Spring

Year's at the Spring.

Day's at the morn.

Morning's at seven.

Hillside's dew-pearled.

The Lark's on the wing.

The Snail's on the thorn.

God's in his Heaven.

All's right with the world.

- R. Browning

After nearly a week of rain and a night of thunderstorms, we have a beautiful sunny afternoon.

And suddenly, the grass is green!  The flowers are blooming - explosions of daffodil and hyacinth in the front bed, splashes of purple and yellow in the back yard.  The mourning dove who has built her nest outside the children's bedroom window for the past several years has returned, and from the way she's sitting on that nest I suspect she's laid her eggs already.  Jack saw a robin earlier.  I've been noticing them for a couple weeks, but this was the first bird he spotted and ID'd all by himself.  (He was very excited.)  And, thanks to Mr. Thorton Burgess, we now know that the robin is a thrush.  :D

This afternoon, they brought armfuls of wildflowers inside for me.  I now have a pot of dandelions on the kitchen table, thanks to Sally, and a huge pile of dandelions, violets, and purple dead-nettle that Jack wants to catalog for nature study.  He's not crazy about the idea of drawing them, he just wants to find them and look at them.  For today, I'm OK with that. 

I showed him how to find the leaves at the base of the dandelion.  Then we came inside, and I taught him how to use the key in our field guide - explaining some of the terms and showing examples of the various types of leaves.  Then we sat down with his haul and tried to classify them.  We narrowed the dandelion down to two: we think it is a red dandelion, based on the leaves, but will have to wait for a seed-head before we can totally rule out the common dandelion.  Of course, they picked ALL the flowers, so we may have to wait a while. 

"Never Stop Learning"

Last autumn, I entered a drawing for an autographed copy of Karen Glass's book Consider This.  I was shocked (and super excited) when I learned that I had won the raffle.  When my husband brought in the mail asking who we knew in Poland, I snatched the parcel out of his hands and eagerly ripped open the envelope.  It's a very good book, and worth a post of it's own, but that's not the topic tonight.

In the front cover of my book, where she signed it, Mrs. Glass wrote the words "Never Stop Learning."  This little phrase - and the idea it embodies - is a vital part of successful teaching.  Continuing education is important for the classroom teacher.  It's arguably even MORE important for the home-school teacher, since we are all but guaranteed to find ourselves teaching outside our areas of expertise.  We have to be committed to continuing to stretch ourselves if we are going to challenge our students appropriately.

It was with this idea in mind that I was interested in this book in the first place.  It was the reason I've been reading Churchill's Birth of Britain chapters corresponding with the history Jack is learning in Our Island Story.  And Richard Maybury's primer on Austrian Economics, Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?   And it's the reason I joined in with a book discussion group on the AO forum planning to read through many of the literature selections from Years 7&8 together over the next couple of years.  We just finished Idylls of the King, and are about halfway through Watership Down.  It's lots of fun.

But.

Joining in the book discussions with these wonderful ladies has made me realize something.  Several of the women in the group do not share my natural affinity for reading, analyzing, parsing, inhaling, rolling around and just generally delighting in "classic" literature.  They actually have to WORK to get through Tennyson.   Can you believe it!?

And yet, they do work at it.  Because they want to learn and grow, even if they never fall in love with it.  (For the record, I have come to have great admiration for these ladies as we read and discuss together.)   Which got me thinking: OK, so British History isn't something I've studied before, but . . . history, literature, philosophy, BOOKS - this is what I'm GOOD at.  My whole plan for self-education, for "Mother Culture", is incredibly biased towards the things I like doing anyway.

And the more I thought about this, the more it bugged me.

My son is very academically inclined.  Last summer we signed him up for baseball.  He couldn't hit.  He couldn't catch.  He couldn't throw.  We made him practice.  He played catch with Dad several times a week, and he whined and fussed about how hard it was Over and Over and Over.  But he got better.  One day he came in for dinner just bubbling with the news that they had made it to TEN catches before he dropped the ball.  By the end of the season, he still couldn't hit, but at least he wasn't whining about it and he couldn't catch or throw very well, but he was trying.

