Plateosaurus Cake (B is 6!)

As many of you reading this know, I have a tradition of baking my children birthday cakes following the theme of their choice. Sometimes these themes are easier to carry out than others! When I asked B what he wanted for his 6th birthday cake, he informed me that he wanted a Plateosaurus. I had never heard of the Plateosaurus before, not having memorized his Dinopedia the way he has, but he turned to the appropriate page and showed me what he hoped I could do for him:

 

He wanted just the head, with a leaf in its mouth, as shown in the picture. It actually turned out to be one of my more successful efforts. I baked a basic rectangular cake, and cut it out in the shape of the head using a paper stencil (so I could pencil in the shape before taking the knife to the cake):

 



I tried to get the 2 colors shown in the picture by coloring all the icing light brown with cocoa, and then adding blue to half of it, but it didn't work because I bought all-natural food color, which turned out not to affect the color of the icing strongly enough. It might have tinted pure white icing a light blue, but the effect of the cocoa completely overwhelmed it.

For the teeth, I had hoped to find yogurt raisins in the bulk section of the same health food store where I got the food color, but they were out of stock, so I used slivered almonds instead. And B insisted that both the eye and nostril should be made of raisins. The leaf was satisfyingly easy - I simply cut off a leaf from our cycad tree outside! Even if cycads weren't part of the Plateosaurus' diet, they were around in the time of the dinosaurs, so it felt quite authentic. Here's the finished product:

 

The young man was pleased with the result!

 

 



Next week, H will be 4, and he's requested a pink robot cake (yes, pink is still his favorite color). Tune back next week to see how that turns out!

Starting up math club

Math Club 1/15/16

A week ago I restarted an activity that my children and I really enjoyed in New York: an enrichment math club. I had planned to hold the club at a local park, but when I woke up that day it was wet and grey, so I changed the venue to my house. Given an enthusiastic response when I posted it on Facebook, I had been concerned that not everyone would fit, but as it turned out only 2 families were able to come. This was actually a good number to begin with – three 10-year-olds (including a set of twins) and one younger sibling, as well as my own children.

My idea for today’s lesson was to approach binary in a way that would be generally accessible, since I wasn’t sure how many younger children would be involved, and then to move to a more formal introduction. I was inspired by James Tanton’s “Exploding Dots” course (http://gdaymath.com/courses/exploding-dots/), and started with a physical activity based on the 1 <– 2 machine. Here’s how the activity went.

First, I placed a few sheets of paper on the floor in a line. I pointed out that a sheet of paper is fairly small; only one person can comfortably stand on it. So, if you ever have more than one person on a sheet of paper, the two EXPLODE! Only one “survives” the explosion, and that person is knocked to the next piece of paper in line. New people can only join the game by standing on the first sheet of paper in the line. So, after the first person joins the game, there is one person on the first piece of paper. Add in a second person, and they EXPLODE, and one of the two is left standing on the second piece, with the first piece empty. Add a third, and s/he can stand on the first piece without a problem: a person is on each of the first two places. Adding a fourth person is fun: the two on the first place EXPLODE, one joins the person on the second place, they EXPLODE, and one goes and stands on the third piece. If you’re familiar with binary, you can see where this is going; if not, try it out yourself (or click through to the Exploding Dots link). Some of the participants wanted to keep one person in the first place and explode the second person into the next place. I wish I’d thought of letting them play with that for a while – it would have been a base 1 system – but I just tried to re-explain that only one person can stay in the game after the explosion.

After we’d added in 5 or so people, I got out the whiteboard, and we started over again, writing down what happened if we dumped on a whole bunch of people at once. Someone suggested trying to put 9 people on the first sheet of paper, which required all 5 of mine and all 3 ten-year-olds, plus myself (holding E1), but it didn’t work too well because several people (all mine) wandered off before being exploded and were hard to find again (and to keep track of). At this point we moved to using the whiteboard exclusively.

I drew 4 boxes, and we began making a chart, using what the children didn’t yet recognize as standard binary notation: 1 is 1, 2 is 10 (a person in the second place as a result of the 2 who exploded in the first place), 3 is 11 (a person in each of the first 2 places), 4 is 100 (only one person left on the 3^rd place, with the first 2 empty). I had them take turns drawing each subsequent number of dots in the first place, carrying out explosions and writing the resulting binary number in a somewhat organized chart. We went up to eleven or so (1011 in binary).

