Cambridge School Shakespeare

Weaknesses plague most student editions of Shakespeare. They spend too much space dissecting the language and interpreting what Shakespeare means instead of helping students find meaning themselves. In addition, perhaps because this is the type of learning typical in schools, they make studying Shakespeare a dry exercise completed in a chair. The Cambridge School Series avoids these traps, however, and is the best tool I have encountered to help me teach Shakespeare. Each play in the series begins with a letter by editor Rex Gibson explaining the purpose of these editions. He writes:

This Julius Caesar aims to be different from other editions of the play. It invites you to bring the play to life in your classroom, hall or drama studio through enjoyable activities that will increase your understanding. Actors have created their different interpretations of the play over the centuries. Similarly, you are encouraged to make up your own mind about Julius Caesar, rather than having someone else's interpretation handed down to you.

Gibson actually does enable students to make up their own individual minds about what each play means instead of handing down an "expert" opinion. He does at times explain different ways people have viewed the play, but only as an opening for a discussion where readers can decide on their own interpretation. The activities also do "bring the play to life" by making the study of a play an active enterprise, helping students experience Shakespeare as Elizabethans originally did. In Renaissance England no one read Shakespeare's plays. Well, the actors might have, but it was en route to memorizing and performing them. The audience heard and saw. To fully experience Shakespeare today, I think it is necessary to watch movies or plays, read them aloud, memorize and perform selections from them, and do a variety of activities designed to help you contemplate them. The Cambridge School editions have made it easy for me and my students to get better acquainted with Shakespeare. Last year I taught 13 students As You Like It, Macbeth, and King Henry V, and I'm currently teaching Julius Caesar to my two daughters and niece. The series has been invaluable for me, reducing my preparation and research time as I have prepared to teach each play.

Some features of the editions I like are:

• Extensive photographs of real productions of the plays in both color and black and white. This enables students to see that every director has interpreted the play differently, so of course every reader can.
• Brief summaries of the action on each page to help the student understand the action. Plays with longer summaries tend to interpret the play in the process, in my opinion, leading the student to think only one interpretation is correct.
• Essays in the back that provide background information and discuss characters, imagery, Shakespeare's language, major themes, critics' reactions to the play, and performances of the play from Elizabethan times to the present.
• An unobtrusive glossary of difficult words. This way students can look for the meanings if they want, but it doesn't interrupt the flow of reading if they choose not to. I find that sometimes I understand less of the action if nearly every word is prominently defined and displayed.
• Activities to go along with the action of the play on the left-hand side of every page. These include discussing, acting, writing, drawing, designing sets or costumes, miming, and pretending you are a director making decisions about how to stage the play.
• Writing assignments that go beyond literary criticism. Some of the writing topics seem like traditional English class assignments, but others involve other types of writing: for example, writing additional scenes, promotional material for a "production" of the play, a letter from one of the characters to another, a poem to accompany part of it, and a scene recast as a chapter in a novel. Students can gain experience with creative writing, summarizing the action of the play, letter writing, and imitating Shakespeare's style in addition to structured expository writing.
• I habitually spend time on a never-ending quest for the perfect curriculum for every subject. When I do find something ideal, I feel like broadcasting it to everyone I know. Cambridge School, my best discovery in years, should be on everyone's homeschool high school essential list.

Leonard Law

"A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent" (Boy Scout Law).

 When my son Tommy had to memorize the Boy Scout Law and explain what it means, I found myself thinking about the advantages of a list of positive character traits to aspire for. I have always felt uninspired to craft a mission statement for our family, no matter how many times I have thought about or read Steven Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families; for some reason it never seemed like something my family would naturally come up with together, and I like family life to feel natural and authentic. "Wouldn't it be fun, though, to come up with our own "Leonard Law" of character traits instead of a mission statement?" I asked myself, and when I proposed it to the family, they all said yes.

At our family gathering to write the law, we began with each individual suggesting a few traits. We decided to whittle the list down to 12, just like the Scout Law. Multipurpose words won out over more specific ones as the debate over which traits to include continued. We decided "strong" could include both physical and moral strength, and "clean" could mean purity as well as personal hygiene and housekeeping. I was sad when "studious" lost out, but everyone convinced me that "curious" and "diligent" both overlapped with it. Making the final cuts took over an hour, and "fun" snuck in as our final choice because we didn't want to seem too serious all the time.

Until we see fit to come out with a new version, the "Leonard Law" says:

"A Leonard is faithful, obedient, curious, diligent, helpful, patient, honest, clean, strong, courteous, kind, and fun."

We have been discussing each of these traits in turn one night a week, deciding what they mean to us and how we can develop these qualities. One grumpy night I used the discussion to tell my children how they really aren't very obedient. My oldest daughter reminded me that these are qualities we want to have, not ones we are already stellar examples of. Since I want these to be times my children anticipate rather than dread, I have decided not to mention something specific my children have done unless it is positive. This week during our conversation I mentioned how each of my children had been helpful.

What do these traits mean to me? I have tried to summarize each in a sentence to give me focus as our family strives to build our character.

• Faithful: We are full of faith in our Savior Jesus Christ and dedicate our lives to emulating Him.
• Obedient: We obey our parents with love and respect, and we obey our God.
• Curious: We eagerly desire to learn about anything that is good and uplifting; nothing is boring.
• Diligent: We work hard with persistence and no procrastination.
• Helpful: We help each other and try to notice and meet the needs of others.
• Patient: We keep an even temperament, and we realize that the most valuable things in life take time.
• Honest: We love truth and represent this in our thoughts, words, and deeds.
• Clean: We cleanse both the inner and outer vessels, practicing good hygiene, good housekeeping, and personal purity.
• Strong: We exercise and face physical challenges to strengthen our bodies. We exercise faith and follow Christ to strengthen our spirits.
• Courteous: We understand that etiquette primarily means being aware of others and the effect of our actions on them.
• Kind: We treat others generously and gently.
• Fun: We believe enjoyment improves everything.

Our Leonard Law is a work in progress because our family and each of us as individuals are good people in progress. As we memorize it and bring its meaning to action in our lives, I think it will help us grow and give us a stronger family identity. Most of all, though, coming up with it was fun, and I want my children to remember it fondly some day when they are adults who have developed good habits of character.

Found Nouns

As much as possible, I try to avoid traditional curricula (textbooks and workbooks) in favor of living books, a concept originated by the educator Charlotte Mason. To me, a book is a living book if it is:

1. Well-written in a literary style
2. By a single author who cares about the subject

For our elementary school grammar studies this year, we are studying one of the parts of speech each month through books and activities. We began September with nouns, using the following three books:


Our final "test" on nouns was to name as many nouns as possible from the picture above. The same object could be named more than once; for example, the dice could also be a cube or a square. My family, my sister's family, and my mom and niece competed against each other. The family who found the most nouns that none of the other families found would win. Next time I try an activity like this, I think I will forego the competition because it made my boys a little too intense. It works just as well to find out how many nouns we could all find together. When I pooled our answers, I found that between the three families, we identified 176 unique nouns in the picture.

Afterwards we discussed how learning about nouns, and that multiple nouns can name the same object, could help us in writing. We decided that it can help us select the best words to represent something and avoid repetition by substituting other appropriate nouns when we can.

I selected the picture I did because it seemed to fit the season. I found it at the following link, where there were some other good pictures that could be used as well. http://www.theotherpages.org/spy/spy012.jpg
The I Spy book series would be another resource for pictures of nouns to name.

"Jack's Shoes. . .

are here."

This email grabbed me when I went to the computer this morning. Our piano teacher wrote it brilliantly. The subject line of "Jack's shoes. . ." made me eager to read on, even though I anticipated the conclusion with embarassment. I admire her tact and brevity. One of the advantages and challenges of taking Suzuki piano is that the teacher gets to know the students, parents and any parenting issues very well. Yesterday when Jack began his lesson she reminded him to take his shoes home with him, wondering how many shoes we need to buy since he has left them several times before. As I pulled out of her driveway, she chased me with one of Luke's shoes. I thanked her and drove off, then had to stop again as she caught up with me to pass the other one through the window to Karina. In a matter of minutes I discovered that Jack had once again left his shoes behind, so I expected and dreaded the email.

