Christmas gifts remind me of the opportunity I have to influence the physical environment that surrounds my children. As I give and ponder what would be best, I have always felt that whatever I choose can help direct their growth. As Dr. Wernher von Braun said, "All one can really leave one's children is what's inside their heads. Education, in other words, and not earthly possessions, is the ultimate legacy, the only thing that cannot be taken away." I love to give them gifts that will help them learn, not just toys that provide temporary entertainment. Improving the conditions for growth and development will help my children have a rich legacy inside their heads.
Especially for young children and those who homeschool, our most influentual physical environment is the home. I don't think this means a child needs to grow up in a home that looks ready for a Better Homes and Gardens photo shoot. Mine certainly wouldn't meet that test. It also doesn't mean the environment has to be perfect. One thing I love about Suzuki's philosophy is that he encourages us to strive for the best while simultaneously acknowledging that none of us are there. As long as we are continually working to provide a better environment for our children and keep that goal in mind, it is enough. In Nurtured by Love he wrote: "Without stopping, without haste, carefully taking a step at a time forward will surely get you there."
My careful steps begin with building an environment that has an abundance of things that will help my children learn and grow. Yesterday I felt that the choices I made for gifts mostly matched this test. A Christmas afternoon where I can watch one daughter piece together a jigsaw puzzle, another make handmade cards from a book I gave her, my toddler and preschooler cuddle on my lap as I read them a book full of Mary Cassatt's paintings of mothers and children, my son attempt magic tricks with new supplies, and my husband and another son play ping pong together in the garage while a new recording of Handel's Messiah plays on the stereo counts to me as one day where I succeeded in establishing a nurturing environment. Many other days fall far short of this ideal, though, like those when I am frantically trying to prepare for a Shakespeare class I'm teaching so I allow the boys to play Lego Star Wars on the Xbox just to get them out of the way.
Where does a quest to improve the atmosphere in our homes begin? I start and end with books. They are the focal point of my home, with a diverse set of books on nearly every subject for everyone in my family to learn about. On a good day I think the floors, shelves and tables in my home are a blank canvas on which we are daily composing a shifting collage of books. Other days as I look at the mountainous pile on the tables in my living room, I think my family is in danger of being buried under an avalanche of books. For some reason that I have never been able to figure out, the books that are out on the floor or a table entice my children much more than those that are shelved neatly by topic or author's last name. At the beginning of December, we brought the contents of a shelf of Christmas books downstairs and set them on the coffee table. All month the pile has been precariously balanced and the opposite of neat and tidy, but we have all read them, and I don't think we would have otherwise. Maybe for the sake of their education I need to pour a different shelf out onto the table every month.
Especially for young children and those who homeschool, our most influentual physical environment is the home. I don't think this means a child needs to grow up in a home that looks ready for a Better Homes and Gardens photo shoot. Mine certainly wouldn't meet that test. It also doesn't mean the environment has to be perfect. One thing I love about Suzuki's philosophy is that he encourages us to strive for the best while simultaneously acknowledging that none of us are there. As long as we are continually working to provide a better environment for our children and keep that goal in mind, it is enough. In Nurtured by Love he wrote: "Without stopping, without haste, carefully taking a step at a time forward will surely get you there."
My careful steps begin with building an environment that has an abundance of things that will help my children learn and grow. Yesterday I felt that the choices I made for gifts mostly matched this test. A Christmas afternoon where I can watch one daughter piece together a jigsaw puzzle, another make handmade cards from a book I gave her, my toddler and preschooler cuddle on my lap as I read them a book full of Mary Cassatt's paintings of mothers and children, my son attempt magic tricks with new supplies, and my husband and another son play ping pong together in the garage while a new recording of Handel's Messiah plays on the stereo counts to me as one day where I succeeded in establishing a nurturing environment. Many other days fall far short of this ideal, though, like those when I am frantically trying to prepare for a Shakespeare class I'm teaching so I allow the boys to play Lego Star Wars on the Xbox just to get them out of the way.
Where does a quest to improve the atmosphere in our homes begin? I start and end with books. They are the focal point of my home, with a diverse set of books on nearly every subject for everyone in my family to learn about. On a good day I think the floors, shelves and tables in my home are a blank canvas on which we are daily composing a shifting collage of books. Other days as I look at the mountainous pile on the tables in my living room, I think my family is in danger of being buried under an avalanche of books. For some reason that I have never been able to figure out, the books that are out on the floor or a table entice my children much more than those that are shelved neatly by topic or author's last name. At the beginning of December, we brought the contents of a shelf of Christmas books downstairs and set them on the coffee table. All month the pile has been precariously balanced and the opposite of neat and tidy, but we have all read them, and I don't think we would have otherwise. Maybe for the sake of their education I need to pour a different shelf out onto the table every month.
Early this fall I checked out dozens of children's books about 19th-century history to accompany the book my children are using to study history, Abraham Lincoln's World by Genevieve Foster. She has written several books that take the life of a famous individual, in this case Abraham Lincoln, and she tells the story of the world during his lifetime through a series of vignettes about other famous people and events. When I checked out the books, I optimistically planned on reading them with my children or at least, failing that, assigning them to read them. But a couple of months and a couple of renewals rolled by where I failed to use any but a couple of the books. As I bagged them up to return them to the library on their final due date, I began asking my children if they had read several titles, trying to figure out whether I should check out a bunch of them again later. I was surprised to discover that they had actually read most of the books on their own because they had seen them lying around.
One evening this past month when my son Jack saw Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol lying on the coffee table, he brought it to me and asked me to read it to him. What followed was a week of family gatherings around the fire as I read myself hoarse each evening and we all accompanied Ebeneezer Scrooge on his transformative journey with the Christmas spirits. My husband asked, "So what is the Ghost of Christmas Present supposed to represent? I think the Ghost of Christmas Past represents the Christmas feeling he once had that has now been extinguished, but what about this one?" I didn't have an instant answer, and I found myself pondering the Ghost of Christmas Present in a way I never had before. He now represents to me the abundance of Christmas that is inequitably distributed and the power we each have to give of what we have. I'm grateful to my son Jack and a messy pile of books on the coffee table for my stronger desire to give more this coming year from any abundance in my life: of things, knowledge, and love.
Posts
I loved reading this! It seems like right now our books get thrashed because they are constantly being read and taken into different rooms. Lizzie gets attached to one book and wants to play, eat and sleep with it. But like you said, I'm glad that they are being used and read even if the house isn't so clean and neat.
ReplyDelete