From the archives: Treasured Possessions

First posted May 2013. Based on The Hidden Art of Homemaking, Chapter 5. Edited somewhat.

Heirloom-quality tablecloths, candlesticks, silver spoons, fine bedcovers? I don't relate much to the particular home-making items that Edith Schaeffer recommends we acquire in Chapter 5.  A candlestick wouldn't necessarily make a hotel room "homier" for me (and do hotels allow you to burn candles in the rooms, anyway? I'm thinking it might be a bit dangerous). 

And Edith knew as well as anyone that "lifetime" treasures could easily be lost or broken.  It was her sweaters that got chewed in the opportunity-for-recycling incident she describes in this chapter, and her wedding china that reportedly got broken by the Schaeffers' constant stream of houseguests.  Moths (mice?) and rust corrupt, cigarette sparks make holes, and careless guests break dishes.  It's a bit of a paradox that Edith describes, in such detail, the value of having your own special stuff; but that she could also see possessions as belonging, ultimately, to the Lord; that dishes and rugs could be somewhat expendable in the service of the Kingdom.

I do have a few treasured family items, but they're not the sort of things you'd want to cart around in a suitcase or that you'd use to dress up a temporary space: a piece of red glassware that was my grandmother's, a Psalter in German script that was passed down through her family, some photographs, my mother's earrings, and so on. I don't think those are the "treasured possessions" that Edith was talking about.

"What about me?"

I think she was shooting more for two types of home-related treasures. 

One would be just familiar, everyday (but also beautiful and individual) home stuff that becomes so much a part of your life that you, or your family, can't imagine home without it.  These days, instead of silver spoons, we might think of afghans or scrap quilts, pottery coffee mugs or bowls, a something-a-day calendar (somebody recently mentioned one with daily paintings), personalized pillowcases.  And her point is that if you don't have any homey stuff like that, then you need to get busy and find some, or make some, or let your kids make some.

The second would be seasonal, ritual-type treasures, things like Christmas ornaments or a birthday plate.

 I'm thinking about my grandparents' move to a granny flat, after forty years in one house.  Somehow they managed to make their new living room look something like the old one.  My grandpa still had a special chair, and some of his steam-train memorabilia.  Grandma's coffee table was still topped by a particular millefiore paperweight.

.

Here's the last point: if Jesus said to store up treasures in heaven, not on earth, isn't that a good attitude to have?

Maybe.  But as Edith says...without any material connections, we risk becoming splintered, unsettled.  Our longings for a home on earth may simply reflect our longings for home in heaven, but while we're here, can't we make our homes places that we care for, and where we know we are also cared for?

More moving stuff: repurposing things

Everything has a story, right?

The shelves in the photo below were part of a Crate Furniture Junior Loft Bed. We bought the bed and shelves for the Apprentice when she was a small only Squirreling, and the other Squirrelings later grew into and then out of the bed and/or the shelves and drawers that went with it. The shelves eventually got moved to the living room to be a T.V. stand. Now they're coming with us to hold stereo components. I'd say we got our money's worth.

These shelves look like more Crate Furniture, but they were made by a family friend who was renovating my parents' attic, thirty years ago. We took the shelves to our first house to keep toddler Apprentice from falling through a too-wide stair opening. At this house they were in a bedroom, then in the dining room to hold Mama Squirrel's favourite books; and they're going to do the same in the new dining area.

The new kitchen is a bit short on drawer space. I was going to look around for a countertop crock to hold utensils, but then I realized these wooden canisters will also work.

A favourite poster from the rec room, now going to brighten up the kitchen.

Rhubarb muffins (maybe the last batch here)

Rhubarb, cut this morning

 A double batch of sour cream rhubarb muffins. Probably our last from that plant.

From the archives: Dolls and violets

First posted April 2014

We are in the peak of violet season.

Wednesday Hodgepodge: Up and Down

1. April showers bring May flowers or so the saying goes. Has your April been filled with showers? Do you carry an umbrella, wear a slicker, or make a run for it? Besides rain, what else has filled your April? 

Some years we seem to go almost straight from winter to summer, but this month has been very springy, meaning we've had some warm days, the snow stomped off in disgust, and yes, there's been some rain. People are, as usual, over-eager to buy things at the garden centres and get something into the ground, but around here they really should wait a bit, because frosts can sneak up.