How does a mother who seems to be meeting her children's higher needs by homeschooling them, practicing instruments with them, directing them in plays, and all the other things I try to do fail to keep shoes on their feet? The truth: my feet are the bare ones. I appear to have it all together if you don't look at the ground when you see me, where my feet fight against the heat, the cold, the slivers, and the shards of glass. I can't do it all, even with constant effort, and my children grow up with part of the education and part of the clothing I think they should have. Next time you see my family, look above the ankles if you want to see perfection, but don't forget that bare feet are lurking beneath.

Try It

Yesterday morning I made sweet lemon risotto for breakfast, a creamy porridge with rice that I served with a dollop of Greek-style yogurt on top. My children all enthusiastically said they liked it, then ate what they were served in confirmation. For my part, I thought the recipe, styled so well in the cookbook with steam rising off the surface and lemon peel garnish,  tasted fine, so I emptied my bowl, but the texture had me struggling not to gag. Afterwards I asked, "Who would like me to make this again some time?"

Dead silence.

Finally, my son said, "This is the kind of thing you like but you don't really want to eat again," and everyone else nodded in agreement.

I felt grateful: grateful that my children eat without grumbling, grateful that they care enough about my feelings to pretend to like something I prepare that is hard to swallow, but most of all grateful that they are willing to try new things. My prayer is that this trait will be present with everything new I offer them, whether it be experiences, challenges or knowledge. Life offers many beautiful, uplifting things, not all of which appeal to every person. As long as they reject anything immoral or degrading, I want them to accept new things, trying more than a token taste. They need to chew and swallow, consuming the chunks of rice even if they're difficult to get down. Many academic challenges may be like that rice, incomprehensible and difficult to appreciate. Over time, with an honest attempt, that can change and their appreciation may grow.

I may never make sweet lemon risotto again, but I probably will eventually. I've found that I can learn to appreciate the good in anything through a positive attitude and repeated exposure. I pray this school year my family will face every new thing with an open mouth.

Two Favorite Things in One

Two of my favorite things:

• Dividing time into 15-minute segments
• Mechanical devices

An hour, sometimes even just a half-hour, seems daunting. But fifteen is brief and undecided: at age fifteen I faced life boldly, eager to assume the responsibilities of adulthood, then drop them next to the front door like my school backpack and resume the role of unburdened childhood. Fifteen minutes also hovers in the balance between grim work and carefree play: it's the time I optimistically tell my family (and myself) it will take to do the dinner dishes but also the time to read a few choice picture books aloud, the time to fold and put away laundry, the time to mix up a batch of cookies, then that again for them to bake and cool enough to eat, the time for a grueling abdominal workout, the time for a stroll down the street to get the mail and examine it  briefly, the time to pay the bills, the time for a phone call with my mother or sisters. It is also, in Charlotte Mason's view, an appropriate length for a lesson with a young child.

Now to mechanical devices. Electronics dominate my life: phones, computer, email, pesky things that break all the time and have mysterious chips inside that somehow make them work. I prefer something I can hold in my hand, manipulate and watch in action: a lemon squeezer, an egg beater, a garlic press, a metronome with a pendulum.

So I coveted at first sight the 15-minute sand timer in the Chinaberry catalog. It's a physical object with heft, 7.75" tall and 3" in diameter. I want to chronicle my days in fifteen minute portions I can see flowing by in sand instead of hearing the electronic buzz of my kitchen timer. Seeing it I am transported to my childhood, watching The Wizard of Oz, with Dorothy's life visually sliding away until her heroics conquer the witch, and along with her, the relentless flow of sand in the timer. Perhaps if I turn it over carefully and repeatedly I can tame time, turning it backwards like Hermione in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. With a sand timer of my own, I hope to master time rather than have it master me.

I have to go. My next 15 minutes are set aside to make a purchase at Chinaberry.

Six Hopeful Habits

A new school year approaches. I love new beginnings because it always gives me an opportunity to try to improve. Not having been born perfect and still nowhere near approaching perfection, I sometimes feel on the verge of giving up, but a change of season, a change of emphasis, and I find renewed purpose and motivation. On another blog I found a homeschooling mom's list of six things that should be a part of her children's daily lives. Since my two favorite educational philosophers, Shinichi Suzuki and Charlotte Mason, both emphasize the importance of good habits, I have come up with the six habits I want my family to develop. These are not the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Instead, I offer the "6 Hopeful Habits of Highly Persistent but Inconsistent People." Each is followed by my brief definition.

1. Devotion: the regular practice of prayer and studying the Word of God.
2. Cleanliness: carefully neat and clean, both in my person and my surroundings.
3. Practice/Study: a concerted effort to learn a skill or gain knowledge in an efficient manner.
4. Exercise: daily activity that requires physical exertion.
5. Family Togetherness: daily positive family time.
6. Contemplation: a quiet time so that "with all [my] getting [I can] get understanding" (Proverbs 4:7).

What habits would you like to develop?

Teaching Reading With Stories

When a child first begins reading, I think it's important for them to find the connection between sounding out words and real books. Choices when they are only reading short-vowel words are limited, though. Early phonics readers tend to be contrived and, due to the limited vocabulary, not that well-written or interesting. Another option is to read a book to the child, stopping at the words he is capable of reading and having him read those words. However, this method disrupts the continuity of the story and can make a fun read-aloud book more of a chore.

Yesterday I happened upon a third option that Luke enjoyed. As I read Baboushka and the Three Kings by Ruth Robbins aloud to him, I quickly jotted down a list of words we encountered that he could read, words like hut, men, lost, gift, and rest. By the time we finished the book, I had 20 words on the paper. Then I told him, "Look Luke, these are words from the book that you can read. Let's hear the story again, and you can read them." I then retold the story in my own words, stopping to let him read. Because they were already in the same order as the book, it was a fun review of the plot and a way for him to tell the story again. I plan on trying it at storytime every day.

All the World's a Stage

"How did you get your students to memorize all those lines?" a girl asked me at our Shakespeare class performance of As You Like It. Memorizing the lines for a play that is over two hours long is no easy feat, made even more difficult when much of the language is archaic, written over 400 years ago. In addition, the character Rosalind has more lines than any other woman in a Shakespeare play, and I cast two students in the role, each acting Rosalind for one of our performances. While I consider memorizing to be an accomplishment, many of the other skills my students acquired as we rehearsed and performed As You Like It are even greater. Each of the following will serve them well throughout their lives.

• Commitment: Every student chose to participate and to put in the work necessary for a smooth performance. I could not make everyone memorize their lines even if I wanted to, but they cared enough about having a good performance that they all practiced on their own and learned their parts. 
• Enunciating and projecting: These two abilities are the foundation of all public speaking. A person who can be heard and understood encourages the audience to listen and care about what they have to say.
• Empathy: Acting requires empathy because an actor will only be convincing if they understand and enter into the feelings of the character they play. As the director, I watched my young cast members mature into their roles over the course of our rehearsals, progressively bringing greater depth of expression into their acting. The ability to empathize may be the foundation for all moral behavior. According to the Collins English Dictionary, empathy is "the power of understanding and imaginatively entering into another person's feelings." Unless they understand that others have feelings different than their own, people will not care how their actions affect another person.
• Teamwork: Participating in the cast of a play requires cooperation. If a cast member forgets lines or fails to come onstage at their cue, every other actor on the stage needs to cover for and try to help them while appearing to the audience as if this was the way it was supposed to be. In some group projects, one person can get stuck doing most of the work, but in a play, a few good actors can't make up for several who consistently forget their part or play it woodenly. The success of all depends on each one in a transparent way.
• Literary Interpretation: Close readings of a text yield the best interpretations. Too often when people read literature, they form their opinions quickly, without an indepth study of the text to justify their conclusions, but acting requires memorization. My students know Shakespeare's own words in a way that a cursory reading and discussion in a class would never provide. They had to think about what each of their lines meant to become the character and to help the audience catch on even when the language was opaque. My own understanding of the play gained clarity and depth through all the rehearsals and even the performances.

