When the rain falls

I liked today's Opus Dei message -- and thought it might apply a bit to this ongoing Real Learning thread on avoiding burnout.

You don't feel like doing anything and there is nothing you look forward to. It is like a dark cloud. Showers of sadness fell, and you experienced a strong sensation of being hemmed in. And, to crown it all, a despondency set in, which grew out of a more or less objective fact: you have been struggling for so many years ... , and you are still so far behind, so far. All this is necessary, and God has things in hand. In order to attain gaudium cum pace -- true peace and joy, we have to add to the conviction of our divine filiation, which fills us with optimism, the acknowledgment of our own personal weakness. (Furrow, 78)

Also, this nice thread on Seasonal Learning is a spin-off -- I'm marking them since I may need to reread them sometime!

Myth of Laziness -- project checklist

Levine says in The Myth of Laziness that long term projects allow a child to get used to organization and accountability. He suggests that parents set up time and materials at home to facilitate organization and accountability. For example:

1. Set up a work space -- eg, have paper, pencils, computer, index cards, good light -- in a location free of distraction. He mentions that children work well in different environments. For example, I always worked bettter with some type of noise level or activity around me. I used to go to a coffee shop (one where I wouldn't meet anyone I knew) in order to do my best studying and writing. Other people need quiet and a lack of activity in order to do good work -- one of my sons shuts himself up in his bedroom. It is worthwhile to experiment with different environments.

2. Set up a work time. Levine mentions that the families with the most effective results have often made studying and academic work an integral part of their life. Often they have agreed on set hours to study and read and write. They often have the whole family doing their quiet work at the same time in the day so that the whole environment recognizes the importance of productive study.

I think that homeschool families tend to do this somewhat naturally, and that this is probably one of the reasons that homeschooling is often so successful. But I see that now that it's written out, I could probably do this more consciously so that our time and material "systems" made it easier for my kids to find a system that worked for them.

Here is his list of the writing steps, which also seem to be a good list for any project -- I am using the checklist to plan out my kids' courses for next year, for example:

1. Strategic planning -- overview -- what are the goals of this project -- what do I have to accomplish in order to be done? Gather the materials and provide yourself with a work space.
2. Plan and timeline -- this is where you break the overview into steps with intermediary deadlines -- index card notes completed by X time, outline made by Y time. If you are an intuitive non-sequential thinker like myself and some of my children, you may want to do it somewhat differently -- for example, visualize the different stages of the project in completion. But the timeline helps avoid the last minute crunch.
3. Brainstorming. You generate ideas here -- mind maps may be useful. The idea is to get your thoughts flowing and put your intuitive processes to work. It doesn't matter whether the ideas are actually useful or connected, at this point.
4. Research -- gather information and compile it.
5. Initial Arrangement -- here you figure out some sort of provisional order. It is not fixed yet.
6. Rough draft.-- you put something together, but you let yourself have freedom to go, since it is not yet a final draft.
7. Revision -- make corrections, rearrange, elaborate or cut.
8. Final product.-- "publishing" in some form
9. (I added this part myself because Ignatian pedagogy recommends it -- it is beneficial to have some sort of demonstration of the product. For example, making an oral presentation of the written material, or devising some sort of visual that you are prepared to explain. )
10. Assessment -- reflection on the final product. How would you score yourself? How could it be improved? This helps you to refine your level of work over a period of time. Levine recommends that the students give themselves a grade and evaluation. Kids like mine will usually grade themselves down, whereas other kids might inflate their grade, but over time hopefully they will learn how to more accurately self-assess.

A sort of organizing process should be going on throughout all this.

1. Finding and managing the best materials for the job. This might change somewhat during different stage of the process.
   
2. Managing time -- making daily room for work on the project and having a rough longterm plan which can be modified along the way.
3. Organizing thoughts -- (using the seven types of paragraphs might be helpful)
4. Quality control -- Levine says that successful students usually have a continual self-monitoring going on ("how am I doing? how could I modify things in order to improve?"). There have been lots of studies showing that successful readers, for example, are always checking their understanding and engaging in an active dialogue with the books they read. Examples here. Similarly, successful math thinkers have been shown to have a mental interaction between reality and the symbolic concepts on the paper. I was just recently watching my friend's MUS DVD where Steve Demme says that a group of kids asked to solve a simple math problem were stumped because they weren't told what operation was to be used -- in other words, they had learned the rote operations but not how to apply them. There is also a lot of discussion about this in John Holt's excellent book How Children Fail.
   

An elementary Writing Center set-up here.

