Blogging for 2011...Inspired Evenings

Is this my first blog for 2011? Isn't this my first blog in many months? Where have I been? Good question.


I was feeling discouraged - feeling like I wasn't inspired or unique or challenging enough in my thoughts to share what was inside of me. I want this blog to be thought provoking and life changing - at least life effecting... Is that too much to ask? I think it might be :). Finally I feel like I am starting the year with some moments to think and ponder again and so feel like I may have a little something or other to contribute to readers out there...at least today I do. So today I will blog. As for tomorrow? We shall wait and see.


I've actually been frequenting another (what I like to call) "superblog" and that is one reason why I stopped blogging here. http://www.aholyexperience.com/ is Ann Voskamp's incredible, beautiful blog about her journey. She has a way with words that I know I will never match and she has insight into spiritual matters that impress me, change me, are transforming me. Her blog is poetry. So check it out if you haven't already.
So now...about me!!

I am reading a book with my fellow Homeschool moms and friends entitled "Leadership Education" by Oliver and Rachel DeMille. They use a method of homeschooling coined as Thomas Jefferson Education. You can learn more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_Education
Let me be clear. I am not a true follower of this method. But, nevertheless I am enjoying this book and finding nuggets that I can apply to our home. I am very serious about homeschooling, as most of my peers are as well. I am not sure what 'people' out there think of when they think of a homeschool mom, but it is amusing to discover that most of us (in my circles anyway) are constantly challenging ourselves, searching for new and better ways to educate our children effectively and at the same time give them a fulfilling and inspiring upbringing.
So this is my nugget for this week: Inspiring Evenings. The authors of this book emphasize the importance of having evenings that are for true inspiration. The common theme of TJEd is to "Inspire not Require". I am not sure if I have yet gotten my brain around what this means exactly. The author states,"There is nothing more challenging in the entire educational world...the parent-teacher's role is to inspire the child to happily, consistently and unswervingly study, learn, search, discover, enlighten, know and apply." (I think we can both require and inspire at the same time, but we will talk more about that another day.) The author goes on to say, "evenings are the Universe's gift to those who want to inspire". After reading this, the more I think about it, as I go through my days , watching the sky darken, the snow fall, the world grow quieter, I really think they have something there. (And yet the typical Canadian family seems okay with letting the tv be the main source of "inspiration"). We need to reclaim these few hours we have before our children lay their sleepy heads down.
Evenings...they are for...laughing...talking...reading great books... playing... knitting...singing... praying... times with family - times for inspiration!
I hope I've learned something this week.
xo
sarahjane

Spring Nature Study With Art and Music Appreciation and A Giveaway!

This is one of my favourite websites and what a perfect time to get excited about studying Nature! Spring has sprung! Check out their newest affordable products and be inspired!http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/2010/03/spring-nature-study-with-art-and-music.html

A Living God for a Living Education

I feel that I struggle to clarify my spiritual ideas and thoughts on paper or in word. The author of this book that I am reading - A Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola - sings to the same tune as me and I find myself nodding emphatically and getting out my orange highlighter frequently. This chapter at the beginning of her book is just so in line with my heart, and it is so encouraging to read. CM had a real love for her Saviour - in her books she calls him names like: our King, the Chief amongst ten thousand, and the altogether lovely. What an intimate relationship she had with Jesus Christ and it comes through time and time again.
Here is a quote that I must copy from CM herself - remember written a whole 130 years ago or so:
"To bring the human race, family by family, child by child, out of the savage and inhuman desolation where He is not, into the light and warmth and comfort of the presence of God, is no doubt, the chief thing we have to do in the world. And this individual work with each child, being the most momentous work in the world, is put into the hands of the wisest, most loving, disciplined and divinely instructed of human beings. Be ye perfect as your Father is perfect, is the perfection of parenthood, perhaps to be attained in its fullness only through parenthood. There are a few mistaken parents, ignorant parents, a few indifferent parents, even one in a thousand, callous parents; but the good that is done upon the earth is done, under God, by parents, whether directly or indirectly...the highest duty imposed upon him, it is also the most delicate; and he will have infinite humility, gentleness, love, and sound judgment, if he would present his child to God and the thought of God to the soul of his child"

Now I know that lots of you reading this won't agree with everything said here - but hey - I guess that is why this is my blog and not yours ;). Let me highlight a few things that jump out at me. My chief job to do in this world is to bring my children in to the presence of God - present my child to God and the thought of God to the soul of my children. I spoke in my last blog about thinking. It's Deuteronomy 6 when just after the 10 commandments are given - God says to the people to 'write the laws on their hearts - impress them on their children, talk about them when you walk, lie down, get up'. I am not talking about some legalistic religion here - I am talking about talking about Him - thinking about Him - for me to be breathing Him in and then breathing Him out on my children. This is my highest duty, and also my most delicate - let's face it, I'm not a delicate person, but yet this job of parenting and of introducing the 'thought of God' to my children, is to be handled delicately - purposefully and wisely. What a calling. But by the Grace of God I go...
sarahjane

What a Child Should Have...

