The seven year old is spending the afternoons this week at an Art Camp held at the local art museum. When I signed him up, I didn't know what to expect exactly, but knowing his love for art, I knew he'd enjoy it. It's a treat to pick him up every day, see his excited smile, hear what he did and listen to him tell me once again, "Thank you for signing me up!"
No pictures yet of his artwork. They'll be having an art show and bringing it all home on Friday.
In style or out, one of my favorite kinds of skirts is the long and flowing hippie skirt. I'm actually most comfortable in jeans most of the time, but when I put on a skirt these days for church or just because, I like the kind that looks good with Birkenstocks (although I do wear them with nicer shoes as well).
They aren't made for those times one needs to be really dressy, obviously, and at those times I prefer something more classical and tailored, but I love the way hippie skirts flow and swing around my legs. When I walk down stairs, they flounce around me and I feel certain that if I spun around they would twirl just like my daughters' favorite skirts and dresses.
And that's really the crux of my love for them. Hippie skirts satisfy a little girl longing for flouncy, feminine twirliness that combines well with my love for comfort.
Love the visual picture you just created with that post! The closest I have is one that is straight to the knee and then has a couple "flounces" from the knee down to mid-calf. I love the way it swings and flounces as I walk, especially when walking down the stairs.
We finally dragged to the end of the school year on Friday. Math and language were holding us up, but we made it through a year of homeschooling.
Sunday I started planning for next year. Although I've been researching and thinking all year about what I like and what I don't like with this year's curriculum. I think the seven year old got a good first grade education, but I think if I did it all again I could do it better with even better books and materials.
For instance, although I think he got a good grounding in grammar from First Language Lessons, I was rather disgusted by the fact that the poems chosen for memorization were all revised and rewritten and they chose not use fine art for the picture studies. If children aren't learning the standard versions of poems then something is lost from cultural literacy. The kids are going to think they know and understand references, but they aren't. Next year I plan on using Primary Language Lessons by Emma Serl. I think it will provide much of the same stuff that I liked from the other book, but with more authentic texts. I'm not sure what we'll do for spelling. I may just have him write more and practice words that he has trouble with.
Last year we used Saxon Math 1 and again, I think my son got a good first grade education, but it took a lot of prep work on my part, even though the lessons were scripted, and although my son now claims to have loved every second of math, some days it was a challenge to get him actually to want to do his lessons. I think for next year we may switch to Math-U-See.
I'm not sure what I want to do for science. That was the subject I had the hardest time with this past year. Nothing clicked well with either of us.
History was my son's favorite subject throughout the year. We used The Story of the World and I liked it for the most part. Although I liked the writing in Hillyer's Child's History of the World a lot better. I'm trying to decide whether to switch from the Story of the World series by Susan Wise Bauer to a much older Story of the World series. It's still written in a narrative that will captivate the audience, but the writing is better. On the other hand, it doesn't have the handy maps and activity guide that the books designed to go with A Well-Trained Mind provide and I might miss those a lot.
For my four year old who will turn five in the fall and who learns in a very different way and doesn't do much of anything that she doesn't want to do, I think we'll be taking a different approach from that of her brother. I plan on using Five in a Row as the springboard for her Kindergarten studies with a heavy dose Waldorf-style meaningful activities (like cooking, cleaning and sewing) and the ritual of different activities based on the seasons.
We'll also start Latin this year, I hope, and maybe do a little passive German. I'm a bit embarrassed that I have not taught the kidlets any language at all.
So that's my preliminary plan. The kids will probably continue taking swimming lessons and the four year old wants to take ballet. It will be interesting to see how things go when we start up again. But in the meantime, I'm enjoying a little break -- if you can call it that. As I type, the seven year old is sitting across from me making me teach him how to add large numbers that involve carrying digits.