Myth of Laziness -- writing problems

Levine says that writing output failure is often a first symptom of the hidden learning deficits that often get labelled as "laziness". Almost all the children he worked with had some writing difficulties. For example, a lack of fluency in the physical act of writing (or keyboarding) will naturally lead to messiness and to a simplistic form of writing, since the child will be focusing so much on the physical act of writing that he is unable to let his thoughts flow freely. I recognize several of my kids in this.

Organizational difficulties can also lead to writing output difficulties. For example, a child who cannot keep track of his materials will find it difficult to organize a research paper -- he will spend his energy hunting for pens and paper and index cards, or whatever he needs. A child who has difficulties with time organization may find himself writing an entire term paper the night before, because he has not been able to generate a timeline that includes a series of steps from beginning to completion. This was definitely my problem in school. Even in college I usually ended up scrambling through an essay or studying for an exam the night (or class period) before, or even missing the deadline and taking a late penalty.

Fluctuating energy levels can lead to extreme inconsistency in production. A child may produce a nice paper one time and a poor effort the next time, or may start off well and fall down as the work progresses. This often leads to the charge that "you could do better if you tried" which for the student may not be helpful at all since he or she may not understand WHY her performance is so inconsistent.

Another trait may show up later in the school years. There are two approaches to a new activity -- "top-down" or "bottom-up". One person may do wonderfully on the sequential, detail-oriented aspects of a research project, but be unable to come up with an original, creative take on the material. This is called a "bottom up" approach. It works well in the grade school years but becomes more of a problem in the secondary or tertiary level of schooling, where a person is expected to produce work beyond a simple synthesis of the collected research.

Since writing output is often such a major indicator of the child's production ability, Levine made a checklist of the writing process which I thought seemed very helpful for any kind of a longterm project. (He also recommends that long-term projects be done in schools more than they are presently, because a long-term project is a wonderful way to acquire the skills needed for ANY kind of future success). I am going to put the writing checklist in the next post since this one is getting long.

Incidentally, I was just reading at a site which recommended cursive before printed writing as a way to solve common writing difficulties. I thought it was interesting. Don Potter's site -- HT Trivium Pursuit blog (there are also some nice phonics resources there).

Myth of Laziness

I wrote several posts with notes on Mel Levine’s Myth of Laziness. I’m going to list them here now:

• The Myth of Laziness
• Writing difficulties
• Project Checklists

When I wrote about Laziness once before, I tried to come up with some of the reasons that kids might be thought of as lazy besides simple idleness. The reasons I thought of were that people (inc children) might be:

1) Alienated. That is, people who aren’t very commited to whatever they’re engaged in, or who are resistant (passively or actively).

2) Debilitated. That is, people who have some underlying health condition or inability because of physical, mental, emotional difficulties. Either temporary or chronic.

3) Misplaced.Maybe this is a bit of both #1 and #2. Sometimes a person gets in a job or lifestyle which has demands that aren’t suited to their temperament or ability. Or don’t LOOK suited to their temperament or ability. I read an example recently — a shy college student who needed to earn money and got a job as a door to door vacuum salesperson.

Levine is focusing mostly on #2 — debilitations of one sort or other. He does mention #3 too — noting that children in school are expected to perform well on an extraordinarily wide field — more wide than most adults. He also mentions the importance of making sure that children transition into an adult vocation that suits their abilities as well as their inclinations.

He seems to mention my #1, Alienation, mostly implicitly, in his descriptions of the older students who have developed defense mechanisms in response to their output failure in the earlier years. So I think he would say that alienation is a common response to the pain people feel when they are unable to succeed at the work that they are expected to do.

The Myth of Laziness

I just finished reading Myth of Laziness by Mel Levine. Levine's thesis is that kids are often accused of a moral flaw -- laziness-- when their actual problem is a mismatch between their level of ability and their ability to actually produce. He uses the myth of Sisyphus who was condemned to push a heavy boulder uphill for all eternity, as an illustration of the state of mind of these kids who find themselves dealing with tasks that to them seem way too burdensome to follow through with.

Through 8 detailed composite case studies, he describes the various different causes for what is called "output failure", and then proposes solutions.

For example, one child was very cognitively gifted and was able to assemble complex things out of scrap materials, but found writing an extraordinarily laborious task and was poor at sports and large motor activities, which exposed him to intense teasing from his peers. Levine found that he suffered from an inability to process verbal commands into motor activities, and an inability to acquire motor memory -- so the coach's orders and demonstrations were not translated into action, and he was unable to acquire fluency in handwriting, which made his written work illegible and simplistic compared to his mental ability.

Another child, a girl, had irregular sleep patterns and also was unable to regulate her energy levels -- so she could start a project very well and then would fade off towards the middle. ANother boy had subtle expressive language deficits; he had not learned to elaborate verbally on a topic or to put it in context so others could understand it. He could verbally relate to his peer group but not beyond that, so he was increasingly taking refuge in his "gang" and basically tuning out on all academic performance.