I am not really one for walking in the rain just for fun (sorry, Charlotte Mason).

What else has filled our April? If you're just popping in here for the first time, One Word: Moving. The rest of you already know that.

2. What's something you could you give a 30-minute presentation on at a moment's notice and with zero preparation?

I have sort of done that, more than once. Usually it's been on a homeschooling topic, like ways to stretch your budget and re-use what you have.

3. Share with us a favorite food memory from childhood.

Food memories: Campfire Pie Irons. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were the best, alhough the filling got hotter even than a McDonald's fried apple pie. But bologna and cheese ones were good too.

4. What's a song you thought you knew the lyrics to, but later discovered you were wrong?

"Fly Robin Fly," by The Silver Convention. When I was younger, I thought (for no good reason) that they were saying "Fly Muffin Fly."

Muffin says, "What???"

5. According to one travel website, the most overrated tourist attractions in America are-
Niagara Falls (NY), Hollywood Walk of Fame (California), Times Square (NYC), Epcot (FL), Seattle Space Needle (WA), and Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market (Boston). How many of these have you seen in person? Did you feel like a tourist? Did you care? Tell us about a place (not on the list) you've visited that might be considered a tourist trap, but you love it anyway.

I have been to Niagara Falls and Epcot Centre. I used to walk past the C.N. Tower in Toronto all the time, but never went up there, and I probably never will. Too expensive, for one thing, and (okay I admit it) going up that high just scared me. A lot. But we're moving to the almost-top-floor of an apartment building, so we can just pretend we're up there.

Since I seem to be in a You-tube mood this morning, here's what's going through my head:

6. Your signature clothing item?

Do I have to have just one? Here's my 10 x 10 Wardrobe Challenge for our pre-move.

7. What's an experience you've had you think everyone should experience at least once? Why?

Not sure about that one! Sometimes things we're glad we went through...weren't that fun at the time.

How about....having a job with a boss that you don't entirely like, or that you don't think entirely likes you, and having to stick it out anyway? Good practice in relationships and the way the world works. (See #8.)

8. Insert your own random thought here.

Not my own thought, but something from a friend:

"And parents are persons. Teachers are persons. Each of our homeschools or our classrooms is unique, and the way things are this year might not be the way things are next year. So we adapt, according to the principles we know. If the weather takes on a deeper chill, we build up that burning fire to keep the room warm. If a child is struggling in math, or we’re adding another first-grader to our homeschool this year, or we have a chance to visit a foreign country, or…fill in the blank with your own special need…well, we have some solid principles to guide our decisions about curriculum, and language study, and schedules." ~~ Karen Glass, "The Spirit and the Letter of a Charlotte Mason Education"

Linked from the Wednesday Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.

With ten days left, I'm doing a 10 x 10 Wardrobe Challenge

#SPRING10x10

What's a 10 x 10 Wardrobe Challenge?

This is something that started on the Stylebee blog. You take ten items of clothing (this can include shoes and coats, or not), and wear only those for ten days.

Why am I doing this right now?

1. It's still Fashion Revolution Week.

2. We're moving in ten days. Ten days, ten items of clothing just sounded like it made sense. Besides, I moved most of the rest of my clothes to the apartment this morning. The weather has been a bit loopy: one day it's nice and warm, the next it's cold and rainy; so I tried to pick out a mix of things that would layer.

This is what I saved out:

Across the top: grey jersey top, off-white t-shirt, denim shirt with a long navy t-shirt underneath it, sage-green outdoor jacket.
Middle row: navy pullover, pink tank top, green sweater dress
Bottom: three scarves which don't count, grey pull-on pants, blue jeans.

I'm not counting shoes, but I included pictures of them anyway. I think that, technically, you're supposed to post pictures of what you're actually wearing over the whole ten days, but I'm doing a shortcut version. Here we go, descriptions are below the photos.

Day One: Schlepping boxes back and forth. Navy pullover, green jacket, navy scarf. (Not shown: jeans and shoes.)

Day Two: Let's get burgers for lunch. Denim shirt, pull-on pants, striped scarf. (Take it for granted that I have something on my feet.)