Congrats on finishing up the year! DD officially finished at the end of May from the Charter school we use, but it didn't really change anything here since we don't generally use texts. But I did want to suggest that you try to get a hold of someone's Math U See books and take a good look at them. We had the Primer (Kinder) for dd and I had several problems with it - lots of repetition which we got around by skipping tons of pages, and a lack of problem solving. I looked at other grade levels and still found the thought process to be missing. The word problems followed the pattern that the other problems on the page followed, or even worse, provided the operation so all the kid needed to do was plug in the numbers and compute. DD also spent more time playing with the manipulatives than she did using them for math. It was nice in that she could watch it by herself. I picked up Singapore Math in case we decide to do text math next year. I LOVE their intensive practice workbook challenge problems. The one drawback to this program is that if you get and use all 3 books you will end up with too much busy work. I plan on picking and choosing which pages/problems we do if I do it.
I've added your SS ideas for next year to my list of things to check out. You have the same problems with SOTW as I do.
Wow - congratulations! It sounds as if it was a successful year, and like next year will be even better. From what you've said about your eldest, it may be difficult to keep ahead of him in a few years.
If the 4 year old wants to do "homework" on cleaning and cooking, or an intensive course in basic sewing, I would happily take her for a week or so :^). Reasoning and math skills can be learned in tons of things.
"If the two-year-old is in church with us, it's only because he's sick in the first place. Without the nursery, we wouldn't have heard a sermon in years."
I don't want to pick on Lenise, but I don't like church nurseries or special children's worship services. We go to church to worship God and part of that worship is listening to the sermon, but that is not the only part. One of a parent's primary jobs is to educate their children about God -- to train them up in the way that they should go.
When we send our children out of the service to a nursery, we tacitly say they are not part of the main church body. They must be shunted off some place until they learn to behave. But if they are sent out of the service, when do they learn to participate in it? When do you change from fun nurseries and watered down children's services to "Okay kids, now you have to grow up and listen to the boring stuff." Wouldn't it be better to train the children that the one service is for everyone? God is for the eight month old and the eighty year old alike.
Jesus said, "Let the children come unto me." Are we to suppose that listening to an entire sermon or making sure that nobody around us is bothered by a wiggling toddler is more important than teaching our children that they are a vital part of a church.
Are my children perfect? Do they sit still, face forward and pay attention? Almost never. Are they part of the body of the Church? Yes. Do they need to be acknowledged as such by encouraging them to participate in worship with the adults? Yes.
In today's society, we grownups spend a lot of time trying to get away from the kids we have, because we think they are annoying. Sometimes they are. However, it doesn't make them less annoying if we don't spend time teaching them how to be adults. I take my children to real restaurants, on errands of all kinds and I take them with me to church.
I do not take them everywhere I go and I occasionally like some down time away from them (I like dates with my husband and quiet trips to the grocery store as much as anyone), but one place I think it especially my duty to instruct the little blighters is at church. Sure send them to Bible classes when they split up into various ages, but when the congregation comes together to worship God as a body, they are part of that body and they need to be there.
I hope you will have the grace to accept other folks who decide to have a separate service for youngsters. If indeed we do have a church "body", then can it be OK for other parts of the body to help raise up our children to understand how to worship and serve the Lord? A parent can also participate in the separate children's service (SCS) and influence their's as well as other children.
My wife recently missed both the Mother's and Father's day services at out church because she does not want to go through the stress of keeping our 3 y.o. daughter under wraps for an hour and a half (SCS was cancelled for those days). I suppose it would be different if it was just a 45 minute service, but it is not possible for her to sit that long without making a scene. I did attend the Father's Day service with my two sons, and while there were some rough patches we made made it through. Neither of them were interested in worship, though, despite my efforts to encourage them as well as modeling it as best I could.
"One of a parent's primary jobs is to educate their children about God - to train them up in the way they should go. When we send our children out of the service to a nursery, we tacitly say they are not part of the main church body." Do you primarily go to church to worship God or train your kids? Is church the only place to train them up in the Lord? If a church has more than one service (i.e. 8 and 10 am services) is the body cut in half?