As Levine works with the school and parent in understanding and helping the child, he proposes accommodations, but also has a system of payback, so that a child with accommodations in his areas of weakness is given extra work to do in his areas of strength.

In order to give the child insight and to dispel the "laziness" stigma, he uses a process called "demystification" to describe the child's pattern of strength and weakness to the child himself. This helps the child be more proactive in helping himself succeed. Levine believes that all children have a desire to succeed and be productive, though they may not realize it themselves. If production is too difficult for mechanical reasons, they find a refuge in passiveness or acting out. So, understanding their own specific areas of weakness and finding ways to cope with it helps them take back control instead of attributing their failure to an irredeemable character flaw like laziness.


Thomas Aquinas defines laziness as a species of fear:

"A deed considered as being actually done, is in the power of the doer. But it is possible to take into consideration something connected with the deed, and surpassing the faculty of the doer, for which reason he shrinks from the deed. It is in this sense that laziness, shamefacedness, and shame are reckoned as species of fear."

So I suppose that looking at it in that light, Levine is trying to get to the roots of the difficulties that make the student think the task is too burdensome to be done. He tries to shine a light on the root sources of the difficulty and then teach the child to manage those so that the task does not seem to "surpass the faculty of the doer". This is probably a more constructive way of handling the problem than to just slap an easy label of "laziness" or "failure" on the child.

I will probably be writing more about Myth of Laziness since there were some lists that I found very helpful and jotted down in note form. There is a review of the book here , and I wrote about laziness once before here, though I was focusing more on the psychological reasons for what is called "laziness" than the logistical reasons.

Miscellaneous Montessori

Kim shared this link to photos of Montessori presentations quite a long time ago on the Real Learning board. I found it when I was googling "presentations." If you are interested in Montessori but have not seen it in action, like me, you might find it helpful. Serendipity!

There are more photos, in The Montessori Method (online book, scroll down)

Also, I found this catalog.

Here is a nice article about starting off using Montessori methods.

Real Life Heroine

My husband has a habit of bringing news stories and current issues to my attention by coming out of his home office and either reading or retelling them to me. My kids get some exposure to current affairs and topical issues that way too and we have some interesting discussions as a result. I believe that this sort of thing is very helpful in raising informed citizens who are intelligently involved in civic life. Also, it has a bit of the same effect as reading history (for good reason, since it is history in the making) in that you see people to emulate and people whose mistakes you would not want to repeat.

Here's one in the emulation category: Poland Honors Woman Who Saved 2,500 Jews.

"Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory," Sendler said in a letter read by Elzbieta Ficowska, who was saved by Sendler as a baby. "Over a half-century has passed since the hell of the Holocaust, but its specter still hangs over the world and doesn't allow us to forget the tragedy."

While we're talking about World War II, Karen Edmisten has listed some World War literature resources for grade school children.

There are some middle school resources for the 20th century at Mater Amabilis, and some at Ambleside.... middle school level here, and high school level here.

Here is Lene Mahler Jaqua's list of 20th century resources here in PDF form at the CCH Newsletter site.

What I Learned about Narration

In February, my learning focus was on narration. I have a vague set of steps for my learning focuses (foci??) . I commit myself to:

• Doing a bit of research (that's the easy part for me)
• Thinking about it (still pretty easy).
• Putting it into practice (hard for me) -- which brings me to the dancing part of the process, because I have to make this into a sort of lateral move:
• Resolve to take the first baby step (I wrote about it here) and then DO it. This makes it much more likely that I'll actually put the information and pondering to some practical use.
  
• Reflecting on the whole thing (that's what this post is about)
  

Narration has always been a challenge for me. It sounds great. I like the concept much better than that of filling in the blanks or just writing down factual details upon request of a worksheet or textbook.

However, I find it a giant strain to narrate. Even thought I am the adult recommending it to my children. In certain ways it almost interferes with my thinking process. It brings it up to the surface ahead of time. So I have always hesitated to impose what seems like a bit of a mental disruption on my kids.

One of the challenges I gave myself last month was to practice narrating, myself. That is, when I sit down and read David Copperfield or MacBeth or Charlotte Mason's books, I have to close the book regularly and mentally or in written form, do a narration.

I found that though it seems superficial to my thinking process, it did help me to pin down details and do what CM claimed narration would help people do: create a web of associations in their mind, so the knowledge was easier to retrieve later.

It's also incredibly difficult for me to actually make myself do this! I would far rather just race on through the book to find out what happens.

The other small step I made was to ask for narrations from my middle school age boys. Oral, so far -- I haven't asked for written, yet. I would occasionally get narrations from my kids in the past so we weren't starting from scratch (and of course, almost all kids will spontaneously retell things that interest them, and mine are no exception).