Day Three: Navy t-shirt, mauve scarf worn shrug-style, jeans, sneakers

Day Four: Did you remember I have a meeting tonight? Grey pants, grey top, mauve scarf.

Day Five: This is grocery day (we still have to eat). Denim shirt, navy t-shirt, grey pants, sneakers.

Day Six: Dress and scarf for church.

Day Seven: Off-white t-shirt, jeans, navy scarf, sneakers.

Day Eight: Sweater dress belted over pull-on pants

Day Nine: Everything's packed. Let's go out for dinner. Pink tank top with mauve scarf worn cape-style, grey pants, grey wedge shoes.

Day Ten: Moving Day! Navy pullover with off-white t-shirt, jeans and sneakers.

April 24th is Fashion Revolution Day

A problem

The slogan posted on the Fashion Revolution site is "Be curious. Find out. Do something." When we are handed a new piece of information, we can choose to react in different ways. We might be able to blend it into our existing model of how the world works. We can refuse to believe it. Or we might have to shift a paradigm to allow it to make sense. And once we accept an idea, we need to act on it.

Fashion Revolution Day, for the past four years, has marked the anniversary of the Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh. Something else happened less than ten days ago, that seems to evoke the same "that's so not fair but what can I do about it?" reaction. That's if you even heard about it on the news.

Sri Lanka Death Toll Rises in Garbage Dump Collapse

An explosion in the dump on Friday afternoon caused a portion of the mound to collapse, sweeping scores of houses off their foundations and burying others, trapping residents inside. Survivors described hearing a loud noise and running outside to see nearby dwellings rushing in their direction on a tide of debris, surrounded by smoke.

A team of geological investigators, who have been gathering evidence at the dump, believe that the explosion occurred when methane naturally produced by decaying waste ignited, Mr. Kodippili said.

Residents of the working-class neighborhoods around the dump had complained for years of reeking water flooding through their narrow lanes, where it collected during the hottest months of the year, providing a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

A similar thing happened last month in Ethiopia. 

Living...and then dying...in a mountain of collapsing garbage sounds like it should be one of Dante's levels of hell. Who's at fault? Who made all that garbage? What combination of reasons forces people to live there? Is that shocking enough to inspire a paradigm shift?

A solution

Did you ever see this movie?

Do you remember the very last scene, as those who were exiled from a toxic, dirty Earth finally returned?



Let's grow some pizza plants.

I'm serious.

Anybody can go buy stuff. Anybody can throw stuff in the trash (and our family has certainly created our own share lately, cleaning out this house). To restore what is broken, we have to think differently. But we also have to start with one small, positive action. Planting a seed. Looking for "less is more." Vlogging about your favourite old piece of clothing instead of buying something new (that's what some people are doing for Fashion Revolution Day).

I don't have a big solution. But I do believe that a lot of small ones add up.


Birds and Vines wall hanging, made in Haiti from a discarded metal oil drum (Ten Thousand Villages)

Incidentally, we have eleven days left here

GOING

As empty as we've ever seen these shelves

Stereo, under deconstruction

COMING

Stereo, reconstructed

View from the new tree.

What's for supper? A new chili recipe

Tonight's dinner menu: Wendy's Copycat Chili Seasoning Mix, plus chili recipe, at Grandma Bee's Recipes.

Tweaks: Since I had only a pound of meat, I cut the seasoning in half. I kept the other amounts about the same. (Two cans of beans, though, not four.)

Verdict: I have no idea if this tastes like Wendy's chili. It's what I'd call diner or homestyle chili, not overly ambitious but tasty just the same. Easy to make in the slow cooker, and would work well as a freeze-ahead.

Moving stuff continues

I had a basic plan for the new kitchen cupboards, but today I decided to do a dry run in 3-D. I cut our Saturday paper into pieces the size of the shelves, marked the heights with sticky notes, and set things up. The advantage to this over-planning: when you call something the "tea shelf," it helps to see that the current teabag holder is not going to fit in that space. I found another basket that works. 

What didn't fit on any of the newspapers went either in the thrift store basket or in a garbage bag. A few larger things (like the bread machine) will go into the storage room/pantry in the new apartment. Ponytails was here today, and she took a couple of things she can use in her own apartment. 

