Anticipation

Walking these halls, looking at this soggy yard that will someday be full of playing children, I am filled with anticipation. This space is going to be so lovely, and I can't wait until we are done with the work shown above, and can focus more on the type of work shown below:

Being a Super Hero

My children, like many children their age, love the idea of Super Heroes. They play superhero, and in the course of that play they battle evil, fight for the right, and save the world. Of course, the evil is never subtle, there is never any question of who is “right”, and the world is in obvious danger from something that can be stopped by brute force.
Our 1st-3rd grade class is currently using a curriculum that puts a different spin on the concept of heroes: Superheroes of the Bible. Here they learn the stories of Moses (and his mother and sister), Elijah, and more, and then they talk about how those people were “heroes”. Not perfect, not super-strong, but heroes all the same. As the curriculum says in its introduction, “people who do heroic deeds have generally humble beginnings, have shortcomings, and make mistakes. Great things can be accomplished by nonperfect people”.
A recent session of the class had the kids talking about what “superpower” they would like to have. Flying, invisibility, mind-reading, and super-strength were all proposed. What would you want as your superpower? Personally, infinite patience would be a very useful superpower for me! The theme song of the curriculum says that a super hero is someone who is “powerful with brains and even stronger in their heart”. What superpowers could live in your heart?
What superpower did Moses’s mother need in order to send her precious baby out onto the river Nile? What superpower did Moses need to take leadership when he was afraid and hated to speak in public? What superpower do you need in order to tackle the challenges in your life? What powers do we all need to tackle the challenges facing our world?
We can all be a hero. When we live our life fully and use our positive superpowers to interact with the world around us, when we grow spiritually and ethically, then we are a hero. When we help others, when we do what we think is right, when we experience loving compassion, we are heroes.
There are many ways that kids, like my kids, can be real Super Heroes. I make a meal once a month for Camp Quixote, and my kids go with me to deliver it. There, they are real heroes. When they dump out their penny bank to donate the money to Haitian earthquake relief, they are real heroes. When they interact with each other with loving compassion (no mean feat for siblings at times), they are heroes. And I know that everyone here at OUUC has those moments when they are a hero, young and old alike.
Let us all cultivate our own superpowers! (heroic fist pump goes here)

Two conversations from today

Me: "Hypatia, why are you sucking on your toe?"

Hypatia: with a loud pop as her toe comes out of her mouth "It tastes good. Like salt."

Me: "Ewwwww. You are so weird."

Hypatia: "Yep. But I'm still your kid."


And then later on ...

Me: "Here, Carbon, have an apple if you're still hungry."

Carbon: "It's a pretty apple." he starts to take a bite "Wait - is this poisoned?"

Me, thinking of Snow White: "No, why would I poison you?"

Carbon: "You know, with the stuff that kills bugs?"

Me: "Oh, you mean pesticides. No, it's organic."


So, I have one child who is sucking the "salt" off her own toe, and another who is worried about eating pesticides. Oh goodness.

"I have plenty of time"

Yesterday Carbon was inspired by our Five In A Row book, The Glorious Flight, to head out into the yard and try and build his own airplane. He knows this one won't fly, but he said "I have plenty of time to keep trying and I'll invent one that does. That guy in the book was older than me when he started".

After it was too dark to "work" outside anymore, he came inside and started writing music. He took his piano workbook, and he copied how they do the notation (which is adapted for beginning youngsters, so they don't have the notes on the staff yet but instead have the letter written above each note). After he had written a few "songs" he asked me to play them on the piano for him. He was a bit disappointed by the way they sounded, but then he said, again, "I have plenty of time. If I keep writing I'll get a good song."

Time.

When he says "I have plenty of time" he means that he is young, but there is also the fact that he does have plenty of time everyday to pursue interests and ideas of his own. So many great inventions, discoveries, and creations would not have happened if people hadn't been blessed with free time: Priestley's discovery of the properties of oxygen, Berliot's airplane, Beatrix Potter's books, and the list goes on.