This was difficult, especially when they complained. I could understand their complaints of embarrassment, particularly, and the mental difficulty of dredging words out of impressions.

But they have made some excellent narrations, which encourages me.

Finally, the third baby step was to pay attention to the "pre-narrations" of the little ones, and consciously build on these. I am not sure why this had really not occurred to me before. Every little child will make comments on his picture books or point to the pictures or say "read the one about....." . Or acted them out, with their action figures or in person. These are preliminary narrations. If I keep aware of this and gently extend the interaction, they will not remember a time when we haven't "retold" or "talked about" or "made up stories about" their books.

I still have to keep aware of the mental disruption part. One thing that I have found helpful is to give them a bit of time to ponder. It slows down the pace. It lets me collect my persona and move it to the background so the narration is as much as possible THEIR mental activity and not being pushed or helped by me.

Sometimes I do help them start a narration. That's because introverts often legitimately need some kind of hook to bring their thinking process up to the surface of their minds. It is a bit like journal prompts only those are so often overdone and to me, anxiety-inspiring. I try to keep it very low-key.

I have been gravitating naturally to a more topical or dialectical mode with my 14 year old. I can't find the quote right now, but Charlotte Mason recommends that narration in older children be transmuted into something more like the high school level essay where a child synthesizes or analyzes content from various sources. I rediscovered this by trial and error when asking him for narrations. My 11 year old, on the other hand, is still quite content with very detailed and articulate narrative accounts.

Life on the Transplant Roller Coaster

Moreena at The Wait and the Wonder writes about the helplessness of passengers in the medical roller coaster here and here. I came to her post by way of Melissa at the Lilting House, who wrote a post here sharing her experience about waiting for a diagnosis for her Wonderboy.

So of course, after reading those, I got pulled into the Pediatric Grand Rounds. I ended up pulling another half-all-nighter, which is why I visit Moreena's blog only when I know I can afford to sleep in a bit next morning.

Moreena writes honestly and beautifully about the ups and downs of living with medical suspense, never knowing whether the next day will bring a glorious swoop towards the sky or a heartstopping plunge towards the core of the earth.

She writes about the chronic worry that is part of the deal of loving a chronically ill child as opposed to a healthy one, even if it's true that life is uncertain and health can turn to illness in a second:

Look at it this way: One guy is walking down the sidewalk, going home from work as he does every day. Unbeknownst to him, a piano being wenched into a 3rd floor apartment is about to break loose and fall on his head. Or maybe a stray bullet is about to strike him in the chest. Or maybe a driver coming along just behind him is about to have a heart attack, jump the curb, and run his car over this poor unsuspecting pedestrian. One of those horrible things is definitely going to be happening in the next 2 minutes.

Another guy is walking down the street on a military patrol, as he does every night, in a country currently experiencing a violent civil war.

The first guy's chance of dying in the next 2 minutes is 100%. The second guy's chance of dying in the next 2 minutes is, let's say, 5%. But which one is most likely to be experiencing extreme anxiety, fear, worry, nervousness, stress? Of course, the 5% guy.

Anyway, I usually don't post about Aidan and his past here on this blog. Usually when I do, to tell the truth, it's because of something Moreena's written ;-), for example, here and here. I don't think this blog, which is basically about homeschooling a crew, is exactly suited to the medical epic genre. So all this is to say I'm starting a new one -- here. I'll still have Aidan's special education stuff on here but the other blog will give me more freedom to talk specifically about Aidan. I'd like to have a way to get those memories out on a screen, both so I can have them retrievable someday and so that I can deal with some of the things that keep me awake at night when I think of them. Also, since neonatal hemochromatosis is such a way-out-there disease, though not quite as rare as this one, I think maybe it's time to have my own little waypost of experience on the web somewhere.

Loveliness of Saint Patrick's Day is Up

....at Tales from the Bonny Blue House
Mary Ellen has done a beautiful job!

There is also some discussion of a St Patrick's Day Lapbook at the real learning board. Lots of ideas and a sample download available from Hands of a Child.

Sunday!

A beautiful spring-like day.
Made waffles for brunch.
Kevin working hard on fixing the garage door, which has been broken for a long time.
I do a little lesson planning, read bits of MacBeth, have a nice talk with my oldest son on the phone, make chicken noodle soup for Kevin who has a cold, and sit in front of the fire with my daughter for a while talking about sewing.
The little ones phase in and out of my vision -- they seem to have an endless series of projects going, most of them messy, but we have all day tomorrow to clean up.
Later on, I'll make homemade pizza.

Happiness!

