The First Day Never Goes as Planned

I've been homeschooling something like 17 years, give or take a year because I'm too lazy to do the math. And, I promise you, in this house, the first day of a new term never goes as planned. After all these years, though, it always goes predictably.

I can predict that it's going to be a bit rocky.

It begins with me arising early, super early, because I am eager to have everything just so. The environment is readied--I've spent hours getting everything just so. I'm very visual and I find a certain peace in the order and the color. All good.

Then, I awaken the children, earlier than usual, because I want them to be eager to begin also. The details from there vary from year to year, but they go something like this:  Despite great provisioning just days before, we don't have eggs for breakfast. Littlest Darling has a runny nose, a fever, and a croupy cough and she doesn't want me to leave her to go to the store. Two little girls mourn the absence of the neighbor's child who slips in and out of our family life. She is going to "real school" today and will join us at 2:30. There is a bit of envy over lunchboxes and school shoes. Little boys are not so little any more and not so eager to be awakened, either. Everyone wants eggs for breakfast.

We begin determinedly, my enthusiasm ebbing a bit as my lofty plans meet reality. I remember a morning over a decade ago when I had such awesome things planned, such an elaborate environment readied, and three little boys responded ... well, they didn't. I'm not even sure they noticed, but they certainly weren't impressed. Those were days before blogs, before the temptation to leave my disappointing crew in our dining room-turned-learning room and go look again at the beautiful pictures of other women's learning spaces (here's where I am resisting the urge to link like crazy--y'all can find them;-) and to download page after page of other people's plans. No, I didn't leave my regular, ordinary, unimpressed boys in my regular, ordinary home and head off to the computer to escape to some sort of blog perfection. I called my husband and I cried. He didn't get it. Well, he got that I was crying, but he didn't get that I thought those things that were so important to me would inspire the boys. And on that day, I learned it's not about me. It's about them.

Flash forward a dozen or so years. Now, the plans grate up against reality on the first day and I'm not surprised. I know this day is the day I test drive my philosophical underpinnings and see how it all works in real life. And when that beautiful basket with the multi-colored gems is gleefully dumped all over the wood floor and the wee one with the big eyes and runny nose delights in the sound so she does it again, I remember.

They haven't been clicking around Pinterest.

They haven't been trading stories on Facebook.

They haven't been reading wonderful, inspiring books about family rhythm and prepared environments.

They haven't been planning curriculum all summer. 

They are why I am doing this at all.

They are the same today as they were last week. We have to meet in the middle. I have to look realistically on all my ponderings and plans and adjust them according to the real life I live here. With them. I have to recognize where I haven't left margin. Where I didn't consider.

Room.

Room for stopping to wipe noses and to swish toilets. Room for cooking and eating and cleaning up afterwards. Room to be alone, each of us in our own spaces, to think and dream and create.  Room for balance.

Reading and running free. Staying on task and stopping to notice and wonder. Pencil to paper and needle to fabric. Still at the table with close up tasks and quick on their feet with a ball beneath them. Discussing what I planned and pondering things I never would have considered. Planning with diligence and moving away from the plans.

The first day is always a little off balance. These days, I plan for that, too. This is as it should be. The grace of the plans that just don't work sheds glorious light on the beauty of educating at home, together. I can adjust the plan. I can allow them to force me to consider each one of them individually and to see where my notions meet their needs and where they fail. When I see that the first day is their day, I begin to understand that the first day might just be the day when I learn the most.

I learn that I can't do this on my own strength. I am reminded that I must see the child, each child, and meet him where he is. I learn anew that this isn't school at home. It's a lifestyle of learning that requires an incredible amount of sacrifice and even more grace. 

 

It's just the first day. It didn't go according to plan. But that was actually part of the plan.  I embrace the rough spots, the weak places, the small failures,  knowing that He is teaching me; He is begging me to show my children that I can be taught.

Oh, I can!  Show me, God. Show me your holy will.  How does it all fit together? How do we all grow together? What is Your plan for this family? Grant me the grace and the humility to set aside my plan for your better one.