If asked I wouldn't know how to grade my students on their participation in the play. Education can't be easily quantified. Schools tend to focus too much on requirements and benchmarks, constantly measuring incremental mastery of knowledge or skills that appears systematic but is really arbitrary. I measure education in a more personal fashion. Have my students grown in skills and character traits that will expand for them the experience of being human? Will they desire to know other things in the future the way they now know As You Like It? Do they work better with others? Can they communicate better? I believe they have, and I hope as they all find and play a meaningful role in the world, they will remember that "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players."

A Simple Way to Teach Reading

My mother teaches reading with abundant energy and effort, producing flash cards and games on her computer that require reams of paper, cardstock and many printer cartridges to make the student encounter something new nearly every day. I admire the way she does this, but due to sheer laziness, I haven't been able to get myself to follow her example, so instead I have searched for the best beginning reading curriculum, finding little to like in most that I have examined. As I flip through the pages, they appear either too complicated or too much like a chore that must be completed. What I want is something systematic yet simple.

The Suzuki Piano School books meet these requirements, only they teach an instrument. Each piece in the books builds on the techniques and musicality learned in previous pieces. Teachers receive training and rely on the pedagogical method they have learned rather than directions on a printed page: other than a brief foreword, the books are free of text, and the style and speed of teaching are dependent on the teacher, who can utilize her own creativity and knowledge of each individual child as she teaches.The children build a "vocabulary" of all the pieces they will learn through daily listening, so they can mentally hear anything they learn to play.

I have looked for something similar to teach early phonetic reading, and the closest match has been a series of lists at the end of Why Johnny Can't Read by Rudolf Flesch. They have no glamor or even cuteness about them. List 1 teaches three-letter words with the short "a" sound and consonants "b d f g h j l m n p r s t v w y z." I first used these lists ten years ago while teaching Karina, my oldest, to read. She never read the lists of words straight out of the book, but I used it as more of a reference for the mother than the child,  like the early Suzuki piano books, when the child cannot yet read music. The lists ensured that I progressed logically in teaching Karina to read, building on and reviewing previous steps. With a pencil in hand, I wrote words in a notebook for her, coming up with simple activities for the words on the spot.

Now I have typed the lists into my computer, making alterations to the order, adding words I like that weren't included in the original, and I am turning to them again as I have begun teaching Luke. The "games" we play are very simple. His current favorite is to circle all the words he thinks are good with a blue pen and all the words he thinks are bad with a red one. Today I felt disappointed when he circled the word "sun" in red because, in his words, "I hate the sun," but young children here in rainy western Washington do seem to find the sun's brightness painful. We also act out words, find animal words and pretend to be that animal, read words for food and pretend to eat it, point to body parts we read, or anything else I can think of that gives him an instant reward for reading. He enjoys linking the letters he strings together with words that are already part of his vocabulary, words that he can mentally hear and begin a conversation about. This is much more gratifying than sounding out incomplete or nonsense words, something many curricula include.

Once Luke can comfortably read the words in one list, I move on to the next, continuing to review previous words as he learns new sounds. I find these lists to be a simple yet thorough way to teach reading that easily adapts to the varying velocities of learning. Each of my children has followed their own trajectory in acquiring the ability to read, and I like the flexibility a simple series of lists gives me. Here are copies of the first five lists as I have adapted them, covering lists 1 through 10 in Flesch's book. I hope someone else may find them as useful as I have.

List 1: Vowel "a," consonants "b c d f g h j l m n p r s t v w y z"
Ann bad bag bat bam cab can cap cat dad Dan fan fat gas hag ham hat jam jazz lap mad man map mass nag nap Nat pad pal Pam pan pass pat rag ran rap rat sad Sam sat tag tan tap van vat wag

List 2: Vowel "o"
Bob boss cob cod cop cot dog doll Don dot fog God got hog hop hot job jog log lot mop moss nod not pop pot rob sob Tom top

List 3: Vowel "i"
bib big Bill bin bit did dig dip fib fig fill fit hill him hip hit Jill Jim kid kill Kim kin kiss kit lid lip mill miss nip pig pin rib rip sin sip Sis sit Tim tip wig will win zip

List 4: Vowel "u"
bud bug bun bus but buzz cub cuff cup cut dull fun fuss fuzz gum gun Gus huff hug hum hut mud muff mug mutt nun nut puff pup rub rug run sum sun tub tug

List 5: Vowel "e"
bed beg bell Ben bet den Ed egg get hem hen jet keg leg less let men mess Ned net peg pen pet red sell set Ted tell ten web well wet yell yes yet

Beatitudes

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled" (Matthew 5:6).

I have a full heart today as I work on memorizing the Beatitudes, my first step towards memorizing the Sermon on the Mount. Last week my oldest daughter Karina asked me if I would memorize it with her, so we have discussed and read verses in the car and copied them into our journals. Her "hunger and thirst after righteousness" fills me with gratitude. When I became a mother I had no idea that the greatest reward of motherhood would be the privilege of helping and working closely with fine people. Suzuki writes, "We must try to make [our children] splendid in mind and heart also." I have tried and am trying to do this, but I always end up feeling like I have contributed little to minds and hearts full of splendor from the beginning. I feel that each human life contains nobility and we only have to keep from destroying it to allow it to blossom.

Tom Sawyer

As soon as I open the washing machine, I hear an enthusiastic flutter of toddler feet, then find two extra hands grabbing and shoving clothes into the washer. I now spend half of my effort removing the wrong clothes and simultaneously tricking Helena into thinking she is helping me. I watch her fascination with my work and eagerness to take part in it, the laundry, a job I tend to avoid as long as possible. Why do I hate it so much?

I'm not alone in a desire to shirk my work. Recently in the car we listened to chapter two of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain, Mark//Mark Twain Library), where Tom tricks his friends into paying him for the privilege of whitewashing his fence. Afterwards, Twain writes:

If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

Obligation as a motive for doing something seems closely related to resentment and procrastination. My children definitely grumble and postpone their work when I assign them chores, yet when they decide to surprise me by cleaning up the house, they work cheerfully and quickly. This principle seems true even when I am the one making myself do the work. A pile of clothes to fold sometimes seems an insurmountable obstacle: couldn't I just bake a cake instead?

Synonyms for obliged include "forced, required, bound, compelled, obligated, duty-bound, under an obligation, under compulsion, without any option" (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/). I can't think of a time in my life when someone actually forced me to do anything, so for me, being obliged to do something is not a real situation but a feeling, and the synonym "duty-bound" best reflects this. When I act out of duty, I don't feel joy in the results of my labor. Instead I feel relief that I can cross something off the to-do list. How can I transcend duty? How can I help my children do the same?

I have not arrived at a perfect solution, but this year I have seen some changes in my family as I have tried to make it more of a team effort than an individual pursuit. We all take our separate positions cleaning the kitchen after a meal, set a timer, and see if we can complete the job in 15 or 20 minutes. When we all work together, jobs become shorter, and the effort to beat the clock adds interest. Our clean clothes pile has become a mountain lately, so the past few weeks we have had a "folding laundry party" a couple of evenings a week. We pile the clean clothes on my bed and everyone finds, folds, and puts away their own clothes as quickly as possible, then helps with towels and the baby clothes. Because the results of cleaning are so short-lived and relentless, I have always had a difficulty feeling entirely satisfied after doing a job. Enlisting my family's aid, then talking and laughing together throughout a job makes the process fun and the completion soon. Mary Poppins spoke truly when she sang, "In every job that must be done there is an element of fun. You find the fun and snap, the job's a game."

Cleaning rooms, making beds, and getting dressed in clean clothes in the morning have been habits I've struggled with helping my children develop. Then my sister Johanna told me what she does, I stole her idea, and now I am finding success with telling everyone that I would love the whole family to join me for a home-cooked breakfast as soon as they have those tasks completed.