By the way, this is an interesting link to Classroom Centers . I just found Dinah Zike's Classroom Organization book -- I thought I had given it away years ago -- and have been browsing through it. I have also been browsing through her Big Book of Books. Some of the things might be fun to set up for my littlies.... we'll see.

Transitioning and Ownership

Cindy at Applestars asked about how my kids and I managed ownership in the middle years. She writes:

At about 11, when my children start to do more formal things, they learn to be in charge themselves . . . by about 13, they are doing well without any oversight or assignments from me . . . just curious if you’ve tried that to free up your time (with a large family like mine and vest them more, or not?

In her page called The Collaborative Learning Process, which I printed out last summer because it was such a helpful outline, she writes:

The Collaborative Learning Stage (Ages 11-13). This has been an important transition stage between a more unschooling collaborative approach (collecting valuable information and honoring it) to a collaborative learning approach (sharing valuable insights about adult living and supporting the process in working toward their unique futures). This is where more formal discussions and frameworks are created in helping each child own and take responsibility for their goal-oriented learning lives.

I spent a lot of time in this stage helping each child figure out how to structure their learning and create goals by sharing information and insights about their learning style and timeframes by using learning collaboration.

I guess this is something like what I do, one reason why I thought her summary of “stages” was helpful, particularly since she compared it with Thomas Jefferson Education and several other “methods” that I’ve also read about. Her approach seems to focus on the signs that the child gives about readiness and to work in an organic mode rather than try to impose something top-down or on a strict schedule. This is something I value.

When I look back at what we did with our first three kids (my third is now 17) I see that they did come to this point where they were largely self-”vested”, but the details differed with every one of them. I think most of them were closer to 14 or sometimes a bit older when they got to the point where they said (more or less plainly) that they could do it basically on their own, thank you very much. By that time the older ones had internalized what we (the parents) were trying to do and as teenagers they seem to have a need to work out how that works in their own lives and with their own talents and interests.

For example, my oldest became very academically oriented. He studied Latin and Greek and went much further than I could have taken him. My second is a classic auto-didact, and there were some things I mishandled with him because I didn’t know enough about right-brained learning. I think there were some things I would do differently now with him, but a lot of things we did right by instinct, too. He devoted huge amounts of time to immersing himself in subjects of interest and I did a small amount of “requirements” with him on a daily basis because he needed the interaction for motivation and to work on some executive function skills. My third, my daughter, has become very focused on music and learning more about her faith heritage and on several other things. She is willing to plod through math and the less naturally interesting subjects because learning these things will help her meet her goals for college and life.
My 17 year old daughter meets with me for informal discussion and to set strategic goals and discuss future plans, but the daily and weekly work she manages pretty much under her own steam. Obviously, I’m always there to help her, but I haven’t needed to very much.

I see my 14 year old as just emerging into this stage. He has started to take an interest in planning for his future and already is the prime mover in getting his required subject areas done in the morning. I am still exploring, trying to find the parameters of what he is capable of. Besides occasional difficulties with math, he can coast easily through almost all his subjects. He has a bit of trouble with mechanics in writing and wants to tackle that. I decided to devote the rest of his 8th grade year to finding how he learns best and how to transition him towards seeing the big picture in his studies.

My just-11 year old is in a different boat. We spent much of last year basically radically unschooling. I learned so much from watching him and interacting with him during those days. However, my instinct at present is that he needs more one-on-one time and that some of it should be (loosely, collaboratively) structured. He doesn’t run to me asking to do his formal work in the morning, but he really interacts with the material and it’s a joy to be around him when this is happening. I don’t want to move him towards more independent work just yet in those areas. It is a chance to mentor him — being the easy going child in the middle, with two medically needy younger brothers, he hasn’t had as much one-on-one attention as some of the others.
About freeing up my time — honestly, when I was radically unschooling, I struggled radically with boredom. I even gained a fair amount of weight. It might work great if there were lots of community opportunities in our area or if my kids were very social or if they were all close in age. But as it was, I had to be on task to supervise the little ones and I tried hard to keep engaged with the older ones but it was just too much open time, too much waiting, too much the same every day and no real signs of progress. When I read Cindy’s Collaborative Learning outline and Anne Lahron-Fishers book “Fundamentals of Homeschooling” I realized that there wasn’t enough of a balance of open time and more structured time. I am really glad I experimented with it since it showed me a lot about how our family works, but it was a bit of a wilderness experience and I’m glad we’re past it now. At present, most of our formal work is finished by noon and we devote the afternoons to more unstructured activities. I’m finding it to be a nice balance.

This got looong and I don’t know how interesting it is, but anyway, it helped me to write it all out. Being right-brained myself, I work in fuzzy global mode a lot of the time and sometimes don’t know exactly what I’m thinking until I sit down and write it down and see it right there in front of me . LOL!