On the occasion of the first day of school,

I'm re-posting the very first post ever posted here. Be back later with some musings on the day. 

Educating a child’s mind is a primary goal of home education and is absolutely essential to helping our children become what God wants them to be. Edith Stein believed in balanced formation—the heart, soul and mind all need to be educated. She was a strong critic of the education system of her day which stressed memorization and the acquisition of unrelated facts. Charlotte Mason concurs when she writes,

“Upon the knowledge of these great matters—History, Literature, Nature, Science, Art—the Mind feeds and grows. It assimilates such knowledge as the body assimilates food, and the person becomes what is called magnanimous, that is a person of great mind, wide interests, incapable of occupying himself much about petty, personal matters. What a pity to lose sight of such a possibility for the sake of miserable scraps of information about persons and things that have little connection with one another and little connection with ourselves!” (Ourselves, p.78)

Edith Stein deplored the fact that the idea of education typically is:

“that of encyclopedic knowledge: the presumed concept of the mind [is] that of the tabula rasa onto which as many impressions as possible [are] to be registered through intellectual perceptions and memorizations." (Woman, Edith Stein, p.130)

Like Charlotte Mason, she recognized that education is so much more than the acquisition of encyclopedic knowledge. In the poetic words of William Butler Yeats, “Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” Edith Stein wrote that the teacher’s job was to encourage the student’s “inner participation” in the educational process. She was to get the student excited about the material, encourage a response, offer guidance, but ultimately the child was to make it his own.

“The teacher’s role in the formation of the students is an indirect one since all development is self-development. All training is self-training” (Woman, p. 5)

With these three forces in mind, we can look at a new paradigm for home education, one which focuses upon developing the whole personality of the child—the heart, soul and mind using the wisdom of Edith Stein, Charlotte Mason and others to pursue a happy, wholehearted, academically excellent, spiritually complete childhood. Over and over again, both Edith Stein and Charlotte Mason articulate beautifully the need to reach a child’s heart in order to truly educate him. We cannot limit education to that which is poured into a child’s brain. Instead, we seek to touch the core of the child. Stein writes,

“Actual formative material is received not merely by the senses and intellect but is integrated by the ‘heart and soul’ as well. But if it actually becomes transformed into the soul, then it ceases to be mere material: it works itself, forming, developing; it helps the soul to reach its intended gestalt." (Woman, p.131)

I don’t consider education from the perspective of filling buckets because I don’t consider children from that perspective. When I look at a child, I see a living breathing person made in God’s image for whom God has a plan. As parent educators, we need to embrace a new notion of learning. We need to help the child discern the Lord’s will and equip him to answer his particular call. It is the heart and soul of the child we want to touch. For our purposes, we need to engage the heart in order to effectively educate the child. Our vision of a well-educated child is a child who has a heart for learning, a child who has the tools he needs to continue to learn for a lifetime and the love to want to do it. He has been led to a lifetime of learning all the time. We must be absolutely certain of our goals in education. When we know where we are going, we can confidently chart our course. We want children who know, love, and serve the Lord. As their primary educators, it is our privilege and our duty to equip them for that task. I want my children to love learning. I want them to revel in their curiosity and delight in their discoveries. And I want to learn alongside them.

If such a style of learning interests you, you might be interested in reading Real Learning: Education in the Heart of the Home, from which the above was taken.

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Tags: homeschooling, homeschool, home education, Charlotte Mason, education

St. Monica

image here

Exemplary Mother of the Great Augustine,

You perseveringly pursued your wayward son

Not with wild threats 

But with prayerful cries to heaven. 

Intercede for all mothers in our day 

So that they may learn 

To draw their children to God. 

Teach them how to remain

Close to their children, 

Even the prodigal sons and daughters 

Who have sadly gone astray. 

Dear St Monica, troubled wife and mother, 

Many sorrows pierced your heart

During your lifetime. 

Yet you never despaired or lost faith. 

With confidence, persistence and profound faith, 

You prayed daily for the conversion

Of your beloved husband, Patricius 

And your beloved son, Augustine. 

