The Lionsgate School

I homeschool in an environment that has so much creativity, learning of new skills, and sudden inspirations taking life in new directions all the time that it is really, really tough to keep everyone moving ahead in a steady fashion with anything. On top of that, we homestead so life is punctuated with all sorts of seasonal demands that simply must be met. And even on top of that, the four children I homeschool are so close in age and have developed such a rich life of the imagination together over the years that anything and everything becomes a game, a story, a way of life which is hard to interrupt.

To add to my managerial challenges here, I admittedly want to pack a lot into their lives/educations. Firstly, I want our children to have a solid foundation of spiritual knowledge the means by which, for various reasons, I have to invent entirely on my own. Secondly, I want them to have a rich, broad, literature and history based general education which just has to be Ambleside Online. AO is our friend. The children and I are used to it, value it and can’t go without it. Thirdly, it is an absolute must here at The Lionsgate School that our young charges learn a great depth and array of “life skills” in preparation for an uncertain future. These skills can range from knot tying to milking a cow to reading a map to learning how to survive in unusual circumstances. For direction along these lines, we draw from Prepare and Pray, our homestead, Linda Runyon’s work, the books and ideas of Tom Elpel, Survival Topics and so many other places. I know from experience that diligently pursuing AO type learning without large doses of Prepare and Pray type learning feels irresponsibly incomplete for us. We have to incorporate both aspects into our schedule in order to feel like we are getting the job done.

There are other factors in this mix too relating to the various personalities of the adults and children in this family/school as well as varying learning styles, varying degrees of willingness to yield to a schedule or routine, various degrees of self-discipline and maturity and, well, the urgency of now that keeps cropping up. Throw in constant fatigue on my part and a relentless compulsion to fulfill a vision and potential problems are everywhere!

For the past year or so, I have tried a number of approaches to scheduling to make all of this work at least well enough. I tried the frequently mentioned approach of schooling four days a week while leaving the fifth day for “other”. It felt too choppy for us. That fifth day was a bit chaotic, I think. And Mondays were always a struggle. I then tried making that fifth day very organized and with its own separate agenda, i.e. we did AO four days a week and then set Friday as Prepare and Pray day. That made Fridays more organized but Mondays were still difficult. Basically with either of these approaches, the family had three days away from the full routine so that by Monday, I felt like I was starting over with everybody. We tried working steadily straight through for a month and then taking a Project Week - an idea I picked up from Sonia at Simply Charlotte Mason. That was great fun but a lot more than the following Monday was required to get everybody back into routine. It took days to get everybody back on routine.

Finally, finally we seem to have hit on something that works. We school the old fashioned way. We school six days a week! Well, by “old fashioned” I mean that Charlotte Mason schools operated six days a week. That was the Victorian model. Fathers worked six days a week at that time also. We Americans have two day weekends as a sacred cow here but why really? A two day weekend is a commercial model of things, I think, which doesn’t suit our particular situation as it turns out. With time, I have discovered a number of benefits to schooling six days a week:

1. It takes considerable pressure off of each day as the same AO work can now be stretched over six days rather than four or five. The children and I are both more relaxed about things.

2. Each day can hold more variety as I can schedule the life skills and Prepare and Pray type activities over the course of the week rather than packing them into one separate day at the end of the week.

3. This model more closely reflects our philosophical beliefs in which practicing life skills, performing chores and homesteading tasks, undertaking rigorous studies and yet also having time to just be together and spontaneously play or undertake new projects are all equally important. Each day’s schedule has a little more wiggle room now so that tastes of this and big doses of that can all be incorporated more naturally. Also, I find scheduling this way much simpler for me. Rather than feeling like I am inventing all sorts of separate schedules for AO, Prepare and Pray, housework and so on, I invent gloriously long schedules of six days that include a bit of everything. It is just easier for me mentally somehow.

4. Mondays are so, so, so much better now. It turns out that using Sundays as “a day set apart” (which we have done for a long, long time anyway) is enough of a hinge to swing easily from one week to the next. This way there isn’t enough of a gap moving from one week to the next for the children to fall through!

5. I discovered when I was in college that the powerful line of demarcation most people have in their minds and schedules between work and play was a false one or an unnatural one anyway. It wasn’t reality, per se. That was a very liberating discovery for me back then. I want to have the fruit of that discovery built into our children’s lives from the outset as much as possible. Work is welcome. Play is welcome. Routine is welcome. Inspiration is welcome. There is room for all of it over the long haul if you don’t hem yourself in with unnatural lines of demarcation and entrenched ideas.

6. Our Saturdays are now more manageable than before. We have long used Saturdays to schedule deep cleaning in the house and preparation for Sundays like extra baking and cooking and so on. Again, for our household this approach to Saturdays apparently presented too abrupt a change and left the children too much at loose ends I guess compared to what they were otherwise used to. Their pick up routines in their rooms were rarely executed smoothly, let’s just say. Now with the six day school week, they still have some homeschooling routine early in the day on Saturday which seems to  act as an anchor for them. Furthermore they now have a much easier job thoroughly picking up their rooms on Saturdays because there is enough space in their schedules for them to do more of it each day and keep up with things.

