Presidential Soapbox

I don't get on too many soapboxes, but I've got to get this off my chest.

Here's the thing. I'm really, really tired of hearing kids say, "Obama." I'm really, really tired of hearing kids spit out the name "Obama" with a sneer of disgust on their little faces. I'm really, really tired of hearing 10-year-olds say things about how dumb "Obama" is and I'm tired of kids making Obama jokes and I'm tired of kids showing disgust for our president.

'Cause you know what, parents? It's President Obama, or Mr. Obama. You are teaching your kids that it's okay to disrespect someone if you don't like them. Wouldn't you be horrified if your kid referred to me as "Small" or to your preacher as "Smith"? I don't get it. Or what about that old man down the street who is grumpy to you and your kids, who has been hostile to you about homeschooling? Do you tell your kids it's OK to refer to him as Mills, instead of Mr. Mills, and that it's okay for them to spit his name out like a rotten peanut? Somehow, I don't think so.

Don't we teach this passage from Matthew 5:43-48 to our kids? Don't we sit down with them after they've had a little episode at church or playgroup with another kid or with their siblings and say to them, "Listen, honey, to what Jesus says!":

You have heard that it was said, "Love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Once I was a den mother for my older son's Cub Scout pack. I'll never forget the chills I got when a little boy, maybe nine-years-old, opened with prayer: "Dear God, please help us to hunt down Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden and the other bad guys and kill them 'til they're dead."

Those were not happy chills. I caught his (devout Christian) mom smiling proudly, indulgently, when he finished praying. I have to wonder: what kinds of conversations go on at dinner tables in Christian households in our country? Why do parents express their disdain for our president in front of their children, who then parrot their parents' sentiments, often verbatim, inappropriately? Why do we allow our children to be disrespectful in regards to the president of our country, but slap their hands when they pick at their siblings?

I'm just asking. And let me tell you: it's true that little pitchers have big ears. Next time you are listening to the news and want to snap off the TV with disgust and mutter "Obama this and that" under your breath, be a grown up and practice what you preach.

Please.

Good Friday, Between Thunderstorms

A Prayer in Spring

By Robert Frost

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid-air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.

Living Lovely with Family

Today's theme at Mt. Hope Chronicles' Living Lovely with Family is budget vacations, and that's something I'm quite familiar with. For years and years, our vacations consisted of doing only one thing: visiting friends and family. Our only cost was gas and food for the road.

When Jesse was three, Dr. H's uncle got married in Hawaii, and that was an amazing vacation. Between Randy's uncle's frequent flier miles and the generosity of his parents and grandpa, we paid not a dime for the trip. That's what happens when you are poor graduate students with the most adorable little boy.

Hawaii was an exception, though. The rest of our vacations were really spent making the long drive from Iowa to Indiana, New York, and/or Tennessee. (Traveling with two kids in a two-door Toyota Tercel without air-conditioning is really not much fun.)

After graduate school, though, when Mr. H. became Dr. H., we bought a van and drove from Iowa to New Orleans. That was probably our first "non-family" vacation, although it was for a friend's wedding.

We'd both been to New Orleans before separately (him in college for fun, me pre-kids for business), but it was totally different—and quite wonderful—as a family vacation. We had a great time.

Since then we've taken two family vacations to Disneyland (one included a few days at Tybee Island) and last year's family vacation to Williamsburg, and the rest: back to the budget vacations.

We have August in upstate New York in my hometown: swimming, sailing, hiking, canoeing. Sounds like luxury and worth hundreds of dollars, I know, but for us it's just the cost of gas and road food, just like it was years ago. My parents are wonderful and gracious, and I wouldn't trade this budget vacation for anything.


Our other regular vacation: camping.
We live at the foot of the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. We camp. We hike. We eat a lot of s'mores in the summer. We create a lifetime of memories.

I'd like to do the Grand Canyon and New England and the Black Hills. Backpacking through Europe would be amazing, and I dream of us breathing deeply in Scotland. But for now, I'm happy with mountains and lakes. And maybe one big trip every couple of years.

Do you have vacations to share? Be sure to visit Living Lovely with Family and share your stories!

WordSmithery: Week 4 Enrichment

My kids love doing our WordSmithery journal writings, and we've been doing Week 4 (similes) for a couple of weeks now. Today we did Day 3: "Pick a color. Tell in a sentence or group of sentences what this color looks like and sounds like." So we all three picked different colors, and then Laurel got the idea to do all the colors of the rainbow. We divided up the colors, added "tastes like" and "smells like" and spent a few more minutes each writing on our own. (Duncan dictates his to me, so I actually write it for him.)

