Amy Welborn has a thread going about slips of the tongue people have made during scripture readings and prayers. My most embarrassing: during bedtime prayers with the kids one night, my mind wandered (forgive me). Near the end of the Our Father, my children suddenly burst out laughing.
“Mommy,” guffawed Jane, “did you just say ‘deliver us from email‘?”
Mea culpa…
Oh, I love that line. And I love the quiet joy in this Robert Frost poem.
The well was dry beside the door,
And so we went with pail and can
Across the fields behind the house
To seek the brook if still it ran;
Not loth to have excuse to go,
Because the autumn eve was fair
(Though chill), because the fields were ours,
And by the brook our woods were there.
We ran as if to meet the moon
That slowly danced behind the trees,
The barren boughs without the leaves,
Without the birds, without the breeze.
But once within the wood, we paused
Like gnomes that hid us from the moon,
Ready to run to hiding new,
With laughter when she found us soon.
Each laid on other a staying hand
To listen ere we dared to look,
And in the hush we joined to make
We heard, we knew we heard the brook
A note as from a single place,
A slender tinkling fall that made
Now drops that floated on the pool
Like pearls, and now a silver blade.
Comments are off
Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
—from a speech given by Dr. King on April 3, 1968, the day before he was assassinated
Related links:
More of Dr. King’s speeches
Washington Post article: King’s Fiery Speech Rarely Heard (HT: The Education Wonks)
In my recent post on “tidal homeschooling,” I mentioned Rose’s determination to learn ancient Greek. This has been a driving interest for her for about a year and a half now. (She was seven last August.) Like all good drives, this one has involved frequent rest stops. She sets her own pace, and she’s the one to decide when to get behind the wheel again. As a passenger on this trip, I have to say it has been (and continues to be) a most delightful journey so far.
Her fascination with ancient Greece began with the fabulous Jim Weiss. His story tapes, “Greek Myths” and “She and He: Adventures in Mythology,” have been favorites with all my girls. Rose especially was captivated by the stories of Atalanta, Hercules, and Perseus. Observing her eager interest, I pulled our trusty D’aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths
A burning interest in mythology seems quite common among children of Jane’s age; I’ve known many a six- or seven-year-old who couldn’t get enough of these tales of high adventure and meddlesome deities. It is certainly an easy appetite to feed. We scoured the library for picture books; we explored a website chronicling the lives of a fictional Spartan family and their counterparts in Athens. We read long passages from Padraic Colum’s The Odyssey
Thus far, the path we traveled was much the same as the one I’d followed with Jane a few years earlier—and, I daresay, quite similar to the roads followed by many a parent of a child this age. Then Rose veered off onto a side route.
“I want to learn ancient Greek,” she announced. “I need you to find me a book. The kind with lots of blanks to write in.”
She meant a workbook. I don’t like workbooks. They make me shudder and look for the exits. Jane has always felt the same way. But for Rose, my orderly, methodical Rose, an empty workbook is a treasure, a blank coin waiting to be engraved. Obligingly, I searched. A few minutes at Anne Zeise’s invaluable website led me to a promising resource: a series called Hey Andrew! Teach Me Some Greek! With Rose panting at my side, I ordered the first level.
As I said, this was well over a year ago. She was very young—is still very young—and I certainly had no plans to commence the study of a classic language—one with a different alphabet, no less—with a six-year-old child. But it’s what Rose wanted. Emphatically, urgently, relentlessly. And that’s what we do. We follow our children’s interests, all of us learning as we go. My job is to outfit her for the journey—or to return to my tidal homeschooling metaphor, to provide the ship for the fishing expedition.
Right now she is about halfway through the second level of the Hey Andrew books. Here’s how she likes it to work. Every day in our home, there is a two-hour period of quiet time. The girls go to separate rooms: Beanie to their bedroom (they all still share a room); Jane to the sewing room; and Rose to my bedroom. I put Wonderboy down for his nap and take a half-hour lunch-and-email break, a welcome hush after our busy mornings. Then I read a story to Beanie, and then I spend 30 to 45 minutes of one-on-one time with first Jane, then Rose. Quite often, Rose chooses to spend her mommy solo time working on her Greek.
