Summer 2007 Update

In May, I shared the goals we wanted to accomplish as a family this summer. To help us meet those, I decided to do regular "checks" to see where we are. Below is a list of goals and where we are on meeting them.

1. Read books together. We are currently reading Traitor in the Tower together. Two of the three children can hardly bear to wait for the next chapter to see if Richard's father will be released from prison and what John Bunyan will share with Richard.

2. Work on math skills. We have been very successful in doing this with our older son, but I have been less successful at including the younger kids in working on this.

3. Physical Exercise. The kids are doing great in this area. Mom and Dad are not doing so well. :(

4. Household Chores/Projects. We are doing okay in this area. We have cleaned out some things, but have a long way to go in decluttering and deep cleaning. Still, I think it would be unreasonable to expect much more than what we have accomplished at this point, given our schedules and the fact that it is summer, after all!

5. Cooking. I am doing terrible in involving the children in this area. My oldest has helped once or twice, but the youngest two are often napping when I prepare dinner. I have decided to table (pardon the pun) any real effort in this area until July, when our schedule slows way down from the busy rush of sports camps and VBS.

6. Scripture Memory. Horrendous. Only one child has memorized a verse, and it wasn't in Philippians as planned. It simply had to do with his heart attitude and what God says about it. I have got to get better in this area.

7. Time with extended family/fun. We're doing well here. We have spent time with grandparents and extended family already, have played with friends, have been to the pool, have watched together the only TV show the kids really watch (Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?), etc. One area we need to work on is father/children time.

8. Catechism/Daily Bible Reading. We are doing so well in this area! We have worked a lot on learning a catechism together. So far, we have memorized just over 30 questions and answers, and the kids love to quiz each other and especially their parents. :) Also, we have made it a point to have the kids start reading their Bibles daily as Mom and Dad do. I can't say we've made it every day, but they are reading their Bibles most days. It has been so exciting to hear what they are learning.

So there you have it. My grand ideas for the summer and the reality of where we are with those ideas. To see the original goals and descriptions, click here. If you have any tips on accomplishing these goals, please let me know.

Friday Photo(s)

My babies are growing up. We are now officially in the flip-flop wearing, running-thru-the-sprinkler-playing, sleeping-in-late (I can dream, can't I?) and relaxing days of summer!

A huge "Thanks a Million" goes out to the incredible team of teachers who worked with my children this year! We will miss you all! You have been a blessing to our family.

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

For the spring play, the Drama Club performed The Wizard of Oz. For a drama club composed entirely of second and third graders, I thought it was a bit ambitious, but I was pleasantly surprised by how nice of a job they did. To make it manageable for the children, they divided lines between multiple children playing the same parts. Thus, there were eight Dorothys and multiple scarecrow, tin men, and lions among other things.

Our oldest son played a munchkin (see the above pictures). He had more lines than last time and did a great job. I am continually amazed at how adaptable children are. He has been in the U.S. less than two years, and yet he has learned English well enough to nicely perform parts with multiple lines in his school's drama club.

A big thanks go out to all the teachers who spent extra time after school to teach our children this art!

Teaching a Boy to Fish

A couple of weeks ago, I went to our state's nature center with my oldest son. We were on a field trip to a destination that his teacher had never before taken kids to see. I was delighted that we were doing something other than going to the zoo for the umpteenth time as most of the other classes were doing.

I think his teacher was as surprised as I was when we heard that one of the activities was going to be fishing. Mind you, we were with a bunch of eight and nine year olds. As we were being led in this, our wildlife instructor told the kids to hold their poles and hooks in a certain fashion and then gave examples of people who didn't listen and got hooks barbed in them. All I could think about, at least rationally, was the legal liability, but inside I was secretly feeling pleasure. Almost everything is sanitized these days, and I was glad my Boy would have an opportunity to do something basic, something that has been done for thousands of years.

My son had never been fishing before. This is partly because he hasn't been home that long, and partly because his father would rather sit inside and read a book or blog on the computer. My hubby, who is a wonderful gift from God, killed all the romantic spirit of one of our early dates when he refused to sit out and look at the stars with me on his Papaw's farm. The road was gravel, and he "might get dirt on his jeans."

Anyway, back to the fishing. As a child, my uncles took me fishing, but my father (like my husband) would rather figure out a gadget inside the house than get dirty outside the house. His one exception to this was his pride in having a beautiful yard. And, after all, he could always go buy fish if he wanted some to eat.

For me, memories of fishing are reminders of easier days when, as a child, all I cared about was getting a fish to bite, not how am I going to pay for something or how are we going to reach our children's hearts about a sin habit they have or whether or not the mass they found might be cancerous.

No, fishing was relaxing...sun and sparkling, splashing water, proving that girls could bait their own hooks, and getting a little muddy without caring. It had been a long (as in at least a decade) time since I had done that. I was excited about passing on the bug to my son. After all, his father and grandfathers weren't carrying on the tradition the way my husband's grandfather and my uncles had done for us. Some of you may have heard about catching fish with dynamite--you just didn't know that it started with my husband's grandpa. My uncles, on the other hand, were purists who spent vacations fly fishing in Oklahoma and Arkansas, or in the salty waters of the gulf. Nothing tasted better than our own fish caught and cleaned at the beach, then fried up that night.

The Boy was wildly excited, giddy with happiness, bouncing with sheer joy at the thought of catching a fish.

And then...

The worms. They. Freaked. Him. Out.