I just realized while I was writing that I have listed six reasons why the six day homeschool week is working so beautifully for us. I think I will leave it at that because I can’t resist the symmetry of it all!

It has been an interesting process for me getting to this point. I have read about Charlotte Mason schools and their approach to scheduling. I have read about schooling during colonial times which often took place in the evenings after the work of surviving and tending to the family was done. I have also read about gurukulas which have very long daily schedules which cover a wide range of activities (I haven’t tried the long hours part! Yikes.). Through the impact of these readings upon me and the frustrations I had in dealing with balky Mondays and chaotic Saturdays, I had to allow old ideas to dissolve so that new, more fitting ideas could emerge and be put into practice. Actual experience is teaching me even more.

No real lines of demarcation are in our schedule at all any more, when I stop to think about it, except the set apart nature of Sundays and the ebb and flow of the outdoor and kitchen work presented by the seasons and our homestead. This seems to be exactly what suits us best. The children are thriving. I feel like I can relax a little. There is progress on all educational fronts every week no matter what and everything feels more natural. I am so grateful to have discovered that elusive sixth day in the week that was there waiting for me all the time.

With prayers for the future,

Leslie

I just read a mention of The Great Sunflower Project on an Ambleside Online list and decided to investigate further. It looks so worthwhile that I signed us up immediately and want to quickly share about it here as well.

The front page says:

By watching and recording the bees at sunflowers in your garden, you can help us understand the challenges that bees are facing. We’ll be sending out annual Lemon Queen sunflower seeds in early March 2009. Just in time to plant!

* It takes less than 30 minutes.
* It’s easy.
* Free Sunflower seeds for planting.
* No knowledge of bees required!

Enter your bee counts online or send us your paper form.
We would love to have you join us; let’s help our most important pollinators together!

If you signed up in 2008, we will send you seeds again this spring. We’ll send you an email this winter to confirm your mailing address and if you respond, your seed will go out in late March or early April.

We love having beekeepers participate.

The site is very simple and has additional great information such as the ecological importance of bees and of this project, tips for growing a bee garden, a bee guide, and quite a few great looking educational resources for the (home or school) classroom.

Joining is free and so is the packet of seeds they send you. Once the sunflowers flower, you go out and observe them once a week and time how long it takes for five bees to come work their magic. Then you send in your data (data sheets provided). There is even a map on the site showing locations of the first 26,000 people who are signed up to participate and a forum where participants can share questions, observations and educational ideas.

What a neat project to be a part of and how important it will be to get a national ongoing map of bee activity. It says on the site that a bee is responsible for every third bite of food. Anyone who needs real food needs real bees, right? This is a fact of nature all children should know, in my opinion.

As a matter of fact, to help children know this vital fact, there is a Resources for Teachers page on the site with learning resources and curricula ideas sent in by teachers. Included are suggested books, ideas for incorporating the project into each typical area of study, links to more information and so on. I am going to dig into this page more when the time comes to plant and then again when the sunflowers start to bloom. Since we live on a homestead and have a strong focus on natural food, this is exactly the kind of project and support that will help me bridge ideas and skills, fine arts and outdoor life, with my young charges. And personally, anything that gets us closer to bees here on Natural Path Farm is most welcome.

I am really looking forward to this!

With prayers for the future,
Leslie

It is the contrast that is so arresting and delightful…

Our eight year old is what I have long called a “little girl professional.” She isn’t just cute. She is a whole order of magnitude beyond that. She has long hair with ringlets. She has dewy soft cheeks. She has enormous blue eyes that are so clear and beautiful that you can’t stop looking into them. She is slim and petite. And she speaks in a charming way with a decidedly little girl voice. Amazingly she still has all of these characteristics in full measure at the age of eight and a half.

At the same time she is feisty, oh so feisty. She is the feistiest of all our children, by far. She has a fierce drive towards mastery, a dry sense of humor and she loves stories about war. Go figure. Watching her narrate about battles between the Romans and the English, for instance, is a full experience in which she acts out sword play, leaps from the furniture, and compellingly dramatizes moments of glory. It is not something to enter into lightly!

Faith is now in Term 3 of Year 1 in the Ambleside Online program. To her unmitigated delight, she is now scheduled to read Viking Tales by Jennie Hall. She apparently overheard enough of this book when I was reading portions of it to her older brother and sister a while back to know that it was going to be a favorite of hers. She is primed and ready to go. She literally begs to read it.

Yesterday she read chapter 3 and needed to narrate it to me. I was in the basement washing laundry so she dressed warmly and came down there to do her narration. (I find this is a great combination for the children and me, by the way. While hand washing the laundry, I am occupied doing something rhythmic and useful which frees us both up to attend to the narration with relaxed interest.) She started out narrating in the usual way by which I mean she was standing next to me telling me the story. But by about halfway through, she spontaneously started to sing her narration!

