experience of people throughout western civilization. That sounds exciting, right?

I'll back up here a bit and try to say what I'm saying. Over the last  few years, I've been thinking a lot about why young kids nowadays aren't always taught the same level of things kids were taught decades and centuries ago. Why were kids once trusted to learn two and three languages before the age of ten, not to mention straight, not watered down, history and literature, along with scientific theory and math facts and equations before? And why are kids generally not trusted with these concepts, subjects, and experiences now until they are much older? I am really asking here. I don't have the answers. I know there are a lot of answers to this, and some of them have things to do with advancement in education and the creation, production, and marketing of super fun and useful workbooks, manipulatives, and instruction manuals. And some of the answers may be good answers like trying to teach kids things they are interested in, so they will grow up and love to learn. The answers go on and on and on, I'm sure. But thankfully, these answers really aren't what I have to deal with finding right now. All I am trying to focus on here is what style to use when educating my kids this next school year. It's getting close to curriculum ordering time! I need lessons plans and material, not answers to all of the random, nerdy life questions I have.

So what I've been doing is a whole bunch of late night reading on classical education and modern education. I have a desire to take advantage of this "sponge" period my children are in, before they grow out of it. Young children have an amazing ability to memorize and to grasp onto new languages and facts in a way that people rarely hang on to as they grow and start moving into different developmental stages. So, we are moving more towards the classical end of the spectrum in our home. We are using books, riddles, rhymes, and songs to teach what has started to be known as only higher level education. We are bringing in more language study, more poetry and classic literature, more histories, and we are going to work more theories and facts into our study of science, math, art, and music, so that when our kiddos get older, and move away from the "sponge" or grammar stage and into the logic or "now what do I think about or do with all that stuff I learned as a tot" stage, they will be filled up with stuff, and not have to bother with square one of learning everything, at the same time when they would rather be thinking "why, how, what, and Oh!....Now I get it!"

So, I know this is a little ambitious and probably a little vague. I guess I could sum up this whole post by saying: we are excited about next year and all of the knowledge we hope our kids will be exposed to and hold on to. There are so many educational theories and styles out there, and I really don't think there is only one right or good way to go. In addition to classical education, I am a big fan of Charlotte Mason's teaching style, and I find a lot of cool ideas in Waldorf curriculum. Classical isn't the only good choice. But when you make the decision to homeschool, you also need to decide how you're gonna do it, so you get the daunting and exciting task of choosing the path your children will take as they learn. There are so many paths to take, and I think it is important to choose a great fit for your children, for your family, and for the teacher. There's my disclaimer to all of these strong points I'm making about our choice to go in one specific direction.

We are going to set the bar high and not work with too much "twaddle", as Charlotte Mason would call some of the reading material and kids workbooks of today. Kids don't always need to be spoon-fed little teeny bits of things we want them to learn later, sometimes we can just teach them the things now, while their minds are young, and their memories are at their best. Kids have done it before, so why not my kids now? Again, I'm seriously asking. And don't get me wrong, I love a good children's book as much as the next Mama, but they don't all have to have pictures and simple sentences, do they? How about a good princess picture book as a simple treat at bedtime, and then the next morning is full of quiet listening to history time. We have been running a little test around here to see how this will work out as we shape our curriculum around classical education next year, and so far, we are blown away by the bits of knowledge kids keep with them. They can understand big words. We don't have to stop reading a book to a child to say, "This big word mean this....". I mean, this isn't how we taught them the small words, no we just spoke the words and then they understood them in context, which is much simpler and much more effective. So, we can go ahead and just use those big words! They'll catch on, and they'll understand much more of the stories we read to them if we aren't always stopping to explain this and that to them. Just read the story.

20 minutes to make our day

I found myself becoming guilty of one of the things I said I would never do as a parent, and I'm not referring to driving a minivan, though I am guilty of that, too. What I'm referring to here is that I became a barking, angry, stressed out parent in a world of chaotic breakfasts and bag forgetting and orders to get your shoes on NOW again and again. No matter how early I got up in the morning, it seemed that those last five minutes until we had to get out of the house in the morning on our way to preschool, to a homeschool  trip, or even on our way to the homeschool room in our own house by our early scheduled start time turned into a rush. And a rush was not a good way to begin our day. It left my kids confused, disappointed, stressed, tired, and it left them with their needs not met well from their mama at the very beginning of a busy day, and chaotic mornings left me feeling defeated and tense, before any schooling or cleaning even got underway. That was not for us, so we stopped doing that and tried something different.