It requires time.

Homeschooling, afterschooling, and trying to find the right road

There are so many things that I love about homeschooling my kids.

I love sharing history with them, talking about ideas, sharing the same stories and experiences as a whole family, being there to see their Ah-Ha! moments, sharing a love of stories and good books, learning new things together, and making plans.

Currently, I really enjoy the curricula we are using for math, spanish, botany, and history. And, although we all like it less, reading is going pretty well also.

But.

But.

But I work full-time, and I feel pretty overworked by my job, the full responsibility for household chores, and homeschooling. Just keeping up with the kids' social calendars, after-school classes, and then their home lessons as well is a lot of work by itself.

But I still want to do some of that learning with the kids - I still want to read to them and do science experiments, and all the rest of it!

It's very hard to decide what I can keep doing, and if I can really do it all. And so we are seriously considering a small private school for the kids, that follows the Sudbury model and is very much like unschooling in a small group environment. I would still do some "after schooling", but I would be decreasing the amount I work on their school lessons. It would also decrease the effort I have to put into providing them a social calendar, as they would be with other kids during the day.

I hope this is the right road for us. Each family has to find what works for them, and although many aspects of what we are currently doing work very well, they run on the assumption that I can and should be a superwoman. As I'm just as human and tired as the next person, it feels like something has to change.

Memory Quilts

Carbon was very excited to sleep under his new quilt last night, especially as it has been a project years in the making.

This is my first ever quilt, and it was done without a plan or any real research into how a quilt is supposed to be done, so I know it is (charmingly?) off-kilter. But what this quilt is really about is all the little parts that went into it: fabric from our wedding clothes, old worn out pants, beloved old Tshirts, and the extra fabric left after so many momma-sewn clothes or toys or curtains. Lots of love and great memories sewn into this quilt.

Storytelling

I attended a really fabulous workshop on storytelling today, led by a minister with an amazing love for children's literature. He told us stories, he asked us to think about our own storytelling, and he challenged us to not shy away from the emotionally challenging stories. That in fact, we need to learn how to grieve, we need to see the emotional impact of war, and we need to know how to handle tough emotions. How are we supposed to learn that if those things are never discussed, never demonstrated, never modeled? Story can be a very important teaching tool in these areas.

This point reminded me of a book I am reading right now, The Uses of Enchantment. The author has this to say: "There is widespread refusal to let children know that the source of much that goes wrong in life is due to our very own natures - the propensity of all men for acting aggressively, asocially, selfishly, out of anger and anxiety. Instead, we want our children to believe that, inherently, all men are good. But children know that they are not always good, and often, even when they are they would prefer not to be. This contradicts what they are told by their parents, and therefor makes the child a monster in his own eyes."

Bettelheim is a Freudian, and this book was published before I was born, so I feel like some of the concepts are a bit out-of-date or at least off-tone, but overall I love his analysis of why Fairy Tales resonant and are needed by children. We need stories, even, or perhaps especially, the ones that challenge us.

So today I was challenged to think about these questions:

1. What is the theme that you keep coming back to in your stories, columns, sermons?
2. How are your stories autobiographical? How is this your story? What is the human connection?
3. What makes a good story? What makes good storytelling?
4. What are you good at and what are you not good at with storytelling?

It was a lovely discussion and reflection, and I realized that I do have a theme in most of my storytelling, and it seems to be Letting Go, Accepting Limitations, and Letting Go of Attachements. Those are things, along with being overly-sensitive and self-critical, that I am actually working on. But then other people mentioned themes like Grace, Beauty, Love, and Community. Geez - I should be focused on those things too! I think we were all feeling like that.

Anyway, it was a very lovely and productive workshop. Here are the books he read from today:

The Van Gogh Cafe

Click, Clack, Moo, Cows that Type

That's Good, That's Bad

Peter Rabbit

Seven Blind Mice

Frederick

Faithful Elephants

What stories do you love? And what stories have challenged you? Gosh, I really love stories. :)