Now we learned in Viking Tales that the Vikings had a very rich tradition of storytelling and song. The book begins with “What the Sagas Were” and says this:

So, as the family worked in the red fire-light, the father told of the kings of Norway, of long voyages to strange lands, of good fights. And in farmhouses all through Iceland these old tales were told over and over until everybody knew them and loved them. Some men could sing and play the harp. This made the stories all the more interesting. People called such men “skalds,” and they called their songs “sagas.”

Every midsummer there was a great meeting. Men from all over Iceland came to it and made laws. During the day there were rest times, when no business was going on. Then some skald would take his harp and walk to a large stone or a knoll and stand on it and begin a song of some brave deed of on old Norse hero. At the first sound of the harp and the voice, men came running from all directions, crying out:

“The skald! The skald! A saga!”

I know that Faith was not consciously remembering this aspect of Viking life while she was narrating to me, nor was she even conscious of the fact that she was singing. She simply sang. Furthermore, some of her sung words started to rhyme as she proceeded along! She became somewhat conscious of this at times and expressed a little surprise but these things happen in our children’s lives all the time so she didn’t even pause over it. She simply sang me her saga.

Oh, how I wished I could have caught this on video but I didn’t want to break the moment or cause her to become self-conscious in any way. So I kept plunging the laundry while listening attentively and tucked away in my heart the memory of my little Viking narrating to me in song the grand adventures of yore.

For some reason, I have always had a steady stream of nicknames for this interesting child so I decided to look up the Norse for her name, Faith. In a spare moment, I asked my husband to please quickly Google this for me and he found this wonderful resource:

English - Old Norse Dictionary

which came from YourDictionary.com page of Germanic Language Free Online Dictionaries

I love words and old meanings and etymologies and dictionaries so the sight of all of these dictionaries about made me swoon. Anyway, Faith in Norse is Tru with an accent mark over the ‘u’ I don’t know how to replicate here and with a pronunciation I have yet to uncover (also it doesn’t appear that the word “Faith” was used as a name then as it is now). In my web travels on this subject, I also came across this resource that gives the real “back story” on Viking women in general and Sigrid (Harald’s queen) in particular. Pretty stern stuff. Definitely not suitable for children - or not suitable for non-Viking children anyway, I guess. I wonder what sort of process author Jennie Hall went through to whitewash these Viking stories enough for a modern, delicate sensibilities type of audience and yet retain enough of the gusto that children like my daughter are so thoroughly engaged?

(That resource, Viking Answer Lady, is a very useful one to use for anyone whose children want to know more about Viking culture by the way. She provides information on every aspect of Viking culture, including the social practice of having thralls as well as all other aspects of daily life, war, religion, agriculture and so on in simple language. I personally would not turn a child loose on this site but rather glean information yourself to pass on as well as perhaps pick out photos to share of things like Icelandic sheep.)

Now that I think about it, the Viking Tales author must have gone through a narration process of her own in order to pare the extensive, colorful Viking sagas down to a storyline that was accessible to the young children of one hundred years ago and today. That is what is so neat about narration. It truly is a process of digestion. When you digest food, that food mixes with what is already in your body to become something new in order to maintain that which is higher - the human organism. When a child hears or reads a story and then narrates it, that story mixes with what is inherent in the child and it also becomes something new. Yes, the child makes the story his or her own by narrating it and is nourished through that process. But in addition, the human story moves forward just a little bit each time a child adds his or her own perspective, talents and abilities to the story itself. Ideally through the very natural process of narration, the uniqueness of each child combines with the universality of timeless human stories to create something new - again in order to maintain that which is higher, i.e. the inner development of the next generation.

In any case, I was left in wonder at my cherubic little girl giving me a such a rousing Viking narration in song. In the same way that one never quite knows the trajectory of the future, one also never quite knows what will come of the deeply interesting process of educere (Latin) or the drawing out of the values, knowledge and abilities already within our children. Narration is an all around wonderful, natural method for digesting what is new, for drawing out what is old, and for providing a window into the marvels of our children’s inner lives.

With prayers for the future,

Leslie

Beginning’s and ending’s of days are so important, aren’t they? This is especially true when you are dealing with children and when working on developing spiritual knowledge and strengthening family connections. Those transition times of day are vital times to sit together and consider what we are really here for. Those transition times of day can be profitably used to help us and our children make transitions between inner and outer, between head and heart, between material life and life purpose. In short, we have found that the transition times of day are best dedicated to family prayer and spiritual readings and quiet discussion.

We have said the Mission prayer together as a family in the evening for over a decade now and we have said it together in the morning for probably two or three years. In other words, we have prayed together long enough for patterns to emerge. As the children move through phases of development, our way of handling prayer time shifts in response and our experience as a family invariably deepens. it is interesting to watch and satisfying to experience.

As a matter of fact, we are at such a juncture now. The children have taken a leap in development and my focus on effective scheduling and maintaining an organized approach to their spiritual education has strengthened. I am very happy with the current result.