Grant me that same fortitude, 

Patience and trust in the Lord. 

Intercede for me, dear St. Monica, 

That God may favorably hear my plea 

For 

(mention your petition here) 

And grant me the grace 

To accept his will in all things, 

Through Jesus Christ, our Lord, 

In the unity of the Holy Spirit, 

One God forever and ever. Amen.

more here

From the Confessions of Saint Augustine, bishop
Let us gain eternal wisdom

The day was now approaching when my mother Monica would depart from this life; you knew that day, Lord, though we did not. She and I happened to be standing by ourselves at a window that overlooked the garden in the courtyard of the house. At the time we were in Ostia on the Tiber. We had gone there after a long and wearisome journey to get away from the noisy crowd, and to rest and prepare for our sea voyage. I believe that you, Lord, caused all this to happen in your own mysterious ways. And so the two of us, all alone, were enjoying a very pleasant conversation, forgetting the past and pushing on to what is ahead. We were asking one another in the presence of the Truth–for you are the Truth–what it would be like to share the eternal life enjoyed by the saints, which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, which has not even entered into the heart of man. We desired with all our hearts to drink from the streams of your heavenly fountain, the fountain of life.

That was the substance of our talk, though not the exact words. But you know, O Lord, that in the course of our conversation that day, the world and its pleasures lost all their attraction for us. My mother said: “Son, as far as I am concerned, nothing in this life now gives me any pleasure. I do not know why I am still here, since I have no further hopes in this world. I did have one reason for wanting to live a little longer: to see you become a Catholic Christian before I died. God has lavished his gifts on me in that respect, for I know that you have even renounced earthly happiness to be his servant. So what am I doing here?”

I do not really remember how I answered her. Shortly, within five days or thereabouts, she fell sick with a fever. Then one day during the course of her illness she became unconscious and for a while she was unaware of her surroundings. My brother and I rushed to her side but she regained consciousness quickly. She looked at us as we stood there and asked in a puzzled voice: “Where was I?”

We were overwhelmed with grief, but she held her gaze steadily upon us and spoke further: “Here you shall bury your mother.” I remained silent as I held back my tears. However, my brother haltingly expressed his hope that she might not die in a strange country but in her own land, since her end would be happier there. When she heard this, her face was filled with anxiety, and she reproached him with a glance because he had entertained such earthly thoughts. Then she looked at me and spoke: “Look what he is saying.” Thereupon she said to both of us: “Bury my body wherever you will; let not care of it cause you any concern. One thing only I ask you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be.” Once our mother had expressed this desire as best she could, she fell silent as the pain of her illness increased.

~St. Augustine, from today's Office of Readings

Five Minute Friday: Older

I breezed by the hospital today for routine bloodwork. I parked just beyond the Birthing Inn, and I was flooded with memories: the sight of Mike's tennis shoes just beneath the curtain signaling that I could indeed birth that baby because dad had arrived; Nicholas bursting on the scene on that magical night just a tick or two before midnight; Katie and the unexpected c-section and the long hospital stay; Karoline and the absolute perfection of that October; the days spent anxiously in the triage room and then the awful, wrenching feeling of walking through the Birthing Inn doors and away from the building when I left sweet Sarah Annie in the NICU. I was transported back by that place, back as far as thirteen years -- to a younger me. I did not walk through those doors today.

I walked instead through medical office building doors. Just routine bloodwork. I sat in the waiting room, foregoing the ubiquitous copies Fit Pregnancy for my knitting bag. There I sat, peering beneath my glasses, because to look through the lenses makes everything close up appear blurry. 

Yep.

Older.

{Wow. That wasn't  very cheerful was it? According to Lisa-Jo, the deal is only five minutes, so I will not have time to elaborate upon the good in older. Besides Sarah has come to climb all over me. It's time to snap things shut here. But hey, I have kids climbing all over me, so it's good, right?. Visit Lisa-Jo for more Five Minute Friday fun.}

And hey, happy weekend! Stay dry, be safe and thanks so much for stopping by.