When we'd all written our "colors," I lightly sketched a rainbow on a piece of poster board, and we wrote our poems in the stripes. And ta-da! Our shape poem. The kids don't know they wrote a shape poem; that lesson comes in a few weeks. But they had so much fun writing this and can't wait to show their Dad our creation:

Rainbow

Red tastes like lollipops
and looks like a dozen roses;
Orange looks like the Vols
and tastes like juicy oranges.
Yellow smells like daffodils
and tastes like bananas;
Green looks like a fresh cucumber
and sounds like peepers in a pond.
Blue looks like the sky in the afternoon
and sounds like rushing waters;
Indigo sounds like the hour before dawn
and smells like ripe plums.
Violet smells like a garden in spring
and tastes like grape popsicles.

I love when my kids get so enthused that they create their own enrichment activities. Maybe you'd like to add this to your Week 4!

(If you'd like to share your kids' writing, please leave a comment at Share Your Writing or post there on your own blog and leave us a link!)

Three Beautiful Things: Spring Colors

Pink dogwood

Cousins

Bluebirds

We awoke to a dusting of southern snow this morning, but it quickly melted and left everything fresh and green.

What beautiful things are in your world today?

Monday Memory: Little Flower

My little girl has a double flower name—Laurel Rose—so it was only appropriate that her first portrait—back when we lived in Iowa— was made with the only flower available at the time, a daffodil. I'd much rather her have had a pink rose, but you take what you can get in Iowa in the "spring." (Iowa doesn't have much of one.)

I've had this 8-month version of my little girl on my mind a lot lately. Laurel (who is now fairly close to 12) and I work in the church nursery on Wednesdays, and there is a sweet 2-year-old girl there who reminds me so much of Laurel at that age. It's one of those uncanny feelings. Same intense look, same little shudder of excitement, same shyness with a yen for adventure barely beneath the surface. And same chubby cheeks and lack of hair! I remember people used to say, "Oh, she'll get it all in when she's about three and she'll have the most gorgeous hair!" It was true.

I miss my baby girl, but I sure am having fun with her now. And I can still catch her eye across a crowded room, and know that we are somehow still attached.

WordSmithery: Share Your Writing!

If you've been doing my WordSmithery for awhile now, you've hopefully discovered that one of the best parts is sharing what you've written with each other. When I teach creative writing at our co-op, we take 15 minutes at the beginning of each session to share what we've written during the week at home. In the home setting, we each write in our journals and then share what we've written right away. (And yes, I do the assignments too!)

This space is now dedicated to a broader sharing of writing. Anytime you want, post something in the comments here that your kids (or you) have written based on my WordSmithery lessons, whether it's in the course of the lesson itself, in a journal writing, or for an assignment. If you can, write the week number from which it comes. My goal is eventually to have samples for each week, so that your kids can hear other kids' writings, too!

If you just want to post something that your student has written outside of "class," that's fine, too! But do share!

(See the comments for examples!)

National Poetry Month: Reading Poetry with Children

“Whatever you do, find ways to read poetry. Eat it, drink it, enjoy it, and share it.”
~Eve Merriam

Did you know that April is National Poetry Month? I find it hard to call myself a "writer" but that is what I am at the core, and even more specifically, I am a writer of poetry. Sadly, poetry is terribly misunderstood because most of us read so much incomprehensible poetry when we were in school and learned to dislike it. During this month, I'll be tossing out poetry suggestions every now and then. For now, here is a repost from last year about poetry for children:

Before I list my favorite books written specifically for children, let me emphasize that you don't have to stick with "kids' poetry" when reading to your children. In other words, some poets write specifically for a younger audience--much of Jack Prelutsky, for example. But poetry doesn't have to rhyme and be about cute kitties or dog poop to appeal to children (although rhyming bodily functions certainly can heighten a child's appreciation of poetry).

Along those lines, I highly recommend A Treasury of Poetry for Young People. This contains poems selected with a younger audience (5th grade and up) in mind by some of the best-known poets: Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. There is a two or three page introduction of each author before his/her section of poetry. The illustrations are simple and beautiful. Notes at the bottom of each page give a very brief commentary on each poem. For example, at the end of the familiar Frost poem "The Road Not Taken," the note simply states: "We all know the feel of a cool autumn day, when we can shuffle our feet through fallen leaves and kick up the smells of the season. This is a poem about such a walk, about coming to a fork in the path, and about making choices in our lives."