My longstanding wish has finally come true that we are able to say the prayer as a family (which includes Dad by the way) early in the morning. The children have time to wake up and interact a bit and get themselves ready for the day. My husband has time to himself and drinks some of his delicious chai and then we gather in the living room for prayer time. Before, prayer time was happening after milking the cow and after some of the children had started their independent homeschooling assignments and often even after breakfast. This never seemed quite right to me but it was the best we could do at the time with all of the demands and age groups involved. Now, however, we are truly starting our days with family prayer (everyone has their own individual prayer/meditation time according to age and ability upon first waking up and before leaving their rooms). This is making for a more peaceful prayer time because family members are not having to be pulled back from daytime activities in order to slow back down for prayer.

My husband and I sit together on a sofa while each of our children sits in a specific spot on a prayer mat with boys on one side and girls on the other. In the mornings, we say the prayer together and sit silently for five minutes as directed. Then I read a few paragraphs or up to a page or so aloud from Down Memory Lane, Vol. 1. I have been reading from Down Memory Lane this way for a couple of years now - at first on and off but now every morning. It is just a wonderful book to share with children. With beautiful language and in a narrative format, so many important topics are touched upon in the course of things: spiritual principles, intergenerational family living, goals and methods of education, kitchen medicine vs pharmaceutical based medicine, history of India, religion and religious practices, raising children, the role of money and jobs, the grit of older generations and what their lives were really like and so much more. Each day I ask the children to briefly summarize what we read about the day before and then I read the next section until I come to a natural stopping point. There is always something of great merit to discuss which we do briefly until their understanding of the subject is full for the moment. (During the fall, we followed this discussion with several minutes devoted to memorizing the maxims together. They memorized them easily over a period of a month or two which I will post about separately.) Then we are off to our busy days grounded and filled with spiritual inspiration.

Evenings are a little different. We were having trouble getting the children settled down after long, active days. They sit in close quarters and tended to fuss with each other and do other than create a spiritual atmosphere! Even I was not sliding into the room until the last minute due to busyness of getting the kitchen cleaned up and the children ready for bed and so on. My husband particularly was getting really frustrated with this state of affairs and rightly so. During meditation, the thought came to me that I needed to go ahead of everyone into the room and create a quiet atmosphere to silently encourage them into right behavior. It also occurred to me that a second reading from something else on the Sahaj Marg bookshelf would help make the evening time more special.

Now evening prayer time goes like this. Everyone leaves the living room 10 minutes before prayer time which is now set at the (winter) time of 7:30pm. At first I, but now one of the children in turn, goes in there and straightens anything that needs straightening, turns off the main light and turns on a small light next to where I sit. Mats and shawls are put out as well as the book I am reading from. Then the child gets our chime and rings it around the house and calls everyone to “prayer time.” They enter a room of low light and silence with me already sitting there. We get composed and ready and then Dad joins us. I am currently reading from Prayer, Sahaj Marg Educational Series, Vol. 6 which is a book length compendium of quotes about the subject of prayer from throughout Sahaj Marg literature. I try to take a few minutes to glance ahead to choose the next suitable passage that will be understandable to them and note any vocabulary words that would be profitably explained ahead of time. I read. They ask questions or make comments and then we say the prayer together and sit quietly for five minutes again. Then it is upstairs to bed and books for them and some quiet downstairs for us. Again each person prays and/or meditates in their own room according to age and requirements.

The transformation in them and in our time together in prayer since adopting this approach has been incredible. It has gone from being profane (i.e. a bit on the fly) to sacred (i.e. suffused with the conscious intent of truly setting the time aside). The quality of the quiet during the five minutes of silence has deepened dramatically to the extent that we all tend to sit there quietly absorbed even afterwards. It is a very fit way to make the transition to bed and private prayers.

As ever, bringing these special times of day into the light of conscious intent and planning as well as meditating on any problems that crop up that need to be solved invariably brings us all to a higher level of functioning and to a deeper level of understanding and experience. It is a most gratifying and edifying process and one I am very grateful to be able to share with my husband and children. If it were not for the children, I would never discover many of these things. There is, indeed, so much to be gained from conducting prayer and spiritual study beautifully together within grihastha (family) life.

With prayers for the future,

Leslie

I have become vividly aware of the fact that the adage about slowly figuring out a baby’s needs and best schedule only to have the baby promptly change and require a whole new approach and schedule remains just as true for older children as it does for babies. Many parents perhaps are not as vividly aware of this during these time in history when children and parents spend most of their time apart. However when you are homeschooling, the greater intimacy demands that you be acutely aware of your children’s changes while the flexibility and goals of teaching them at home charge you with the responsibility of responding to those changes for the best. It surely can keep a mama/teacher hopping!