At that point, I got out the main manipulative I had prepared, a set of 5 cards containing 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 dots respectively. I let them look at the cards and say what they noticed. “They’re all even!” “Except 1 isn’t.” “And 6 is missing.” “And 10.” Finally, “Oh, you have to double them.” Once that idea was mentioned, everyone agreed: it was a sequence of numbers you get by repeated doubling. Once they’d realized that, I asked them to make numbers using the available cards: 7 (1+2+4), 13 (1+4+8), 21 (1+4+16). Is there only one way of making each of these numbers, or could you find another way to do it? Well, all 4 children who were still engaged with the activity did it the same way, and no one could think of another way. “Unless we got into teams and had 2 of each card.” But with just one set of cards, we agreed that there was only one way to make each number.

The next step was to ask if there was any connection between the activity with the cards and the activity with the exploding dots. This puzzled them for a little while, so I set up a set of dot cards in order beneath one of the binary numbers we’d written on the board, with each card marking a place. They were able to see that, for example, 1010 was the same as 8 + 0 + 2 + 0.

Someone noticed that five in binary is 101, and ten is 1010. “What’s twenty?” They found it was 10100, which was an interesting pattern. I asked if anyone had any guesses about what forty might be, and there was general agreement that it should be 101000. We had to add another place, though, since our dot cards only went up to 16, but when we’d added the 32 place we noticed that 40 was indeed 32 + 8. I had thoughts at this point about doing some addition (with carrying) and subtraction (with borrowing), but I could tell that people had about reached the end of their interest with the activity, so we wound up and everyone left.

Things that went well: Letting them say what they noticed about the base 2 cards, noticing patterns of doubling and halving (5, 10, 20, 40 translates to 101, 1010, 10100, 101000), letting them hold the whiteboard markers, asking children to explain their reasoning whether the answer was right or wrong (which helped me see how my explanations were going awry).

Things that didn’t go as well: Whiteboard markers running out of ink (repeatedly), allowing some people to dominate the conversation and failing to include others, not explaining the rules of the game carefully enough for everyone to understand that one of the people in the explosion disappears completely, drawing 4 boxes on the whiteboard before we needed all of them (should have added boxes only as needed).

Plan for next time: I have no idea which of the same children and which new ones – of which ages – will come, but, weather permitting, I’m hoping to do it at the park. We’ll look at fractals – there’s a gorgeous, enormous tree there, so tree fractals will flow naturally. I’ll try giving each child a sheet protector with cardstock inside it, and a (new) whiteboard marker, so they can each explore without one child dominating. I’m particularly enamored with Sierpinski’s triangle and the Koch snowflake, so those will certainly feature. I’ll plan to post again with how it goes.

Back to blogging?

It's been a while since my last post. A LONG while. We've been in Hawaii for almost half a year now, and we're feeling more and more settled. Additionally, it's that time of year when people boldly state that they will do good things, go forth in the excitement of their resolution and do them twice, then quit. So, I thought I'd let you in on some of my resolutions for the new year - not necessarily in order.

1) Eat local eggs. So far, I've been doing much of my grocery shopping at Costco, over 14 miles away from our house, where the prices tend to be more reasonable than at many local grocery stores. Costco, of course, carries large quantities but less selection, and in the egg department, you can choose between conventional mainland eggs and organic mainland eggs. But when I think about how much space 3 dozen eggs a week takes up, shipping them from the mainland is pretty much equivalent to sending our entire family back to the mainland several times a year. That's not ecologically responsible, so I've resolved to prefer even conventional Hawaii eggs over mainland eggs. This idea extends to noble plans to seek out CSAs and maybe even a local dairy (I believe there is precisely one on Oahu), but as I haven't made good on those yet, they don't count as "resolutions."

2) Blog more regularly. I've had P11 and E9 post on private, non-searchable blogs on a weekly basis with the exclusive goal of allowing them to share their school writing assignments with their grandparents, aunts and uncles. This allows them to receive feedback from someone other than me, but doesn't expose them to the risks of posting things that can be googled. So my plan is to blog as often as they do. I didn't do this during our first week back of school, but starting with the second week is better than not starting at all!

