Mindful Living

I have been encouraged by several different sources lately to consider how "mindfully" I am living my life, and how that is affecting my happiness and anxiety. "Mindfulness" simply means being aware of and living in the moment, rather than fretting over the past or worrying about the future. Eckhart Tolle points out in his book A New Earth (which I'll warn you is pretty weird and probably isn't the best place to start reflecting on this) that truly only the present exists; the past is just memories and the future exists only in our imagination. The past and future are simply a row of moments of "now" placed one after the other in our mind. The only place we can truly live is "now," because it is the only time that exists outside of our minds, yet how many people never truly live in "now" because they are mulling over the past or the future?  It is only in the present moment that we can meet and connect with other people in our lives, and not being mindful of "now" also means not being mindful of what other people and what they may need or can offer to you.

This has been a major problem for me. All too often I try to escape my life instead of living in it and being present to it. The internet and message boards have been a major means of escape for me, as have reading books, spending time thinking about "how things will be" at some point in the future, curriculum planning, or just mulling over theoretical issues of theology and philosophy. Oh, and this blog. ; ) None of these things are bad in and of themselves, and in fact each of them is good and can be beneficial in its proper place. However, when they are being used as a means to avoid dealing with the present moment and its frustrations and demands (all too often, my children) then they become detrimental to my overall emotional and spiritual health.

While some of the sources advocating mindfulness come from an Eastern or New Age perspective, I've also been encouraged to reflect on this by sources coming from a purely psychological perspective, which consider mindfulness important for mental health, and sources coming from a Christian perspective. I've just begun reading The Sacrament of the Present Moment which seems to take mindfulness to its next logical step in the Christian life: after becoming aware of the present moment, one asks, "What does God will for me to do right now?" Now, if only I can remember to ask this of myself.

What a difference a year makes!

It just so happens that my blogging hiatus has encompassed the whole of Verity's existence thus far, so this is actually the first mention of her on the blog. In any case, she is a year old!

A Curriculum Decision

We reached a decision about what we would do for school next year -- we're going to be using the Mother of Divine Grace third grade lesson plans. We used their lesson plans loosely for Pauly for first grade and I really liked and agreed with the methodology of lessons, including memorizing poetry, reading lots of literature for history and using "narrations" or retellings, but Bob wasn't really happy with their focus on American history rather than world history in the elementary years so last year we enrolled with St. Thomas Aquinas Academy. STAA was fine, I do like a lot of their suggestions, but they don't have lesson plans available without enrolling, and enrolling is pretty expensive. I am planning on following MODG's plans pretty closely for next year, simply switching out their religion plans and using the Faith and Life books instead. Best of all, since we still have the plans for first grade, we'll spend very little money on Roger's curriculum next year.

Creative Contrariness

Roger will not cooperate with any schoolwork that I plan and initiate, but he's full of plenty of creative ideas for himself. This was how yesterday's school day went.

First, he fought with me over the copywork I'd printed off for him. This confused me, as last week he'd said that he loved copywork and wanted to do it every day. Then I had just written something on a paper, but this weekend I'd printed off a copywork booklet, and maybe that was overwhelming? With many threats and much cajoling I finally convinced him to do it. I wanted to take the time while Pauly was practicing his piano and then working on his typing to get Roger's math and reading done, but that didn't work out anything like I'd planned. For reading, I was going to do a spelling activity, but was first going to make letter tiles out of some of our many sheets of blank business cards. Roger asked to make the tiles himself, so I let him do so. Instead of just writing the lowercase letters, as I was planning, he insisted on writing the capital letters on one side, and the lowercase on the others. That's fine, extra practice, right? I was trying to tell him which letters we would need for the spelling words, but he ignored me entirely and wrote the letters he wanted, then started using the tiles to spell his own words. After he did that for a while, I suggested that he finish writing the letters we needed so I could read words for him to spell, but he declared that he was done and stacked the tiles up. So we didn't do what I'd planned, but he did reading.