Kind of forgetting this, I thought I had certain structures nicely in place for something approaching forever. We used Ambleside Online (AO) and I was thrilled with it and so were the children. Aside from having to tweak a few books that were too slanted towards one religion or the general direction of the history selections that were a bit too “white male European” for my comfort, I figured we would use AO for “always and always and always” and come out at the other end wondrously educated, deeply thoughtful and exquisitely sensitive to beauty and duty. I had the older two of the children I am homeschooling doing their work together as they are a day less than a year apart in age with the older one being a boy and the younger one a girl. They went through Year 1 together and had been working through Year 2 in the same way. Then my next girl was working through Year 1 while my youngest, a boy, was working on the cusp of Year 0/Year 1. Aside from the fact that I found all of this pretty difficult to keep up with given my other (homesteading, writing, home business, endless real food making) duties, it was otherwise great.

Then a few things happened. (1) My adrenal fatigue worsened dramatically; (2) I could no longer tolerate the split between the focus and concerns of AO and the activities and vision of our homesteading/spiritual life; (3) I discovered the Prepare and Pray curriculum; (4) Will and Anna, the two who were going through AO together and who, in fact, had done everything together all their lives… changed. They have always had a very cooperative, complementary relationship which I realize now has had a great deal to do with their differences. Now that they are 10 and 9, their differences in learning styles, interests, and assorted boy/girl variances are coming sharply into view. This is a very neat development but it is requiring major modifications in the areas of curricula, scheduling and goal setting.

These changes, or my full recognition of them, didn’t happen all at once. They occurred gradually over a number of months. I fretted and wondered over what I was seeing and feeling. I tried a little of this and that and then, several months ago, I went down with an abscessed tooth (plus migraine!). I wasn’t thinking about this (or anything else for that matter) while I went through that painful experience but when I got up from it, I found to my surprise that the old straight ahead AO way had been taken from me and I was tasked with developing a new way for our family. At least that is how I experienced it. Ever since I have been very busy trying to figure out a more close fitting approach to curricula and scheduling for us. I have been thinking more carefully and originally about long-term educational goals. And I persuaded my computer-savvy husband to create this dedicated homeschooling blog for me. I want to keep track of the changes in thinking and action and outcomes with regards to our children’s education. I want to leave a paper trail that is easy to follow and not interspersed with all of the many homesteading projects and realizations that are on our Pockets of the Future blog (plus I love the internal spontaneous combustion that happens when many related thoughts, ideas and observations are brought together in one place). I want to be able to look back and trace out what happened and be able to share anything that might be useful with others in a way that is accessible.

In upcoming posts, I will share what changes we are working with at the moment as well as some of my questions about the future. I will document our progress with Ambleside Online as well as with Prepare and Pray. I will share book choices and approaches to subject matter and individual student. And I will attempt to keep up. That last bit will probably be my biggest challenge of all!

Thank you for joining me here and for looking with me towards a somewhat different approach to homeschooling. May our willingness, loving intentions and dedicated work bear sweet fruit.

With prayers for the future,

Leslie

We seem to have settled into a new Sunday morning practice that brings delight to all of us and gives the day a special glow. We are laying a beautiful table for Sunday morning breakfast. And by “we”, I really mean “they”, the children.

I have labored for years to make Sundays a day that is set aside. My ultimate goal has been to have the children grow in an atmosphere where the whole day has a feeling of being set aside, not just the morning with its obviously spiritually oriented activities. In other words, what if every Sunday were spent as if we were at a day-long gathering with Him? That is what I am continually aiming for. I have found that this requires frequent adjustments in my thinking and approach to the day because things are always changing in our family circumstances. Seasons change changing our workload with them. The children grow older, therefore requiring different supports and ideas to make the day special for them. My husband and I experience varying degrees of fatigue and overwhelm (!) and so can only take on so much that is new or sustain so much that is extra at a time. Neither of us grew up with this practice of setting Sundays aside, by the way, so conducting our family life this way isn’t automatic. It takes a continually refreshed dedication and is, therefore, another one of those things I am inspired to invent (constantly).

I am discovering that having children now old enough to catch the spirit of the thing as well as capable enough to carry some of the necessary actions forward makes all the difference in the world. We are ever and ever more a genuine team headed towards the same lofty goals. I welcome the extra hands and hearts pitched towards accomplishing family dreams. It is all so much more fun and doable now with them there to help.

Back to Sunday morning breakfasts -

For some years now, I have made either Indian breakfasts on Sundays or else something that was clearly special. Yesterday, for instance, I made raisin scones which my husband particularly loves and everyone else would too if I made them often enough for them to get hooked on them. But now in addition to special Sunday morning food, we are sitting down to a special Sunday morning table and to a special Sunday morning cup of tea. Oldest daughter (who is increasingly interested in herbs and is trying to find funding to take the Family Herbalist course at the Dr. Christopher School of Natural Healing that is wildly on sale at the moment) is now charged with making a big pot of tea every Sunday morning while second oldest daughter (who is working her way through the Christian Light Home Economics Course) takes great care in setting the table with a cloth, a centerpiece and my grandmother’s china all perfectly placed.They do this while I cook up breakfast so we are all working together.

