Finishing Up

Much has happened in these past weeks, of course. Our school year is winding down and we found a very peaceful way to do this by returning once again to the Old Testament Stories. We picked up with Moses and spent a full week delving into his life and journey. Next we touched on some of the well known stories of the Bible: Samson and Delilah, David and Goliath and Jonah and the Whale. These stories enlivened Rowan's imagination and brought out great drawings from him. It was a nice way for me to bring closure on this third grade year and its Old Testament theme.

For the past week we have been reviewing the year, looking at all of our paintings and main lesson books and trying to recall our best memories from the year. Most of Rowan's best memories had to do with our wonderful home school group that meets each Friday for crafts, festivals and an annual play production. This group has so enriched our home schooling experience, I am not sure how we would have managed without it.

Now summer approaches and I feel the pull into my own personal pursuits. I love being a home school mom but I also love the perk of summer vacation!

Serious Nine Year Old Stuff

Oh Noah, do you wonder why,

The children of God are doomed to die?

Know this: that only bodies die, souls return to Heaven on High.

The spirit lives and does not perish!

Today was another great Monday. These truly are wonderful days in homeschooling. I told the story of Job, his trials and hardships and his continued faith. This led to a discussion of Job's children, the ones who perished when the roof collapsed in order to see if Job would curse God or not. Rowan wondered if they were brought back to life once Job proved that he was still faithful. I reminded Rowan of the lines he is working on for the upcoming Noah play. This led to further discussion of what happens after we die. The talk we had was heavier than I expected on a Monday morning, but totally appropriate for a sensitive nine year old boy. Are we just this body? Do we have a soul that lives on? How do we know this? Who is right? Do we reincarnate like the Hindus believe, to work out karma in life after life or are we sent to Heaven or Hell depending on our "goodness" or "badness" in this life? These were the questions that came to us in our lesson.

Our Old Testament lesson led very smoothly into a lesson on clothing and shelter. The weather right now is powerfully stormy and it is so easy to see why we need clothing and a house! We spoke of all the parts of the world we know about from our travels and also the parts we know about from books and teased out the different needs for clothing and shelter just based on weather and available resources. From here I offered a big stack of library books with great photos an illustrations of clothing and shelter through the ages.

Our painting today was of a rainy day scene with a shelter in it. We both ended up with a similar painting: mountains and rainy sky, forest with a log house.

All this work with shelter and clothing and Old Testament stories seems to be reaching Rowan right where he needs it. He is in the midst of wondering who and where he is in this world and he needs to feel secure. This curriculum is giving him the support and structure he needs to express himself.

As I do this little work in my home with my youngest child, I think of the larger world and the events currently happening within it. The large earthquake and devastating damage in Haiti have moved many and I have found a little place to contribute. The group called Craft Hope for Haiti is an Etsy shop selling donated handmade items. 100% of these sales is going to Doctors Without Borders in Haiti. I am making my small contribution by offering one of my white felt doves to the cause.

Old Stories, New Questions

Today, as part of our block on the Old Testament, I told the story of Lot, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt. Rowan declared, "I think God is a jerk. How could he kill all those people, including children? What about the animals when all the fire and brimstone fell?" Hmm. This is a hard one for me. It all started with Noah. Rowan did not think it was fair that only two of each kind of animal was saved. He could not understand why God would drown all those animals due to the "badness" of humans. He hears these stories and notices the highly judgmental nature of God in them. I try to bring a fullness to them, get a sense of the deeper meanings so that I can imbue the stories with that feeling, create a beautiful picture, but I am not sure if it is working. I suppose Rowan's reaction is a normal nine year change thing that questions authority and the fairness of things. Still, I wonder how I am going to possibly tell the story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac without Rowan being aghast at the idea of a father being asked to kill his son to prove his love of God! The points are stacking up against the God of the Old Testament in Rowan's book. I hope by the end of the block that I can help him have a more balanced understanding.

On the other hand, my attempt to bring in lessons on shelter and clothing along side the Old Testament are going very well. Right away this week Rowan was very interested in the types of houses that Abraham lived in. He wanted to build a clay model house immediately. We do not have access to a kiln like we did when older brother made his ziggurat, so we had to settle for the DAS air-drying clay. For the past two days we have spent a bit of time molding and stacking small clay bricks, modeling the structure on photos and drawings we found of Biblical clay houses and ruins. This was a very satisfying activity for both of us.

We also spent some time today learning all about wool. I dug out my old drop spindle (although I don't know how to use it!) and we went around finding things in the house that were made of wool. Rowan had fun working with the carding brushes. We discussed how cool it is that so many different animals can give up extra hair by combing or shearing without needing to be killed. We also talked about how in some places, like in Greenland or Alaska, animal fur and skin is essential for human survival. I had Rowan write an essay on the subject of wool in his Nature and History main lesson book.

Shepherds and Shelter

We had a lovely Monday back to school today. We started out with a new years verse and a discussion of new year celebrations in different cultures. We remembered Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and our fun celebration of that holiday back in the autumn. We talked about the Chinese New Year and the Chinese Zodiac. We also talked about the tradition of New Year's resolutions and goal setting. Rowan said that his school goals were to get faster at both reading and writing and to work more on his times tables. He also remembered his goals of becoming more agile and stealthy at his nature awareness program on Thursdays.