I don't know if there's a right answer, and I'd like to see any specific examples from the Bible on whether or not to include children in worship services. Children do have different attention spans, interests and ways of learning. AND, I'll go out on a limb and say that most are not ready for full worship until middle school (if not later). When they're ready, I'm overjoyed to praise God with them. Misbehaving children in a church service does not annoy me, though as a parent I tend to be sympathetic.
Our first service to the Lord is worship, our second is training up the children He has blessed us with. It is not mandatory that children are excluded from the main worship service, but the extra services are provided so that parents can focus on worship as needed.
Again, I hope you will have the grace to accept us "separatists". From the tone of your post it sounds like something else is troubling you. May God continue to richly bless you and your new home to soon be ready for training up your children.
I've heard folks say this before, and from your descriptions, I'm sure your children are very active too. We would seriously end up having to walk Jay around, either inside or outside of the sanctuary to keep him from crying or running away! Maybe we were doing something wrong, but I just don't know how it would have been possible for us to keep him in the pew without raising a large ruckus.
Next year, (as a 3-year-old), he'll be in the congregation for the opening hymn/creed/ praise songs and then join children's church. Personally, I think this strikes a nice balance for the older tykes, as I agree that children ARE part of the congregation, but Jay is just not likely to sit still for 90 minutes.
We have our own logistical challenges- parents having to escort children to children's church and then slip back into the service en masse, and now that we are moving to a single service in our new facility, that leaves the 11 AM nursery workers without a worship service. That strikes me as a significant problem. We may move back to 2 services in the fall- I hope so, just for the nursery workers' sake.
Anyway, no offense taken. I know some people do manage to keep their kids in the service, and small children don't annoy me- just the 7-year-olds who kick one's seat repeatedly! Now that we have real pews, though, that shouldn't be much of a problem!
We have very busy and active children (3 of them bouncy boys!), and helping them learn to worship with our family has certainly taken ongoing work, patience, and consistency. Parenting in the Pew: Guiding Your Children into the Joy of Worship by Robbie Castleman was such a help and inspiration to me as I changed my perspective from helping my children to learn to "behave and sit still" in church to desiring them to understand and actively participate in worshiping our great God. I HIGHLY recommend it to anyone looking for some refreshing input on this topic. I can now honestly say that worshiping together as a family brings me some of the greatest joy I experience as a parent.
Our worship training always starts at home with family devotions in the evenings. We sing, read Scripture, pray together, and talk about many different aspects of worship, on a child's level. That is how we helped our little ones to learn to sit for any length of time, and to have a sense of what we are doing on Sunday mornings. Otherwise, when they get to church, they have no prior experience or understanding of what is going on in the worship service.
Also, I should add that our kids don't stay in church with us during the period between approximately age 8 months till a little past a year. Once we start bringing them in to church after that one year mark, we keep them with us for perhaps only a few minutes, not expecting that on the first Sunday they will make it through the entire 90 minutes, and we have worked with each one a little differently - some have had an easier time with the long service than others. But regardless, we just build up gradually and patiently. I have one extremely active little boy who struggles mightily with self-control. But even he, before age 3, was able to not just sit through the whole service, but to actively, on an age-appropriate level, worship too.
I do think that nursery for very young (read: under age 3) children can be quite helpful for visitors, and families who are new to church, as an aid and help to them as they acclimate and learn to train their children in worship too. Just my two cents. :)
Wow. OK - while I'm part of the demographic that would traditionally complain about small kids in the service (middle-aged single woman), I personally don't mind having them there, provided at least some training has gone on and no one is throwing sippy cups at me. I've been in churches that keep most kids (4 and up) in the service, and churches that keep the youngest in nursery, and have the K-3rd graders go off to a separate message after the singing time in the main service.
If I remember correctly, there are no specific injunctions on including/excluding kids in a worship service in scripture, just as there are no specific instructions on exactly what a service should look like. We're to bring children up to worship and reverence God, and that teaching takes place 24/7, not just on Sunday morning. What Sunday morning looks like seems to depend more on where your family is in their faith walk, and the personalities and maturity of the kids involved than any set script. The core question isn't so much "what is the right thing to do?", but more "are my kids able to learn to worship, and are they doing so in the present circumstances?". As with the homeschooling ciricculum, you chose what works and accomplishes your goals.