Everyone comes to the set table with a kind of reverence. It is quite amazing. Second oldest son positively glows. Two youngest children are sweetly careful with the china. Husband lingers at the table much longer than usual. Oldest son asks for as much tea as he can get away with. Oldest daughter pours graciously. And we all marvel over how much better tea tastes when drunk from a fine china tea cup than from a mug. At least on Sunday mornings it does…

It is good, I think, to have Sundays associated with beauty and delight for

There are three types of bodies… Third is the soul or the causal body which is called ‘Karana Shareer’.’It is made of happiness, joy and bliss. This is the sheath of bliss or Anandamaya Kosha, the food of which is joy. Truth Eternal, p. 31

May we feed our souls joy every Sunday and find ways to bring beauty to our fellowship in Him always.

With prayers for the future,

Leslie

I have struck upon a wonderful variation on narrating that adds variety to my children’s diet as well as moral fiber.

The Prepare and Pray curriculum includes an extensive 48 item list of character qualities which students are supposed to keep in mind as we read through The Swiss Family Robinson. After reading through a chapter, the children are supposed to share some of the character qualities they saw illustrated in the reading. It is a good idea - especially in a teach-y book like this one.

My first step with my children was to go over the character qualities and their meanings. Quality names like “discernment,” “tactfulness,” and “diligence” were unfamiliar to them. They know the qualities, just not their names. Of course, there is enormous power in naming in that it brings what is being named into conscious awareness so just having them learn the names of these 48 distinct character qualities and considering with them how they are illustrated in our family life is a wonderfully deepening exercise.

Next I used this list as the basis for The Swiss Family Robinson narrations. We all sit together (even my husband comes in for this reading) while I read a chapter. Then I simply ask them to think of any of the character qualities they felt were illustrated by the events of the chapter. They are to name the quality and then narrate extensively about from the portion of the chapter that illustrated it. This approach has yielded excellent narrations which all ages gleefully contribute to and very rich ensuing family discussions. Furthermore, the children have come up with relevant charcter qualities that aren’t even on the list and my husband makes interesting observations like the fact that the father in the story brags too much about his own abilities.

Finally, with the list by now very familiar to all the children, I can occasionally request that they narrate by character quality for other books they are reading on their own from the Ambleside Online curriculum. I really like having this variation to put before them every once in a while and every single one of them really enjoys narrating in this way. Other variations on narration often have some one child or the other who is resistant around here.

This is one of the many ways that pulling Prepare and Pray and Ambleside Online together is creating an approach to learning that really works well for my family. Each contains principles and materials to be applied to the other and to our homesteading/spiritually-based family life in general that gives all of us a feeling of congruence, deepening and forward movement. For those who do not use Prepare and Pray, you can make up your own list of character qualities for your children to draw upon or find lists elsewhere. I suggest making the final list quite extensive so as to stretch your children’s awareness, their ability to discriminate between qualities as well as their discernment in picking out illustrations of good character in the many books that they will be reading.

With prayers for the future,

Leslie

December 2, 2008

My husband and I have just released a 30 page lesson plan for young children to accompany our first Bamboo Grove Press publication, My Friend Within. Yesterday’s cross post kind of describes the orientation of the lesson plan and what motivated us to put it together and has videos of our now older children doing some of the activities. Most of the game/activity portion of the My Friend Within Lesson Plan was drawn from a much larger curriculum we started writing about five years ago to accompany the first children’s book we wrote entitled Playing at His Feet, an ABC Book.

We thought that knowing something about the original, much more extensive curriculum would help place the My Friend Within Lesson Plan in context so we pulled out the brief article that was published about it in Constant Remembrance some years ago and it is quoted here below:

Playing at His Feet is an alphabet book for young children created to introduce youngsters in the Mission to some of the basic vocabulary and concepts found in Sahaj Marg. The Playing at His Feet Companion turns the alphabet book into the foundation for a full value-based program for preschool through elementary age children that can be offered during satsangh, gatherings and at home.

Based on the rhythm of introducing one letter of the alphabet per week, The Playing at His Feet Companion is a guide for moving through each session. Guidelines are included for starting each session with the Mission prayer and ending it with a sense of gratitude, making children comfortable, and encouraging them to express their unique insights and ideas. For each letter of the alphabet and line from the alphabet book, The Companion provides related Sahaj Marg principles and terms as well as character qualities, a quote from Sahaj Marg literature and suitable children’s book titles from general literature. Also included for each session are simple activities, music, art projects and fun games designed to gently illustrate the principle or character quality of the week as well as snack ideas listed by letter. In centers where this program is implemented during satsangh, parents are encouraged to continue building upon these sessions with their children at home throughout the week.

