Serendipity Q & A

Hope wrote yesterday with several questions:

First of all, where did you find your nice, large blackboard?

I'm guessing it is Katherine's. I don't have a blackboard. Sorry:-).

Second question, what is the table top made of that the children are playing the Rainbow Gem Trading game on (it looks like little stickers)?
 
I bought the table unfinished at Ikea. I painted it and then I stenciled the top in a patchwork pattern. Honestly, I don't reccomend doing that. It's darling, but it's a little bumpy for writing and I admit to cringing now and then when stray crayon and pencil marks add their own charm.

Lastly, I have a far more complex question.  I have been printing out everything to put in a binder and I am having a real hard time figuring out where to begin and the order of things.  I can find lessons 3, 4 and 5, but when I printed out what looked like earlier info I ended up printing out several 20-30 page long documents some of which had a lot of info that overlapped and one of which looked like it went in backwards order. Since I am new to this I know the problem is me, but I was wondering if you could give me any lesson ordering tips for this.  There is so much great info there that I want to make sure not to miss anything.

This is a complex question. It's also a frequently asked question. Any time you click on an archive, you are going to see the most current post first. That means, the posts will be backwards in terms of how to present them. It's a very annoying way to have to read and to cut and paste. We know that and we're working on a great solution.  As we've expanded lessons and themes, the blog format has gotten unwieldy. Hang in there! Cindy is creating a webpage interface that will make it all much more streamlined.You'll be able to see the lessons listed in order and click on one lesson at a time.  She's away from her computer just now, helping a friend with a new baby, but we'll have a much more user-friendly format for you in the near future. For the math in particular, we've already begun breaking those long lessons into smaller chunks by topic. I think that will make it more intuitive. It's taking us some time but it will be easier to understand and easier to navigate.

This may be on your site somewhere, but I would also be interested to see a typical day for you as I am trying to figure out how waldorf (ish) homeschooling would work with a 5 year old and a 7 year old. 

I have some typical days from last year up at Faithful Over Little Things. I've been playing with some cool Mac features and plan to renew my journaling at Little Things and upload our daily lists, once we get around to settling into a school rhythm, but there are a few days there from last year. There are rough drafts of this year's days to download here.  Marisa has some days from last year at her notes blog. Paula has her days for this fall sketched out here. Colleen has planning thoughts here. Keep your eyes on the Serendipity-do-dah blogroll on the lefthand sidebar for other examples of Serendipitous days.

While I appreciate the beauty, the materials and some of the methods of Waldorf education, I am not a follower of Rudolf Steiner, his educational philosophy, or his religion. I am a practicing Catholic who is very clear in teaching the faith to her children. Please see this post for any further explanation of incorporating methods or materials that might also appear in Waldorf schools into your home. Take inspiration from what is good and what in in harmony with the true faith and leave the rest. If you can't discern, then leave it all alone.

Well said

I have to admit that when I first was made aware of all the negative (even condemning) opinions published by folks who appear not to like our plans or planning or people who plan, my first thought wasn't really for me. It was for the people who have stuck themselves out there with me and made our plans public. I've been fried online before and as much as I had hoped I never would (because I think sensitivity is a gift), I'm developing a thick skin. But it made me sad that these other women who have given so much of themselves were met with criticism and speculation that their houses must be a mess and their husbands and children neglected. Because I know that not to be true. My stomach did a little flip when I read this, as I munched my salad this noontime:

I feel as though I've made myself quite vulnerable in the sharing of all my planning thoughts lately...

Do click and read the rest. Every word is worth the time.

A Voice of Wisdom

Stephanie is a voice of reason and wisdom that echoes in my fondest memories of the best times at the old Catholic Charlotte Mason yahoolist. She's always been a step or two ahead of me, and now she is even more recollected and writing from the perspective of a woman who has raised her children well. Read what she has to say about planning. Go!

Why plan? Or, is planning a good thing?

In several  places, women are questioning whether it is appropriate to plan at all or whether they are over-planning and wasting time, energy, and more importantly, focus on the children. When we plan, does our purpose become fulfilling the plan instead of meeting the needs of the children? Is it unrealistic to plan?

I was thinking about this a great deal last weekend. Am I wasting my time making detailed plans? Am I over-planning? Am I making it about my plans and not about the kids? And I came up with a couple of thoughts.

