Thinking is hard work-in fact the very hardest that human beings are ever called upon to do. It is fatiguing, not refreshing. If allowed to follow the path of least resistance, no one would ever think.
Mortimer Adler

But, it is in thinking that we find meaning in the mundane repetitive tasks of life. I’ve been volunteering at an 1880s living history farm. It’s quiet and peaceful–and it’s hard work. You have to keep the fire going if you want to cook something. You have to go get eggs from the chickens or analyze the pantry contents before making a meal. You treadle the sewing machine pedal up and down over and over and over to piece a quilt or mend a shirt. And you have to think about what you’re doing while you’re doing it. The slowing down is time consuming, but for me it seems to create such a connection to the act of living.

There are so many things that we simply take for granted. We live in such ease that we can go without thinking. A lot of the time our lives are governed by expediency and just going through the motions.

But, by thinking about the what and why of even the smallest things, we can create so much more meaning in our lives. We can conciously choose and create our circumstances if we stop to think and ponder and meditate…

My discussion group was wonderful and empowering and inspirational. I am so excited to be embarking on this adventure and building real friendships and to be spending time with women talking about positive things. And thinking together.

That’s pretty cool.

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end in life.
-Robert Louis Stevenson

I really firmly believe that every single person ever born has a mission, a purpose for which they were created, something they alone can do.

And I think God gives us hints and glimpses of our unique and individual missions through our passions, dreams, and abilities. We have to listen for them. We have to be looking. We have to find our center and quiet place…

It is often hurdling the distractions that is hardest. There is so much that is blaring loudly telling you what to think, how to look, what to eat, how to be, what to watch…

I’m preparing for the first meeting of a book group I’m starting with a purpose of helping us each create a meaningful family culture that lays a solid foundation of truth, fosters a love of learning, and gives us tools we need to fulfill our own unique missions in life and help our children find and fulfill theirs.

I just gave a few articles out with the invitation for this first discussion. Want to join in? Here’s the first one. The second is here, but I don’t know if just anyone can get to it because it is in the member section of the Art of Womanhood site. (You can register free of charge and have access to the article if you really want.)

I’ve felt like I needed to start this group for a while, but the time just wasn’t ever right. I was released from my big church responsibilities, so that frees up a lot of time (Now I get to play the piano for the choir!). All that was left was overcoming my self conciousness that everyone would just think I’m wierd, and working up the courage to just do it. “If you build it, they will come.” People have been coming out of the wood work asking to be a part.

I know teaching and discussing my thoughts with women is part of my mission. I’m passionate about that. I’ve jumped one hurdle.

How about you?

I’ve been inspired by Lisa’s posts of her daily drawings, and so I thought I’d take a stab at it this school year. I adhere to the educational philosophy of “it’s you, not them.” My real responsibility is for my own education–and in order to teach my kids that they, in turn, bear the responsibility for their own educations I need to be learning and making during school time. So, here’s week one of drawings. Here in writing I’m only requiring myself to do 3 a week, but this week I have 5. You know, it’s new and the motivation is high

They’re all small, about 6″x6″ give or take, on scraps of printmaking paper using watercolors and a regular old #2 pencil.

My other mom school work is working on the Womanhood Course in a new organization called The Art of Womanhood.

I’m tired. I’ve been quite a slacker in posting here–and in lots of other areas. I’ve been really bad about doing school every day, because I’m just not quite sure what to do. We’ve been doing first grade Saxon Math, which has worked pretty well so far because it is so gradual in adding concepts. Brenna is perfectly capable of every bit of it–and a little more. But, now we’ve reached a point where she has a worksheet of facts and the regular worksheet everyday, and it is just out of her 5 year old attention span to be able to enjoy. So, I’ve completely backed off on the math and structure and let her just read. But she has plenty of attention span for books. She’s been reading about 2 novels a week. This week she read Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz and Queen Zixxie of Ix, both by L. Frank Baum. Last week she read Ozma of Oz and one of the American Girl books. I guess I just feel guilty because it doesn’t take any effort on my part to plop her on a chair with a book and let her disappear into Oz for the rest of the the day. She’s got to be learning something, right? I shouldn’t be feeling bad that my 5 year old is reading at an 7th or 8th grade level, but just isn’t interested in 1st grade math.