And now what we have is 20 minutes of bliss. We don't have perfect days. We don't always go according to plan. And we certainly don't do everything all sweet and proper and correct, but we do our best around here to get a calm, quiet start to the day now. At first, this was a bit of a challenge, as a new routine often is with small children, but after a couple days, we began to begin our days in a much better way. After teeth are brushed, beds are made, breakfast is cleared away, and we are all dressed for the day, I set a timer for 20 minutes, and the four of us all go to different parts of the house to do something quietly and calmly on our own. Everyone gets to choose what they do, but I give them suggestions and tell them that electronics (other than tag reader pens) are off limits; television and video games make my kids way to jittery and/or spacey in the morning to be a good idea before school.



Morning quiet time choices include reading quietly to yourself (a good book that teaches you something), writing or copying a letter to a friend or relative, working a puzzle, playing a board or card game (yes, kids can do this by themselves....quite creatively, actually...), playing with blocks or manipulatives, sitting doing nothing, or working on an art project. And I have to say that a little organization goes a long way with kids' games.



We put our broken game boxes in the recycle bin, put game pieces in labeled zippered bags, and then used address label stickers to label the boards of games. Now it is more reasonable to keep the kids accountable for only getting out one thing at a time and then putting it away neatly. Sigh.

I use our 20 minute morning alone time to lesson plan for the day, catch up on letters or emails, and really, just to breathe in my favorite room in the house with a cup of something warm. This doesn't mean the kids don't have access to me. Of course they come to me with questions about a word in a book or for help with a puzzle piece or even for a hug, but in theory we are all doing something on our own. I think it is good for them to have time to be alone, but not entirely alone. I'm right there if they need me, and they know that, and I think they even like that a little.

So when the timer goes off, we start our school day relaxed and ready to join back up together. The kids actually all look forward to doing something together again. Imagine! A little quiet can go a long way. I don't think it is necessary to homeschool children in order to make morning a time for meeting kids' needs and preparing them for their days by filling them up with calm and love and security, but the decision to homeschool the kids has certainly made it easier to slow down our mornings. I'm sure there are many great mothers out their who keep their cool in the morning when heading out the door on a tight schedule, but for me, it was difficult on many mornings to be sweet and chill when the clock was ticking and there was a kid who was panicked about not being comfortable in her shoes, while another was in need of a new diaper at the last minute, and yet another was needing to talk about something super important to her in that moment. So for us, we made our mornings work better with a clear early morning schedule and 20 small, sweet minutes. And I hope this time is a step towards our kids learning how to spend time with family in a home, while not always doing the same thing. Quality time doesn't have to be all or nothing, as in we are either talking to the person next to us or we are ignoring the person next to us and talking to a friend on the Internet. How about just sitting and enjoying someone's company without always feeling a need to fill up the silence with something? I know I am pretty old-fashioned and probably have a silly, dreamy view of after-dinner time with my family, all the girls sitting in different parts of the room, one embroidering a pillow, while one plays cards with her daddy, and another reads a book of poetry.....BUT even if we can't go back in time to a slower paced world and my girls may never learn to embroider seat cushions like Jane Austen characters, we can still learn to share a house and enjoy each other's company, whether we are doing something together...or not. Clearly I have big hopes for what our 20 minutes in the morning will teach us as family. Not sure if they will all pan out, but for now the 20 minutes are working out pretty well for our mornings, and good mornings tend to make good days. Right?

Three Kids, a Volcano, and Blueberry Muffins

We learned about rocks in our kindergarten class last week, which for little kids means: time to collect rocks and time to talk about HOT LAVA! I expected kids to get a kick out of picking up rocks and talking about their similarities and differences, but what always surprises me about my dear, sweet little girls is their fascination with lava. They love to play "Don't Step on the Hot Lava", and this is a pretty serious game since apparently there is a whole bunch of lava on our living room floor on most days. And I thought they were so unique to have come up with this game all on their own, but ya know, it's everywhere. Kids love this game. Real kids play it. Book character kids play it. Television show kids play it. And so, what did we just have to do as part of our rock week? We had to make a volcano. And let me tell you something: this took me back to my second grade class. Oh the smell of baking soda, vinegar, and clay all mingled together was like being eight again. Except now it was my kitchen that stunk.





