Six

I'm not interested in perfect.

As I sweep the floor, I notice it there.  In the corner, behind the shoes, the dirt.  It's in the kitchen too, in the back corner under the cabinets.  And underneath the washer and dryer in the utility closet.  I would have to move them to get to it.  I see it.

I sew one stitch too far.  I know I've done it, and I could go back and fix it... cut the threads in progress, pull this behemoth quilt out of my machine, and painstakingly remove stitches, all the way back to the beginning of the line, sew it again... so that it would be perfect.

I have a terrible day.  I am emotional, crying, needing to be alone.  But I have to teach my kids, even if I didn't have to teach them, I have to parent them.  I don't do a very good job, some days.

And it skitters through my mind,  as I look at the dirt I've missed, choose not to rip a seam, accept the hug my children need to give...

I'm not interested in perfect. 

Perfect doesn't solve anything.  Perfect won't guarantee life goes according to plan.

But so much life is in front of me!

These kids, they are helping to sweep.  They make a bigger mess, but they are learning!

My little daughter might get to sleep covered by this quilt by Christmas.  There are uneven stitches.  I will always know they are there, but maybe they won't be, next time. 

And I have a chance, in my own weakness, to show redemption.  To show real life, real emotions, to show and receive grace.  Perfection would never teach them that.

I'm not interested in perfect.

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.

 Philippians 1:9-11

My Helpers

Reminiscing

This week we're reading A Pair of Red Clogs by Masako Matsuno.  It's the story of a grandmother reminiscing about a lesson learned in her childhood. 

As our activity, I asked the kids to narrate a memory to me.


Here is Nathan's special memory:

When my baby brother was born, I was four years old.  Beah was my baby brother's midwife.  When he was born, my dad went over and woke me up and when I got up, the breakfast I had was plain cheerios with sugar in them.

My dad was the one to catch my baby brother.

The other midwife that came helped Beah.

My baby brother's name is Isaac.

I got water for my mom.  Beah helped me get nice hot water from the kettle.

Nana came to our house when my baby brother was born.  Nana took care of me.

I was in my mom's room most of the time.  I wanted to catch my baby brother, but then I didn't want to .  So I watched Isaac come out of my mom's tummy.  It was in the middle of the night.

I was excited that I was gonna get a new baby brother!

Here is Brenna's special memory:

I went to Wahoo Wednesday.  We had tables there.  We sat at them and colored.

There were toys that you could sprinkle but they weren't real.  They were pretend food.  They were yellow.  It was cheese.

I asked Brenna if she remembered the shirt she wore to Wahoo Wednesday (our church's VBS) and she scrunched up her nose and said, "it's getting too big on me."

"What?"

"It's getting too big on me."

"Do you mean 'it's getting too small'?"

"No.  It's getting too big on me."

"Oh.  well do you want to write about that?"

"No."

Well, at least she's got her priorities straight.  It's all about the cheese.  Fake or otherwise.

I am exhausted and hormonal, but not pregnant.

Really, I failed a pregnancy test yesterday.  Definitely not pregnant.

But SO tired.  And cranky.

A little bit ago, Brian called to say his boss is in town and wants to take the team out to dinner. I cried.  Not because I don't want him to go, but because I want to go too.

About that pregnancy test:

I've spent the last couple days thinking about being pregnant.  I'm not ready.  It's an odd feeling, since each other time I could hardly wait!  But as I looked at Isaac, I wasn't ready for him to NOT be the baby.  And as I thought about all of the unknowns in the next six to eight months, being pregnant would really complicate not having any idea where we'll be living (or even when we'll be moving)!

And yet...

When I got a minus sign instead of a plus...

I was disappointed.

I never claim to be logical!

(And no, we're not going to start trying...yet)

A Perfect Fit, Part 2

On Saturday, I talked about my love for Five in a Row.  The freedom it's given us is just what our family needs.  However, so much more goes into a day of parenting/schooling around here.  FIAR makes up about 45 minutes of a full day that encompasses the things I love about homeschooling.

In the morning, our family works together to run a load of laundry and load/unload the dishwasher.  The kids each make their own beds (as a side note, for the first time in my life, it has become habit to make my bed as soon as I get out of it.  Yay for growth!) and put away all the books they read the night before.

Next, we sit down for a devotional time.  As I was trying to figure out what to do for devotionals shortly before school started, my friend Nina told me she was using a book called Leading Little Ones to God.

The title sounded vaguely familiar... last year, I was given a couple huge totes of homeschooling supplies and texts from an acquaintance back home.  I told Nina, "I think I have that!" and I did.  I hadn't spent any time at all looking at it, but for some reason, decided to bring it to New Orleans with us.  It's a wonderful book.  Each day has a short reading, a scripture passage, and a hymn.  Last week, our readings were

• Our hearts ask for God
• We cannot see God
• We see God's works
• God talked to people long ago
• God talks to us

When I saw these subjects, and all the rest presented in a very loving and simple way, I knew this would be perfect for Nathan.  He asks questions about these sorts of things all the time.  Another perfect fit!

After devotions, we do math.  One of the things that the commenters about FIAR mentioned was that you definitely need to supplement math and handwriting. 

For handwriting, I've chosen to have Nathan write letters to people, because sending mail is about the greatest thing EVER.  Every week, we'll write one letter (and Brenna draws a picture), and spend time the rest of the week working on the places that were hard.  I know that's sort of backwards, but it works for us!

