Mormon Monday: Tell Me the Stories of Jesus

Our church holds a General Conference every 6 months, a time when thousands gather at church headquarters in Salt Lake City and millions watch and listen in via radio, satellite, and internet broadcasts around the world to hear messages of inspiration and instruction from our church leaders. The messages are always inspiring and often convicting, and are a spiritual highlight of the year for me. Unfortunately I have not yet discovered a way to get three small children to sit and listen quietly through a combined 8 hours of conference sessions over a two-day period! We try to catch as much of conference as we can, but I'm sure I wasn't able to really listen to more than 1/4 of the talks last month. Fortunately, they are all available online--you can find them here.

One morning last week I was having a hard time motivating myself to clean the kitchen (that seems to take an enormous amount of motivational energy--I'm sure it deserves its own Law of Physics!) I decided to jumpstart myself by listening to conference talks on my MP3 player, and randomly selected this talk by Neil L. Andersen. His words struck me powerfully, and I have been thinking about them ever since. Here is a part of his talk:

"We hold in our arms the rising generation. They come to this earth with important responsibilities and great spiritual capacities. We cannot be casual in how we prepare them. Our challenge as parents and teachers is not to create a spiritual core in their souls but rather to fan the flame of their spiritual core already aglow with the fire of their premortal faith.

This afternoon I wish to emphasize the plea of a child from a Primary song:

Tell me the stories of Jesus I love to hear,
Things I would ask him to tell me if he were here.⁶

In our world today, each child, each young man and young woman needs his or her own conversion to the truth. Each needs his or her own light, his or her own “steadfast and immovable”⁷ faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, independent of parents, youth leaders, and supportive friends.

The stories of Jesus can be like a rushing wind across the embers of faith in the hearts of our children. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”⁸ The stories of Jesus shared over and over bring faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and strength to the foundation of testimony. Can you think of a more valuable gift for our children?"

Because I have chosen to homeschool my children, I spend a lot of time and energy researching and pondering educational goals, methods, and curricula. I wonder if I am giving sufficient thought to my children's spiritual education? I am sure that question is one that every parent could ask themself. Do we think more about whether our children are learning to read than we do about whether they are learning to love the scriptures? Are we more concerned about their mastery of mathematical facts and operations than about their mastery of right and wrong choices? Do we get more excited about a first soccer goal than about a first independent prayer? Do we spend more time and energy helping them prepare for their first piano recital than for their baptism? Are we encouraging their expanding knowledge of the workings of the world through science but neglecting to guide their understanding of the Creator of the Universe and their own place and purpose in it?

Once again, I find myself needing to realign my expenditure of time and effort in regards to my family with my true values and priorities.

Dissections

I really like biology, and decided to try some dissections with the kids (I thought if I introduced them now they might not shy away from them later). Lily and Luke were fascinated to discover the inner workings of a number of specimens, including a sea star and a crayfish.

Home-Made Learning Games: King's Ransom

I was in a creative mood the other day and drew up this game to help Lily learn her addition facts for 9's; it could easily be modified for any math facts. If you read my post about visiting Durnstein Castle in Austria, you can guess where the inspiration came from--King Richard the Lion-Hearted of England was held captive there until the English found out where he was and eventually ransomed him. The goal of this game was to ransom the king held captive in the castle.
I wrote the addition problems for 9's around the edges of the board (ours happened to be shield-shaped, left over from another project, but any poster board would work well). I chose an amount for the ransom, in this case 50 cents (I had just picked up a roll of nickels at the bank and thought I would throw in some money practice by using those to collect the ransom). I made up cards with the numbers 9-18, and every player started with 5. The game is played by rolling a die and moving your playing piece to the appropriate problem square. If you have a number card with the answer to that question, you get to trade it in for a nickel and roll again. If you don't have the right answer card, you draw a card from the draw pile; if that card matches you can play it and go on, if not your turn ends. My children enjoyed the game but were getting anxious to move on to something else before anyone had acquired the requisite 10 nickels to ransom the king, so Lily and Luke pooled their funds and freed the king that way. I think next time we play I might spice things up a bit by throwing in random squares requiring the player who lands on them to do something other than answering a math problem--say, twenty jumping jacks (anything active is good!) in order to earn their coin. And maybe each square could earn a different coin--that way they would get more money practice! The ransom amount too could vary...