So, I guess I’m just writing this to try to convince myself I’m doing okay, even though I’m not doing much. I have been spending a lot of time with church responsibilities. There have been lots of sugeries and babies born. There is one sister who has a 3 year old boy, a 2 year old boy, 16 month old twin girls, she’s pregnant due in April, and in the process of a divorce. I have no room to complain about being tired.

But I sure want too

We started school almost 3 weeks ago now. I subscribe to the “kids should not be taught like little adults” philosophy, but am trying to find a happy medium between total unschooling and playing sergeant mom. We start the morning with a song and a prayer, say the pledge of alegiance (mostly because Jonah thinks it is way cool), then check the calendar and the weather. I try to work in some phonics for Jonah and started 1st grade Saxon math with Brenna. Both of them love the math–we stack and count legos and color pictures and count on a 1-100 counting chart. Then Brenna reads and reads. She’s also been listening to books on CD. I had to take The Land of Oz back before it was due because we all had it memorized. She was listening 24/7. I’ve been trying to read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (book 5 in the Chronicles of Narnia) with her, but she gets impatient with my limited amount of reading time and reads ahead. Oh well. I’m certainly not going to complain about my 5 year old reading novels, but it is kind of sad that she doesn’t need me anymore. I’m not the only one with magic reading powers.

We’re also dabbling with history, hence the family tree. This has taken 3 weeks for her to make. I’m glad it’s done so we can be archeologists and dig in the sand box!

Here’s a close up:

Felting is fun for everyone! Felt beads are the absolute easiest felt project to make, so I enlisted my kids to help show you how.

First, you need some roving. Roving is processed wool that is ready to spin into yarn or make into felt. Get MERINO roving– especially if you’ve never made felt before. It’s not too picky about water temperature and felts really fast. I think e-bay is a great place to find roving for cheap and in big quantities.

I just do this on my kitchen counter, but you could do it outside just as well. I set out a towell, get my roving, and fill up a bowl with warm water with a little drop of soap.

Now, pull off a little piece of fluff

and dunk it in the water.

Now, rub it round and round in your hands like you would if you were making a ball of play-dough.

It will seem like wet hair at first, then a soft, squishy ball, and after a little while it will be a firm piece of felt. The harder and faster you rub it, the quicker it will matt up and become felt. Brenna’s (5) beads were pretty round, Jonah’s (3) were oblong because he just rubbed back and forth.

I must admit that most of the time the kids were playing with their little “eels” who would swim in the water and then go potty all over the towell.

White beads are okay,

but we wanted a prettier necklace, so we broke out the Kool-Aid. The only flavors I had left were Blue Raspberry Lemonade, Berry Blue, Pink Lemonade, and Cherry, so that’s what we used.

I put about 1/4 cup of water in each bowl and dumped in a whole packet of Kool-Aid. I’m sure it would work just as well with less powder, but I wasn’t to concerned about having leftovers. Then I put all the bowls in the microwave together for 5 or 6 minutes and let it sit for a little bit. Once it wasn’t scorching hot I scooped the beads out, one color at a time, and put the in a colander and rinsed them with cold water.

Now, let them dry. Then, string them on a string (You can’t use a thick tapestry needle though, you have to use a skinny sewing needle, so my kids need my help to do this.)

We used a piece of skinny handspun yarn that we dyed with the beads so it would match, but you can just use whatever you want.

ALL DONE!! Brenna loves her necklace and Jonah played with his little eels all day.

If you try this with your kids, send me a picture!

Now, go get felting!

to be continuted…

Today we sat outside in the fresh spring air and finished reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It’s kind of like coming full cirlce. Just before Brenna turned three she pulled it off the shelf and brought it to me saying, “Read this! Read, read, read, read…” Well, I took it and opened it thinking, “She’ll last two seconds and then I can go get something done.” But, instead, we finished the entire book in two days. I figured she wasn’t really getting what was going on, but realized that she was playing with her plastic animals calling one Aslan and asking for protection from the White Witch.

I’m glad that I’ve kept up with the reading novels, even though my kids are so young. I think adults often underestimate what kids are capable of understanding. We also think they’re not listening when they really are. Jonah has not been one to sit on my lap and listen to a book without pictures, but he knows everything that happened to little Sophie in The BFG and loves Harry Potter. He normally plays with toys and comes and goes out of the room as Barry or I read, but he gets it none the less. I love it that his play is based on Shel Silverstien poems rather than Bob the Builder or Dora. I’m thankful that this is something I stumbled upon and stuck with it.