What she likes is for me to sit beside her on my bedroom floor, knitting while she does a lesson in the book. Often the entire half hour will pass in silence while she doggedly fills in her beloved blanks. Other times, she’ll lay down her pencil and chatter away to me, or ask me to practice her flash cards with her (flash cards are another thing that make me shudder and fill Rose with delight). She likes me to look over each page as it is finished; she jots little notes at the bottom to record the time and day.
Sometimes she’ll want to do Greek during quiet time every day for a week. Just as often, she wants me to read to her—we’re halfway through Old Yeller right now—while she nibbles a piece of candy. Sometimes she’ll lay aside the Greek books for weeks at a stretch. This is why I call it tidal homeschooling. The tide carries this interest in and out. I’m not imposing these studies upon her; there is no pressure to complete the book in a certain amount of time, or even to complete it at all.
And that’s why I think she remains as interested in the subject as ever. If I were to sit her down and the table every day and say, “Now it’s time for your Greek lesson,” I know without a doubt that sooner or later her eagerness would have given way to reluctance. “Now listen, honey,” I could say. “You wanted to learn this and Mommy is going to help you fulfill that goal.” But what if a child’s goal changes? What if she didn’t have any goal in mind to begin with? I doubt Rose said to herself, at the age of six, “I want to attain proficiency in ancient Greek.” I think she said, “Ooh, this stuff is interesting, I want to know more.”
I know some parents might worry that allowing a child to start a project (or workbook) and cast it aside when interest fades will encourage habits of laziness or irresponsibility. You don’t want to give a kid the idea it’s ok to abandon ship as soon as you find out how much work is required of a sailor, right? But these fears don’t trouble me. I find that there are plenty of other areas of life for the establishment of good habits of discipline and follow-through: household chores, thank-you notes, pet care. I don’t need to harness a child’s interest in ancient Greece to a plow so that she can get practice making nice, neat furrows. My own interests wax and wane; why shouldn’t hers?
And suppose the interest dies a sudden death—then what? What if the Greek workbook gets shoved under my bed and Rose never mentions it again? Well, then that’s what happens. And that’s fine. The tide will bring in something else.
It always, always does.
Click here for the master list of all my tidal homeschooling posts.
Last week I took the kids to the city rec center for the weekly homeschoolers’ games day. Two hours of playing ball, tumbling on gym mats, and (occasionally) playing ball while tumbling on gym mats. Afterward, we stopped for a snack at a frozen yogurt shop. Unexpected treats bring out the best in my children, I’ve noticed, and this day was no exception. Their table manners were impeccable—I think Beanie only fell out of her chair once. And what helpful and considerate children! “Don’t worry about those sprinkles on the table, Mommy—I’ll clean them up.” (Lick lick lick.) “Are you full, Mommy? I can finish it for you if you want.”
As we were finishing our sundaes, a couple of elderly women who had been sitting nearby stopped to chat for a moment.
“Are they homeschooled?” one of the ladies asked me. I nodded. “I thought so,” she said, smiling. She didn’t elaborate, and I chose, naturally, to interpret it as a complimentary acknowledgment of their pleasing behavior. I’m sure the fact that my ten-year-old was sitting in a yogurt shop at two in the afternoon on a school day had nothing at all to do with the nice woman’s observation.
This brief encounter reminded me of another time my heart swelled with pride over a stranger’s recognition of my children as homeschoolers. This was two or three years ago. I took the girls to a nearby living history museum where costumed interpreters cook and weave and do some light blacksmithing in 1700s period cottages. In one cottage, Jane had quite a long chat with the interpreter, asking questions, answering questions, discussing the merits of peat fires vs. wood fires, real cats vs. stuffed cats, and so on.
As Jane skipped out the door to the barnyard, the interpreter turned to me and said, “You must be homeschoolers!”
“Why, yes!” I answered, delighted that Jane’s brilliant conversation had revealed the wonders of a home education.