New LDS Homeschooling Blog

This is a neat blog for and by LDS homeschoolers that was just launched yesterday, Latter-Day Homeschooling. The blog description states that it was "created as a gathering place for LDS homeschoolers to share their homeschooling experiences, offer tips, resources, ideas and encouragement to each other."
Sounds good to me! I get most of my inspiration and encouragement from homeschooling groups with various Christian and secular emphases, but sometimes it is nice to learn from others who share my specific religious beliefs.

Morning Devotionals

This week I have been reminded once again that our day goes much more smoothly when we start it off with a morning devotional. I know this is true for my personal devotions--if I spend some time studying my scriptures in the morning, the rest of the day just seems to flow better. I have discovered the same is true for the children.
Last year, I established the habit of having a morning devotional time together either during or immediately after breakfast. I can't say we did it every day, but often enough that the children have come to expect it. I notice now that on days when devotional gets neglected or put off things fall apart pretty quickly--and if I sit down and hold a devotional time with the children the spirit in our home immediately becomes calmer and we are all able to focus better. I think I've learned the lesson--I just have to remember to apply it!

Home Management Binder--First Incarnation

I'm sure there will be lots of tweaking and modifying, but I think I've put together a tool that will be useful for me. Most of the forms and planner items come from Donna Young's website (tons of free printables). Here is what is in my binder at this point (italicized items I plan to add but haven't put in yet):

Schedule and Calendar Section
Master Schedule
Monthly Calendar Pages

Devotional Section:
This year's Sunday School reading schedule (Old Testament)
Book of Mormon 365 day Reading Chart
Homeschool Section:
School Year calendars for 2009-2010 and 2010-2011
Attendance Record (A legal requirement in my state--yes, my children were present every day)
Subject goal planning sheets
Daily task checklists for each of the children
Monthly reports from Simply Charlotte Mason's Online Planner. (This is my record of what we have done)
Copy of Private School affidavit filed with state
Copy of my teaching qualifications (another state requirement)
Copies of children's immunization records (also state requirement, of course I have their record anyway, but it wouldn't hurt to have an easily accessible copy)
HSLDA membership information
Schedules for Art Study, Music Study, and booklists from various sources.

Meal Planning Section:

Menu and shopping planning pages
Favorite Recipe section

Phoenician writing

We met with some friends for a small history co-op yesterday; we were learning about the Phoenicians and practiced writing on clay with the Phoenician alphabet, precursor to the Greek alphabet.

A Successful Homeschool Day

We went on our first nature walk today, and my kids were actually enthusiastic about it. Lily made a nice drawing of a flower, and while Luke didn't draw he did enjoy exploring. A couple of neighbour kids came with us, which was fun because they were enthusiastic too--there's one 8 year old girl who keeps telling me how she begs her mom to homeschool her.
At home, we did some math, spent some time learning letters in the Greek alphabet, did chores and made gingerbread cookies. I'm feeling quite content.

More on the Master Schedule and a Penny Incentive Program

We've started implementing our Master Schedule (minus the schoolwork). So far it is going well. We've actually been sitting down to meals together, and spending a few minutes cleaning not just the kitchen but a designated area of the house after meals. I have an incentive program tied to this, and I thought I would explain how it works.