As a child, I thought Tom Sawyer successfully tricked his friends into doing his work, but it's not that simple. They had fun whitewashing his fence. Working cooperatively, finding success in the results, and  taking well-deserved rest at the end of a task can help anyone develop the ability to feel self-motivated and enjoy a task instead of feeling obliged to do it. Even me.

On Accompanying

Karina and Katie performed in a voice recital Tuesday night with me accompanying them on the piano. My years of practicing and taking piano lessons have culminated in playing accompaniments, which thefreedictionary.com defines as "a vocal or instrumental part that supports another, often solo, part." If I do that job well, I will scarcely be noticed, I will follow the singer's lead and enhance the performance in an inconspicuous way. I have no time to sit back and enjoy the music. Last night several people told me Katie looked so enthusiastic while she sang, but I missed it, with my eyes on the score and my ears following her lead. What I gained was a feeling of involvement in the music, of losing myself for the benefit of another and finding my abilities strengthened in the process. I love supporting my daughters as they sing. A parent's most noble job, in my opinion, is to provide the support and the scaffolding her children need to climb to greater heights. This requires and enhances every ability I have gained in my life. Like my accompaniments on the piano, motherhood involves few times to relax and enjoy. The songs I am creating form only the background of my children's lives. However, I find purpose in supporting, a vocation suited to me for the present time, until I will once again be the soloist.

Weep to Have

I feel poetry but lack the power to make my words profoundly beautiful like my thoughts. This month while reading Jane Eyre, I found that Jane felt the same about her artistic ability. When Mr. Rochester asked her about some of her paintings, she said, "I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and my handiwork: in each case I had imagined something which I was quite powerless to realise." Sometimes a particular poem strikes me because it captures my feelings in a way I am "powerless to realise." This week I encountered Shakespeare's Sonnet 64 and feel new awe at his power.

Impermanence and inevitable loss are his themes. He begins:

          When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced
          The rich-proud cost of outworn buried age;
          When sometimes lofty towers I see down-razed
          And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;

Amid monuments to the dead, the poet laments time and weather's slow destruction of our attempts to remember them.

The next four lines show the effect of the tides:

          When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
          Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
          And the firm soil win of the watery main,
          Increasing store with loss, and loss with store;

I feel a faster progress of decay and visualize a child's disappointment at the loss of his "kingdom of the shore," a sand castle.

Viewing ruin all around him, he thinks:

          When I have seen such interchange of state,
          Or state it self counfounded to decay,
          Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate
          That Time will come and take my love away.

Because nothing is permanent, we will inevitably lose even those we love. His concluding couplet mourns the having because of the fear of losing:

          This thought is as a death which cannot choose
          But weep to have, that which it fears to lose.

I feel this as I witness and participate in my children's inexorable march to adulthood. I know my goal as a parent is to eliminate my position so that one day they will all leave my home, but I still dread it. When my mother visited a couple of years ago, she swept my floor after lunch one day, and I complained, "My floor has to be swept after every meal."
  
She replied, "My floor stays clean, but my house is empty."

I "weep to have" because I fear for the empty house, the loneliness I know I will some day feel. One day at church I sat between my eldest daughter, Karina, and my youngest, Helena, the beginning and end of my cycle of motherhood. I remember Karina as the baby in my arms, but she stands taller than I am and will leave for college in only three years. I try to grasp that remaining time but the "firm soil" increases "store with loss" and runs right between my fingers.

Some day I will ask myself where the years went, but I will know that I lived them. I am grateful that in the midst of a busy life I can spend each day with these children, to help them, know them, relate to them. The days and stages of their childhood dissolve like sugar into the syrup of my life, sweetening it but in an elusive way I find difficult to distinguish and savor. One day I will have the time and solitude to savor it and the sweetness of my memories will remain.

Sonnet 64

When I have seen by time’s fell hand defaced

The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;

When sometimes lofty towers I see down razed,

And brass eternal slave to mortal rage:

When I have seen the hungry ocean gain

Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,

And the firm soil win of the watery main,

Increasing store with loss, and loss with store:

When I have seen such interchange of state,

Or state itself confounded to decay;

Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate—

That Time will come and take my love away.

This thought is as a death, which cannot choose

But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

Don't bring these things to the table

"Table Manners Made Easy," our new chapter in Sheryl Eberly's 365 Manners Kids Should Know: Games, Activities, and Other Fun Ways to Help Children Learn Etiquette, began on May 5. From now through mid-July, behavior at the table will be our focus. On Saturday we read a short list entitled, "Don't bring these things to the table." In case you were wondering, here they are:

• Handheld video games
• The remote control for the television (keep the TV off during meals)
• A magazine or book
• The newspaper
• Homework
• The dog

I guess five out of six isn't too bad. We will continue to have our manners lessons every morning at the breakfast table, along with the book, even though I now know it to be a forbidden item. There isn't another time with the entire family present that would be as convenient. Consistency trumps etiquette this time.

A Thinking Love

I am a stay-at-home mother, a chef, a nurturer, a seamstress, a musician, an educator, a baker, an accountant, a writer, a wife, a student, and a lover of the arts—all without pay. I am not a housekeeper, a maid, a chauffeur, or a laundress, although at times I do the tasks necessary for those roles. I am also a feminist who worries that by embracing these roles I appear to be an unliberated housewife who has attenuated herself into a mere outline of her husband and children. This life satisfies me even as I visualize an imaginary feminist despising me for my unliberated life.

Save your contempt. I don't despise you in return. The Mommy Wars have always mystified me. I do not need to justify staying at home by persuading myself that my children will surpass those of the career-balancing mother in every way because I sacrificed my identity on the altar of motherhood. I chose this life and think other women should be free to choose theirs. While Eric works, I have the freedom to help my children grow, to watch their identities unfold. I also choose to consider it my calling, not my job.  I do not need or want a salary for my work because I love it for itself. Renumeration would only cheapen my motivation. My worth as a person and my identity do not center on what I receive money for, which I consider a hollow way of valuing a person. I think Eric sometimes envies me my freedom to pursue my interests with my children.

Homeschooling has given me my greatest purpose. Through home education I believe I can give my children an individualized education superior to any they could receive in school. I have not lost myself in the process, but instead it has led me to utilize more of my mind than anything else I have ever done. Pestalozzi said:

The mother is qualified, and qualified by the creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the development of her child; . . . and what is demanded of her is––a thinking love . . . . God has given to the child all the faculties of our nature, but the grand point reminds undecided––how shall this heart, this head, these hands be employed? to whose service shall they be dedicated? A question the answer to which involves a futurity of happiness or misery to a life so dear to thee. Maternal love is the first agent in education (Charlotte Mason, Home Education, 3).

I give a "thinking love" to my children not through the suppression of my individuality but by using all my faculties and abilities to tutor them as I work with them daily. Every mother is an expert in her own children, and I try to use my expertise to help each child develop uniquely. Suzuki wrote: "The word education implies two concepts: to educe, which means to 'bring out, develop from latent or potential existence,' as well as to instruct" (Nurtured by Love 86). As much time should be spent educing children's humanity as instructing them. Coaxing out their latent qualities requires much time and the knowledge of and love for each individual that I alone possess. In the process I realize my own potential.

Reading, accompanying a choir, writing, singing, teaching, explaining math concepts, directing a play––my week consists mainly of these activities, all of which benefit both me and my children. Sometimes I think that feminism in the 20th century could have taken a different path, that envisioned by Charlotte Mason at the century's start. She wrote:

We are waking up to our duties and in proportion as mothers become more highly educated and efficient, they will doubtless feel the more strongly that the education of their children during the first six years of life is an undertaking hardly to be entrusted to any hands but their own. And they will take it up as their profession––that is, with the diligence, regularity, and punctuality which men bestow on their professional labours (Mason, Home Education, 3).