Jordana's comments "In today's society, we grownups spend a lot of time trying to get away from the kids we have, because we think they are annoying. Sometimes they are. However, it doesn't make them less annoying if we don't spend time teaching them how to be adults." truly resonate with me. Honestly, you think the kids have Black Plaque the way some parents avoid them. We are to train them in the way they should go - kind of hard to do if you avoid spending time with them.
And it's all easy for me to say, since I have no kids of my own :^)
I don't know; my first two years as a parent have made me a bit twitchy about this subject, mainly because our church's anti-child-noise attitude has meant that I have personally missed a lot of services (or parts thereof) over the last two years. (My husband's and my over-commitment to church needs like children's church and nursery duty has also contributed.) I was raised in the Episcopal church, where we children had our Sunday school during the first part of the service (including the sermon) and then were brought in for the finish (including communion), and I think that's a decent happy medium. Everyone expected that the service would get a bit more rowdy/squeaky after the kidlets came back, and that was fine.
I would settle for a church with a mother's room where we mommies could actually see and hear the service while calming our restless little ones. But (and I know I've told this story on this blog before), one of the most refreshing experiences I've had as a mommy in church was at a Catholic Ash Wednesday service, where the tired and wired little Squid's noises and wiggles were met with approving glances and positive comments from people of all ages around us as we kept her with us through the whole service (and I didn't get any cool looks for breastfeeding her there, either).
So, yeah, no really helpful input from me ... just my not-so-well-thought-out feelings on the subject ...
When a two year old snuggles up to you in church and falls asleep, do you (a) assume she loves you and loves to snuggle (b) needs a nap (c) someone slipped her narcotics (d) check for a fever? In my experience, the answer is always (d), although there have been times when I longed to slip a particularly active and wiggly child a little something to make them drowsy.
The two year old has been running an on and off 103 fever since Sunday morning. Unlike my other children who would feign illness in order to get their hands on medicine, this child is particularly resistant to medication. She won't take it in liquid form. She used to be okay with the rapid melt kind, but now that also has gone to the unapproved list. There is one other way to get Acetaminophen into a child and that involves sticking it where the sun don't shine. That's always fun and non-traumatic (NOT!).
Adding to the excitement around here, as far as I'm concerned -- I have a cold. I'm sniffling, snorting and I sat up in bed and pulled a muscle in my neck. So imagine me bent over snorting and wheezing. I'm moving like I'm about 85 and picking the baby up is no fun. And naturally, I've passed the rivers of snot onto him as well.
We're just a barrel of contagion over here. Want to visit?
If the two-year-old is in church with us, it's only because he's sick in the first place. Without the nursery, we wouldn't have heard a sermon in years =]
I've almost always been a short haired girl. Although I begged to have hair long enough to put up in Princess Leia buns when I was in Kindergarten, my mother insisted my hair remain short enough that she could keep it combed and detangled with minimal effort. I got a lot of Dorothy Hamill haircuts and almost never had long enough hair to even manage a pony tail.
In high school, I briefly had long hair when I played Margot in The Diary of Anne Frank, but I got tired of it pretty quickly. In college, I grew my bangs out and the fastest way to get your bangs to match the length of your hair is to keep your hair cut short. I did eventually grow my hair out to a length where I could wear a pony tail, but I didn't like how it looked and chopped it all off again. Since then, it has stayed pretty short, until now.
During my last pregnancy, I decided to grow it out. I was tired of short hair and ready for a change. I've had it trimmed a few times since then, but I'm enjoying the slightly long hair.
The most unexpected thing for me is how much a certain spouse of mine likes my long hair. He never seemed to mind me with short hair, but when I last said I wanted my hair trimmed, he quickly replied, "Don't get too much taken off."