Basically, my children are earning pennies for each successfully completed "task" throughout the day. What earns a penny is up to Mom and Dad, although the children are free to propose "penny projects" when they are motivated to earn more. The idea is to have an immediate incentive for the things we want the children to do. For example, if they are dressed and ready for breakfast on time, they earn a penny. Another penny for appropriate participation during devotional (this means actually singing the songs and reciting the memory scriptures). After-meal chores earn more pennies--this has evolved to one penny for each area in which they complete their assigned chores. The kitchen is a designated area for every meal, the others rotate according to the schedule--bedrooms after breakfast, Living Room after lunch, bathrooms after dinner. I will assign a child something in each area. Today after breakfast, Luke helped clear the table, put away clean silverware from the dishwasher, and picked up toys in the living room. He gets one penny for the kitchen chores and one for the living room chores. Once we start school next week, the children will earn a penny for every workbox task completed. Getting ready for bed and brushing teeth also earn pennies.
All the pennies for a week go into a cup labeled with each child's name. At the end of the week, the pennies are counted. For every ten pennies earned, 1 is set aside for tithing, 1 for a family missionary fund, 1 for a family charity fund, and 2 for the child's savings account. The other 5 go into each child's personal spending account (well, jar...); of course pennies can and hopefully will be traded for larger monetary denominations to put in their jars. My hope is to keep the children motivated, and give out pennies freely enough, that they end up with about $1 dollar for their spending accounts each week. That would mean earning 200 pennies during the week. They can probably earn more if they try--that will be up to them. We haven't tried any kind monetary allowance or incentive program with the children before, so I'm interested to see how it works.
The flip side of earning pennies is of course taking away pennies. Pennies can be lost if a child is disobedient. For now, the rule is that any infraction that merits a time out also merits the loss of a penny. I haven't had to take any pennies away in the last two days, the threat has been enough to keep behavior under control. Children do not loose pennies if they are acting up because of overtiredness/overstimulation. It is intentional, knowing disobedience I am trying to curtail.
My plan for the family charity account is to let whatever money the children contribute accumulate until December; we will then contribute a matching amount (or more) and let the children decide how to use it.

So far, I like the plan. We'll see how it plays out in practice!

Balloon Solar System Model

The planets (yes we did include Pluto) are supposed to be generally to scale; the sun is not.
You can see our new timeline in the background--so far it includes Copernicus and Galileo, from today's astronomy lesson.

Science!

I spent all day yesterday cleaning and organizing, so today I determined to spend some time doing activities with the kids. They chose science, so we worked on several projects.
We:

1) Made a new Astronomy notebook by decorating the cover of a blue binder with stickers of stars, space ships, planets, comets, etc. We will be studying Apologia's Exploring Creation with Astronomy book, and a notebook is one critical element.

2) Got started right away with a Magic School Bus astronomy kit. We made a constellation view box (the constellations are punched holes in cards, you look through the box to see them--it's sad but so few stars are visible around here that this is about the only constellations my kids will be viewing until we go camping!) We built a small telescope (lenses and tubes were included in the kit). We made a solar system model (not to scale) with Styrofoam balls. We used balls and a flashlight in a dark room to model the Earth and the Moon. And Lily drew and colored a beautiful picture of the Earth.

3) Luke still wanted to do more science so we pulled out a magnet kit to explore. He had fun finding out how magnets attract and repel each other, what things they stick to, and how to make a simple working compass.

Of course I should have pictures of all this, but my camera battery is dead and I don't know where the charger is. You'll just have to use your imaginations!

Morning Devotionals

We're still taking things a bit slow around here. We're mostly over the flu (if that is what it was), but have lingering coughs and tiredness. And of course crankiness. I suspect our English word cranky shares its origins with the German krank, meaning sick. Certainly being sick makes us all rather emotionally fragile. And of course my job is to try to keep all these cranky people happy, without having an emotional meltdown myself. Honestly, there are days when I feel exhausted from the energy expended throughout the day in the effort to remain calm!
On the plus side, we've started out our new year with at least one new habit that is so far proving quite successful. I have introduced a morning devotional during our breakfast hour. We use this time to memorize scriptures and spiritual songs, to read the scriptures, and to pray together. Sometimes we also read a poem. So far the children have participated cheerfully, and it really helps to get our day off to a good start. I made a chart to put up on the wall to remind us. Every morning after breakfast one of the children gets to put a sticker on the chart. I have also introduced sticker charts for music practice, foreign language study, and recess, which my children will tell you is the most important part of homeschool! Recess means outdoor time, playing at the playground, riding bikes, or anything else as long as we are outdoors and active. I really do believe Charlotte Mason's observation that children really need time outdoors, especially in a natural environment. The sticker chart is really for me--to remind me to take them out! They certainly don't need any extra urging.

Prepared Dictation

I was thinking this morning of a way to combine Copywork and Dictation, two pillars of Charlotte Mason's approach to language arts. Charlotte Mason advocated the use of prepared dictation for teaching spelling and grammar. I am familiar with prepared dications, as teachers at the French school I attended in middle school occasionally assigned them. A passage is given in advance, the student studies the spelling and grammar, then the teacher dictates the passage while the student writes. My idea this morning was, why not use copywork for prepared dictation passages? The approach seems efficient to me--the child practices their handwriting while learning the spelling and grammar conventions of a language, paying extra close attention because they know they will have to write the same passage from dictation later. I believe this approach could be helpful not only with English but with foreign language study as well.
I don't think my kids are quite old enough for this yet, but if anyone decides to try it out let me know how it goes!