For a wider variety of poets, I recommend the Poetry for Young People Series. These books are also published by Sterling Publishing, like the one above, but each books features a different poet. Scholastic often has these titles in their monthly sale fliers for home or school. Featured authors include: Robert Browning, Langston Hughes, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and all the ones mentioned above.

One more collection I really love for kids: The Oxford Illustrated Book of American Children's Poems, edited by Donald Hall. This one takes a chronological approach to American poetry, beginning with the Native American cradle song, "Chant to the Fire-Fly" and ending with the contemporary poetry of Sandra Cisneros and Janet S. Wong. I love the diversity offered in this collection: poetry isn't all written by white guys and reclusive women. And one of my personal favorites is included here: Nikki Giovanni's "Knoxville, Tennessee." Even if you don't live around these parts, you and your children can surely relate to Giovanni's ode to the pure bliss of summertime.

Of course, you can get out your old copy of The Norton Anthology of Poetry and just pick out age-appropriate poems from some of the world's best poets of all time. What? You don't have an old Norton's Anthology? Run to your nearest used bookstore or Goodwill and pick one up. Please. You never know when you might need to read T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock":

I grow old. . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trouser rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think they will sing to me.

But I digress. Moving on to poetry written specifically for children, I must present my four favorites: Shel Silverstein, Jack Prelutsky, Eve Merriam, and Valerie Worth. Does anyone not know Shel Silverstein's works? Silverstein, who died in 1999, is the king of children's poetry. His website is great fun, and you can read all about his works there. You local library will have every book; better yet, buy at least a couple. No family library can possibly be complete with A Light in the Attic or Where the Sidewalk Ends. If your kids hear the word "poetry" and cover their ears, try reading "Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out' to them. They will want to hear more.

Jack Prelutsky also has a gift for luring children in with the absurd. He knows how to engage children with the silly, absurd, and irresistibly disgusting:

Slime, slime,
Savory slime,
you're luscious and succulent
any old time,
there's hardly a thing
that is nearly as grand
as a dollop of slime
in the palm of my hand.

Prelutsky also has a great website, where you can read all about him and his books and get teaching ideas, too.

The poet Eve Merriam loved language--loved the sound of words alone and in combination with other words. When I read her poetry, I imagine how carefully she chose each word. From her widely anthologized "Lullaby":

Purple as a king's cape
Purple as a grape.
Purple for the evening
When daylight is leaving.
Soft and purry,
Gentle and furry,
Velvet evening-time.

I have a cassette tape of Merriam reading some of her poetry; when my oldest was little, this was one of his favorites. Check out your local library or amazon.com for poetry by Eve Merriam, including You Be Good and I'll Be Night and A Sky Full of Poems.

One last poet who might be less familiar but who also takes great care in crafting poetry: Valerie Worth. In the wonderful All the Small Poems and Fourteen More, Worth turns every day things--animal, vegetable and mineral--into exquisite works of art. This is a fantastic collection for teaching personification, metaphor and simile, and for emphasizing the power of observation and the craft of language.

The sun
is a leaping fire
too hot
to go near,
But it will still
lie down
in warm yellow squares
on the floor
lie a flat
quilt, where
the cat can curl
and purr.

This is just a tiny taste of the wonderful feast that is the world of poetry. Surf the internet and shuffle through the library bookshelves. If you had a bad experience with poetry in your own schooling, try again--with your child. I promise, you'll both find something you love.

(And check out my FREE creative writing workshop—SmallWorld's WordSmithery— on the sidebar!)

Living Lovely with Family

This week's theme at Mt. Hope Chronicles' Living Lovely with Family is annual traditions. We have a lot!

January: My Dad's birthday. For some reason his birthday, more than anyone else's, always merits a good family party. Usually my two Tennessee brothers (I also have two in New York) and their families come over to our house, and we have a rousing night of card playing.

February:
• On Valentine's Day we have two traditions. First, I always create a scavenger hunt for the kids that leads them through the house, with little piles of candy here and there. (Jesse no longer participates but appreciates his candy in one lump sum.) And for Valentine's dinner we always have spaghetti because that's what Dr. H. and I had on our first Valentine's day together, when we were poor college students.