Here he was, with his peers, who mostly were handling it, with his teacher, who caught more than anyone, and with me, who showed him how to do it the first time around. The second time, it was his turn. I knew the feeling he would get after successfully baiting his hook. I had had that same feeling before.

I eagerly awaited his expression.

We never got there.

He picked the worm up (f..i..n..a..l..l..y) and screaming, dropped it to the ground. It almost escaped, but mom deftly caught it and once again baited the hook.

The next time, I told the Boy he must do it. After watching him almost lose the whole container of worms (provied for usage by many people), and seeing him fuss for a few seconds, I gave in.

And then I got the greatest pleasure, because he who baits, fishes. Or in this case, she.

And so, even though he enjoyed fishing when he got the rod back from Mama, I think I enjoyed the experience even more.

Oh, yeah...he did manage to catch one himself! Triumph.

And the next time he fishes? Well, it's coming up soon, and Mama won't be around!

Water on Their Wings

Yesterday, my husband and I were sitting around the dinner table with our three children and our niece, all between 5 and 9 years old. My 9 year old has just begun studying dinosaurs at school and my other two just finished studying them. My niece is a self-proclaimed expert (age 6) who "just knows" because she reads about them.

I made the mistake of asking about the name of the ones who fly (come on, mom, don't you know that?). My 5 year old immediately said "Pterodactyl". Then they started talking about a movie they have been watching at school where some Pterodactyl tries to fly from one ocean to another but gets really tired and barely makes it. At this point, my 5 year old again speaks up. "Mama, Pterodactyls ate fish, but they didn't like water on their wings. They could dive down and eat fish and never get water on themselves!" "Really," I say. "And just how do we know these creatures did this?"

Before she can answer, my second-grader starts telling his father all the various class opinions on how dinosaurs came to be extinct. "My teacher's opinion is that they all died when Noah's flood happened, Daddy. But Mama and I had the same question. We thought Noah was commanded to get two of every mammal and bird (his classifications) on board the ark. But my teacher say the ark was big, but not that big." He follows this announcement by saying he thinks "it got too hot" and "they died."

My daughter pipes up again: "The reason the dinosaurs are 'tinct is the sun was too close to the earth and they couldn't live." I ask the kids why the dinosaurs died because it was too hot, but people didn't. Our self-appointed expert, aka my six year old niece, completely ignores her uncool aunt and says, "Listen, I know this. I read about this. The sun was too close to the earth and all the plants died. The plant-eaters didn't have anything left to eat, so they died. Then the meat-eaters had nothing left to eat, so they died too." I ask her if she was taught this in school. "No, I just know. I read about this stuff." I ask again why humans didn't die if it was so hot. With a look of exasperation, she says, "Nooooo...like a hundred million years ago!" My second grader says, "My teacher thinks the earth is 200 million years old."

I ask the kids what God says about how long it took to create land, light, plants, animals, people, water...after an answer of "a couple of weeks" (really, we have studied the creation account many times), I remind them that God said he created the earth in 6 days and rested on the seventh, so there were not millions of years between the dinosaurs and people. I ask the kids who we should believe, God or their teachers. With a look of confusion, they say that believing God is right.

At this point, my husband tries again to emphasize what he has been saying intermittently throughout the conversation--we can't know if the pterodactyls disliked water on their wings or not, because we don't know anyone who has seen a dinosaur, and we don't know anyone who knows anyone who has seen dinosaurs, and their teachers are not even scientists. He points out that some large animals were mentioned in the Bible that we do not know much about, but we cannot make as many assumptions as are currently being made over finding some bones that are old.

With a reminder that we need to respect our teachers--they are trying their best to teach us what others have learned, and they are in authority over the children during the day--I remind the children that everything that teachers say is not fact. In fact, *gasp* everything we see in movies is not a fact. I find all too often that if my children see something in a movie, particularly if it is not animated or is supposed to be educational, they accept it as fact without thinking through it.

I have to ask myself, was my worldview shaped much like theirs? Am I a thinker, or do I just accept whatever a person I respect says with no questions asked?

There are many theories about many things out there...I just hope we can teach our children to reason and believe things based on the filter of God's word.

I Do Not Like Them, Sam I Am

Recently, my two youngest children celebrated Dr. Seuss' birthday by going to school dressed as their favorite book character (from any author) and listening to Dr. Seuss all day. My daughter was Laura Ingalls Wilder from Little House on the Prairie. My son chose to dress up as Sam I Am from Green Eggs and Ham.

This brought to mind a recent conversation with one of my sisters. I told her about my children's rules for spending money at the book fair--no Disney Princess books, no Nemo or Cars books, no toys, no junk. My husband actually took my daughter to the book fair so she did not shop on her own, but she did come home with a My Little Pony book (in other words, junk).

My sister stated that it really didn't matter what the kids read, as long as they were reading. On the surface, this sounds good. In actuality, however, this rings false. Children learn the art of telling and writing stories from hearing and reading stories. They learn syntax, rules of the genre, and creativity from the books they read. In reality, we don't live in a Disney Princess world, and while it might be okay to watch a movie or read an occasional story about a Disney Princess, I would rather have them spend their time on worthwhile literature--biographies on people who have impacted the world for better or worse, stories that promote creativity, perseverance or problem-solving, not fluff written without a story in mind because the book is all about a movie.

Here are thoughts from others on the matter:

The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.
Mark Twain

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
Charles Caleb Colton

It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Let me know what you think.