Fantastic Field Trips

Theme: This week I’d like to invite you to share your favourite field-trip that you’ve been able to go on since you’ve started homeschool.

I'm going to take the liberty of interpreting "since you've started homeschool" rather broadly.

You see, as a homeschooling mother, I really haven't been homeschooling very long, and I can't think of a particular field trip to write about. But, going back a few years (OK, almost a quarter of a century but who's counting) to when I was a homeschool student, I remember some spectacular field trips. Oh, we didn't call them that, we just called them trips. Our family vacations. The one I particularly remember happened the year I turned 6.

Sometime in April, my mom and dad packed up our big family van, loaded in 5 kids between the ages of 1 and 9, and took off. We drove from Utah to the Mexican boarder, then through Mexico almost to the Guatemalan boarder. We saw Mexico city, climbed ancient pyramids, swam in the ocean, heard lots of Spanish, drove on a lot of twisty mountain roads, and picked up a pretty bad flu on the way. For a little farm girl from Utah, it was an awesome adventure. I celebrated my 6th birthday on that trip.

Looking back, with the wisdom and experience of many years spent overseas, my parents say that trip was a crazy thing to do. But with an adventurous spirit and just enough naivete to not know the dangers, they took us on a field trip that we would never forget.

Harvest Festival

Today was Co-op day, but instead of regular co-op classes, we had a harvest festival. The kids all came dressed up as a favorite literary character, and presented a book report for the group. Lily came as Garnet from the book "Thimble Summer" by Elizabeth Enright. This book won the Newberry Medal in 1939. It is a nice, simple, beautifully written book. Nathan read it a couple of years ago and brought it home from the library for me to read aloud to the kids earlier this month. We enjoyed reading it.
After the book reports, the kids decorated sugar cookies. They used paint brushes and royal frosting, the kind the hardens when it dries. They really had a lot of fun. Afterwards we had games and lunch; it was really a nice, simple party.
This afternoon Lily had her piano lesson. This is her first month of piano lessons and so far she is enjoying them. I really like her teacher, a mom who homeschooled her own kids until high school, and comes from a long line of musicians. She really enjoys teaching and it shows. I'm happy to have finally found a music teacher that I like; we haven't had a lot of luck with that in the past. This lady also teaches violin, so Lily might start taking violin lessons with her at some point. Right now she is still doing cello. Lily likes the cello and her teacher, but thus far I am not thrilled with the level of teaching. We'll see, I'm not quite ready to give up on it.

Tot School #2

Lily's "Van Gogh" style painting.

Maybe she inherited my Grandpa's artistic talent.

We've been bringing home lots of library books on trucks, tractors and other machines for Luke lately. Here are a few--I bet we've got a dozen in the house right now.

Storytime!

And there's the tractors at work in the sandbox!

I'm trying to find ways to do music instruction with Luke. Lily started learning violin when she was his age, and I would like to do the same with Luke. Trouble is, he doesn't focus nearly as long as she did at that age. I can think of two reasons for that: A) He's a lot like me; b)He's a boy. The combination is dangerous. Anyway, we've done a few short lessons on holding the violin and bow, but he doesn't seem ready to play a particular not yet, or even to just bow on one string. I've debated whether to wait for him to grow up a bit or just do things slowly. There are advantages either way. If I wait, he will (hopefully) learn faster. If I push forwards now, he gets that experience and discipline.

We made used of those tractors to do some letter-tracing in the sand. I drew the letters with my finger, then Luke followed them with his tractor.