If I had someone else's syllabi (like MODG) for each of my children and a KONOS volume to supplement for hands-on, and if I let myself run through the Real Learning blogroll regularly looking to implement some of  the good ideas that pop up there, would people (and I) question the complexity of my plans? Maybe. But probably not.It is seemingly reasonable to have some sort of lesson plans, though we often hear advice not to let those plans be a slave master. And that, too, is very reasonable advice. If I "just" had seven sets of MODG syllabi (one for every child in my house expecting to be educated this year), would that seem excessive? I don't think so. It's reasonable to have a  plan for everyone unless you are absolutely philosophically opposed to plans at all. Those plans could be Sonlight or KONOS or MODG or STAA or Kolbe or Oak Meadow or four different levels of Five in a Row, depending on my educational philosophy, but no matter what it was, I'd need to consider every child.

I have a degree in curriculum planning and development. It's what I've loved to do since before I had children. My idea of a good time in college was to sit in the children's section of the library in Charlottesville and write unit studies with my best college buddy, alternately planning my wedding. First to the Eric Carle section, then to the bridal books. Now to Beatrix Potter, then to Bride magazine. It was a glorious year!

Now, I have a multi-level brood of my own. I know what works in my house and I know that we dissolve into chaos if we get up in the morning and don't have a sense of where we're going. I also know that I can't manage seven different syllabi, no matter how great the program. I'm going to have to tweak and tailor and spend a great deal of time making someone else's plan fit my family. And I'm going to have to do it while nursing a baby,  on very little sleep.I know that it's not good enough for me to have a booklist and send everyone off to learn on their own. I need to keep my children close to me--both the ones who want to be with me every waking moment and those who would like to wander off and do nothing while holding an open book.  So, for me, it makes good sense to spend a chunk of time thinking things out in advance and writing my own plan to fit my own family. It's easier to tweak something that is organically mine, written for my own children from the beginning, than it is to make someone else's work fit my family. But that's just me.

I like multi-level plans across the subject areas so that we can all benefit from each other's experience. I like having a few too many things up my sleeve so that I never have a child look at me, wanting to do something more, only to be met with my blank stare and then my frantic scurrying to find the right resource. In my opinion, that doesn't make the plans or the home education atmosphere all about me, it makes it very much about each individual in the context of our family.This is a big family. There are a lot of different needs and abilities here. I can't "wing it." I'm just not good at winging. My household functions best and my children thrive when we have the structure and the suggestion of a plan. My husband likes to see it, all written out on the blog. He can touch base at any hour, from any where in the world.

Does that mean I think that everyone should spend their summers writing their own lesson plans? No. It absolutely does not. This is what I do. I love to do it. Other people scrapbook, write novels, grow gigantic gardens, design websites, run swim teams, teach Vacation Bible School. I'm a curriculum geek. Someone else might buy plans (or use my plans, which are shared for free) and they are very comfortable making them work for their families and very grateful that someone who loves to plan shared her gifts. My friend the accountant uses my plans. She would no more endeavor to write plans from scratch than I would endeavor to do the taxes for my husband's business. We all have different gifts.

For the sixth time, I'm expecting a baby early in the school year. Even my very first baby, born in September, impacted the school year. I was employed and in charge of curriculum for 25 first graders. I spent that summer writing airtight plans to cover my maternity leave. Believe me, the sub was very grateful that I was not of the philosophy that somehow plans preculde the child. I won't have maternity leave this time. I will be the "sub"--there to ensure that my children welcome this baby with joy, all the while knowing that I've planned for their needs.

So, do you need a "daily detail" or should you fuss with your curriculum after the plan is purchased?

I have no idea.

I don't live in your home. I'm not married to your husband. I don't know your children the way that you do. And I don't know your teaching style. I don't know how God has equipped you to educate your children. I don't know what resources He wants you to use. I don't know how He sees your days.

But I do know that He will give us each the grace sufficient to figure it all out.

Charlotte Mason Summer Book Study: About Habits

With this installment, we begin to ponder Laying Down the Rails. This book is so well named. As I reflect on the past year and look ahead to the next, it is so easy to fall into the lingo of the railroad.

"Ah, that's where we got off track."
"See, we were really chugging along in that term!
"Thankfully, we can begin again when we get derailed."