“I thought so,” said the interpreter, watching my three small girls, who had come prepared for this outing in costumes of their own, chasing peacocks in the yard. “I could tell from the bonnets.”
Upon discovering that I had inadvertently written a note on the back of one of her drawings, Beanie wondered, “Do you think other mothers make this kind of mistake?”
This month’s Carnival of Unschooling is up at Atypical Homeschool this morning: the perfect reading for my tea break. I especially enjoyed Joanne’s post on the old socialization bugaboo. And how nice to see Every Waking Hour there!
Thanks, Ron & Andrea.
Meanwhile, the folks at Why Homeschool are collecting entries for the next Carnival of Homeschooling. Submissions are due by January 16th.
And here’s the latest Carnival of Education, hosted by Jenny D. Submissions for the next Carnival of Ed, hosted by The Education Wonk, are due January 17th and should be sent to: owlshome [at] earthlink [dot] net.
What do you do with your poet and painter of the month? Do you introduce one new work a week? One a day? Who chooses the featured artist and do you have a grand plan?
Our approach to art appreciation is very, very simple. We look at paintings and sculptures, and we talk about them. That’s really it. Jane and I might discuss (briefly) the historical context of the artist—what time and place he or she was from, what else was going on in the world, that sort of thing. It’s informal and conversational.
Many of our encounters with artists have been “accidental,” chosen by chance. When we were reading From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler
We chat about the paintings and sculptures. The girls are full of opinions and speculative background stories. Beanie especially likes to ponder what’s going on in the picture. About the Manet piece I posted the other day, she wondered why the mother isn’t watching the little girl—nor reading her book—nor petting her dog. “Maybe she isn’t the mommy,” she mused. “She could be a big sister.” Big sisters, apparently, are cut more slack when it comes to gazing off into space. Mothers, I gather, are supposed to pay attention.
This month it was I who chose Manet (rather than Manet who chose us, as has so often happened), primarily because some friends at 4 Real Learning are studying Manet this month, and the task of tracking down links to his paintings had already been done for me by someone else. (Thanks, Amy!)
In this casual manner, my family becomes acquainted with a new artist every month or two—during the indoor months of the year, that is. We seldom seem to spend much time poring over paintings during swimming-pool season.
I don’t have a master plan or a schedule, though I do harbor a fantasy (as yet unrealized) of purchasing a nice framed print of one painting from each artist we encounter in our family rambles. For now I make do with postcards and computer print-outs. My hope is that the kids will grow up enjoying art, enjoying talking about art, enjoying thinking about how an artist’s work reflects—or does not reflect—his cultural and historical context. I love the spark of connection when one of the children recognizes a print somewhere. “Mommy, that’s a Van Gogh!”
Karen Andreola mentions that important connection moment in this article on picture study:
…first and foremost we want our children to really “connect” with the artist’s work.
Here lies the difficulty. The grown-up who arranges the lesson is an all-important middleman, but like other middlemen, you must be lost in the background. Many pictures make their own independent appeal. Your must judge when a helping word is needed, or when—as it is especially the case with older children—too much speaking or too much enthusiasm may raise a barrier.
I completely agree: really the only mistake I can make here is to get in the way. So I try simply to put great works of art in the children’s path and then—quick—jump out of the road. But I’m here to listen to opinions (and they have many) and to provide access to more of what anyone wants to explore. I suppose Beanie’s reaction to Manet’s Railway painting establishes my role pretty clearly: all I have to do is pay attention.
I just found out that I’m a finalist in the Best Education/Homeschooling Blog category for the 2005 Best of Blog Awards. How very exciting. My sincere thanks to the unknown person who nominated me, and to the judges who selected the finalists. I was delighted to note that I’m in the company of a couple of blogs I very much enjoy, Alexander’s Maitresse and The Education Wonk. I see also that one of my favorite daily reads, Mental Multivitamin, is a finalist in the Best Book or Literary Blog category. Voting is scheduled to begin soon (details to follow). Best wishes to all the finalists!