Saturday Accountability 18 October 2008

I think I will just make this an informal summary of how various aspects of our life are going.
First, the big new of the week: Esther took her first steps on Wednesday. She has been standing up for awhile, but Wednesday morning at Co-op she stood up in the middle of the floor and took three very deliberate steps. She has repeated the performance several times since, with three and four steps at a time. Now I just need to capture a video clip one of these time...
I'm feeling pretty happy with our schooling. We're still not doing much with math, but that's not bothering me right now. That's the nice thing about kindergarten, there's really not that much math to learn!
Lily seems to be poised to take off with reading, so I've decided to focus our efforts on that. We started reading this week from the Book of Mormon together--it is actually a pretty good book to work with beginning readers on, the words are fairly predictable (lots of "and it came to pass") and the stories are already familiar to my kids. Right now we're just trying to read a verse or two at a time, with me reading the harder words and Lily reading the easier ones. I also bought phonogram cards that go with the "Spell to Write and Read" program. I have been investigating this program and liking it better and better, but I don't have the funds just now to buy the entire set. Basically, it teaches systematic phonetics that apply to probably 99% of English words, so you don't have to just teach a few rules and the rest is exceptions. I'm not explaining very well. Maybe once I own the complete program I will write a review!
If you read my first Tot School post, you saw the sugar cube pyramid we made. That came from a book about Ancient Egyptians and their Neighbours that I got from the library. It is full of activities. We are informally studying the ancient world this year, so the activity books is a good fit. We'll see what we do next.
I'm not doing so well with some of my personal goals. I have been exercising pretty regularly, thanks to my friend C. who goes running and to the gym with me. Personal scripture study is hit and miss. I have fallen behind on the Bible reading challenge, although I am still reading. And I have not been writing in my journal--although I have been blogging, which is a sort of journaling. I was looking through the book The Sneaky Chef, and thought I might make use of some of its suggestions to get more vegetables into our diet--suggestions include using a blender to puree vegetables to mix into other dishes--like macaroni and cheese.
And if you read this blog you know I currently volunteering with the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign. Today we stood on a busy street corner with signs to encourage people to vote yes on Proposition 8. Some fellow came up the last hour we were there with a home-made sign saying "No On H8". Now I don't mind sharing the street corner, but I really don't get the claim that voting to retain the traditional definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman is hateful towards anyone. Hm, I smella new blog post brewing...

Tot School #1

This is my first Tot School post--an opportunity to share activities and ideas focused on the younger tots in the family.

We moved late in the summer, but we planted a garden in our new place anyway; here in Southern California we're hoping for enough sunshine for at least some of our plants to grow. The second series of pictures is the construction of our sugar cube step pyramid. We read about pyramids last week, but we had to make a special shopping trip to get sugar cubes before we could build our model.

Beginning Narration

I wrote in an earlier post about the technique of retelling or narration, as a way to help children internalize and take ownership of books they read or books read to them. I have had a bit of a rocky start in teaching Lily how to narrate. She is happy to answer specific questions, but if I ask her simply to tell me about what we just read, she hesitates to volunteer anything. I decided to get over this hump I needed to resort to extreme measures--bribery! We bought a bag of Jelly Belly candy, and sat down with a book with simple, familiar story segments. I would read a segment, then ask Lily to tell me about it, then reward her with a jelly bean. Lily is easily motivated by rewards, and this system worked beautifully for us. Now that Lily knows what to do and has practiced doing it a few times, I think we will be able to proceed without the incentive of immediate rewards.

Favorite Study Spot

This week share your favourite spot to study with your kids. There are many places you can sit down to teach, learn, and work, but where do you prefer and why? You’re welcome to include a photo of your study spot! Looking forward to seeing everyone’s!

Well, I missed last week's theme. I guess life just got to busy! I like this week's theme, though. I'm not a very formal sit-down-and-do-school type. A lot of our schoolwork takes place on the living room floor, on lying on the bed while I read aloud. My true favorite, though, is outside. I know it might seem to disctracting to some, but for me there is something calming about being outside. I like the open sky. I think being hemmed in by four walls makes us feel confined both physically and mentally. When I was a kid I couldn't wait to get home from school so I could go outside. For a few years we lived near a forest, and I remember throwing my backpack over the fence into the backyard and taking off into the trees, just to wander. I don't know that I ever studied there, but with my kids I do take them outside to read, or even for violin practice. And some subjects, such as nature study, are obviously better undertaken out of doors!

Oh, and the best part? If I'm working with Lily on something outdoors I don't have to worry about what Luke and Esther creating havoc in the house. They, too, are much happier to play on the grass or in the sandbox.