Educating my own children is my professional labor. It takes diligence and more of my intelligence than anything else I have ever attempted. Every day I learn a little more about the value of each child, of the difference a good education can make, and about having a large impact on a few people as their latent qualities develop. I am living the life I have chosen. In the middle of the daily chaos I find myself, no mere outline but fully fleshed, a complete woman. And yes, a mother.

A Lazy, Sky-High Fly Ball

Grayson, parkhand, ex-Minor League ball player, never learned to read. After he finds a young runaway, the two become friends, and Maniac Magee assumes the task of teaching him. Grayson finds that he must practice reading just as he used to practice baseball. And it can be frustrating:

Vowels were something else. He didn't like them, and they didn't like him. There were only five of them, but they seemed to be everywhere. . . . To the old pitcher, they were like his own best knuckleball come back to haunt him. In, out, up, down––not even the pitcher, much much less the batter, knew which way it would break. He kept swinging and missing (Maniac Magee 101). 

I swung and missed yesterday morning, just like Grayson in Jerry Spinelli's Maniac Magee, only instead of learning how to read I was learning how to tie knots. I attempted two knots necessary for rock climbing: a figure eight with follow through and a clove hitch, both of which I have learned before. Even though I read instructions in my rock-climbing book, examined the pictures, and Eric walked me through the process, I still struck out.

Eric didn't let me give up. He coached me repeatedly after each failure, just like Magee coached Grayson:

But the kid was a good manager, and tough. He would never let him slink back to the showers, but kept sending him back up to the plate. The kid used different words, but in his ears the old Minor Leaguer heard: 'Keep your eye on it . . . Hold your swing. . . Watch it all the way in . . . Don't be anxious . . . Just make contact' (Maniac Magee 102).

Magee felt confident that if they kept at it, Grayson would learn to read. Eric believes I can learn to tie knots, even though I lack spatial visualization ability and have fumbling fingers. "Anyone can train himself; it is only a question of using the right kind of effort" (Nurtured by Love 37), wrote Suzuki. What, then, is the right kind of effort? The Suzuki Method has taught me that it consists in part of these things:

1. Small steps
2. Consistent effort
3. Repetition

When working with my children, I have found small steps to be an invaluable tool. A piece of music can be broken up into ever smaller portions: lines, measures, single notes, and if any larger portion is too difficult, a smaller one can be found that is achievable. In addition, the Suzuki books also haved graded repertoire, beginning with simple pieces that build necessary skills now for more challenging pieces later. The same process can be applied to every educational situation. Although strugglings and frustration usually play a role in learning anything, I have always found that breaking a task into smaller steps makes the impossible possible.

Even though I felt like it wasn't possible, Eric kept me at it. He guided me through each small step until I succeeded in tying a clove hitch. The knot worked!

However, small steps will not make a difference without consistent effort. Learning only takes place if lessons are spaced closely enough that any ability gained is retained. Otherwise, frustration can resurface as the skill has to be relearned, something that has happened to me with tying knots, so three hours later, Eric brought me rope and I tied it again. This time, it will stick.

But only if I use repetition to cement it in the mind and the body. "If some skill is easy for you, that is evidence that it has been developed through training to such an extent that it has become a part of you,  . . that your purpose has been achieved by work and repetition until the skill has firmly taken hold in your consciousness" (Nurtured by Love 43). I need tying knots to become as automatic as other things I take for granted, like knowing how to read.

Though practice is frequently grueling, the reward of watching something difficult become
 easy is immeasurable. With weeks of work, Greyson began reading, "nailing those vowels on the button, riding them from consonant to consonant, syllable to syllable, word to word" (Maniac Magee 102). I love Spinelli's description of Greyson's feelings that night:

The old man gave himself up willingly to his exhaustion and drifted off like a lazy, sky-high fly ball. Something deep in his heart, unmeasured by his own consciousness, soared unburdened for the first time in thirty-seven years, since the time he had so disgraced himself before the Mud Hen's scout and named himself thereafter a failure" (Maniac Magee 105). 

Learning frees us to drift off "like a lazy, sky-high fly ball." What we now know takes hold in our consciousness, changing forever both who we are and how we view ourselves.

Algorithms are Recipes

At 6:30 this morning, I grabbed paper and pencils, and Eric and I figured out why the algorithm for extracting square roots in Katie's math book works. Why did we choose to do math during our early morning time together? Well, finding square roots was yesterday's math lesson in A Beka Pre Algebra. I followed the directions, walked her through a couple of problems, and was ready to set her working on her own when she said, "But I don't understand it. I can't do it if I don't understand it."

Just the day before my mother told me she skipped the section on extracting square roots with my niece. I never did it myself until yesterday. Eric also never learned how in school but taught himself some time along the way using Newton's Method. A calculator makes fast, efficient business of finding square roots. Why should we bother?

An algorithm is basically a recipe for solving a math problem. If you follow the procedure correctly, the right answer will be the result. In traditional math education, like A Beka PreAlgebra, the recipe or algorithm is what matters and helping the student understand why rarely merits mention. A recipe for pancakes may warn against overbeating because it makes them tough but usually lacks an explanation. Knowing that they become tough because the gluten develops and creates more structure in the batter doesn't change the recipe. Following directions and practice make good food and good math, not an understanding of the process.

Do I believe that? Absolutely not. My favorite biblical proverb has always been "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding." I do think knowing how gluten functions in doughs and batters and how I can make changes to vary the results makes me a better cook, even if it is in an intangible way. In cooking I manipulate ingredients to vary the results; in math I vary the results through manipulating numbers. Michael Ruhlman's Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking explains the value of knowing the mathematical ratios for doughs and batters, imparting the craft of cooking with an elegant simplicity that made the cookbook a pageturner for me. Deriving square roots without a calculator will make Katie and me magicians performing a number trick, but understanding the algorithm will raise it above that.

First we turned to our supplemental math curriculum, Math-U-See. Steve Demme on the DVD usually explains everything comprehensively, but he lacked an explanation for finding square roots, so we decided to figure it out ourselves in the early morning light. I extracted a square root, then squared it to examine the process. Eric compared it to the squares of binomials and trinomials. Somewhere along the way, I found a way that made it clear for me, he found one that did the same for him, and we compared notes.

A couple of hours later I explained it to Katie. "Oh! It's like multiplying backwards!" she said and then completed the lesson. I wish understanding everything about life could be as simple as math and cooking.

A Poetry Assignment

Poetry combines my love of language, music, truth and beauty. The best poetry fuses these elements together in such a way that I think, "That is true. I wish I could phrase it so well." My current nightstand read, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship by David Whyte, while not a book of poetry, is written by a poet. He explains early on that as a public speaker he mostly relies on hundreds of memorized poems that he strings together into speeches. I immediately began my list of "Poems to Memorize." Perhaps we all might be a bit more of a poet if we spent our time reading, writing, memorizing and reciting poetry.

I studied poetry in high school and college but claim no expertise in teaching it. Since grandmother, mother, daughters, and nieces recently began a three-week study of 19th-century British and American poets (not meant to be exhaustive), I have been attempting to feel my way through teaching it. For each poet we study, I have assigned us to write a poem based on one we have read. Speaking for myself, I know it has not made me write great poetry, but I have a greater appreciation for the poets we have studied, and I do feel I can consider myself an amateur poet.

At the request of one of my daughters and one of my nieces, we included Edgar Allan Poe in our study. I gave the following assignment:

Using Edgar Allan Poe’s “Alone” as your inspiration, write a poem on the topic of your choice using the following guidelines:

• Describe a feeling.
• Use dashes as your only punctuation.
• Make each couplet (set of two lines) rhyme.
• Each couplet should have the same number of syllables on each lines, either 7, 8 or 9 syllables.