We also make him learn piano.  Now, this boy LOVES music.  But he does not love piano.  He particularly hates that he can't make the music sound the way it is supposed to right away on the first try.  He gets frustrated and wants to quit and we keep telling him, "No."   Now, I know that for some CM students, it would be totally OK to hold off on music lessons until the child is in Year 4, closer to age 10.  But we are including piano now and insisting he keep it for a particular reason.  The reason is: because the academic stuff all comes naturally to him.  We want there to be something in his schoolwork that is hard for him, so that he can learn how to work through a challenge.  Because there's so much room for learning and growing in that process of patient effort.  It's not really about the piano at all, it's about virtue and character.

From a Mama who had a natural gift for academics, and never did develop that particular virtue (of working hard at hard tasks), it is important to me that he learn this lesson NOW at age seven.  Because it is oh-so-much harder to learn at 20.  Or 30.

I tried explaining all of this to said 7-year-old the other day.  He wasn't impressed.

And after that conversation, I got on-line and scheduled a driving test.  In two weeks.  Even though I haven't even pretended to be practicing in like two (?) years.

Relevant background: I got a learner's permit (again) back in October because I thought it would make voting simpler.  (Long story).  But I never really planned on using it for, y'know, learning to drive.  Motor skills and spatial reasoning are not my strong points.  I've never been able to wrap my brain around kinetic learning - it's just totally foreign to the way I think.  Physics, however, I can wrap my brain around, and high mass with high velocity = yikes.

But I realized that I need to force myself to stretch beyond my comfort zone for the very same reasons that Jack needs to practice his piano lesson and to read books that are harder than Frog and Toad.  Because that's how we grow.

There was a lot of practicing during the past two weeks.  The friend who helped teach me during my most recent half-hearted attempt took me out on the roads a couple of times.  My husband packed all four kids into the car and took me to the exam station 30+ minutes away to get in some time on their practice course after dinner each evening for a week.  (My kids were bored to tears the first night.  We took music for them after that, and it went better.)  There may have been a moment where I broke down and pitched a "this-is-pointless-I'll-never-get-it-the-whole-thing-is-stupid" fit EXACTLY like the one my first grader had thrown over his piano lesson that morning.  In front of said first grader, of course.  That was embarrassing.

I got my license this weekend, 14 years after my first driving lesson.  Tonight, I drove my four kids to and from church.  In the dark, and the rain.  It was AWFUL.  But we got home safe and in one piece.  (Thank you, Abba!)  My husband is out of town on a business trip, and I have at least one other place we are supposed to get to before he comes home.  And I'm going to challenge myself to drive at least once a week for a while.  Because even though it's hard, and I don't like it, and might never like it - it is worth learning.

I don't know if this technically qualifies as "Mother Culture" or not - but it's not really about the driving.  It's about learning, and growing.  It's about deliberately making TIME to learn and grow, instead of being ruled by "tyranny of the urgent."  It's about building relationships with space and mass and velocity and learning to trust God and surrender fears.  And, somehow, I think that the woman who insisted that students of all backgrounds study poetry and handicrafts, classical music and Swedish Drill, would not rule out an area of learning just because on the surface it seems mundane.

Yes, I'm still here.

Obviously, blogging consistently is not my strong point.

School is going well.  Jack is two-thirds of the way through first grade, and has nearly completed AmblesideOnline Year 1.  He finished reading Farmer Boy during his "quiet reading time" this week.  During spring term, we'll be finishing our study of birds, reading legends about King Arthur and Robin Hood, learning about the early church, and the fall of the Roman empire.  Each of his end-of-term exams has gone a little better than the term before, and we feel like he's making good progress through his schoolwork.  He still has a vivid imagination and loves to pull his sisters into his crazy adventures.

Sally is learning to read, and beginning to learn to write lower-case letters using chalk, and listening to fairy tales.  She's still a good helper and a great hug-giver, but not quite as quiet as she used to be.  She loves to pretend to be a princess who is lost in the forest - usually with a bow and quiver of arrows at her side.

For Bible, we are reading stories from the Old Testament, from Solomon to Esther.  We've started memorizing Psalm 121, and are continuing to sing a hymn as part of our schoolwork each morning.

