Meredith is having a Carnival of Toddlerhood Friday and I hoped to make a thoughtful contribution with all sorts of cutting edge advice. Yeah, well. Life, it happens. (see previous cow entry for this week’s excuse ; )) That tends to be considered a con when homeschooling with little ones. Current thinking on parenthood is that we ought to plan each moment of the day with factory precision. We should devise and implement thematic lesson plans for our little people. We should be sure to provide optimum musical, nutritional, social, philosophical, physical, emotional, financial, and educational experiences. Or else.

I have long suspected such obsessive parenting was not likely critical to successful child rearing but dog-gone it you sound downright second rate in the parenting dept if you say so.  Dorcas Smucker helped me think about this differently. She shares how she tried heroically to stage memories that would rival those of her own childhood. From thanksgiving turkeys to Christmas candy making she felt perpetually let down by the realities of her life and longed to recreate picture-perfect experiences like those she remembered. Her sister even bought her a ‘Lets Make a Memory’ book to help her ‘send children into adulthood with a stockpile of good childhood memories.’  The irony of all this is that her own mother had hazy recall of how those deep seated family traditions came to be. Apparently she had not been a victim of what Smucker calls ‘nebulous parenting."  Her mom knew that ‘memories creep in when you’re busy doing something else.’

This is so true.

Sometimes life trumps your best intentions. I believe, like Dorcas’ mother, that if you work hard, fear God, and have fun, memories will take care of themselves. Children remember love above all else. I hope to remember this:

My current toddler is on the cusp between baby and big boy. When he sleeps the baby side is most prominent though. Thank God for small favors <g>  This will pass all too quickly. Anymore, while I still see the value of early childhood enrichment I appreciate that life itself is education. Bringing up our little people alongside of us in our busy days provides a rich and varied upbringing. Slowing ourselves to come alongside of our little people in these quiet moments keeps us sane.

It’s ok not to have every moment planned out. It’s ok to let your babies play. It’s not copping out to end up doing the dishes, washing the clothes, and making the meals instead of presenting a cross curricular wonder lesson. That is love too. Those things are chock full of opportunities for making memories and teaching our little guys. What is most important is the slowing down part. Don’t miss this time. I have said it before, if you blink twice, it’s passed.

from Marva Collins’ Way on drawing analogies:

"What drug takes its name from Morpheus, the god of dreams?"

"Morphine," the children called out in unison.

"From where do we get the words geography and geology?""The goddess Ge," they answered.

"Who was Ge?"
"Greek goddess of the earth."

"What does museum mean?"

"Temple of the muses."

"What else does muse mean, Laura?"

"To think about something," she answered.

"Which of King Priam’s sons has a name which means to bully?

"Hector," the class responded.

"And who killed Hector?"

"Achilles."

"How did Achilles die?"

"Paris shot him with an arrow in the heel," Gary shouted, before anyone else could put together a complete sentence.

"And when we use the phrase Achilles heel what do we mean, Tracy?"

"A weak spot."

…and so it went. This is the key to quality classical education in my opinion. Many published unit studies attempt to help make those connections for the students/teachers but like Marva Collins, I believe the best way to make connections is to read widely. Many homeschool mothers worry that their lack of teacher training is a potential handicap. Marva said that the best training a teacher can have is a solid liberal arts education. If you did not come to home education with such a background you can still do exactly what she did: "read constantly in order to tie together fragments of information and interweave subjects."

That does not need to consist of reading intense literary texts either as we discovered reading aloud the other day. We had a picture book of Rip Van Winkle. When we began the story we learned Rip lived in the Catskills Mts near the Hudson River, which one daughter remembered was named after Henry Hudson who was looking for the Northwest Passage. This had just come up in her history book. That reminded them of the D’Aulaire Columbus book and the other explorers read about lately and a lively discussion ensued about why those men were trying so hard to get to Asia(silks, spices, etc)and how America was accidentally discovered in the process.  They wondered why Hudson was called Hendrick in the book and what the significance of the Dutchmen was, so we discussed New York’s original name – New Netherlands, recalling the artist we studied this year, Rembrandt, who was also born there about the same time.

As we read about Dame Van Winkle’s nagging and scolding we discussed the bible’s definition of a valiant woman who brings her husband ‘good and not evil all the days of his life’. We discussed the significance of the sign over the tavern where Rip hung out – first bearing a picture of King George and later George Washington, hence alluding to the American Revolution. We noticed the illustrator was Will Moses which sounded an awful lot like Grandma Moses about whom we read earlier this year. Reading the book jacket revealed that he was indeed linked to her both by relation and artistically, painting in a similar primitive style. Later in the week a copy of Mary Engelbreit’s Home Companion magazine had an ad for a Will Moses poster which another child immediately noticed and correctly connected back to the book and ‘Grandma’.  And so it goes here. : )

We are reading a bit more slowly these days but exchanges like these are free lessons as far as I am concerned. They require no prep time, just a willingness to enter into the story with the children. I don’t believe any prepared lesson plan can effectively replace being well read, unless you are willing to be tied to a cumbersome lesson manual that will make artificial connections for you. Those will never work as well as the spontaneous connections made with our children as we call to mind similar people, places, and events read about before. We have benefited most in our homeschool journey not from complicated, and costly, lesson manuals but from hours on the couch or around the kitchen table hashing out ideas born from books.