The big math decision, I turned over to my mathematically inclined husband.  I narrowed it down to two programs, then told him to try to remember being a kid, and pick which one he would have liked to use.  As I am mathematically challenged, even studying the websites' descriptions of their teaching styles was confusing to me!  Brian chose Math-U-See, a program that has received raves from those who use it. 

Math-U-See comes with a video lesson, a teacher's text, a workbook, and colorful blocks to play work with.  While Nathan works on his lesson, Brenna builds with the blocks, occasionally stealing the ones he needs.  Good stuff.  Because math is so not my subject, the jury is still out on this part of our curriculum, but if it doesn't work well for us, people are selling these things on ebay for almost what we paid for them! 

So, then comes snack time, then FIAR, then lunch and rest time.  After rest time, we finish anything that we didn't complete before lunch, and the children have free play time.

Okay, now, all those of you who love me, please be gentle with the obvious-ness of this next part!  I am a work in progress!

One of the parts of our day I've come to love arrives at four o'clock.  We stop everything, and tidy all the major living areas of the house.  This includes picking up toys, sweeping, folding and putting away the clean laundry if we didn't finish that earlier.  We clear and set the table for dinner, make the kitchen ready for business, and make sure the clothes in the closets are actually on their hangers (it's sort of amazing how many things get taken off hangers in the search for something to wear!). 

The first day we implemented this, I almost cried.  I had set aside about 45 minutes in our schedule to attempt to tidy two rooms (the living room and playroom).  An hour and a half later, the progress was, well, almost noticeable.  But as we've made this our habit, the cleaning itself goes faster (which is why we're able to do more than just tidy two rooms), and the cleaning carries over to the next day.  It's sort of amazing to me!

So once we've tidied, the kids are free to do their thing until Daddy comes home, and everyone goes positively spazzy.  And the mama pours herself a glass of whine wine and hides for the rest of the night.

So that's our school day.  All in all, a perfect fit for us.  Next mission: figuring out when to do the grocery shopping!

A Perfect Fit, Part 1

I was a little late to the curriculum game.  As I'm a little late most places, I guess that's par for the course!  So it wasn't until June that I started seriously pondering what level of structure would be best for us.  Right around that time, my friend Rachel asked if I'd seen Five in a Row, as it seemed like it might be a good fit for me.  I hadn't, but as is my general method, I first went to their site, then googled "five in a row blog".  The descriptions I found were glowing.

Basically, with FIAR, we read the same book, a well-chosen piece of classical children's literature, every day for the week.  Then, each day we discuss/study/experiment with different aspects of the book.  This is referred to as a "unit study" in homeschooling (and probably elsewhere). The lessons are given in short paragraphs in the (inexpensive) curriculum book, and we do several a day.  It's very low-key, and I can do as many or as few lessons as I wish.

This week we read The Story about Ping, a book we've had on our shelf for a couple years.  My kids asked for it periodically, but it's never been a particular favorite. Friday, as Nathan brought the book to me for the fifth time, he declared, "Mom, this is my FAVORITE BOOK!"  I asked how he liked it after reading it five times in a row, and he replied, "I never knew what a WONDERFUL BOOK this was!"

Ping is about a little duck who lives on the Yangtze River in China.  His master has trained his ducks to hurry onto his boat by giving the last duck across the bridge a spank on the back.  One day, Ping has his head under the water when his master calls, and he quickly  realizes he will be the last on the boat.  To avoid the spank, Ping hides rather than go home.  The story that follows is about Ping's misadventures before he is reunited with his family aboard the boat.  Ultimately, he has to make a choice to either take the discipline he doesn't want or be separated again from his family.

So this is how our week broke down:

Monday:
We read the book, then talked about China and the Yangtze river (the third largest river in the world).  We located them on a map, talked about the size of the river, how many people live on/around it, and how Ping would feel when he was lost in such a huge place, surrounded by so many people. Then we talked about the clothes, food and boats of the human characters in the book.  Nathan colored and cut out a "story disk" and placed it on our wall map.

Tuesday:
We read the book, then talked about what makes a book "a classic", what fiction is, then talked about how repetition is used.  For example, Ping begins and ends with,

"Ping (lived) with his mother and his father and two sisters and three brothers and eleven aunts and seven uncles and forty-two cousins"

Also throughout, there is repetition of the phrase, "the wise-eyed boat on the Yangtze river."

Wednesday:
Such a fun day!  We read the book, then talked first about discernment, how things are sometimes not what they seem.  Sometimes they seem better than what they are; Ping followed some rice cake crumbs and was captured for a duck dinner.  Sometimes they are worse than what they are; Ping avoided a spank and was separated from his loved ones.

Then we talked about the pictures in the book, what they were made with (crayon and colored pencil in primary colors), the use of water in almost every picture as a unifying theme (of course I didn't use that term with Nathan and Brenna!) and then we sat at the table with our own colored pencils to experiment with drawing like the artist (layered colors, water, reflections and ripples).

By Nathan

By Brenna

Thursday:
We read the book, then counted out Pings family, then talked about ducks.

Friday:
We read the book, then experimented with things floating in a bowl of water (a major human character has a barrel tied to his back).  We talked about life vests and floaties, and why some things float and others don't.  Then we talked about reflections.  We read the poem "The Mirror" by A. A. Milne, and used a hand mirror to look at reflections.


Five in a Row has given my family amazing literature and structure combined with flexibility in a way that is perfect for us. I couldn't be happier.  Next week, we travel to Japan!