Brenna’s almost five now. I thought it’d be fun to post a list of the books we’ve read since the first time we read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Charlotte’s Web
Stuart Little
Little House in the Big Woods
Little House on the Prairie
Farmer Boy
On the Banks of Plum Creek
Trumpet of the Swan
Black Beauty
The Mouse and the Motorcycle
The BFG
Peter Pan
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Matilda
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (w/ Dad)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (w/ Dad)
The Magician’s Nephew
Where the Sidewalk Ends (w/ Dad)
Falling up (w/ Dad)
A Light in the Attic (w/ Dad)
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

I’m not sure what we’ll start next. We may just continue with the Chronicles of Narnia, but Spring is getting me itchy to read Laddie again and share it with my family.

We’ve been a little lax on school lately. Spring is in the air and we’re itching to get outside, but we have stuck to our bare-bones routine. We sing a song (or several if Jonah gets his way) and say a prayer, then Brenna works on memorizing the Articles of Faith. She’s on number 6 now. Then we read. Brenna reads me a book, I read a book Jonah picks out, and then I read a chapter of our latest novel. Right now we’re working on The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S.Lewis. Usually we do some penmanship practice and I set Brenna free to color and draw to her hearts content. She’s become pretty serious about her art lately.

Here’s an orchestra she drew yesterday while listening to classical radio.

I have started my study of child psychology and educational theory today by reading Erik Erikson. He was an artist who moved to Vienna and was trained in psychoannalysis. He study Freud and worked closely with his daughter Anne Freud. They ran a little school and studied the children and how they learned.

Anyway, I wish I had a background in Freud for reading Erikson. I need to figure out exactly what the ‘ego’ and ’super-ego’ are. From what I’ve read today, the ‘ego’ is a person’s innate self-love, and the ’super-ego’ is what we call a conscience. But, a child isn’t born with a conscience. The ’super-ego’ develops within a child in response to their need for adult approval. The conscience is a created authority inside the child’s head that defines right and wrong the way he thinks adults would do it. This mechanism keeps his behaviour in check because the need for adult love is so strong.

I don’t think I agree with that.

I guess it’s a question of nature vs. nurture. Is conscience something we’re born with, or is it learned? There are clearly people that don’t have much of a conscience–is it because it was never nurtured into them, or that it was nurtured out of them?

We had fun today. We just got our Usborne books from the party I had, so we explored our Children’s Encyclopedia for school. Each page has a website with links relating to the topic, so after reading and real school stuff I let Brenna pick a page and we found the links. She explored deep sea fish and was mezmerized. Tonight she made up her own fish called a Ribbon-Bow fish that woul kind of be a sea serpent like an Oarfish and have bioluminescent markings and spots on its tummy that looked like eyes to trick other fish. It’s stomach would be able to stretch so it coul eat fish bigger than itself, and it woul tie itself in knots. It was basically a mixture of all the fish wer read about today. She went on and on 100 miles an hour talking about it. It was cute. She is certainly an animal lover, especially fish. Maybe we should get her one of her own…

Anyway, I also got a bunch of the Usborne Easy Words to Read books. They are the cutest thing ever. I’ve hidden them so I can just get one new one out every once in awhile. Today we got Hen’s Pens out and Brenna can read the whole thing. That’s fun.

I’ve been at my wits end with trying to negotiate bed-making and getting dressed in the mornings (and Jonah’s naps–but that’s a whole other can of worms) so I devised a plan. We have a popcorn jar now, so when anyone does something good they get to put a scoop of seeds in the jar, and when its full we can get a movie and have a popcorn party. Also, if Brenna decides she wants me to make her bed or get her dressed, then she’ll take scoops of seeds out of the jar. I hope this reduces the “Brenna, I’m ready to go downstairs and you’re still not dressed. You can’t come down ’til you’re dressed and your bed is made and you say your prayers, okay?” “But I need company!! You always do this to me. I’m tired of these consequences. I don’t like these bad consequences and you just make them up and do this to me. (blood curdling scream and running after me to latch onto my leg) I can’t be alone, don’t leave, don’t leave!!!!!!!” “Brenna, it’s 9:00! You’ve been playing for an hour and a half while I kept reminding you that I would be going downstair without you. I’m hungry. I NEED to go downstairs and eat breakfast before I pass out. You can come down when you do you morning routine…” and the negotiations continue and the drama drags out. I can’t adequately describe the drama, the drama. So I pray the popcorn jar will work and give her some inspirtation to get dressed before 9:00, for heaven’s sake!!!