We had a sweet homeschool friend join in on the volcano fun. Many hands made light work. I was pretty impressed with how well three kids got along as they worked to make one shared volcano. Isn't it great when moments of sharing and team work happen? Sigh.

And we ended up with a volcano that was not only solid, but also fabulous. Can you tell girls made this?

So since we were going to be working in the kitchen that day anyway, my oldest child (the one with a love for the Food Network and the cookbook shelves at the public library) wanted to do some baking for an after school snack. We went with stone ground whole wheat blueberry muffins (they look healthy, are pretty healthful, and they were so very, very good). Thank you to two sweet fellow mothers and friends of mine for picking up the blueberries at the store for me. You can see we put them to use. Isn't it funny how something as simple as someone picking up something at the store for you can brighten up your day? Motherhood is absolutely amazing and sweet and wonderful, but it is also hard and even lonely at times. I hope I can always make time for other mothers to catch up over coffee (either in person or sometimes over the phone...), help each other clean up toy room floors, and pick up blueberries at the store for each other. It really does make a difference in my day, and hopefully in my friends' days. What a great way to end our rock and volcano unit week: with muffins that look like rocks, but taste great. 

CrockPot Math Post taken over by rant. Sorry.

One of the topics I've read about in homeschool articles and books is the idea that the time of the genius and prodigy is disappearing in many school systems. The idea behind this is that many schools (not all...) are set up to create well-rounded jack-of-all-trades students who graduate having a grasp on all subject matters, which is great, right? I mean, what can be more useful in life than having a solid understanding, if not a mastery, of all subject matters? Well, okay, but what about the kid who has a special gift for, let's say, understanding light and shapes and has the ability to work towards creating artistic masterpieces to inspire the world, not to mention to support her future family in a job created around her passion?...should that kid have to spend hours upon hours trying to learn, let's say...advanced algebra, if algebra, beyond its basics is uninteresting, frustrating, and stressful for that particular student artist? Can hours spent in algebra tutoring, when the child could be painting and studying style and art history instead, really be worth it? There are only so many hours in the day, and if a child or older student has a desire and a real gift in one particular area, why are we pushing that child to give up time which could be spent working on that gift and asking her to put the time towards dabbling in all subject matters? And why can't a 16 year-old be trusted to know, declare, and prove to her parents and teachers that she is a gifted scientist and should be allowed to invest most of her time and educational resources into excelling in that field? Does a chemistry whiz kid really need to spend more than half of her school hours on other subject matters? Certainly there are reasons for her to spend some time learning about grammar and social studies and such, but more than half of her learning time? Is that really the best choice for her? (Clearly, I am really passionate about exploring these questions...you know, the girl who loves to write but spent her high school career obsessing over a need to excel, which meant, for me, that I wanted to get A's in not just English and History, but in all of my classes, and all of my classes included Chemistry and Algebra. No where did I get the idea that it is okay to not be the best at everything. Either I was a straight A student, or I wasn't one of the best students, in my childhood mind (and I'm betting my childhood mind didn't come up with that on my own, although I do only have myself to blame for even caring if I was "one of the best"). I don't use all of those subjects now. I don't. I know we all hear, "You're gonna need this someday." But, ya know what: Ten years out, and I haven't needed to work with the periodic table yet. But, I have been sad when I think back on the time I could have been writing, reading, learning about the craft that I love, live, and work with everyday. It's sad to me that I spent so much time stressing and banging my head against my palm as I stared at my chemistry book, while trying to get Scarlet O'Hara and her world out of my head. And, I was no genius at all, and certainly no prodigy, so when I consider what that would be like, to be put in a world of required classes when all you want to do is work with an amazing gift and ability, something to share with the world, well that is just a tragedy. I think so anyway. Of course there are kids who enjoy learning about many different things and want and need to work with all subject matters equally. Not everyone only leans towards one or two particular areas, and that is great, pretty greater than great, actually. That is a gift in itself.  And not everyone knows what they want to do at a young age, and those kids should not be forced to choose before they are ready. What I'm saying here is:  Education shouldn't be one size fits all. I look at my three kids and am amazed at how different they are, and the idea that they could all be made to fit into the same course load and curriculum is pretty astounding to me. This thought makes me so thankful for those teachers out there, other moms, and members of the "village", who take an interest in children as individuals and help them to identify and work with their particular gifts. How cool are those people? I know I'll never forget certain teachers for encouraging me to step outside of the box and be heard. I cannot tell you how much I hope my children have that kind of encouragement, and it's gonna start with me. I'm pretty sure I will fail at many things in my life as a mother, but I sincerely hope that embracing the variety in my children and their educational needs will not be one of them. Matching socks and never getting annoyed at bedtime....yep, I'll fail at those every now and then for sure, but hopefully I won't fail in embracing the differences in my children.