Molly loves to listen to stories, poetry, and nursery rhymes.  She plays with her dolls, blocks, puzzles, and lacing beads.  And she sings - oh, she sings!  It's hard to believe that this busy and curious two-year-old was such a tiny baby.

And then there's Gavin - my one-month-old cuddle bug, who is learning - oh, everything! :)

Treasuring These Things: Mother's Day Eve, 2013

The day began in the dark, chilly quiet of 4:30.

I have been blessed with a baby who sleeps from 9 to 6 more often than not.  This morning was a "not."  This morning, you were wide awake at 4:30.  For the next hour and a half, I held you while you ate, and giggled, and smiled, and looked.  I wasn't very good company, but you didn't seem to mind.  I sang a lullaby, hoping you'd settle down and I could get another half hour of sleep.  You sang with me.  When you did fall asleep, I didn't.  I sat there and held you and thought that these hours, with no big siblings or housework or anything else demanding my attention, was a gift.  A gift to Mommy from Molly, for Mother's Day: two whole hours of smiles, and giggles, and coos, and songs, and those beautiful wonder-full eyes taking in all of the world around them.

The day began at 6:30.

Your sister had just fallen soundly asleep, and I was near drifting off myself, when I heard you get up, go to the bathroom, and wash your hands.  I thought about how responsible you're becoming, how short (yet long) a time it's been since I cuddled you in the sleepy dawn-light listening to Daddy's alarm.  After washing your hands, you came into my room, knocked several things off my nightstand so you could get closer to me, and whispered, "Mommy, the sun is awake.  Can it be morning? please?"  I stifled the desire to snap something sarcastic, and told you that yes, it was morning, but since everyone was still sleeping you should play very quietly in your bedroom.  You did.  (Another Gift.)  

Later, I watched you play.  Your dinosaurs roamed a vast domain - all the corners of the bedroom, the hall, the stairs.  You love to lay down next to Molly, eye to eye, and tell her stories from your imagination, to tell Sarah stories, to become a character in a story and play out the role, to build puppets with your blocks or use your toys to act out the story.  And you always make it bigger and more interesting than the story I would've told, even if it happens to be the same one.  When we went hiking, and saw a tower, it was Rapunzel's Castle - but she's not home, because when you called "let down your hair" she didn't answer.  You protect your sisters, come running for me when Molly cries, make sure Sarah remembers the rules.  You make me understand, a little better, how amazing my Mom is and what it must've been like to mother me.

The day began at 7:30.

I heard John's play getting a little louder, a little more excited.  I went in to remind him that you were sleeping.  Only you weren't.  That is to say, your eyes were open.  You were still in bed, and I asked if you would mind me climbing in with you.  We cuddled and snoozed for about an hour, while the dinosaurs did their thing.  I apologized for letting Molly monopolize my arms lately.  That hour was another of my Mother's Day Gifts - a nap with my favorite hug-giver.

Afterwards, we got dressed and you helped me make breakfast, just Sarah and Mommy.  You are a such a good helper - excited to be with me, paying attention to what I do and asking good questions, doing anything you're asked with a cheerful attitude.  I need to invite you into my work more often.

Molly giggles and coos, John is a chatterbox, but you don't say much at all.  Not that you can't talk, if you wanted to.  It's just that you'd rather watch and listen.  But when  we were walking at the park, you held my hand most of the time.  Near the end, as we'd returned to the car, you tugged on my arm: "Mommy, mommy - I know what happened to Rapunzel!"  Your voice dropped almost to a whisper.  "She sailed away on a pirate ship!"  Your little imagination had been marinating on that story ever since we found the "castle," and I was the person you chose to share it.

There are far too many days when I don't stop and savor these moments.  Mornings when I just want to get 10 more minutes of sleep, to get breakfast on the table, to get on with the day.  Afternoons when I'm too preoccupied with my grown-up stuff to enter into your imaginings.  Days when "being Mommy" is just something else I have to do, instead of something I get to do.  And these little gifts are brushed aside, and forgotten, gathering dust in the corners.  But today, I am seeing you.  And I'm staggered by the weight of this treasure that God has entrusted to me.