3) Build a beehive. This one is pure fun. The children are studying insects this year, and ever since I decided that we'd be focusing on that topic, I've been toying with the idea. Ari's brother and sister-in-law have kept bees for years, and the honey they've given us has been utterly scrumptious. And there are always flowers in bloom in Hawaii! In addition, this gives me the opportunity to give E9 some hands-on experience with using math to solve real-world problems.* We're planning to build a top-bar hive (loosely based on BackYardHive.com's plans), so he'll have the opportunity to build skills in scale drawing, measuring, geometry, estimating budgets and amounts of wood needed, and other skills I probably haven't even thought of. And of course, we're hoping to reap rewards, not only in terms of honey, but in terms of understanding more about these amazing insects. So far, I've changed E9's daily math assignment format from 5 review problems a day plus instruction, to 2
harder problems a day plus some time working on the hive.

*I saw a compelling argument that essential math skills consist of 4 stages: clearly stating a problem, translating it into mathematics, calculating, and translating the answer back into a solution to the problem. Traditional instruction focuses almost exclusively on the third stage, calculation, which is the only stage that can easily be automated (computers, calculators, etc.), but what students really need is practice with stages 1, 2, and 4 - then they can teach a computer to do stage 3 for them. I want my children to be able to calculate, but if they can code a solution, that'll show that they understand the problem without having to suffer through pages of grunge. We might make coding a part of next year's course of study.

4) Get to bed at a decent time. This is the one I have the hardest time with. Ari's long commute means that he gets home late, and the children need to see their Daddy which translates to a fairly late bedtime. Once they're asleep, it's so relaxing to sit still for many consecutive minutes without needing to jump up (as I did at least 12 times while typing this up) to solve a child-related disaster, that I frequently give in to the temptation to keep reading, playing piano, or working on the computer until much later than is healthy. So I've resolved to be off the computer by 10, and ideally on my way to bed by then. This hasn't always happened so far this year, but I'm trying to form new habits. I know it's a blessing to Ari when he's sleep deprived from his long hours to know that I'm not and he can depend more on me. This is one I've been praying about for a while, and given previous answers to prayer, I know I'm going to do better this year: "This is the will of God, your sanctification" (1 Thessalonians 4:3a).

Moving to Paradise

Last Sunday morning, I woke up with a pervasive sense that something about my life was absolutely wonderful. As I became more awake, I remembered: “Oh, yes – we’re moving to a tropical island this summer!” Ari has accepted a job in Honolulu, starting August 1^st. He’ll be working with the ATLAS project (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System), trying to find potential earth impactors before they hit us. Needless to say, this impending major life change has dominated my thoughts over the past week or so.

It struck me that there are parallels between this good news and the ultimate Good News that fills my entire life with a pervasive peace and hope for the future.

I have work to do to prepare. There are tasks on Long Island that I would like to finish with excellence before we move, so that life in Hawaii will be easier – tasks like getting rid of unneeded possessions (so that we won’t have to ship as many things) and finishing the children’s school year (so we can have a sense of completion before moving, without 6 weeks’ worth of work looming over us as we enter life in the new place). Likewise, the knowledge that this world is not my final destination affects my motivation to get rid of unneeded habits (like excessive unproductive computer time – a current struggle) and work diligently at tasks that further God’s kingdom on earth (like teaching my children about God’s love through my actions as well as my words). If I don’t declutter or finish the school year, we’ll still move to Hawaii, but our stress levels will be much higher and we’ll spend more on shipping. If I don’t get the link-clicking habit under control or continue to teach my children about God’s love, he’ll still love me, but I won’t be as much part of helping his kingdom come.

I need to rearrange my priorities. I’ve spent some time on scheduling so that, instead of the school year finishing around June 30 (the New York reporting deadline), we can finish in the middle of June and I can start packing full-time sooner. This means that I’ve decided certain school tasks aren’t essential, such as finishing the 3^rd grade spelling book or covering every concept I wanted to get to in math. In the same way, knowing that my ultimate future is in Heaven means that ensuring my own comfort in terms of free time, money, or control is less of a priority than making choices that will help me know Jesus and make him known. Choosing to spend time in prayer or service, to support people who are telling others about Jesus, and to be thankful even when things don’t go my way has greater ultimate value than an extra half hour of sleep, a bigger house, or making sure people do things the “right” way. I can give up less important things in order to pursue a more important goal.

