This is Real Life
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
The Catapult
Joel worked on making a working catapult all spring, and on towards summer he made one that really worked. I say *worked* as he is currently disassembling it in order to build Orpheus' harp. He really didn't mess with the catapult much once he got a working one built. But it was really cool, and here are the pictures. Please ignore my messy garage.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Are We There Yet?
I have been attempting to write my post on Chapter 4 for over a week now. I simply CANNOT get myself motivated to quote that much CM when posting from my iPhone. It will have to wait until I can get some free time to go use my in-law's computer.
All this reading and rereading of Chapter 4 in order to write about it has made me restless. It's all about habits, you see. And all I can think of are all the bad habits that I have, and all the good ones I wish I had, and how I think I can begin making aforementioned good habits. All of this plus really needing to just be patient. Just be patient. I know that if I come up with some beautiful, perfect, outlandish plan it will be lovely for about three weeks. Then I will realize that I am the Hare, and should have been content to be the Tortoise that I know I must be, and that really and truly Aesop was right - slow and steady does win the race. At least the sort of long haul that I am on anyway.
In other news, we have two weeks left of our Summer Term. I can truthfully say that I feel like it's gone well. I think what makes me happiest is when I see the boys going to the bookshelf and picking out books we've finished in school in order to read them again for the sheer pleasure of it.
All this reading and rereading of Chapter 4 in order to write about it has made me restless. It's all about habits, you see. And all I can think of are all the bad habits that I have, and all the good ones I wish I had, and how I think I can begin making aforementioned good habits. All of this plus really needing to just be patient. Just be patient. I know that if I come up with some beautiful, perfect, outlandish plan it will be lovely for about three weeks. Then I will realize that I am the Hare, and should have been content to be the Tortoise that I know I must be, and that really and truly Aesop was right - slow and steady does win the race. At least the sort of long haul that I am on anyway.
In other news, we have two weeks left of our Summer Term. I can truthfully say that I feel like it's gone well. I think what makes me happiest is when I see the boys going to the bookshelf and picking out books we've finished in school in order to read them again for the sheer pleasure of it.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Favorite Quotes This Week
"There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn't count"
- Rabbit, The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne
"Thus by the Shepherds Secrets are reveal'd,
Which from all other men are kept conceal'd:
Come to the Shepherds then, if you would see
Things deep, Things hid, and that Mysterious be."
- Hopeful & Christian, The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
"'Orpheus shall go with Jason, and bring his magic harp; for I hear of him that he is the king of all minstrels, and can charm all things on earth.'
And Orpheus laughed for joy, and clapped his hands, because the choice had fallen on him; for in those days poets and singers were as bold as warriors as the best."
The Heroes by Charles Kingsley
- Rabbit, The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne
"Thus by the Shepherds Secrets are reveal'd,
Which from all other men are kept conceal'd:
Come to the Shepherds then, if you would see
Things deep, Things hid, and that Mysterious be."
- Hopeful & Christian, The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
"'Orpheus shall go with Jason, and bring his magic harp; for I hear of him that he is the king of all minstrels, and can charm all things on earth.'
And Orpheus laughed for joy, and clapped his hands, because the choice had fallen on him; for in those days poets and singers were as bold as warriors as the best."
The Heroes by Charles Kingsley
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Home Education, Part 3
Part III - 'Habit Is Ten Natures'
What in the world does that mean? Well, I think it is something that you come to understand, it sort of soaks into you. In other words, it's difficult to explain. But. I shall attempt, if not to explain it well, to give you what insight I gained from this wonderful chapter.
What Charlotte is saying is that habits are your greatest ally in raising and/or educating your children. She says,
"The formation of habits is education, and Education is the formation of habits."
"Habit is TEN natures" is a phrase Charlotte heard in church frequently at the time she was beginning her career. She speaks a little of her experience in the evolution, shall we say, of her philosophy. One of the first things she discusses is the fact that children have "no self-compelling power". Reading this was huge for me. I, like many others, feel like banging my head against the wall every day, ten times a day, because it is so laborious to be on top of the kids all the time. She talks about WHY children are incapable of steady effort, and that they should be saved from the effort of decision. These are all very real things that tend to be burdensome, especially when you have child after child after child. But it's the parent's job to make their children do what they ought to do.
"But it were poor training that should keep the child dependent upon personal influence. It is the business of education to find some way of supplementing that weakness of will which is the bane of most us as well as of the children."
So, here we are again at 'Habit is Ten Natures'. In order to understand what that means we need to understand what 'Nature' is. Our desires. Our affections. Our consciousness of God. Add to that heredity, and physical conditions, and attributes and we begin to have a sense of what our "nature" is. It is nothing to trifle with in a child. She bemoans the fact that a large number of parents and teachers are content to leave children to their human nature. We are not talking about trying to turn our little sinners into saints.