Hurricanes to think about

Below is a repost from several years ago. I confess that I have not tried all the links. My hope is that there is still plenty of good stuff to think about as we seize a very real opportunity to discuss hurricanes.

Hurricane Reading

Peter Spier's Rain

Galveston's Summer of the Storm

Isaac's Storm

Hurricane

Magic School Bus inside a Hurricane

Rain Makes Applesauce

Come on, Rain!

Down Comes The Rain

One Morning in Maine

Websites Worth Exploring

FEMA for Kids

National Hurricane Center

Hurricanes: How they Work and What they Do

Alphabetical Order Each year, hurricane names are assigned in alphabetical order. The list of names is recycled every six years. The names of this year's hurricanes can be found at here. List the names out of sequence and let the children put the names in alphabetical order. Ask them to notice a pattern in the names once they are in order. 

Make “lightning”. Static electricity is stored in rain clouds. When a cloud is so full of static electricity that there's no room for any more, a spark might leap from the cloud. That spark is called "lightning"! (Note: This experiment works best when the weather is dry.)

1. Tear up a sheet of tissue paper into tiny little pieces.

2. Hold a comb over the confetti.  Nothing happens.

3. Use a comb to comb the children’s hair. Or rub the comb on a piece of wool or fur.

4. Then hold the comb over the tiny tissue paper pieces.

5. What happens? Why does it happen?

The Water Cycle in a Jar. Discuss the steps of the water cycle:

(1.) Energy from the sun changes water to water vapor.

(2.) Water vapor rises. It cools and condenses to form clouds.

(3.) Winds blow the clouds over land.

(4.) Clouds meet cool air, and rain or snow falls to the ground.

(5.) Most of the water returns to large lakes and oceans.

Draw the steps for nature journals.

Now, re-create the water cycle:

1. Fill a large, glass bottle or jar half full of water .

2. Cover the jar with plastic wrap and secure the plastic wrap in place with an elastic.

3. Place the jar in a sunny window.

4. Observe for a few hours. What happens? Why did it happen?

Create a cyclone in a bottle.

Graphing. Make a bar graph of the number of hurricanes by month.

June

19 hurricanes

July

25 hurricanes

August

77 hurricanes

September

107 hurricanes

October

53 hurricanes

November

5 hurricanes

(Data shows totals for US Landfalls from1851-2015.)

And/or

Hurricanes cause millions of dollars in damages each year. Create a bar or picture graph to show the costs of Atlantic hurricane damage over the decades.

1920s

$2 billion

1930s

$6 billion

1940s

$6 billion

1950s

$13 billion

1960s

$23 billion

1970s

$21 billion

1980s

$21 billion

1990s

$78 billion

Make a weather station. Go to Making a Weather Station and follow the directions to create a weather station at home.

Geography -- track a hurricane. Print off a Tracking Map and track the path of a current storm.

Download the Hurricane Kit Checklist and create one for your own home. This is a good basic disaster kit even if you don’t live in a hurricane region.

Use watercolors to paint hurricane scenes.

Curriculum Looking for a unit study on emergency preparedness? Youth Emergency Preparedness Curriculum. 

Games  Create your own hurricane and explore the relationship between sea surface temperatures and hurricane strength.

Research

1. What's the difference between a hurricane, a cyclone, and a typhoon?

2. What is the origin of the word "hurricane"?

3. Pick a hurricane whose name has been retired.  Research the storm and find out why the name was retired. Choose from the list a hurricane a US hurricane, research the hurricane, and then create a brochure or lapbook about it. Include such things as the hurricane's path, the costs according to the actual year in which the hurricane occurred, the loss of life, loss of property (particularly notable property and landmarks), rebuilding efforts.

4.  Research relief efforts.  Which organizations rush to offer relief?  How do they operate? 

Geography. Visit Earth Science for Kids and look at the geographic areas to find current tropical storms. Locate the seven areas where tropical storms occur on a world map identify countries that might be affected by storms in each of those areas. Are storms there called typhoons, cyclones, or hurricanes?