Example poem:

Alone

Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood's hour I have not been

As others were — I have not seen

As others saw — I could not bring

My passions from a common spring —

From the same source I have not taken

My sorrow — I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone —

And all I lov'd — I lov'd alone —

Then — in my childhood — in the dawn

Of a most stormy life — was drawn

From ev'ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still —

From the torrent, or the fountain —

From the red cliff of the mountain —

From the sun that 'round me roll'd

In its autumn tint of gold —

From the lightning in the sky

As it pass'd me flying by —

From the thunder, and the storm —

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view —

My niece just completed her final course of chemotherapy for leukemia last week. The poem she wrote, "Jealousy," touched me with the true feelings of a 14-year-old girl. Here it is:

Jealousy

Whenever I look around and see—

Pretty girls with hair—unlike me—

Curly—straightened—or wavy hair—

Sometimes it’s really hard to bear—

My thoughts are filled with jealousy—

Why not that hair belong to me—

A wig I wear upon my head—

Taken off when it’s time for bed—

I’m not saying—I’m jealous all the time—

Just sometimes it hits me in my mind—

When I have thoughts of jealousy—

I think—one day—that will be me—

My assignment idea, good or bad, is not the intellectual property of anyone other than myself. You are welcome to use it in your own home or class, but I do politely request feedback on whether you enjoyed the assignment if you do indeed complete it.

Everyone has Parents

"Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Adams and your children all have something in common – Parents. You can make the difference."

When I saw this advertisement for a seminar, I thought to myself:

"Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Hirohito and your children all have something in common: parents."

Right now I find my responsibility and influence for good or bad in my children's lives overwhelming. Suzuki said, "A child improves depending on his parents." The bible reads, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6). When a person goes bad, the parents usually get the blame. Last week I read an article about Tiger Woods that placed the blame for Tiger's lack of moral character squarely on Earl Wood's shoulders. The author, Jason Whitlock, wrote:

After his press conference in February, I wrote a column comparing Woods to Michael Jackson. No one blamed Elvis Presley or Quincy Jones for Jackson's fall from grace.

We blamed Joe Jackson, Michael's father.

Is there a difference between Joe Jackson and Earl Woods?

Both focused on raising entertainers more than human beings.

When I read the article, I was ready to blame Earl Woods. I even thought of blogging about it. Of course I am trying to raise caring human beings with character. Shame on him!

This week I'm not so sure. I'm in a Christian, forgiving mood. As a homeschooler, not only do I get the blame if my children are poorly behaved or delinquent, but I also get the blame if they lack knowledge of history, times tables, reading, writing, penmanship, nutrition, science, spelling, grammar, and algebra. Have I missed anything? My husband Eric kindly and quickly pointed out to me mid-rant that I also get the credit, but at that moment I didn't care. It's just not fair!

My Christian mood might not be strong enough. The person I can't forgive is me. Sometimes I get tired or sick and I realize that I am not consistently working with my children on the skills I want to help them develop. In my view, consistency is the hardest thing to be consistent about. Today when I walked in my children's rooms, disgusted with the mess on their floors, I felt angry. When I walked in my own room, disgusted with the week's worth of laundry baskets full of clean clothes on the floor, I felt shame.

Shinichi Suzuki said, "Practice only on the days you eat." How impossible that seems to me! Some days we miss math, on others instrument practice gets skipped, we don't do a little Spanish homework every day no matter how many times I set that goal. When I'm in a dark mood, I conclude that THE thing wrong with my life is me. I lack pretty much everything.

Excessive guilt and discouragement are unproductive feelings. I realize that perfect parents don't exist. I do, however, give some priceless things to my children that no one else can:

• I love and want each individual child.
• I spend lots of time, both quantity and quality, with them. Benjamin Franklin wrote, "Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of." I believe that by giving them what "life is made of," it shows that I value my family.
• I know them better than any other teacher could.
• I never give up (for more than the length of a pity party).
• I seek improvement.  

My religion also gives me comfort. A speaker in my church referred to the effort to be like Christ as "attempting the impossible." As a mother, I'm sure that all my attempts are exactly that. However, if we lay our efforts on the altar, Christ accepts our sacrifice, our heart and our spirit, and we can be given beauty for ashes. That is a grace, a strength, a promise I can rely on, because everyone has parents, and we can all also be the children of Christ.

Remember Your Manners

Remember your manners: last year I decided this was something I couldn't ask my kids to do because I wasn't sure if I had ever taught them enough about manners for them to know them to begin with, much less remember them later. Because I happened to remember this fact while Christmas shopping, the result was a gift to the Leonard family of the book 365 Manners Kids Should Know: Games, Activities, and Other Fun Ways to Help Children Learn Etiquette by Sheryl Eberly. It has been a simple and straightforward way to incorporate manners lessons into our daily family life. For each calendar day of the year, the book discusses one aspect of manners in approximately two to three paragraphs. So far we have completed units entitled "A Great Beginning," "Family Time," "Getting Along with Other Kids," "Introductions," "Telephone Talk," and are partway through "You Are What You Say." I read selectively from each day's portion at the breakfast table, and then we discuss it.

The book is not without flaws. Some topics seem misplaced on the calendar, like February 16, which discusses rules for using friends' or neighbors' swimming pools. It must have been a challenge to decide on 365 mini-topics that fit into larger units, but some of them seem trivial, like "Frightening Others" (January 24),while others I don't even consider part of manners, like "Allowance" (January 30), which we don't pay in our family. At times we disagree somewhat with Eberly's advice, but the lessons have generated meaningful conversation.

Occasionally the lessons include activities. My children are looking forward to May with the beginning of table manners and an activity almost every day. I have promised them that we will eat all of the different foods specifically discussed after we learn how to handle them properly. So far my favorite morning has been February 28, "Remembering names." The activity was to come up with a rhyming word for everyone in our family's name so we could practice inventing mnemonics for people's names. Karina suggested we come up with alliterative phrases instead, so soon we were all "Terrific Tommy from Tacoma" or "Little Luke from Louisiana."

Ultimately, my favorite outcome from our breakfast manners class has not been my newfound ability to say "remember your manners" and indicate something specific we've read. Instead it has been the days that Tommy and Jack have opened the door for me on the way into church after the "Opening doors" lesson or last week when Tommy introduced his friend Taylor to his piano teacher exactly like the book describes. My children's manners aren't perfect, and the book keeps showing me that mine need quite a bit of improvement as well. Of course! That's why we need it.

Teaching Letters to Young Children

My children as toddlers, in their first burst of language acquisition, have loved to learn the names of animals and the sounds they make. When Karina, my oldest, turned two, my mother suggested I teach her the letters as well. She said that in her experience it was easier to teach children letters as toddlers when they are enthusiastically labeling everything in their environment than it is to wait until they are four or five years old. When we were children she taught my brothers, my sisters and me our letter sounds at two years old; we learned the letter names later. I decided to teach my children both the names and sounds at the same time, reasoning that if they knew that a cow says moo, they could learn that "m" says mmmm.

I agree with Shinichi Suzuki that education begins at birth and that we tend to underestimate what young children are capable of learning. My daughter Helena, 18 months, has reminded me of the enormous potential in every human being this week. Yesterday after eating a banana, she carried the peel to the garbage can by herself. At dinner when I asked someone to pass the milk, she pushed the milk carton towards me. These are simultaneously ordinary and miraculous accomplishments to me, ordinary because every normal child seems to blossom at this age, suddenly understanding and doing things they have been absorbing since birth, miraculous because of the explosion of latent ability that I always underestimate until it emerges. I consider throwing trash away a miracle, in part because I frequently wish my older children did it more consistently. I also sometimes sit patiently at the table pleasantly repeating, "please pass the milk" for a few minutes, then becoming less patient and pleasant when everyone ignores me.

"Human ability will not exist if it is ignored when in the seedling stage," Suzuki wrote in Ability Development from Age Zero. Children will only observe and learn those things that have been a part of their environment, and the most crucial part of this environment is the people in it. Parents and siblings need to spend time interacting with infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, consciously trying to model good character. In this way, "inspiration and interest are acquired involuntarily by an infant from everything he sees and hears, like a seed that is planted. This is what molds--forms--the character . . . . It is a frightening fact. By no means only words or music, but everything, good or bad, is absorbed" (Shinichi Suzuki, Nurtured by Love).