I want to tell everyone. Because I’m so excited about the move, I find myself wanting to share it with everyone I see. It’s one of the main things I’m thinking about, so it naturally flows out of my conversation. I really want to tell everyone about Jesus and the freedom and healing he’s given me, as well. I think about his love for me and his church worldwide throughout the day, and I want to share it. I confess that fear sometimes hinders me (fear of being obnoxious or too vulnerable), which is worth praying about, and I don’t always know how to broach the subject.

I want to invite others to join me. When I think of all my friends here shoveling snow next winter, I want to offer them a space on our futon in Honolulu. I will miss people here so much and I want to see them again after our move. I will enjoy it more knowing we can offer people a respite from the cold, if they choose to come visit. And when I think of the mansions Jesus has promised to prepare for his children in heaven, as well as the peace and joy I experience in my life now, I want everyone I know to be able to share it with me, to know Jesus and his power in their own lives, to escape from the cold meaninglessness of an existence that ends at death.

Threshing in a Winepress

This past fall, I was in a women’s Bible study that focused on Gideon. Rereading the first few chapters of Judges this week, I was reminded of a passage that stood out to me during that study

Judges 6:11-12: Now the angel of the Lord came and sat under the terebinth at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, while his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the winepress to hide it from the Midianites. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him, “The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor.”

Have you ever watched people beating out wheat? When I was living in Jordan as a teenager, we sometimes drove past a group of threshers. They held flails in their hands, and energetically beat at the wheat on a tarp to remove the hulls from the grains. It would always be on a windy day, and when the wheat was well beaten they would take the corners of the tarp and toss the wheat up in the air. The grains would fall down again, while the chaff would fly off in a cloud, carried by the wind.

Have you ever seen a winepress? The ones I've seen in the Middle East were all either sunken down in the ground, sort of in a hole, or surrounded by a wall. A winepress is about as unlikely a place to find a breeze as you could imagine. When Gideon beat out his wheat in a winepress, the chaff wasn’t going anywhere fast. The commonplace task of threshing would be an arduous chore if you had to do it in a winepress.

I remember the study asked if we had any tasks that felt like beating out wheat in a winepress. With 5 kids, I do a lot of laundry. Here’s what laundry looks like at our house.

Our house was built in about 1900. The laundry hookups are in the basement. When I say “basement”, you ought to picture a place that looked like Shelob's lair when we moved in. It is located under the kitchen, but there is no indoor access. You have to go out the back door into the ambient weather conditions and enter the basement from outside the house, by lifting up the slanted doors using a rope handle. The rough concrete steps accumulate pine cones and needles quickly, and are not as deep as my feet are long. The ceiling beams are about 5’ 8” from the rough concrete floor. With bare feet, the top of my head is about 5’ 9 ½” from the floor, and no-one in their right mind would go into our basement barefoot. Hanging down from the ceiling beams are rusty electrical conduits and the bare bulb that illuminates the basement. To turn on this light, you have to go inside the house, because there is no light switch down in the basement. Spiders repopulate the basement each summer, and some sort of sticky dots rain out onto the washer and dryer regularly – spider poop, perhaps? When it rains, the water runs down the steps and floods the basement floor. 2 years ago, we had a blizzard when Ari was out of town that dumped 2 feet of snow overnight. A pine branch fell across the kitchen door, so instead of being able to shovel the 20 feet or so from the back door to the basement, I had to shovel all the way around the house from the front door in order to do the laundry. Last winter and this winter, the path from the back door to the basement became a strip of ice under the relentless pressure of feet on snow. Every time it snows, you have to either shovel off the slanted doors or reach through the snow for the rope handle, which is frozen stiff, and pull until the ice that has formed around the edge of the door gives way.

