Living Lovely with Family

Today's Living Lovely with Family at Mt. Hope Chronicles asked for ways we celebrate milestones: "achievements, graduations, birthdays…how do you mark milestones with your children?"

Achievements: We don't do much except verbally congratulate our kids. We've never been much into rewarding them with "things" for jobs well done. Most of the time, it seems that the achievement itself is enough for our kids. For example, our daughter will be moving from one level in American Heritage Girls to the next level in a few weeks. Her celebration will be walking under the archway, having her vest taken off by us, and having the next level girls put on her sash. Then again, our oldest son will be getting his Eagle Scout next fall. That will be an achievement we mark with a ceremony and reception completely focused on him. But we haven't reached that milestone quite yet...

Graduations: Here in the South, we have kindergarten graduations. I'd never heard of such a thing until I moved here and I did roll my eyes secretly when I heard of such a thing, but I have to admit it's really sweet. Our homeschooling support group has a fantastic graduation ceremony each year. The picture above is from Duncan's two years ago. And next year we'll graduate our first high schooler! I have no idea how we'll celebrate that milestone. Where I grew up in upstate New York, graduation parties were the thing. It was unbelievable. Pretty much every weekend of the summer, someone was having a graduation party. These were huge parties with the big white tent and huge amounts of food—and were basically open to anyone who even remotely knew the graduate. (Of course at a small school, everone knows everyone anyway.) Those were awesome parties. I believe it's customary here to do something on a much smaller scale. I'll be looking into that.

Birthdays: First of all, we do not do school on birthdays. That's a big celebration. And we have one very important tradition. On the night before the birthday, Randy and I print out about a dozen of the birthday child's new age (16 was the most recent) in big, colorful numbers and tape them all over the house. This started sometime when our oldest was little, and we can't seem to stop. Even right now there are a few "16s" left around from Jesse's birthday 3 weeks ago. It's a common in March, August, and December for visitors to ask: "Why are there numbers all over your house?" Another birthday tradition is to take the birthday person out to dinner at his/her favorite restaurant. Since we rarely eat out, this is a huge treat for everyone. And of course I make a cake and the kids usually have a friend party.

And that's seriously about it. I lack a certain amount of sentimentality about milestones, I suppose. I don't get all teary-eyed at "significant" birthdays, and we're just not into rewarding our kids materially for every achievement. We think they're great; we tell them we think they're great; and most importantly, they know we think they're great.

Easter Sunday: A Green Day, Filled with Flowers and Frolicking

A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown,
Who ponders this tremendous scene
This whole experiment of green,
As if it were his own!
~Emily Dickinson

Rainforest Lapbooks

We've been thoroughly immersed in slavery and Civil War these past few months, so the kids requested that we add in a unit study for a little levity. We settled on a rainforest theme, and we've had a blast these past several weeks.

I used two primary sources for ideas and templates for the lapbooks, and some the kids created on their own. Jimmie's Rainforest Lapbook, like all of Jimmie's lapbooks, is phenomenal. She has loads of fantastic resources and photos on this site. Homeschool Share has a fantastic literature-based study of The Kapok Tree, including lots of great templates. Our lapbooks were not as detailed nor as complex as the two above, but we had all had enough of the rainforest and were satisfied with the study.

Our resources included:
Videos:
Zoo Life with Jack Hanna: Wonders of the Rainforest
National Geographic: Wacky Rainforest
Animals of the Amazon (Coyote Creek Animal Safari with Karla Majewski)—kids loved this
Magic School Bus: In the Rainforest

Story Books
The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry*****
The Umbrella by Jan Brett
"Slowly, Slowly, Slowly," said the Sloth by Eric Carle

Non-fiction
The Giant Book of the Jungle*****
A Walk Through a Rain Forest by David and Mark Jenike
Jungles (Usborne)
Usborne Discovery Snakes (internet linked)
Usborne Rainforest Wildlife

*****There are bazillions of books out there about the jungle. We just used the guidebooks we had at home and the few story books from the library. If I could only use two books, however, these two would suffice!

Since we couldn't go to Papua New Guinea, we settled for taking a field trip to the nearby Rainforest Adventure in Sevierville.

We rarely do a lapbook as our "main" course. Lapbooking for us is usually a way to get in a little extra science or to make a complicated subject come to life. Lapbooking is a fantastic way to make a unit study more memorable. If you have no idea how to start, check out my Lapbooking Resources post. I am by no means a lapbooking expert, but I can point you in the direction of a few!

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!)