In a few minutes a day, children can learn their letters. None of my children have considered this to be work or pressure because I have approached it like a game, and they have frequently asked to do their letters. One fun and methodical way to teach letters I discovered when my second child was two. A friend of mine told me about the way her daughter's kindergarten taught letters with sounds and actions. I loved the idea, copied it, and over the years my mother, sisters and I have adapted and changed it. You can find the method and the flash cards explained more fully on my mother's blog. My favorite is the letter O, singing opera. We always sing the short o sound to a passage from Mozart's The Magic Flute where the Queen of the Night is singing.

Because I believe in exposing my children to "whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report" (Philippians 4:8), I have some favorite alphabet books that incorporate beautiful art. The first is Museum ABC, which also comes as a board book, My First ABC, published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (I own both versions). I appreciate the fact that all the examples for vowels utilize the short sounds. I try not to confuse my children with vowels when they are very young, so I teach them the name and as the sound I teach only the short sound. I find it easier to pretend that it only has one sound. When they are older, I explain that it sometimes says its name. Another book I like that is illustrated with fine art is Tigers and Sails and ABC Tales, but the vowel sounds are not as consistent. Sometimes with alphabet books I skip the pages with vowels if they use the long sound.


Flash cards, actions, sounds, books: what else is there? I also like letters that children can manipulate, especially the magnetic ones from Melissa and Doug. They come in both uppercase and lowercase. We use these to play games like "help the mommy M find the baby m" or "which one says sssss?" The more contexts children discover letters in and the more they use them, the more automatic that knowledge will be when time to learn to read arrives.

 "Inspiration and interest," acquired by a positive environment, are the foundation for all education, especially in the seedling stage. Whole-language enthusiasts are right when they say children reared in a print-rich home acquire literacy readily. Early childhood education, when approached in a positive, patient way, lays the foundation for a lifetime of enthusiasm for learning. I believe this is best done in the home, which by nature should be less stressful and competitive than a school. As a mother, I can appreciate three-year-old Luke handing me a piece of paper last week on which he wrote "L l."

"Oh, it says "LLLLL," I said.

"No, it says Luke loves Mommy."

Somehow, I don't think a teacher would retain that forever in her heart as I will.

A Cake on a Pedestal

I inhaled a sweet lemon-coconut-butter scent as I opened the oven door. Golden brown, risen to the top of the bundt pan, the cake seemed perfect to me as I poked a skewer in the middle to see if it was done. Only a couple of crumbs clung to the skewer--done but not overbaked to the point of dryness. As I placed it on a cooling rack, I thought with anticipation of the gorgeous and delicious cake I would be taking to the reception after my children's piano recital later in the afternoon.

After mixing together powdered sugar and lemon juice for a glaze, I prepared to flip the cake onto a cooling rack. It's easy: simply put the rack on top of the pan, then flip in one motion while holding everything together. I've done it hundreds of times. But this time partway through the turn, the pan slid and the cake slipped, disintegrating into a pile of crumbs on the counter. I desperately tried to retrieve at least a portion of the cake until I noticed that the biggest chunk was only as big as about two pieces of cake. The cake definitely had a delicate, tender crumb.

Crackers and cheese were now the only food I had to take to the recital. My children didn't mind. Within two minutes all six of them were shouting with glee as they descended on the cake like vultures, tearing off bits, pouring glaze over the crumbs, and devouring all of it.

I went outside to help Eric with the yard work. He had no sympathy either. "Good," he said. "You don't need everything to be perfect."

My life in my mind is fully organized, never running late, as perfect as a centerpiece cake, beautifully building expectation until the moment when it is cut with ceremony and delicately eaten with forks and china. My real life consists mainly of cakes so delicate they become a pile of crumbs on contact, then get shoved greedily but joyfully into six mouths followed by twelve feet smashing crumbs and tracking sticky glaze across my kitchen floor that I have to mop up one hour later, two hours later, and the next morning. Today I can't help thinking, though, that the unveiled enthusiasm of that moment is a life I should cherish in my mind because a cake on a pedestal will never match it.

Harmony Between Sisters

Six hands at a single keyboard played Debussy's Clair de Lune, the pianists three sisters seated side by side. The gossamer melody wove tranquil threads and their hands crossed and uncrossed with perfect coordination; I couldn't always tell whose hand played which notes. While watching them I felt suspended in a web of music, cooperation, harmony, and peace within my reach, glistening like beads of dew on the silken strands. With sudden clarity I knew that this piece now represented for me the benefits of a strong family.

We went as a family to see the 5 Browns in Tacoma Saturday night. These five Mormon siblings, who all attended Juilliard simultaneously and now perform and record together, play orchestral pieces arranged for five pianos as well as duets, trios and solos. They engage audience members of all ages both by the way they play and by their quirky introductions for each piece that are personal and educational. While I loved the music, what I gained most was a sense of the worth of family, siblings especially. They performed together in a united way that I feel only siblings could, people who shared a childhood, parents, toys and everything else in the years identity and individuality emerge and begin to cement.

I have never played a piece at one piano with my two sisters. I do not play the piano as well as the 5 Browns and never will. I have, however, felt cooperation, harmony, and peace while working in the kitchen with my sisters. Tatiana and I spent one Thanksgiving morning baking an apple pie that had a top crust consisting of overlapping, individually cut out and etched pastry leaves. Another year at Christmas time we made chicken tamales. For her daughter's first birthday, Johanna and I wrapped individual chunks of cake in fondant, decorating them to look like alphabet blocks.

A couple of years later for her next daughter's birthday, we wreathed a cake with flower petals to look like a sunflower.

My sisters and I also share a dedication to home education. They (and my mother) are my greatest homeschooling resource because I still prefer a live person I can engage in conversation to any online support. We each have our individual approach. I am amazed by Tatiana's commitment to speaking only Spanish in her house a few days a week, resulting in a bilingual family. Johanna has a balanced, moderate approach I learn from as I struggle with my tendency to either try for the ultimate or do nothing. Even though our homes dot the west coast--Southern California, Northern California, Washington state--I feel that even now we share our lives in a way no one else can. We do not always get along perfectly (although it's been at least two decades since I can remember any friction with Johanna, who I know deserves all the credit for this feat). However, my memories of our time together are like an inviting porch welcoming me home, a place where I'm capable, understood, and loved.

I decided to have six children in part because I felt my daughters deserved to have two sisters. My own two sisters are irreplaceable, as we are three women with a shared childhood culture who are now mothers contributing to the culture of a new generation of children. As a group I might work with all my brothers and sisters as the 5 Browns did on five separate pianos, each playing their part and contributing to an orchestra of one instrument. It is a greater unity I visualize with my sisters and I as a trio harmonizing on one piano, our hands crossing each other, reaching towards the same goal. For our next family reunion I plan to suggest that we play a trio.

To see video clips from a 5 Browns concert, including Debussy's "Clair de Lune," visit their home page, http://www.the5browns.com/.

How Much Is Enough?

"Do no homeschooling parents worry if their children are doing enough?" This question, asked yesterday by a mom on an email support group, has stubbornly stayed in my mind every spare minute. I may not be able to speak for anyone other than myself, but I can declare that I have worried about doing enough every week of my life since I began educating my children. I am grateful for my concerns because they ensure that I am always striving to do better rather than being satisfied with where I am.

The first place I look when I wonder how much I should be doing is the people around me. However, comparisons are fraught with difficulties, so this should be the last place I look. I suspect that most people do not exactly give the truth when asked how much they do, and not because they are intentionally dishonest. I too am guilty of this, as I find myself relating what we do in an ideal week, when the ideal rarely happens. My plans mix with the actual in my enthusiasm for homeschooling, and I express my idealistic wishes even though they float on the air like dandelion seeds until finally settling and taking root in the hard dirt of reality. Then somehow when I listen to other moms telling me what they do, I forget all this, compare my weaknesses to their strengths, and wind up feeling inadequate. I do this with my sister Johanna all the time, who fortunately always reassures me that I am actually doing more than I think.