Earlier this week, there was so much snow behind the door that when I opened it, the snow pushed it shut again. I didn’t realize how solid the snow was, gave an extra push on the door, and the entire door broke off right next to the hinges. For the rest of the week (until Ari fixed it this afternoon), I had to lift the entire door off and move it to the side in order to get into the basement. This was such a headache (particularly with a basket of laundry balanced against my hip) that for a couple of days, when no snow was predicted, I simply left the door off to the side. What I hadn’t thought about was that this left the basement uninsulated from the 8°F night-time temperatures. Fortunately, the main water pipes didn’t freeze, but the flexible conduits from the water pipes to the washing machine did, as did something mysterious inside the washing machine. When I tried to run it on Saturday morning no water flowed into the machine, and when we had removed the conduits and thawed them upstairs in the bathtub, the machine still didn’t work. Fortunately, after 12 hours or so of keeping the door closed, the furnace in the basement had returned the ambient temperature to well above freezing and the machine resumed its normal operation. But I confess – I have a mountain of unwashed clothes in the bathroom, and right now I don’t feel like threshing them in my winepress.

But here’s the encouragement I gained from the passage, and what I remember from the study. First, the angel of the LORD was there, seeing Gideon’s situation (he “came and sat”) before Gideon saw him (he “appeared to him”). I might not always be aware of God in my situation, but he’s aware of what my circumstances are even if I’m blind to his presence. “The LORD is with you.”

Second, the angel addresses Gideon as a “mighty man of valor.” Now here he is, hiding from the enemy, probably feeling like “mighty” and “valor” don’t describe anyone he knows, let alone him. But just as Gideon didn’t see God until after God saw him, Gideon didn’t see his true character until after God saw it and told him about it. He was a mighty man of valor, but he hadn’t had a chance to show it yet. There are aspects of my character, too, that God can see and I can’t; things he’ll do through me that this situation is preparing me for, plans for my future that are just as invisible to me now as the angel was to Gideon before he appeared to him.

So each time I haul another load of laundry around, I’ve been reminding myself: “The LORD is with you, O mighty woman of valor.” Saying it helps me to see ways it’s true. I can see that the LORD is with me because I have strong knees and arms to cope with carrying the laundry down those steps, despite a shattered kneecap and arm in our December 2003 car accident. I can see that the LORD is with me because my back can support me and the laundry basket as I squat below the rusty pipes, unlike after baby E’s birth. I can see that the LORD is with me because he has given me healthy, growing children who are able to run around and get dirty. Money might be tight, but he has given us a wonderful church community with people who share their kids’ outgrown clothes with us. He’s always provided us with enough money to pay the water and electric bills, sometimes in surprising ways when I’ve been worrying about how it’ll work out. It’s turning into a sort of game – how many ways can I see that the LORD is with me while I’m down in the basement this time?

How about you? Are you in a situation that feels like beating out wheat in a winepress? “The LORD is with you, O mighty (wo)man of valor!”

The Hearing Aid Fund

Sometimes, my young charges do not receive, with joy and thankfulness, the academic bounty I labor to set before them.

About 2 weeks ago, struggling with a head cold, I explained to E8 the instructions for his language arts assignment. He was to rewrite a passage, adding descriptive adjectives to make the passage more interesting. While I was explaining the assignment to him, he was grumbling, “I know! Do you think I’m stupid?!” When he returned, having copied the passage verbatim without adding any adjectives, I had the audacity to insist that he redo it correctly. At this point, he roared directly into my ears. My ears did not stop ringing for over an hour. This resulted in the creation of the hearing aid fund.

A mason jar now sits atop our microwave bearing the label, “Hearing Aid Fund.” Every time someone uses their voice as a weapon, yelling loudly enough to potentially damage someone’s hearing, the guilty party is to put a dollar into the hearing aid fund, to cover a (very small) portion of our future hearing aid expenses. This was all well and good. After 3 or 4 more explosions, E8 has done a much better job of controlling his voice, if not his heart attitude. Then came the time I had to put a dollar in.

I had a pretty good reason. H2, who is in the throes of potty training, was wearing a pull-up diaper that morning. While I was finishing our morning lessons, he suddenly entered the kitchen, stark naked, and threw the diaper, now wet, onto the kitchen table. I looked him right in the eyes, and screamed at him. Just like E8 had done to me earlier that week. Wow. I don’t like it when that kind of ugliness comes out of my kids, but I like it even less when it comes out of me.