Charlotte Mason said that each day a child should have:

• something or someone to love
• something to do
• something to think about

If I can achieve these three things for all five of my children than I am doing something right. I like breaking it down to three things, like a checklist. We all like checklists don't we? This parenting gig is challenging but oh so rewarding.

Something to love - Everybody needs something to love, whether it be a dog, a guinnea pig, parents, siblings. "There are opportunities for love in every home. There are also many ways to provide services (labors of love) to others if you look for them."

Something to do - By this she meant of course - something worthwhile to do! Have we lost our creativity? Are we so busy figuring out what show is on next, or website to hook our kids into that we have forgotten how many other things there are to do? Things of great value. Now, these are never easy are they? When our child says they are bored - as children will quite often - it becomes our responsibility to either (a) entertain them or (b) put the tv on. Wait a second what happened to option (c) teach them to entertain themselves? We are raising a generation of children that expect to be entertained - carted from one activity to another, amused with one game, playmate or another. Option (c) is the hardest option - at first - but then come the rewards. Teach them to sew, and you have a child making her own outfits for her dolls within a month or two; take them out on Nature Studies and then watch them take the initiative on their own to take their sketchbook out and draw a picture of that beautiful leaf they found on the lawn. I did find by the end of the summer, the kids were getting more squirrely - bickering, bored, what have you, and I have had friends ask me how I homeschool because this is their only experience with their children at home. But as soon as we started back to school - focused attention (giving them lots of things to think about) - the "something to do" has gone back to smooth and easy again. Too much idleness makes for ...something...not good...what was that saying my mother used to say?

I suppose that really finding something to do, depends on the last point being followed...

Something to Think About - Here is another quote from Karen Andreola that I just must copy "Children who are not given something to think about grow up at best with two ideas: to work hard and to amuse themselves when they are working...amusement is not an adequate substitute for something to think about...When children are guided to seek after something to think about during their home life, they will continue this habit throughout their lives." Okay- that's what I want for my babies - yup. No questions asked. Think about it (no pun intended) - how many of us were 'really' encouraged to think - and of course given great things from which to stem our thoughts when we were young? Living books? I am responsible for giving my children the best that this world has to offer - not money wise of course - but content wise. I want my children to find "joy and refreshment" in what they read - digging in to the text and pulling out what they can in their own words (narration!).

There - did I give you something to think about?

Charlotte Mason - the "gentle art of learning"

I have alluded to Charlotte Mason but I have not yet really described her the way that she should be. It could be difficult in one or two sentences to summarize her and the influence that she had on the school systems in the late 18oo's early 1900's.
I have been drawn to CM's way of thinking since a friend gave me the book "A Charlotte Mason Companion" by Karen Andreola, four years ago, to peruse and read at my leisure. I quickly learned that, "Charlotte saw children as thinking, feeling human beins, as spirits to be kindled and not as vessels to be filled...She believed all children were entitled to a liberal education based upon good literature and the arts." This was radical for these times where - upper class children only were given any education and even that was very regimented and "boxed in". CM wrote a book and then more books explaining "how parents could- and should- provide their children with a broad, stimulating, even exciting education, far removed from the common diet of so many elementary schools of the day." Her literature was received gratefully and she quickly became a leading authority on early education.
There is a book called "For the Children's Sake" by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay which I have not read, and do intend to (when I am done re-reading my brand new copy of "A CM Companion") - Karen Andreola was first inspired by her book and then had CM's original books republished back in the 80's.
Here are the main points of a CM Education that I will expand on in further posts: Living Books, Narration, No Homework, Short Lessons, Free Afternoons, Few Lectures, Ideas and Culture, and Habit.

Homeschooling and Why

No, I am not going to explain why I am homeschooling - not tonight anyway. (did you check the clock? - okay it's wrong - it's actually 11:28 pm) But I will say that I am once again very excited about educating my children at home! I just had a few ladies in and we watched a video about Charlotte Mason - relearned some fundamentals about "The Gentle Art of Learning" - Charlotte lived over one hundred years ago and was a big influence in changing the way they were doing school at that time (in England) - before her time they were very much about the drudgery of school - math drills, grammar lessons, memorization - and she would say that none of these things are wrong in their own rites but she would introduce things like math manipulatives, reading "living books", narration, nature study - helping the child to really gain a love for learning by having the opportunity to connect with some of the "Great Minds" - the greatest Mind being God (the Bible) and then from there writers like Robert Louis Stevenson or Charlotte Bronte, inventors like Bell and Einstein. Nothing grieves me more than the tendency for any child over grade 1 or 2 telling me that their favourite subject in school is Gym or Recess - WHAT??? What happened to that love for learning that they had in Kindergarten??
That is just one reason why I homeschool.