How do I decide if I'm doing enough? In public school jargon, students with learning difficulties have IEPs, or Individualized Education Programs. I consider it unfortunate that they are not a component of the education of each student. The best education would naturally consider the strengths, interests, and challenges of each student, a virtual impossibility for a large school system but something I hope lies within my grasp as a mother and educator. These are the factors I consider as I decide how much each of my children should do:

• The amount of material I intend to cover
• My personal priorities
• The age of my child
• My child's ability to concentrate
• My child's progression
• My child's interests
• What I can handle

I start with how much I intend to cover. For some subjects, the answer comes easily. If I intend my child to finish one math book during the course of the year, I figure out how much needs to be completed each day to reach that goal. These objectives are not set in stone. One of my daughters has found it extremely difficult to finish her math assignments each day, so I have decided that finishing the book over the summer or next fall is appropriate in her case. On the other hand, my 7-year-old son Jack finds math easy and fun. He has skipped ahead some and will end up completing two books this year. It is also not necessary for the child to complete every problem on every page, but they should demonstrate mastery of the material. I also like to give myself wiggle room, so I schedule the year so we only have to do four days of math a week, and then we try to do five days anyway. Homeschooling without some kind of target feels aimless to me, so I always try to schedule out the school year and operate backwards from that deadline rather than just considering the individual days.

For elementary-age children, I prioritize the three R's over all other subjects. As long as we spend time on reading, writing, and math each day, I consider it adequate. This is because an older child who has strong skills in these areas will be able to compensate for deficient knowledge in things like history or science and "catch up," but a person weak in these areas will continue to suffer. People who can read well can teach themselves practically anything. Mathematical problem solving is necessary for understanding personal finance and science. Of the three R's, though, I consider writing to be the capstone. Expressing thoughts in writing is a complex endeavor that is part of most careers. Elementary school practice in the physical mechanics of writing and familiarity with the structure of our language lays the foundation for more involved writing projects later.

The amount of schoolwork my children do varies greatly by age. My 3-year-old son spends about half an hour doing "schoolwork" with me, which mostly consists of games involving letters, numbers, and reading. My 7-year-old son spends about 2-3 hours a day on math, writing in his journal, practicing the piano, and reading, while my 10-year-old son also does some Spanish, practices the cello, and history, about an additional hour. At the high end, my 12 and 14-year-old daughters spend about 8 hours a day doing schoolwork that includes grammar, vocabulary, literature, math, biology, history, Spanish, music practice, and writing. Finally, my 17-month-old daughter spends every waking minute interfering with everyone's ability to concentrate.

Shinichi Suzuki said, "when the child looks up, the lesson is over." I try to gauge my children's ability to concentrate and stop at a point where they are not overly tired or distracted. This increases with time. All of my children, when they began playing the piano, could only practice for about 5 or 10 minutes at one sitting. As their ability to play increased, so did their ability to concentrate, and we could practice longer. My goal is to help them gain the skill of concentration, and I try to be persistent but not rushed in our efforts.

If my children are progressing and improving academically, I consider that a sign that we are doing enough. I consider part of progress to be enthusiasm for learning that grows rather than decreases with time because they will continue to learn throughout their lives with a positive attitude and a good foundation.

When a child displays an affinity for a particular subject, pursuing it with more vigor should be the natural result. We all have to choose because no one can become an expert in everything. These individual differences are one of the reasons why comparing one child or family to others doesn't usually help.

Finally, I remember that I shouldn't run faster than I have strength. I have to admit that the dirt of reality might be hard and unpleasant, but seeds don't take root and grow in the air. I have to accept myself and my current limitations, but I do allow myself to work hard and continue to watch my dreams float off into the air.

Kindling the Flame of Motivation

"No, your left hand's too loud. Play finger 4!" We had piano lessons in a few hours, and I wanted Katie's piano teacher to hear a definite improvement in the way she played her newest piece, a Sonatina by Clementi. "Do it again!"

"I hate this piece!" Katie shouted.

"Why?"

"Because you always get mad at me when I play it."

At that point, I belatedly realized my mistake. In my anxious, not entirely misguided hope to impress piano teacher Margie with the results of our effort, I was squelching Katie's desire to learn. The parent's duty, according to Shinichi Suzuki, is to "create motivation in the child." Both last night and this morning I had barked out orders and created rebellion and frustration rather than a love for music and a desire to succeed.

In his book The Schools our Children Deserve, Alfie Kohn discusses the impossibility of directly motivating another person. He writes, "First, while you can often make someone else do something--in effect buying a behavior with a bribe or threat--you can never make him or her want to do something, which is that 'motivation' means. The best you can do is create the kind of setting and offer the kind of tasks that will tap and nourish people's own motivation" (Kohn 125). I think Suzuki understood this. Many of his statements appear to me somewhat cryptic because I have found wisdom in them as I have learned not too interpret them too literally. Parents may need to create motivation in their child, but this is done through creating the right environment and exerting the "right kind of effort," not through directly ordering our child to want to do something.

All children from birth had a natural motivation to learn. The inner drive to walk and talk persists no matter how many times they mispronounce their first words or stumble and fall as they take their first steps. Deborah Meier said, "a passion for learning . . . isn't something you have to inspire [kids] with; it's something you have to keep from extinguishing" (Kohn 125). If, as Plutarch wrote, "the mind is a fire to be kindled, not a vessel to be filled," this week I have unfortunately been the fire extinguisher rather than the match.

The downside of this is that I've been doing the opposite of what I should be. Luckily for me, there is an upside. It is:

1. I can change.
2. I have not completely killed Katie's desire to play the piano, just subdued part of it.
3. I know what I should be doing.

In my experience, skills that come less naturally to people than speaking and walking require more extensive efforts to kindle the flame of motivation into a blaze. Like playing an instrument, reading is not a developmental skill, one that people naturally learn as a part of growth into adulthood. The parent teacher can help by making the process interesting and rewarding even when it is at its most tedious.
This week, I have been successful at kindling the flame of reading in my 3-year-old son Luke even though I have smothered the flame of piano playing in Katie. He is at the earliest stage of learning to read, when it has little intrinsic reward. Reading lists of words, sounding them out slowly, without the fluency to enjoy a story or get useful information, is a difficult enterprise. I have discovered many ways to shelter and encourage these first sparks of reading.
I stuck with words that had the short "a" sound in our first reading lesson. They also all rhymed with "at." Luke knows his letter names and their sounds thoroughly, a necessary foundation to keep reading from being too challenging. We accompanied each word he read with an activity to add fun and variety. When he read "cat" we pretended to be cats; when he read "bat" he pretended to fly like a bat; when he read "fat" we talked about how Santa Claus is fat and pretended to be Santa; when we read "hat" he pretended to put a hat on his head. This made it into a game. Then I allowed him to reread the same words several times on different days before introducing new ones. Finally, after practicing these words, he read them for grandma, and a couple of days later, for his dad, giving him an opportunity to show off what he could do.
As I continue to help Katie practice the piano, I need to follow these same principles.

1. Make sure she has a solid foundation in the basics of the piece before progressing to more difficult things. In this case, practice just the right hand and left hand a lot before playing the piece with both hands.
2. Take baby steps as we move forward. We can take two notes, three notes or a measure at a time rather than trying to play the entire piece at once.
3. Find a way to add fun, variety or make it a game. We agreed with her piano teacher to see how many times in a row she could play each of the ending cadences correctly on one of her pieces. Each day we will see if we can do more repetitions than the day before.
4. Share our small successes with others. We need to celebrate our progress and share it with brothers and sisters, Dad and Grandma.

At times I have snuffed out my own motivation to work with my children because of the guilt I feel for my many mistakes. At these times, I remind myself of my successes so my failures don't overwhelm me. This week I can celebrate my progress with my niece. As I have taught her literature and writing, I have seen her motivation grow from a birthday candle to a bonfire. This week she asked, "Can you give us two writing assignments this week? I really like it when we get to do more than one."
Katie, please remember that I am human, I make more mistakes than I would like, but I love music and I love you. I hope to kindle your already fiery spirit into a greater enthusiasm for learning, not to douse it.