Robert Southwell: Rhythms of Life

My oldest son and I discovered Robert Southwell when my son was reading about him in high school. In Saint Robert Southwell -- Jesuit Saint by Fr John Hardon, it says that his feast day is February 21. One of his most famous poems is said to have been used by Shakespeare in MacBeth.

I found this letter written by Southwell to his friend Thomas Howard, who apparently was executed in 1572; Southwell was executed in 1595 after much misuse and torture, for being a Catholic priest in the Elizabethan reign. It was in the book Living Water; the style is so beautiful. It was written in 1591.

There is in this world a continual interchange of pleasing and affecting accidents, still keeping their succession of time, and overtaking each other in their several courses. No picture can be all drawn of the brightest colours, nor a harmony consorted only of trebles; shadows are needful in expressing of proportions, and the bass is a principal part in perfect music: the condition of our exile here alloweth no unmingled joy; our whole life is tempered between sweet and sour, and we must all look for a mixture of both. The wise so wist, prepared both for the better and the worse; accepting the one, if it come, with liking, and bearing the other without impatience, being so much masters of every turn of fortune, that none shall work them to excess. The dwarf groweth not on the highest hill, nor doth the tall man lose his height in the lowest valley. And as a base mind, though most at ease, will be dejected, so a resolute virtue is most impregnable in the deepest distress.

They evermore most perfectly enjoy their comforts, who least fear their contraries; for a desire to enjoy carrieth with it a fear to lose, and both desire and fear are enemies to quiet possession, making men less owners of God's benefits, than tenants at His will. The cause of our troubles is, that our misfortunes happen, either to unwitting or unwilling minds. Foresight preventeth the one, necessity the other; for he taketh away the smart of the present evils that attendeth their coming, and is not dismayed by any cross, that is armed against all.

Where necessity worketh without our consent, the effect should never greatly afflict us; grief being bootless where it cannot help; needless where there was no fault. God casteth the dice, and giveth us our chance; the most that we can do is to take the point that the cast will afford us, not grudging so much that it is no better, as comforting ourselves that it is no worse. If men were to lay all their evils together, to be afterwards divided by equal portions amonst them, most men would rather take what they brought than stand to the division; yet such is the partial judgement of self-love, that every man judgeth his self-misery too great, fearing he shall find some circumstance to increase it and make it intolerable: thus by thought he aggravates the evil.

When Moses threw his rod from him it became a serpent, ready to sting, and affrighted him so much as to make him fly; but being quietly taken up, it was a rod again, serviceable for his use and no way hurtful. The cross of Christ and the rod of every tribulation, seemeth to threaten stinging and terror to those who shun and eschew it, but they that mildly take it up and embrace it with patience may say with David, thy rod and thy staff have been my comfort. In this, affliction resembleth the crocodile; fly, it pursueth and frighteth; follow, it flieth and feareth; a shame to the constant, a tyrant to the timorous.

Hold not your eyes always upon your hardest haps; there are fairer parts in your body than scars. Let God strip you to the skin, yea to the soul, so He stay with you Himself: let His reproach be your honour, His poverty your riches, and He is lieu of all other friends. Think Him enough for this world that must be your possession for a whole eternity.

When I was looking on the web I found Maureen Wittman's website with a unit on Robert Southwell. ... and also some timeline forms and advice; in PDF form. What I was looking for was the published unit study on Robert Southwell and his times which my son used in high school, but I can't seem to find a link to that online.

Century Books

Paula asked what Century Books are. Here is an explanation of Century Books at Simply Charlotte Mason; there's also a free download. Basically, a century book is a timeline in book or notebook form. You can be as simple or as artistic as you like.

I also found an article on how to make timelines in book form, with some visuals.
Here's another one.
And here's another.
And here's some timelines in book form from the British Museum -- I think CM envisioned the century books using the museum as a supplemental -- the children would sketch artifacts and put them into the proper places in their century books.

Here's a simple template.
Donna Young has several timeline forms.
And ChaseNC has several more.

Sonlight sells a timeline book.... and figures.
There is a Catholic World History Timeline by Marcia O'Neil. Here are samples.
Tanglewood Curriculum has timeline forms in ebook form.

There is a thread on Real Learning about century books where my friend Chari posted her article about doing century books. Others posted links to views of their century books.

Learning Goals: March is for Century Books

Ah, I just realized it is March already and time to move on to a new Monthly Learning Goal.
January was Notebooking.
February was Narration

One side benefit is that I realize that we've actually started doing a bit in the other areas without specifically having it on the agenda. What should we focus on for March? I wanted to save the Nature Study focus for spring -- and it is definitely not spring here yet.