As Reverend Master said in Hyderabad in 1999, “My Master wished our children to be model children, then model youth, and grow into model adults capable of guiding social trends in the right evolutionary direction for the spiritual uplift of humanity – in short, they should be torch-bearers at every stage of life …” The goal of The Playing at His Feet Companion is to help set a strong foundation for our young torch-bearers and to begin to lay a course for them to enter their abhyasi lives naturally and easily. Constant Remembrance, October, 2004, Vol. XX No. 4 p. 77

The Playing at His Feet Companion curriculum was wonderful but it was so extensive that we only got about halfway through writing it. We started homesteading at that point and just couldn’t carry both undertakings at once. And now our children are older so we are busy creating new Sahaj Marg materials and lesson plans for their now older level. So we are very happy to be able to share at least some of what is in The Playing at His Feet Companion in the My Friend Within Lesson Plan. No sense letting all of that goodness go to waste!

I do harbor a secret hope that we will be able to finish The Playing at His Feet Companion some day. Or perhaps one of our children will finish it as they use it with their children. That would be a wonderful carrying forward of inspiration and obligation towards the future. I look forward to it.

With prayers for the future,
Leslie

This is cross posted from our Bamboo Grove Press blog.

December 1, 2008

The modern human being is filled with unrealized gifts, abilities and talents.

Given the limitations and diversions of modern day society, we do not generally receive the training and experiences necessary for drawing out the higher, more noble qualities that exist in all of us. Technology and industrialization have become crutches that have kept us from having to realize our full innate abilities. Instead we have become dependent upon man made systems and hypnotized by materialism. In fact, most of us have become “disabled” in a way because we have no working relationship with the Divinity that resides within us. Everything in our consumerist culture pulls us outward and away from our true Divine inner nature. All of our intentions, goals, and actions tend to be of a material nature while our sacred inner relationship with the Divinity within is left to wither and die.

For this reason, my wife and I have made providing experiences, training and education geared towards forming an inner relationship with the Self or Master our top priority with regards to raising our children. We have always felt that our primary duty as parents was to provide the circumstances necessary for our children to uncover their true wealth, the Divine being that resides within them. By creating an enhanced environment through prayer, intentions, training and experiences, we are giving them the very best chance to become what they are meant to become and succeed in both their inner and outer worlds. With their inner Friend to guide them on their path, success will be assured and their true inner natures will be honored. Our ultimate goal is not to give them fish or even teach them how to fish but rather to provide them with all the tools and time necessary for them to find their “Inner Fisherman,” so to speak. With their “Inner Fisherman” in the lead, a lifetime of fishing will come to them naturally and successfully.

Out of this inner compulsion my wife and I share, we have spent years developing spiritually based lesson plans and activities of various sorts for our children and, really, for all children. In order to make these opportunities potentially available to all children, we have published My Friend Within, and have a few more children’s books to come that are along the same lines.

We are also now very happy to provide, at no cost, a complementary portion of our general lesson plan to people who purchase a copy of the book.

Anyone interested need only email us and request the My Friend Within Lesson Plan and we will send back the 30 page pdf file of activities, games and experiences designed to nurture the innate relationship between the child and their Friend who resides within them.

While it is true that children are born with the innate knowledge that God is within, any innate knowledge that is not triggered by models and experiences in the child’s environment will tend to lay dormant or even disappear entirely. We parents should do our best to not let that happen, especially when it comes to our children’s relationship with the Divine. It is our deep hope that as many parents as possible will get a copy of My Friend Within and use the Lesson Plan as well as develop activities of their own to further enhance this training for their children. In fact, we hope that someday nurturing a child’s inner relationship will be considered as mandatory a requirement as teaching a child to read. There is no greater gift to our children than aiding them in allowing their true inner nature to emerge into useful practice.

Here is a five part video series featuring our now older children doing some activities from the Lesson Plan. In the first video, I talk a little more about about some of the ideas in this blog post while spending time with our cows out in the pasture.

In this video, the children read My Friend Within aloud.

In the next two videos, our children play The Exploration game. With their eyes closed, they use their senses, including their inner senses, to figure out what objects, food, smells and even some of our farm animals are. Even at their somewhat older ages, they still love this game and ask to play it.

This last video is some old video clips I found. The first is of the children doing one of the circle exercises from the Lesson Plan. The second clip is from three years ago when our youngest son, then three years old, read a copy of My Friend Within back when it was called He Sits.

I have watched this last video five times in the last few days and I still am filled with joy and laughter each time I see it. I wish for all parents, teachers and children to find their own joy as they connect with their eternal Friend within.

From the rustling leaves of the Grove,
Paul

November 11, 2008

Like many of the “living simply” tasks I am learning to do around the homestead, I find that hand washing laundry is done at a pace and with a physical rhythm that encourages contemplation. Also because water is involved, I find that my thoughts really flow. One of the trains of thought that has come to me through several washing sessions has to do with the myriad ways that hand washing laundry is similar to homeschooling. While homeschooling is much more common now than it used to be, hand washing laundry is not yet common again here in the United States. As a matter of fact, I have seen a number of people who engage in homeschooling decrying those who also engage in hand washing laundry. This is kind of interesting because most folks nowadays would decry both with no thought of distinguishing between the two. So stepping back a bit, what can I say from experience are some of the similarities between hand washing laundry and homeschooling?