This particular  book resonates with me. I see where habits have stood us in good stead over time. In particular, our bedtime habits have ensured that I know that all of my children got significant amounts of focused attention from me every day. Bedtime was (and is) assuredly a time of quality literature, of prayer, and of confidences shared as we snuggle in the still and the dark. I remember how hard this habit was to cultivate when my older boys were little. After a warm bath and books, I'd lie with them in the dark and one of two things would happen: (1) I'd internally squirm and fidget, thinking of the things I'd still to do: dishes, laundry, projects or (2) I'd fall asleep, thereby neglecting and annoying my husband.

Oh, it'd be so much easier to do this another way!But I was committed to an intentional habit, one that I knew would be beneficial over the long haul. I had no way of knowing just how beneficial. And I don't regret a single squirmy, sleepy moment.  And somehow, over time, I've overcome both the squirminess and the sleepiness. I guess a "habit is ten natures:-)"

We read that habits produce character.That makes sense, doesn't it? A child's character is the sum of his habits to some degree.

The habits of the child produce the character of the man, because certain mental habitudes once set up, their nature is to go on forever unless they should be displaced by other habis. Here is an end to the easy philosophy of, 'It doesn't matter,' 'Oh, he'll grow out of it,' "He'll know better by and by,' 'He's so young, what can we expect?' and so on. Every day, every hour, the parents are either passively or actively forming those habits in their children upon which, more than upon anything else, future character and conduct depend (Vol.I, p.118).

They won't outgrow it. When my husband and I watch our toddler doing something a bit naughty but awfully cute in someone so young, we have to remind ourselves that it won't be so cute when she is five. if we don't want her to behave a certain way when she's no longer a cherubic tot in diapers, the time to stop the behavior is now, before it is a habit.

Educate the child in right habits and the man's life will run in them, without the constant wear and tear of the moral effort of decision. once, twice, three times in a day, he will still, no doubt, have to choose between the highest and the less high, the best and the less good course. But all the minor moralities of life may be made habitual to him. He has been brought up to be courteous, prompt, punctual, neat, considerate; and he practises these virtues without conscious effort. It is much easier to behave in the way he is used to, than to originate a new line of conduct (Vol. 2, p.124)

So, the character is not just a series of rote behaviors. He is still in a position to decide again and again. We don't train the will out of him. We strengthen the will by instilling good patterns of behavior. Much the way we can teach a child to be a discerning reader, to help him learn how to read and comprehend a book, we teach him how to behave. The tools for comprehension don't do the work for him, but they give him particular patterns of thinking that come automatically, leaving him the freedom to actively engage his brain in higher level thinking as he reads. The "minor moralities of life" are no-brainers. And the barin is primed to choose good when faced with the big decisions.

The mother who takes pains to endow her children with good habits secures for herself smooth and easy days.

Consider how laborious life would be were its wheels not greased by habits of cleanliness, neatness, order courtesy; had we to make the effort of decision about every detail of dressing and eating, coming and going, life would not be worth living.Every cottaeg mother knows that she must train her child in habits of decency, and a whole code of habit causes a shock to others which few children have courage to face. Physical fitness, morals and manners, are very largely the outcome of habit; and not only so, but the habits of the religious life also become fixed and delightful and give us dues support in the effort to live a godly, righteous and sober life (Vol 6, p. 103)

This is "pay now or pay later" parenting philosophy. I can assign a task and then motivate myself to teach patiently how it is done properly and to inspect to see that it has been completed properly--over and over again until it is a habit--or I can take the easy road now and not follow through, only to be faced with that same poorly done task, or task not done at all forever more. This goes way beyond the habit of doing household chores cheerfully and well.It means addressing every small lie and insisting upon the truth. It means stopping in my tracks to correct a whining child and insist on a pleasant voice (or a nap) every single time. It means ensuring first time obedience. It's work. but it's going to be work either way. An untrained child or a poorly trained child will be much, much more work as an unruly teenager or young adult. Much more work, much more worry, much more grief. Invest now or pay later.

Before I close with some parting words from Miss Mason, let me encourage you to leave a link in the comments when you share your thoughts on habits or join the conversation the ladies are having at the message board.

In conclusion, let me say that the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions--a running fire of Do and Don't; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way, and grow to fruitful purpose. The gardener, it is true, 'digs about and dungs,' prunes and trains, his peach tree; but that occupies a small fraction of the tree's life: all the rest of the time the sweet airs and sunshine, the rains and dews, play about it and breathe upon it, get into its substance, and the result is --peaches. But let the gardener neglect his part, and the peaches will be no better than sloes (Vol 1, p 134)