I think the March focus should be Century Books, or Plutarch and Shakespeare. Now, which one??

When I first wrote out the learning goals, I couldn't decide whether to have a Habit per month or deal with Habits generally in one month. I think I will do both! Focus on habits generally speaking during one month, but try to focus on a particular habit each month.

This month is covered habit-wise, I think because we are all doing various Lenten practices. In general, for Lent, in addition to the individual devotions and fasts everyone does, I try to put a blanket over the house. .... like the purple strips of cloth I've put over the pictures and statues. We don't cut out everything but we minimize. Plus, since Lent is about almsgiving as well, we try to think about others' convenience more than of our own. I have been trying extra hard to listen to my domestic monastery bells. I think I hear one or two right now.....

Cat's in the Crade, and Silver Spoons

Well, he came home from college just the other day
So much like a man I just had to say
"Son, I'm proud of you, can you sit for a while?""
He shook his head and then said with a smile
"What I'd really like, Dad, is to borrow the car keys"
"See you later, can I have them please?"

Quite a long time ago now, the DHM at the Common Room and Cindy at Dominion Family brought up this article which coincidentally, my husband had mentioned the same week during one of our morning conversations. My kids get a lot of their political and civic context information from my husband's habit of coming out of his office in the morning and discussing whatever's going on in the news that has struck his interest. This kind of study goes to the heart of our interests as parents, of course, because we are raising our own members of the next generation, plus the ones out in society are the ones our children will be working with and living with to at least some extent.

Here are my thoughts on this for what it's worth:

1. Statistics are Simply Data.

Statistics are a bit like computer programs.... or like oracles. They tell you what you ask them, and what they are set up to tell you. How you interpret them is a whole different field, and more like an art than a science. It is a judgment, which involves a different kind of thinking than simple empirical information-gathering and -crunching.

I'm sure it's been said before, but I think statistics, or rather the use of statistics, are the myths of our time. I am not using the word "myth" as a euphemism for fiction or delusion. Rather, myths are stories created and/or distributed to evoke an idea or explain some curious event. Myths may be true or false; they may be interpreted in varying ways, and that is part of their resonance. Statistical studies are designed, implemented and reported to deal with the concerns of our time. The particularly resonant ones are often resonant just because they put a finger on something that troubles us or baffles us.

Obviously, we are troubled and baffled about our young people. In the first place, we are troubled because often we don't really know them. Sometimes, we haven't seen them except in spare minutes here and there almost since they were infants. In the second place, we are baffled because we don't know what we have done or failed to do that has made them this way. The Greeks have many stories about children being exposed on hillsides and then coming back in some way to be the ruin of those who exposed them; we have our studies about how children are failing in education and in life. There is more than science here.... there is almost a kind of poetry and prophesy.

2. I am Not Really Special, Therefore Nobody Is

The article puts the blame on preschool songs like "I am Special" and parental habits like permissiveness. But these seem more like symptoms than an actual disease to me.

Think about where the children -- presumably 3-5 year olds -- are actually SINGING these songs like "I am special." The answer would probably be: (1) At preschools. (2)Along with Barney or whoever they are watching as they park in front of the educational preschool TV shows in the morning while their older siblings, if they have any, are bunkered in the schools.

Isn't there a deeper problem than twaddly, self-centered songs here? These children need individualized, responsive love and attention. They need bread, and are getting pebbles.

The obvious fact is that every child is special. Definition: particular; unique or specific. "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you" Jeremiah 1:5. Every child knows this instinctively about himself from his first dawning of awareness. If he is fortunate, he moderates and refines the impression as he gets older. He learns that everyone is created with this loving solicitude, not just himself. He learns that he is formed for a purpose, and that an essential key to his identity is to be of help to others. .... that "no man is an island, entire of himself." He learns that he reaches his fullest potential as part of a family, a community working for a higher purpose. (Which is, of course, the overriding message of The Incredibles whence the famous line comes: If everyone is special, then no one is. Our "specialness" is an asset to the wider society, not a debit or a polite fiction)

But just as Al Gore doesn't actually make his lifestyle ecologically friendly by marketing environmental movies or purchasing carbon off-sets, we don't make children recognize their unique potential by ignoring them, shuttling them off, putting them in situations where their uniqueness is a weak point, and then telling them they are special. Children are not stupid; they can recognize the ambivalence just as well as anyone else.

You acquire a sense of uniqueness and particularity by being loved passionately and individually and being brought up in a particular family culture with all its richness of enculturation into our society's heritage. I am not saying that preschool and kiddie TV is always and everywhere bad. I am saying that the silly songs are just one element of a bigger problem; changing the silly song to "You are NOT special" is only going to worsen the basic problem.