1. Both activities require that you re-arrange your life in ways that run counter to the dictates of the modern materials/money economy. Interestingly, since these are both age old activities, practicing them at this point in history requires bold thinking, self-discipline and a creative approach to problem solving.

2. Both are giant steps towards self-sufficiency. All benefits that accrue from becoming more self sufficient in one’s daily activities flow from both hand washing laundry and homeschooling.

3. With both, you build skills that you will never forget and would never otherwise learn. Once you know how to teach a child to read or how to wash their dress to sparkling cleanness with your very own hands, you will always know how to do those things and will be able to do them anywhere, any time.

4. Both homeschooling and hand washing laundry create the space to pray about and devote yourself in service to the needs of others. As such both are, therefore, character building and have tremendous potential to deepen the bonds between family members as well as members of the community.

5. Both hand washing laundry and homeschooling are greatly enhanced if approached from a “teamwork” perspective. If the family works as a team to clean clothes or as a team to discover what it even means to be “educated” and works as a team to become truly educated together, then adventure, beauty, love and Divine inspiration may be your constant supports as you undertake either of these daily activities of life.

6. Carried out with awareness, both homeschooling and hand washing laundry demand fewer natural resources than conventional approaches to either education or laundering.

7. Hand washing laundry and homeschooling are both pathways to discovery and connection. People undertake both all over the world so a brotherly feeling of connection is waiting there to be experienced. I will write more about this aspect in another post. Furthermore, simple truths have been hidden away gradually and, at times, willfully by those promulgating the conventional approaches. How many people know now that you can get clothes much cleaner on your own than by using washing machines? How many people know now that a loving parent can teach their children how to read? How many people know now that artificial chemicals and so-called fragrances are the opposite of clean? How many people know now that education is best conducted in an atmosphere of wonder and love? Peeling away conventional attitudes and approaches to both laundering and educating can lead to delightful and unanticipated discoveries.

8. We are hardwired to find satisfaction in primary labor, i.e. the kind of work that is directly related to survival and real, natural life. Our economic engine is predicated upon us turning our backs on our true natures. It forcefully keeps us lulled in a state of perpetual forgetfulness about our true abilities and our higher purpose. However, I can say from vivid personal experience that taking the time to become reacquainted with the primary labors of life brings peaceful satisfaction brimming to the surface and spilling over into smiles, affectionate touches and contented sighs. The sight of honestly clean clothes ruffling in a breeze, the sound of milk hitting the milk pail, the experience of a child’s understanding blooming before your eyes are experiences that are wonderfully fresh and yet deeply remembered. There really is no substitute. The more of these activities you can include in your daily life, the more satisfied and confident you may feel.

9. Both hand washing laundry and homeschooling increase flexibility and expand your range of choices. Now if a person’s goal is to engage in secondary labor (i.e. most jobs which are sort of made up and have nothing to do with creating food or clothes or shelter), to earn ever more money, to increase prestige and to have more things, then - no - neither hand washing laundry nor home educating are the way to go because they dramatically decrease the flexibility needed for those sorts of endeavors. However, if living a natural, unassuming, deeply intimate, conserving sort of life is your goal then both hand washing laundry and homeschooling expand your options considerably. You can wash clothes based upon the weather. You can wash inside or outside. You can work alone or with others. You can decide how much elbow grease to put into a particular stain or pair of work jeans or not. You can use equipment or not. You can make small adjustments throughout the process because you are consciously a part of the entire process. It is the same with homeschooling. You can choose educational goals, content, scheduling, exact location… everything. You get to choose everything based upon your style as teacher, the propensities and learning styles of the students, budget, other daily tasks that must be accomplished, spiritual goals or not and so on. As any of these conditions change, you are free to change with them because while doing it yourself is more work, doing it yourself comes largely free of institutional rigidity and hindrances. You are flexible and free to respond to inspiration.

10. One of the most startling similarities between hand washing laundry and homeschooling is the wildly successful outcome that comes from giving individual attention. With both activities, individual attention is perhaps the greatest key to success. Examining each item of clothing in the bright light of the sun, assessing what sort of treatment it needs and then supplying said treatment is the key to keeping everything in the best possible condition and making it last the longest. Prayerfully considering the needs and aptitudes of each child and then stretching as a parent/teacher to meet those needs and aptitudes goes further in making it possible for each child to become what they should become than anything else. Simple systems carried out with modest resources generally encourage the magnifying glass of the human mind to be pointed towards the needful. Improved outcomes nearly always follow.

Honestly, I find striving to live simply a gold mine of ideas, discoveries, insights, and opportunities. This seems to be true no matter what the “living simply” activity is (and is one of the biggest secrets of our times I might add). In any case, it is certainly true with both hand washing laundry and homeschooling. May we all boldly and yet humbly step away from institutional thinking and discover what we can through the profitable use of our own hearts, minds and hands.

With prayers for the future,
Leslie