We watched the next lesson on the Math-U-See DVD, which introduced subtraction, and then used the blocks to practice it a bit. He went along with this for a few minutes, then started using the blocks to build a restaurant, instead. My attempts to bring him back to math met with obstinate refusal, so I gave up. I had no energy for a fight. Instead, I used the math blocks to show Rosemarie subtraction, because she wanted to learn. Then Roger told me, "Guess what is on the dessert menu at my restaurant?" As he started listing things off, I figured we might as well roll with what he wanted to do, so I asked him if he wanted me to help him write the menus down. We ended up making two menus -- a regular menu and a dessert menu -- and he also named his restaurant. After I'd written everything down like he wanted, he illustrated the menus. So not math, but certainly educational.

This is just so very different from Pauly, who, until relatively recently, was happy to cooperate with what I wanted but who rarely initiates any kind of creative activity himself. The more I want Roger to do something, the less likely he is to do it.

I Forgot Myself

After I posted the link to my blog on Facebook, a friend commented on how much she enjoyed reading it and what interesting things I had to say about homeschooling and other subjects. I was a bit taken aback. I haven't blogged regularly in more than a year and a half, and lately I've felt that I don't know the first thing about homeschooling well. I went back to my blog and read the archives of older posts from 2007 and the first half of 2008, and was surprised to find that I had blogged pretty regularly for quite a while and I had some good ideas and interesting things to say. I particularly thought this post was interesting as it described how we were doing math at the time, and it addresses some of our current problems and frustrations. We were using the same math series that we are now, Math-U-See, but we weren't using it in the same way.

I do alter the lessons somewhat. After reading How Children Fail I have taken a lot of Holt's suggestions for the Cuisenaire rods and applied them to the Math-U-See blocks. This doesn't change the content of the lessons, just how I present them. I do a bit less instruction and a bit more guided exploration.

At the time we were exploring the blocks together and using the student book very little. In Math-U-See, the instruction is supposed to take place through watching the video then practicing with the blocks, and the student workbook is only supposed to be practice and reinforcement. That's not how we've been using it at all lately, and I think that's been a big part of the growing math resistence and frustration. My kids simply don't need that much repetition to understand the concepts, and if I'd been using the curriculum as it is intended to be used instead of feeling like we had to complete a certain percentage of the workbook to be doing it "right" then things would have been going better.

There were other posts covering my thoughts on homeschooling approach that reminded me of what I had thought and why I had thought it, and I'm glad I reread them. They've given me some inspiration for what I would like to do in the future.

On a more somber note, I realized as I reviewed the blog that the drop off in posting coincided with my descent into a bout of depression, anxiety and spiritual turmoil that I've only recently begun to emerge from. I hadn't really realized how long it had been since I had felt good.

Structure, Freedom and Anxiety

Providing our children the freedom to learn and explore at their own pace instead of being bound by curriculum and conformity to a set of group standards is one of the primary reasons that we have chosen to educate the kids at home, yet when I look at how we have been homeschooling in practice, I realize how very far we are from our original intentions and even my current convictions. We've been using a math curriculum, for instance, that explains things in interesting and innovative ways, but at the same time doesn't involve much exploration and does require a great deal of drill and repetition. We have been skipping some of the workbook pages, but I'm now convinced that I've still been requiring far more than my kids need in order to retain the material. The kids have gone from loving math to resisting math, even though they are quite good at it. We are using a highly structured phonics program, which hasn't met the same resistance, yet I wonder about how much it is really required. Pauly made a jump in reading some months ago, and now the phonics material is far below his current reading level, yet we've kept slogging through it because I feel like we need to complete the program before moving on. Why I am doing this? Why aren't I taking advantage of our freedom to move at the kids' pace?

This year we are enrolled with St. Thomas Aquinas Academy, and when I called our advisor to discuss some of these frustrations, her advice could be reduced to "Lighten up, have fun, they're little yet." Even with this blessing, I've found myself unable to truly relax. It finally occurred to me this week that most of what we have been doing in practice has had little to do with my educational convictions or what my children need, but instead is about calming my own anxiety and meeting my own need to do things "right." The irony is that in seeking to do things "right" I'm actually acting against what I am intellectually convinced is right for home school education; my rigidity interferes with utilizing home schooling's freedom and flexibility and instilling a love for learning.

So what do I do now that I realize this?

I'm Going to Resume Blogging

Really, I will.