What is it about long hair? Did I miss out on being a femme fatale and having a large male following in my single days by not having long hair? Do most of you men prefer a woman with longish hair? Or is it just my husband?
Long hair does frame the face differently, and it can make smooching sessions more interesting.
My wife is looking forward to cutting our 3 y.o. duaghter's hair, now that the birth mother has had her rights almost officially terminated. She has very nice hair (straight with the last third curling naturally) but it's difficult to manage.
You know that I generally prefer long hair. But funny thing, Husband doesn't really care either way.
I always had short hair my whole life and grew it long when pg with David, and I loved having long hair, it was such a novelty. But Hubs never seemed to pay any attention to it, and that actually kind of bugged me. I wanted him to like it.
Then I got it chopped a few years back to that very styled, layered look with the flipped up ends and he went GA-GA over it. It is the only time in my life he has ever made un-solicited comments about my hair.
Of course, I've since grown it out and tend to keep it in the shoulder-length range, and once again, he never mentions it. But I like it better this way. For now.
Dan, obviously no wise and loving husband is going to say anything to his wife about her hair choices in anything less than positive and glowing tones. That would be like saying "Yes!" to the question, "Do these jeans make me look fat?"
No worries about jeans making you look fat when, of course, you're wearing Action Jeans.
While a husband may use positive and glowing terms when describing his wife's hair, God forbid he should fail to notice and make a comment after his wife's triumphant return from the beauty salon.
My DH loves long hair, he has told me this more then once.. BUT at the same time doesn't really care what I do with mine. Except he has told me to never go above my chin with it. LOL.. but I do know he likes it long, even if he didn't I like it long so I guess it doesn't matter LOL.
Actually, Jordana, I decided long ago that the answer to "do I look fat?" is "yes."
Why?
Because no matter how the question is phrased, it will always get rephrased a few times until I don't remember what the original question was. So to simplify life, I just get myself in trouble right away.
I think it must be a guy thing ... the Husbandlet claims to prefer my hair long, though he always amends that with, "But you do what you want with it." I've been keeping it around shoulder-length of late, though, as the long hair, it annoys me after awhile.
The Tooth Fairy got to make a surprise visit. We'd put the kidlets to bed and were about to have to go up for our usual "knock it off and go to sleep" visit, when the seven year old came downstairs holding his hand to his mouth full of blood yelling, "My sister kicked my toof out!"
Sure enough. He'd been talking and the four year old wanted to go to sleep, so naturally -- she kicked him in the mouth. It knocked out one of his front teeth, but fortunately, his front tooth was ready to come out. It had been loose for months and would have fallen out long ago if he'd ever wiggled it. Still, it had been held in by some skin still and that's where the blood came from.
After it stopped bleeding though, the Boy was pretty happy to have lost the tooth and even happier when he woke up the next morning and discovered that the Tooth Fairy had come. Good thing she didn't oversleep.
Our tooth fairy is a cheapskate and because our son is homeschooled, he hasn't been able to compare the payment rates of his tooth fairy with others. So our tooth fairy pays a dollar for the first tooth and a quarter for all subsequent teeth. I made sure the first dollar was also a special one, digging into my supply of Eisenhower silver dollars that my grandfather gave me for birthdays long ago.
Ha! Same thing happened to me. I think everyone else in my class had already lost a tooth and I was feeling left out. My sister accidently kicked mine out while we were on the jungle gym in the back yard, and I was thrilled! But we couldn't find the tooth in the grass, so I made my mom write a note for the tooth fairy that I put under my pillow. My first affidavit!
My friend at Musings of a Housewife tagged me for a restaurant meme requiring me to tell you my five favorite restaurants. It is an interesting question, but since I firmly believe that the best restaurants are usually local, most of you won't know these places or ever get a chance to sample their yumminess, unless you travel to Nashville.
Sadly, I have far too many favorite restaurants. I really love to cook, but I love it when someone else plans the menu, slices, dices and cleans up too.
The two best restaurants I've been to in Nashville are both on the side of town where my new house is! Yay!