Wow. This was not what I was planning to write about at all. I was planning to write about my five year old not liking math, and how we are encouraging her to learn math in fun ways. I was going to talk about how important it is for kids to learn everything, even the things they don't love, and there I ended up going the total other direction. So, let me say this, just to pull the two poles together here and make myself clear: It is important to me that my kids learn about all subject matters. Just because they may not love math, doesn't mean they don't have to work to understand it. Math is important. And if one of my children turns out to be a grammar hater, well, she is still going to need to learn how to write and speak intelligently and clearly. HOWEVER, one of our reasons to homeschool is to allow our kids to work with their natural abilities, gifts, and interests. Their education can be shaped around what they enjoy and do well. We can push them and challenge them toward greatness, I hope.

Um, yeah, so here's what I would have said before the rant took me over:

Our Kindergarten gal loves to cook. So, her math time has been all about cooking lately. Our girls especially love fun cooking tools, like these adorable tea cup measuring cups. We're still all about all things tea party around here. We're learning about measuring, addition, subtraction, and greater than and less than all through cooking. And this works much better for her than a worksheet. It works much better for me too, because once math time is over in the morning, we tend to end up with dinner cooking in the crockpot. Our three girls especially love when I let them "invent" their own meals. Last week, they made up something called "Favorite Dish". Each girl put in one favorite ingredient in the crockpot during a math lesson. We ended up with butternut squash, apples, and country ham.

We threw in some honey, cinnamon, and butter, and let me say, considering the kids picked out the ingredients, it could have been a lot worse. Math tasted pretty good that night.






Whew. My fingers are tired. Thank you for making it to the bottom of this page. Really. :)

We're gonna need a bigger table, more patience, an extra jar of peanut butter, more games, an upgrade on our ability to laugh at life, several more puzzles, and a peppermint mocha every now and then, for starters.

Okay, so I started this little blog to share all about our neat little year of homeschooling our eldest, our kindergarten gal, our first little student, the one to ease us into the whole homeschool journey. But here we are, doing what we do. We're adapting, we're growing, and we are trying our hardest to go with the flow of doing what works for our family. Long story short: our youngest two are now homeschooling with us. That's right. Here we are a-homeschooling two preschool gals and a kindergarten gal. We've got us our own little academy.

So here's what I know so far about teaching more than one kid and on more than one learning/grade level: it's a lot of work. Man, it takes time, and it takes focus and patience, love and creativity. It takes ideas and organization....and.....AND it takes letting something else go sometimes. Last week it was my schedule, and this week, well, so far it looks like it's the laundry's turn to take some time off.

But, I'm glad to report that we are learning. Our kindergarten student is learning about the War of 1812 (her choice, not mine), and she's learning that just because she knows how to write doesn't mean she can now chicken scratch her way through her writing lessons. (Yes, I just said chicken scratch....just like a real life teacher....). Our pre-k student is learning that it is okay if everything is not perfect. She's learning, or beginning to learn that mistakes don't always have to go into the trash can or go flying through the air on a balled up wad of paper; they can be corrected, fixed, or sometimes adapted into something way cooler than what she began with. And our teeny preschooler is practicing taking turns (not her favorite), improving her sign language skills, and learning sounds made by each letter in the alphabet.

Usually the kids have their individual school time, but sometimes we all learn around the table together, and some of those times, we even find a way to do this without chaos. And those times are pretty great.