"Wherefore, it is as much the parent's duty to educate his child into moral strength and purpose and intellectual activity as it is to feed him and clothe him; and that in spite of his nature, if it must be so."
"The problem before the educator is to give the child control over his own nature, to enable him to hold himself in hand as much in regard to the traits we call good, as to those we call evil: -many a man makes shipwreck on the rock of what he grew up to think his characteristic virtue..."
She then speaks about Divine Grace, and assures her readers that she is not undervaluing its work.
Returning to 'Habit is TEN natures'. "If that be true, strong as nature is, habit is not only as strong, but TENFOLD stronger. Here, then, have we a stronger than he, able to overcome this strong man armed." Do you begin to see what it means?
Our habits actually run along the lines of our nature. It is nature in action, growing strong by exercise. But habit may be a lever. We can train our children to be courteous, or to never get dirty, or to scream to get their way.
"As a matter of fact, there is nothing which a mother cannot bring her child up to, and there is hardly a mother anywhere who had not some two or three - crotchets sometimes, principles sometimes - which her children never violate."
On to the Direction of Lines of Habit.
"Just as it is on the whole easier for the locomotive to pursue its way on the rails than to take a disastrous run off them, so it is easier for the child to follow lines if habit carefully laid down than to run off these lined at his peril."
She continues in this strain, then stresses the importance of not allowing lapses in order for a habit to grow and strengthen into a nature.
"And do you not take away the child's free-will, make a mere automaton of him by this excessive culture? In the first place, whether you choose to or no to take any trouble about the formation of habits, it is a habit, all the same, which will govern ninety-nine one-hundredths of the child's life: he is the mere automaton you describe. As for the child's becoming the creature of habit, that is not left with the parent to determine. We are all mere creatures of habit. We think our accustomed thoughts, make our usual small talk, go through the trivial round, the common task, without any self-determining effort of will at all. If it were not so - if we had to think, to deliberate, about each operation of the bath or the table - life would not be worth having; the perpetually repeated effort of decision would wear us out. But, let us be thankful, life is not this laborious. For a hundred times we act or think, it is not necessary to choose, to will, say, more than once. And the little emergencies, which compel an act of will, will fall in the children's lives just about as frequently as in our own. These we cannot save them from, nor is it desirable that we should. What we can do for them is to secure that they have habits which shall lead them in ways of order, propriety, and virtue, instead of leaving their wheel of life to make ugly ruts in miry places."
"The boy who has been accustomed to find both profit and pleasure in his books does not fall easily into idle ways because he is attracted by an idle schoolfellow. The girl who had been carefully trained to speak the exact truth simply does not think of a lie as a ready means of getting out of a scrape, coward as she may be."
Notice she does not say that they will not yield to temptation. They have not become sinless, they simply have a strong habit. She drives home again and again through example and illustration the power of habit, and how we are slave to our habits. That is why they are so powerful, and to instill good habits in our children is to do them a world of good.
I love her step-by-step illustration of how mothers ought to go about teaching their children habits. Then the inevitable self-doubting and second-guessing, relaxing, that happens which ruins the progress you've made. To help your child form a habit is such a gift - a "delight in itself", and becomes a real pleasure. It seemed to me that she covered every major issue that a typical mother of young children faces - cleaning up toys, shutting the door behind you, dawdling, tantrums, just to name a few. It is a very thorough chapter, and I highly recommend reading it in its entirety.
What in the world does that mean? Well, I think it is something that you come to understand, it sort of soaks into you. In other words, it's difficult to explain. But. I shall attempt, if not to explain it well, to give you what insight I gained from this wonderful chapter.
What Charlotte is saying is that habits are your greatest ally in raising and/or educating your children. She says,
"The formation of habits is education, and Education is the formation of habits."
"Habit is TEN natures" is a phrase Charlotte heard in church frequently at the time she was beginning her career. She speaks a little of her experience in the evolution, shall we say, of her philosophy. One of the first things she discusses is the fact that children have "no self-compelling power". Reading this was huge for me. I, like many others, feel like banging my head against the wall every day, ten times a day, because it is so laborious to be on top of the kids all the time. She talks about WHY children are incapable of steady effort, and that they should be saved from the effort of decision. These are all very real things that tend to be burdensome, especially when you have child after child after child. But it's the parent's job to make their children do what they ought to do.
"But it were poor training that should keep the child dependent upon personal influence. It is the business of education to find some way of supplementing that weakness of will which is the bane of most us as well as of the children."
So, here we are again at 'Habit is Ten Natures'. In order to understand what that means we need to understand what 'Nature' is. Our desires. Our affections. Our consciousness of God. Add to that heredity, and physical conditions, and attributes and we begin to have a sense of what our "nature" is. It is nothing to trifle with in a child. She bemoans the fact that a large number of parents and teachers are content to leave children to their human nature. We are not talking about trying to turn our little sinners into saints.
