As mothers, we brood over our young like hens brood over their nests. We try to provide a nurturing environment to foster the perfect balance of self-discipline and creative-thinking in our children and ourselves.
We're not alone in these trenches. We turn inward in faith and find the love and support we need to carry the precious burdens of motherhood with grace.
Today, I've invited my Classical Conversations Director over for lunch. She is a kind, intelligent woman, who has already graduated two children and is still homeschooling her 9-year-old son. Classical Conversations is a national homeschool group that models the Classical method in local communities. We meet once a week.
The weekly classes look like this:
30 min: The tutor introduces new memory work to a class no larger than 8 children of a certain grade level.
New memory work includes:
-A history sentence in song form (e.g. In 1898, Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders defeated the Spanish at the Battle of San Juan Hill, while trying to help the Cubans win their independence.)
-A science fact (e.g. What is an atomic number? The atomic number is the number of protons in an atoms nucleus, which is also the number of electrons in a neutral atom)
-A math fact or skip counting song
-Latin vocabulary words
-A grammar rule
-Geography (this year, states and capitals of the US plus features like mountains and bodies of water), and
-History timeline cards
30 min: The tutor reviews previous week's memory work (with games)
30 min: Presentations. Each child gets to stand up and practice public speaking with either a show-and-tell item or on an assigned subject. Next week's assignment is “Tell a joke or humorous story.”
30 min: Science segment (experiments for a few semesters, putting together a paper body with all the organs another semester)
30 min: Art or Music (different semesters: drawing fundamentals, music fundamentals (with the tin whistle), artist appreciation, orchestra appreciation
It's been a very interesting and enlightening school year for me. I've signed up to tutor this year and happened to get Erin's age-group (Kindergarten). The kids are very compliant and calm some weeks, and other weeks they are all extra talkative and energetic. I am still learning how to come up with fun, creative, energetic ways for them to learn and practice their memory work.
Here's how I lead on community day:
Usually, I start with having my kids trace their maps, while I show them the new Geography feature.
Then, I sing the history song, which they always love to learn.
The science and grammar memory work have not been set to songs, so I come up with my own tunes for those, because it helps so much with this younger age. Songs are always a big hit, especially when we put motions to them!
Then, we push the table back, and I have them sit in a circle while we do hand-motions and chant our Latin.
For Grammar, on the weeks when we are learning verb tenses (To write: write(s), wrote, writing, written), I have them play Duck, Duck Goose and have them chase the person they choose when they get to the final word in the
group. They love that game!
Then we look at the timeline cards and make up motions for each one. By this time they are getting tired, and I just barely get through that.
Here, I let them take a fun break to eat their snacks, and have presentation time. They really enjoy this change of pace here!
After presentations, we move on to the science experiment. The kids love this part, and I always appreciate it when the parents, who are in the room, help out with the logistics of helping to set up, and clean up, and through-out the process keeping things moving smoothly with each child.
Next, I present them with the art or music ideas for the week, and we begin the fun project. This is always a very pleasant time for me, because I find a lot of peace and enjoyment in watching the children create.
Finally, we play some sort of review game. I like to divide the kids up into two teams. I ask them their favorite food, color, and animal, and then make that the team's name. I have two giant dice, one with numbers, and one with colors, which I let each team throw. The color corresponds to a subject. The number is the amount of points they will receive for a correct answer.
They enjoy this game to a point, but by the end of our two and a half hours together, many of them are just ready for lunch! So, I want to come up with more interesting game variations to keep it fresh each week!
That is the end of our Foundations morning, and we all eat lunch together with the other tutors and age-groups.
I have found that my older daughter, Rachel, who is 10 and in the oldest age group, very much enjoys her day there. She loves to do her presentation and spends a
good amount of time in preparation for it each week. Rachel get's a lot of enjoyment from the group interactions.
My youngest, who is 5, does not like the fact that I am her teacher. On one hand, she resents sharing me with the rest of the class, on the other hand, she says she want to have a different teacher because she is with me all the time. So, she is one of my least compliant students! I'm not sure what to do about it. She finds a lot of joy in “knowing the right answers” when called upon, and there are certain projects during art and music which make her sublimely happy. But, on the way in to our meeting, she tells me every
week that she does not want to go to her class. I wonder if that would be different if she had another teacher. The other kids in the class seem to really enjoy it.
The Challenge Program(Middle and High School)
My son, who is my oldest (13), is participating in the same group, only in the older program called Challenge. It is set up to be more dialectic in the Classical tradition for children who are middle-school aged. The class he attends covers all his subjects and incorporates debate and group discussion and demonstration in appropriate subjects: Algebra, Science (Aiden participated in his first science fair this year, and took first place!), Current Events/Debate/Mock Trial, Latin, Logic, and Literature.
Challenge is a very well-rounded curriculum, and the work-load is awe-inspiring to me. Aiden works six full hours a day at home and is highly motivated to succeed and compete with his peers. He is in a transition time, personally, of managing his own schedule and learning study proper habits.
I am hands-on/hands-off, hands-on again/hands-off again. I back off enough for him to succeed or fail on his own, and then I offer guidance and assistance, then back-off again. It's been quite a learning experience for me, as he's also now entering the teen-years and experiencing the dialectic need to question me about everything,
ad nauseam! I'm working on guiding him to be respectful, while being “himself.”
He says that the challenge program has been good for him, and I have seen his academic stamina increase (his spelling skills, too!). He enjoys the comradery in his weekly meetings and looks forward to the day all week.
I find that if I allow myself to fall back into "God's arms," to not allow myself to become anxious and fretful, but take one step at a time, one moment at a time, turning inward to the voice of love, I can maintain the balance of living a disciplined life, and a life of joy and freedom.
At times, I'm tempted towards fear and self-doubt, but those thoughts are self-defeating.
When I allow myself to believe in and feel loved by God, my love for others bubbles up and flows out bountifully.
Today, I will enjoy my children; I will enjoy getting to know my Classical Conversations Director better; and I will be thankful for these and all of the other blessings and opportunities in my life now as well as for the trials and struggles I face now and will face in the future.
May grace cover your lives and your homeschools this week, and may you have peace in the trenches.
Love,
Jennifer Dowell (2010)
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