3. Don't Hate Them Because They are Learning From Us Too Well.

I think permissiveness, where it exists, usually exists with arbitrariness, and the arbitrariness is a bigger problem than the permissiveness itself. We are allowed to give good things to our children. -- in fact, if we don't, we are not doing what God wrote in our heart in His image even though we are weak and concupiscent. But what we do if we are careless and neglectful (and who isn't at times -- it's our job to get up each day and try to do better) is give our children poor substitutes for good things. Our children ask for bread and we give them Twinkies. Our children ask for time and attention and we give them TVs in their room and Ipods with earbuds so we don't have to listen to their music. They ask for a childhood and preparation for adulthood and we give them scheduled and over-structured substitutes for playtime, and trashy pre-teen clothes and toys.

They want love, which includes personalized discipline and instruction, and we are detached and/or anxious and thereby and exasperate, despise, offend and hinder them. We run to the experts too easily. We hand off our responsibilities too readily. We ourselves were usually taught that we can't trust our own heritage and our own principles and that we should wait for the experts to tell us if we got the answer right or wrong. So it isn't entirely our fault, but we can't absolve ourselves completely, either.

Read The Hurried Child and Hold On To Your Kids, and look at life from the point of view of those "entitled" kids. Where are they getting the attitude that bling-things, status, self-aggrandizement and novelty are more important than genuine commitment and achievement? Why do they think that scorpions, snakes and stones substitute for bread, eggs and fish? We're teaching it to them daily, when we make Paris Hilton or Brittney Spears into a news spectacle, and Simon Cowell and Donald Trump into the arbitrars of our standards, when we isolate them in their peer group as if it were some kind of ghetto or warehouse. Meanwhile, the vast majority of these children know that they are the disposable generation; that many of their peers didn't make it through the filter of their parents' decision process. How bitter that must be for them.

4. The Silver Spoon that Doesn't Feed Them

We give them entitlements that are merely inadequate substitutes, and then we wonder why they are attached to the substitutes and no longer have a taste for the real things. The cat is in the cradle -- the child who is shuffled aside becomes the shuffler himself.

And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me
He'd grown up just like me
....my boy was just like me

Sibling Emulation

Paddy, age four, getting ready to go outside:

When I'm seven, do I get to wear a brace?

(because his seven year old big brother Aidan has one for his hemiparesis)

Crunchy Considerations

I don't usually do these but this one was fun:
How crunchy are you?
HT: The Bookworm
It was amusing to find I ended up as Super Crunchy though I am usually the most jello/instant oatmeal in the circles I personally move in -- which must make most of my friends just ULTIMATELY crunchy. LOL! I suspected as much!

I think that I was higher in crunchiness when we lived in Oregon because it was just so EASY there -- everything's a bit more work up here as far as organic food, finding alternative birthing methods and so on. It seems like a distant memory -- but I used to make my own diapers and diaper wraps, before life caught up with me. I definitely lose points for my habit of wearing socks and shoes unless I'm going to bed. I grew up in Alaska and Switzerland and even here in the CA Sierras the wood floors get COLD -- no bare feet or sandals for me!

Plus Aidan, with his medical needs, made our family style a little more processed and artificial than it was before. Somehow when a child is getting major chemotherapy and is massively immunesuppressed and getting predigested formula by a gastric pump and blood transfusions, it is more difficult to be upset if the other kids have a hot dog once in a while or if the diapers are disposable instead of cloth.

If I ever had another child I think I would be re-evaluating my systems a bit -- even now, Lent is a good time to do so. How apologetic does this sound? But I think there's a better way to think about it than feeling embarrassed about what I'm NOT doing.

What Happened to My Layout

I didn't mean to change the look of my blog. What happened was that I impulsively decided to switch from the old blogger template to the new "Layout" which promised more flexibility. When I did this, I suddenly found myself back to scratch with a standard blogger template. Then I couldn't find the old picture I had used for my header... so I was scrambling to get something up there temporarily in its place. Anyway, I landed on the roses and the purple. Then I decided I LIKED it. It is so soothing. Sometimes I surf over to my blog just to sit there and look at it for a moment when I'm stressed, and it calms me right down. So I'm leaving it there for now. I think I really ought to take up quilting, or scrapbooking or something.

The new layout mode does have more flexibility ... there are sidebar widgets like wordpress has that you can easily rearrange, and there is a feature which allows you to change colors and fonts of your text easily.... it even has a palette for the color choices based on the color scheme of your blog. So this weekend I switched over a couple of my other blogs, to the new format, though the lavendar and roses is still my favorite so far.

Thanks to my daughter I found there is a way to restore the old template or look at the html, so I can bring back up my old Bridalveils Fall picture if I want to. But for now, I'm leaving it the way it is.