I found a nice way to enliven the Abraham story and introduce our Clothing and Shelter block at the same time. As I told the story of Abraham I spoke of how he was instructed by God more than once to take his family and flocks and move to a new place. Rowan and I talked about the kinds of sheep and goats that they might have had and how different they probably looked from the sheep we see on farms today. He may have had camels and donkeys as well. We also talked about the kinds of shelters that Abraham might have lived in. He was born in a cave, as his parents hid out from King Nimrod. Then he lived for many years with Noah, we imagined in a modest clay farm house. Next he spent time traveling, first to Canaan and then on to Egypt. During his travels he must have lived in tents that could be easily packed up for the move. We pulled out the clay ziggurat that his older brother made a few years back in fourth grade and spoke of the building materials available in the desert regions Abraham lived in. Our story ended with the amazing news that Abraham and Sarah became parents when they were one hundred years old, with the birth of thier son, Isaac, the one who laughs.

After violin practice, we painted. My instructions were that we needed to paint a desert scene and there must be at least one animal in it. Rowan chose to do a difficult painting of Egypt with pyramids and a palm tree and people and camels. All of his creatures were on a very minimal scale and it was a challenge to keep the wet on wet paint from bleeding his fine details all over the page. We waited for the paper to dry a bit before he added his animals and discussed the importance of putting in the sky before the details to avoid the tedious work of bringing the sky down and around these features. The rest of the day was filled with familiar school work: math, writing (thank you notes!) and reading. I do think his reading was just a tad bit faster than the last time...

New Year and a New Block

I love preparing for a new block in homeschooling. This one is nice in many ways. I feel rested from a fine vacation, mostly at home, but with a little adventuring in this beautiful state of California. I feel happy with Rowan's progress so far and especially his enthusiasm. He really does seem to enjoy homeschooling and puts in such admirable effort to all of his work for me. I am enjoying trying to figure out how to make this next block meet him right where he is at. On the other hand, I have an ongoing nervousness about the Old Testament, which feels like the right place to delve next. Our work with Creation went wonderfully well so I don't know why I am hesitant now, but I am. I think I have a direction with the Abraham story, but I had to stop in my preparations when I got to Isaac and the sacrifice. I know I will pull it off when the time comes, but not tonight. For now I am feeling into what it might have been like to be a wandering shepherd in the desert, following God's orders and waiting one hundred years to start a family.

Halloween

Well weeks have gone by without a post. I knew that would happen. Homeschooling has a way of pulling me into a vortex that is very creative, but allows little time for documentation.

In these past weeks, we finished the story of creation and bound a beautiful book of painting, drawings and writings. We continued on for some time with Old Testament Stories, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Ark and the Tower of Babel. I need to take some time to write about all of that in more detail, but the most exciting thing going on right now is Halloween!

This week has been devoted entirely to Halloween. Rowan loves to decorate and we came up with some great ideas for a little party that will take place here tonight! Of course, I threw in a little learning here and there. We learned Halloween tunes for the violin, wrote out labels for potions and signs for the spooky walk. We drew and walked spirals, then created spider web forms in many places, finally hanging up a rope spider web and creating a creepy spider kingdom in a burnt out redwood stump in the yard. We also did some baking - full of measuring and technique. We made cookies in the shapes of pumpkins, bats and autumn leaves and we made doughnuts from scratch. Tonight we will hand fresh made donuts from a tree and have a "doughnut bobbing" contest.

Rowan very much wanted to create a graveyard in our yard and hang up skeletons and ghosts. He sees this sort of decoration all around town. We recently spent some time in Southern California, visiting the mausoleum where my recently deceased grandmothers ashes rest. That was certainly a good opportunity to discuss death and burial with my kids. It was an odd experience in many ways, but healthy, I think. Earlier this year, we lost a dear old pet and we held a beautiful and sad funeral in our garden. Now, when Rowan wanted to create a "spooky" graveyard, I felt compelled to take a little time to talk about the sacredness of death and the memory of those we love. We created markers for pets and wild animals (mostly birds that hit our window) that we have known. With Rowan right in the midst of his "nine year change", I felt it was a ripe moment to take with him and speak openly about loss, death, the spirit and the body.

Paper mache was a big part of our decorating this year. Trying to save money, not spending it on overpriced, low-quality junk from the party store, we came up with creative ideas for making giant toadstools, ghosts, bones and costume pieces. We did these things in paper mache, clay and cloth. I even slipped in a little fiber arts, having Rowan needlefelt green stems and leaves onto little wool balls to use as pumpkins in our fairy house display.

It is such a pleasure to work with Rowan on all of this. He is so enthusiastic and innocent. He is nine this year and I know that he will begin to change rapidly in the coming years. This is most likely the last time we will throw this kind of "magical" kid-focused party. I am trying to savor it as much as I can. At the same time I get exasperated with some of Rowan's behavior. Nine year old boys are full of some sort of mischeivious juice that jangles my nerves sometimes. I find myself chanting "Patience" to myself several times each day. I definitely feel that I am most able to do this when I have things in balance, not too much to do, minimal distraction. Unfortunately, this is not always possible to orchestrate.

Off to create a little more magic and try to have fun!

Happy Halloween!