I have had other lapses. There was the afternoon when H2 reddened my bedroom. While I thought he was napping, he found a red permanent marker atop a box in my room and proceeded to decorate the bedspread, pillowslip, wood floor, walls, boxes, and plastic drawers. He also found a test tube from a fish tank water test kit, broke it, cut his finger with it, but kept quiet because he knew I’d come and spoil his fun if he made a noise. My first inkling of the mess upstairs was discovering the broken glass on the steps after he’d already come down. There were bloody fingerprints on a few objects, though I only noticed them after I’d spent some time untangling the thread from my sewing machine that he’d wrapped around various objects in the room, tidying up the curriculum items I’d taken out to show a friend that he'd strewn on the floor, and vacuuming up the broken glass. That time I yelled to keep him (and everyone else) downstairs while I tried to diminish the hazardous nature of our bedroom floor. When I started finding the bloody fingerprints, I stopped seeing red and was able to speak gently to him to ask about the injury (it wasn’t serious). But I had to think: before I knew he was hurt, why was I unable to speak kindly to him, to gently request the other children to help keep him out of the way, instead of resorting to a default of increasing the volume – and then, so suddenly, to change to a much more kind, effective approach when I found the blood? Wasn’t my anger like broken glass in its own way, cutting up the atmosphere of peace in our home and hurting my children?

Yesterday, I didn’t yell at H2. I roared at the world, though, when I got up from doing some necessary school planning at the computer and saw the mess in the living room. My deduction of the train of events is that H2 had removed a clean towel from the basket of unfolded laundry, placed it in the toilet until it was sodden, and then dragged it back into the living room and set it on the couch, where the water seeped in for however long it took for me to find it. I was still fuming at him (and snapping at everyone else on the slightest provocation) until church this morning. Perhaps it was just the opportunity to sit still for a few minutes, but suddenly this phrase came into my mind:

“A cup brimful of sweet water cannot spill even one drop of bitter water, however suddenly jolted.”

I’d read this quote from Amy Carmichael many months ago. The full quote is, “If a sudden jar can cause me to speak an impatient, unloving word, then I know nothing of Calvary love. For a cup brimful of sweet water cannot spill even one drop of bitter water, however suddenly jolted.”

I know nothing of Calvary love.

Calvary love is the love of the one who had all the rights and privileges of being God, but willingly emptied himself, took the form of a servant, and humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. If I am unwilling to clean up a mess, even a disgusting mess, without yelling or grumbling, what do I know of the love that gave up even his own life to serve and save me?

Calvary love is patient and kind; it does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful. Love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

I’ve heard these passages before (Philippians 2, 1 Corinthians 13, 1 John 4:7-8). I’ve memorized them. “God, I know! Do you think I’m stupid?!” But when I lose my temper and yell, or complain at the sudden jolts and jars that reveal the true state of my heart, I know I have a long way yet to go before I know anything of Calvary love. Am I so focused on the minor irritations of this life that I am unable to listen to Jesus? Have I been spiritually deaf?

O Lord, sometimes, I do not receive, with joy and thankfulness, the lessons in love you labor to set before me.

Making It Work

When people hear that I have 5 children and homeschool, they often ask how I do it. Although in casual conversation it is easiest and most truthful just to say, “By the grace of God,” there are details that you, dear reader, may find interesting, enlightening, or helpful, so I venture to share some of them here.

We started our new school year this past Monday. I spent most of the summer preparing for school in one way or another, from de-cluttering the house (so we can move around, and find things), to pre-reading P10 and E8’s readers, to obsessively scheduling how to fit in everything I want to do with each child and still have time to cook dinner. So planning is one of the more significant of my strategies for “making it work”.

I have discovered that if I want to maintain my sanity on a day-to-day basis, I must get up before the kids. At this point Baby E is sleeping well. He sleeps next to me, but I can usually transfer him to his pack ‘n play when I wake up at 6am and have him stay asleep, which gives me 45 minutes to an hour before the other kids wake up. I use the time to exercise, shower, read the Bible, and pray. That way I am physically, emotionally, and spiritually ready for the onslaught by the time little H2 comes downstairs and demands attention. That’s the ideal; I’m not always done by the time he appears and I can be irritable if I feel that he’s too early! But a commitment to prayer has made dramatic changes in my ability to respond gently to the children throughout the day; I really can’t do without it.