"Wherefore, it is as much the parent's duty to educate his child into moral strength and purpose and intellectual activity as it is to feed him and clothe him; and that in spite of his nature, if it must be so."
"The problem before the educator is to give the child control over his own nature, to enable him to hold himself in hand as much in regard to the traits we call good, as to those we call evil: -many a man makes shipwreck on the rock of what he grew up to think his characteristic virtue..."
She then speaks about Divine Grace, and assures her readers that she is not undervaluing its work.
Returning to 'Habit is TEN natures'. "If that be true, strong as nature is, habit is not only as strong, but TENFOLD stronger. Here, then, have we a stronger than he, able to overcome this strong man armed." Do you begin to see what it means?
Our habits actually run along the lines of our nature. It is nature in action, growing strong by exercise. But habit may be a lever. We can train our children to be courteous, or to never get dirty, or to scream to get their way.
"As a matter of fact, there is nothing which a mother cannot bring her child up to, and there is hardly a mother anywhere who had not some two or three - crotchets sometimes, principles sometimes - which her children never violate."
On to the Direction of Lines of Habit.
"Just as it is on the whole easier for the locomotive to pursue its way on the rails than to take a disastrous run off them, so it is easier for the child to follow lines if habit carefully laid down than to run off these lined at his peril."
She continues in this strain, then stresses the importance of not allowing lapses in order for a habit to grow and strengthen into a nature.
"And do you not take away the child's free-will, make a mere automaton of him by this excessive culture? In the first place, whether you choose to or no to take any trouble about the formation of habits, it is a habit, all the same, which will govern ninety-nine one-hundredths of the child's life: he is the mere automaton you describe. As for the child's becoming the creature of habit, that is not left with the parent to determine. We are all mere creatures of habit. We think our accustomed thoughts, make our usual small talk, go through the trivial round, the common task, without any self-determining effort of will at all. If it were not so - if we had to think, to deliberate, about each operation of the bath or the table - life would not be worth having; the perpetually repeated effort of decision would wear us out. But, let us be thankful, life is not this laborious. For a hundred times we act or think, it is not necessary to choose, to will, say, more than once. And the little emergencies, which compel an act of will, will fall in the children's lives just about as frequently as in our own. These we cannot save them from, nor is it desirable that we should. What we can do for them is to secure that they have habits which shall lead them in ways of order, propriety, and virtue, instead of leaving their wheel of life to make ugly ruts in miry places."
"The boy who has been accustomed to find both profit and pleasure in his books does not fall easily into idle ways because he is attracted by an idle schoolfellow. The girl who had been carefully trained to speak the exact truth simply does not think of a lie as a ready means of getting out of a scrape, coward as she may be."
Notice she does not say that they will not yield to temptation. They have not become sinless, they simply have a strong habit. She drives home again and again through example and illustration the power of habit, and how we are slave to our habits. That is why they are so powerful, and to instill good habits in our children is to do them a world of good.
I love her step-by-step illustration of how mothers ought to go about teaching their children habits. Then the inevitable self-doubting and second-guessing, relaxing, that happens which ruins the progress you've made. To help your child form a habit is such a gift - a "delight in itself", and becomes a real pleasure. It seemed to me that she covered every major issue that a typical mother of young children faces - cleaning up toys, shutting the door behind you, dawdling, tantrums, just to name a few. It is a very thorough chapter, and I highly recommend reading it in its entirety.
Monday, August 06, 2012
More Wishes for James
A subscription to God's World News would be FANTASTIC!
Mouse Tales by Arnold Lobel
The Wind in the Willows illus. by Ernest Shepard
Mouse Tales by Arnold Lobel
The Wind in the Willows illus. by Ernest Shepard
Saturday, August 04, 2012
Friday, August 03, 2012
The Wish List
For the two August birthday kiddos:
James:
Read Aloud Bible Stories by Ella Lindvall (any of the 4 volumes)
Little House in the Big Woods (it's his favorite of the series)
Anything by Tasha Tudor
Dover coloring books
Magnifying glass
A medium size rope for practicing tying knots
Josie:
Nightgowns
Hairbands or bows
Small backpack
Anything by Tasha Tudor
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
James:
Read Aloud Bible Stories by Ella Lindvall (any of the 4 volumes)
Little House in the Big Woods (it's his favorite of the series)
Anything by Tasha Tudor
Dover coloring books
Magnifying glass
A medium size rope for practicing tying knots
Josie:
Nightgowns
Hairbands or bows
Small backpack
Anything by Tasha Tudor
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
World Traveller
Actually I only went two states away, but getting out of Texas is quite a feat. Jeana took me to Colorado, and flew me home. Wish I could take the whole family and stay the rest of the summer. 
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