• Generally during the last week in February, the daffodils are in flower at Cades Cove in the Smokies. We pick the perfect sunny Sunday, pack a picnic, and take a drive around the loop.

Easter: I used to do a fabulous Easter egg hunt at my house. It was so much work that I decided just to do it every-other-year, and I think this is probably the year I should be doing it (actually, I think I was supposed to do it last year). It really was fun, but now we usually just have one family over after church and have the kids hunt some eggs.


Family Trip: Our new tradition is to take a family trip in May. We like to do this during the second week of the month, after classes are done at UT but before the school are out for the summer. The first year we had a fantastic, amazing vacation at Disney World, and last year we went to Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown. This year we are planning a much smaller scale trip to a few Civil War sites in Nashville and Chattanooga.

4th of July: Dr. H. and Jesse have been gone for years during the 4th of July because of Boy Scout camp, so the kids and I generally head over to my brother John's house for a cookout and insane fireworks. My brothers should not be trusted with explosives, but it does make the evening exciting!

August:
• New York: For probably nine or 10 years, we've gone to my hometown, where my parents still live half the year, in upstate New York during the first two weeks of August. Swimming, sailing, bonfires, and the comfort of my parents. It's a vital part of my summer. I thought last year would be our last one, as my parents put their house on the market, but it still hasn't sold. We may still have another vacation there!

• Scouting Family Camp-out: This is a new annual tradition—just started last year—but we have our reservations in again this year. This is for our Boy Scout, Cub Scout, and American Heritage Girls families. We had a fantastic time last August and look forward to it again this year.

October: Soup and Pumpkin Party. This is one of my absolute favorite annual traditions. We have a bunch of friends over—around 50—and have a night of soup (everyone brings a pot) and pumpkin carving. Probably more than anything else—possibly even more than our Christmas traditions!—our kids will remember this chilly autumn evenings spent in the midst of dozens of friends, the warmth of soup, and the smell of pumpkin guts.

Autumn in Cades Cove: For years, the kids and I have taken one perfect day in late October or early November to drive around the Cades Cove loop. We take our school books with us, find a warm spot, and read. The kids climb in the barns, and we stop and visit each old cabin, even though we've seen them all dozens of times. Somehow this closes off autumn for us and allows us to welcome in winter.


Christmas and Thanksgiving have loads of traditions of their own. We always have Thanksgiving at one of my brothers' houses and then have Christmas here at our house. We always go to our city's Christmas parade and come home with sacks full of candy. We always cut down our Christmas tree at the same tree farm, and it's usually a balmy, spring-like day. And we absolutely must make and decorate a few dozen sugar cookies, besides all the other cookies we make during December.

What yearly traditions do you have? Share your thoughts at Mt. Hope Chronicles!

March at SmallWorld Reads

March was a pitiful month for reading. I've posted only six entries at SmallWorld Reads and finished five books.

Books Reviewed
Tramp for the Lord
The Bookseller of Kabul
Paula

Finished but not yet reviewed: New Moon, second in the Twilight series. (I wasn't crazy about Twilight but my friend begged me to keep reading. I'm glad I did. More later.) Also Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, which I really enjoyed. A mostly off-topic note here: Jesse is taking English 1010 at the local community college. They do the "common book" method there, where all English 1010 classes read the same book (in this case, Persepolis) and each instructor teaches it in their own way. He wasn't crazy about the class at first partly because he was hoping for more literature, but he's ended up really enjoying this thorough approach to one text. And I've been absolutely thrilled (and gratified) with his writing for the class. Phew! That boy can write an essay!

Kids Books Finished: We finished reading Carl Sandburg's amazing Abe Lincoln Grows Up. Since then we've been reading various short books about the Civil War along with Irene Hunt's Across Five Aprils.

Favorite Book of the Month: Paula by Isabel Allende

Books to Movies: Gone with the Wind (As part of our Civil War unit. I've been watching it since I was a little girl, and for the first time I watched it with my kids. Loved the book, love the movie, love that my kids loved it!) and Twilight (I really, really liked the movie. Bella was perfect.)

Currently Reading: The third book in the Twilight series, I say with a slight blush.

Sunday Scribblings:
Dear Past Me, Dear Future Me
Aging

And most weeks I perused Semicolon's Saturday Review of Books, my favorite place to glean new titles.

I am quite sure that April will be a better reading month! If you are looking for something to read, I've got loads of reviews on my sidebar at SmallWorld Reads, from this year's books to ones reviewed in the past few years.