Another great date restaurant, this one is also close to my new house and easier to get a reservation at for those times when a babysitter falls into your lap at the last minute. The herb-filled oil for dipping bread into was so good, I could have licked the plate and after the blueberry beignets for dessert, I think I did.
My children sometimes call in "Mango Lassi Land" which gives you some inkling of what they really go there for, but although I do think their mango lassis are some of the best I've ever had, I would also recommend pretty much everything else on the menu too. Or go for the buffet at lunchtime and try it all. We've been going there since before my oldest child was even a gleam (or leer) in his father's eye. It is always good.
There are a lot of restaurants that I've been to more often than this one and probably some I like even more, but it is definitely unique and perfect for taking visitors to, especially non-Southerners -- a good Nashville meat-and-three, with the usual Southern vegetables like macaroni and cheese along with turnip greens and okra. The tables seat twelve, so a large family can all sit together, or if you are there with a small party on a busy night, you'll get to cozy up and meet some new folks. Food is served right away and family style, so the kids are happy. There is a ton of food and it is all good country cooking -- everything from drinks to dessert is included in the price and there are choices set out on the table for just about everyone (though vegans would have difficulties). Outside the old house in which the restaurant is located, is a beautiful garden which my kids love to run around in after dinner, while the grownups finish up thirds and fourths.
Well, I don't know whether to congratulate you or commiserate with you. ;-) By the way, you're tagged. If you don't want to do it, no problem. I know you aren't big into memes.
Mrs. P delivers some of the finest writing about how a man should dress.
As an aside, I finally let Justin get rid of his bucs when we moved. I'd convinced him to keep them for years, but I'd never successfully convinced him to wear them. He's totally on board with the whole seersucker and bow tie thing though, but such was not always the case. Fortunately, he was willing to learn.
Y'all must have really well-trained husbands to be able to worry about how they're dressed! That's way down the list around here. I even let Paul wear his polo shirt with the various trout on it until he decided it was through. Not a word escaped my lips. Nor did I say anything about the purple denim shorts. I guess I'm a slacker wife. I've got enough trouble trying to keep the little boys clothed =]
The Husbandlet is sartorially clueless. He decided in high school that if he dressed entirely in T-shirts and jeans, he could never clash, and he has a violent antipathy to ties. We had a heated and (for me) distressing discussion of the difference between suits and tuxedos right before our wedding. However, I think we reached a bit of a breakthrough recently when the whole job interview thing came up. He is now the proud possessor of a good suit, and he even voluntarily purchased a lovely shirt to go with it--by himself!--and accompanied me to mull over matching ties at length. For the most part, though, I have adapted to his fashion sense and he has resigned himself to my shoe addiction.
One of the hardest things for me this spring and summer is the fact that my potential garden is on the other side of town. I miss my old flower beds and vegetable gardens and sometimes wonder how my old friends are blooming. I wouldn't be thinking so much about my old garden, but for the fact that I don't really have a garden yet at the new house, and since we aren't there, I can't spend much time tending the garden any way.
Before we sold our old house, I moved a lot of plants across town. We made a big flowerbed down the side of the driveway and created some beds in front of the house. Things are growing nicely, although the short, 18" max sunflowers I planted are now 3'+, so the beds are a bit more crowded than I'd expected, but that's not much of a problem. The beds are full of weeds along with the flowers though and I haven't even had time to mulch.
I wanted to have a vegetable bed, and we certainly have room for one, but I don't have the time to tend to it, water it, weed it, or even harvest anything. I'm trying to decide whether to give up on a garden completely or if I should buy a determinate tomato plant or two and some basil for a few easily movable pots. Doing that would probably make me happy, but the thought of settling for that "garden" is kind of depressing. Sigh.
My new garden is about an hour and fifteen minutes from my current house and the kicker is that I drive by it on my new commute. Thank goodness we will be moving next week. I'll still have to wait and plan before planting, but this time it's a clean slate as opposed to a reclamation campaign.
Jordana Adams, Chief Pontificator