Something we started doing last year, which has helped our mornings before school to run smoothly, is chore packs. I got the idea from the Duggars’ book 20 and Counting which I checked out shortly after H2 was born with the thought, “If they can handle 18 kids, I’m sure they’ll have insights I can glean with only (at the time) 4.” I came up with a list of the chores that P10, E8, and B4 need to do before starting school.  These include self-care items (dressing, brushing teeth), homemaking tasks (cleaning the bathroom, sweeping, putting away toys, feeding and watering the chickens), and some independent academic work (practicing instruments, reviewing memory verses, working on math facts). The Duggars suggested placing a card for each chore in a pouch around each child’s neck, but my children took off their pouches and forgot about them, leaving them in mysterious locations on a daily basis, so our “chore packs” have morphed into a more chart-like format. Each chore is depicted on a card which is attached to a chart with Velcro, and as the child does each chore s/he turns it over. The chore pack is combined with the children’s allowance: if everything is done properly before 9am, P10 and E8 earn a quarter and B4 earns a dime (because he has fewer responsibilities). Personality differences show up here: P10 is usually done by 8:10 or so and she retreats to her own room to read, E8 dawdles and plays until about 8:40 when he begins a mad rush that sometimes, but not always, results in his being done by 9, and B4 spends an hour over breakfast staring into his oatmeal, insists on finishing reading his book before venturing to start his chores, and hasn’t yet earned a dime this school year. But for the older 2, having them diligently at work with physical reminders of everything that needs to happen has greatly reduced my morning workload and frees me up to care for the little ones.

Something I did just this school year that has already helped a lot with making the school day run more smoothly is to post a schedule in a clearly visible location. At some point I mean to extend the chore pack concept to include school task cards, but for now just posting the outline of what I’d like to have happen academically on the average day has already clarified my expectations. This is where my summer planning pays off! I used to think I just wasn’t a “scheduled” sort of person, and that working from a strict schedule would cramp my style. But my children really thrive with predictability, and it frees up mental energy to actually do our scheduled tasks when we aren’t trying to decide what those tasks ought to be. Our schedule alternates between activities where P10 and E8 can work independently and those where they need my help. That way, when they’re working independently, I can pay attention to my middle boys, H2 and B4. B4 is reading at an early second-grade level, so I’m doing some formal reading, handwriting, and spelling instruction with him as he shows interest (and reminding myself that he’s only four when he doesn’t), as well as providing math games and toys for him during P10 and E8’s independent math work time. I also am using Sonlight’s P4/5 preschool curriculum with him, reading to him for 15-30 minutes before attempting to read history or literature to P10 and E8. As for H2, I’ve been using the “learning poster” concept from Letter of the Week’s 2-year-old program: one day each week, we place a new shape, color, letter, number, or nursery rhyme on his very own learning poster. He loves having his own poster prominently displayed in the kitchen, he loves getting to do his own school, and if he doesn’t remember any of it next week, it’ll at least sound more familiar to him the next time he encounters it. I also read to him during moments when his 3 older siblings are all occupied with independent work or play, using Sonlight’s P3/4 books among others. He is still at the phase where he has one or two favorite books, which must be repeated ad nauseam by anyone who is willing and able to read to him. Would you like me to recite Go, Dog, Go to you from memory? Baby E is still at the delightful phase where, if he is awake, he is happy to be in my arms while I explain a new math concept or read a story, and I can usually direct operations while nursing him. Once he becomes mobile, I know it will change the entire game!

To be honest, though, the most important answer to the question of “how do you do it?” is still by the grace of God. God has given me the specific children I have, with their personalities. He has given me the health and strength to keep track of these children, he has provided Ari with a job that pays enough for us to live on so that I can stay home with them and educate them, and he has worked in my life to bring me to a point of being able to care for others as well as myself. I realize I am coming from a position of having so many blessings poured out on me, I don’t even know what all of them are and I take them for granted. So, when people say, “I could never homeschool my kids,” I recognize that may be true. But I’d like to encourage you that, if you feel it’s something you would like to try, the same God who has given me what I need right now to do what I’m doing will enable you too. Just ask him!

If you homeschool, what are some strategies you’ve found that help you “make it work” or “get things done”?