I found these folding cooling racks at a yard sale. Unfolded, they can hold dish cloths and towels.

Trial run in the new kitchen: yes, it will fit.

And oh man, you wouldn't believe the workshop. Mr. Fixit has cleaned it out almost to the walls.

So we are getting somewhere.

Dewey has found a safe perch to watch the carrying and packing and reorganizing.

From the archives: the golden age of science publishing?

First posted February 2007, edited slightly.

On the "Golden Age" of children's science publishing: I'm just guessing but I think it started just after WWII and probably extended sometime into the sixties. I'm not talking so much about the little kids' Read-and-Find-Out books, although some of those are semi-classic too (like Benny's Animals And How He Put Them In Order), but something more; a collaboration between scientists, writers, and well-known (or well-known later) childrens' book illustrators. These books were written...let's say...to appeal to junior George Baileys ("Then I'm coming back here and go to college and see what they know…and then I'm going to build things"), Little Eddies, and Homer Prices. Kids like my dear Mr. Fixit who wanted to know how things worked, and who weren't scared off by having to read information instead of getting it delivered in multimedia format.

I picked up three books like this at the thrift shop last week. One is The Story of Sound, by James Geralton. (James Geralton is the pen name of Harvard physics professor emeritus Gerald Holton.) The illustrations are by Joe Krush; you might have seen Beth and Joe Krush's illustrations in The Borrowers or Gone-Away Lake. The cover is terrible, especially with the dustjacket missing; the title is boring (gee, thanks Uncle Max, just what I wanted, The Story of Sound).

But the text draws you in, keeps you interested, and teaches you something along the way. Some examples (they're not consecutive paragraphs):

Wind whistling through a forest may sound mysterious and frightening. But we can now explain that noise quite simply. When the wind hits a branch or a leaf, or a blade of grass, its smooth flow is broken up--just as the pillars of a bridge break the passing stream into small whirlpools and eddies. The eddies of water try to stay and hide right behind the pillars. The little eddies of air, too [no, not those Little Eddies], lie behind the twig or blade, leaf or telegraph wire, while the wind that rushes past pushes them lightly back and forth. The whirls of air vibrate to and fro behind their hiding place, like a flag on a stormy day that flutters from its pole. This vibration of whirling air sets up sound waves, just like any other vibration!

Hot gases, too, like the exhaust from the engine of a car, expand quite rapidly. To make one's automobile trips pleasanter a muffler is usually attached which lets the gas expand more slowly through a widening tube of metal. Thus the noise is deadened a little.

Now we have come to a large and interesting family of noises: those made by explosions! [ooh yeah]

The other two books are sixties paperback reprints of earlier books: Everyday Weather and How It Works, by Herman Schneider, illustrated by Jeanne Bendick; and Research Ideas for Young Scientists, by George Barr, illustrated by John Teppich. The George Barr book in particular is terrific and asks all kinds of questions that young scientists can find answers to: How far did your helium balloon travel? What accounts for the force of a collision? How quickly can you stop your bicycle? Does a blindfolded person walk in a circle? What is the traffic picture at a busy corner? [I'm visualizing Policeman Small here...] Why are ships pointed? How reliable is your camera's shutter?

"Have you been getting poor snapshots lately, even though you used the recommended exposure? Maybe your shutter speed is not what is supposed to be....The next time you use a roll of film, save your last shot for this test. Take a record player, with an extension cord, out into the bright sunlight. Use the standard 78-rpm speed. Place a 10- or 12-inch record on the turntable. Tape a thin white paper strip to the record from the center to the edge....[take a picture while it's going around]....When the picture is printed, measure the angle with a protractor--or compare it with the one shown in the diagram...."

Of course the experiments (like that one) are sometimes anachronistic; other experiments involve roller skates, milk bottles and "stapling machines" ("Dad, can I use that 'stapling machine' you have on your desk?" "Sure, Beaver"). But many of them are still workable; and some of them are more relevant than ever (How much water is wasted in your home?).

Moral: don't be scared off by boring titles or cover art showing tin-can phones; there's gold in some of them thar Golden Age books.

Lost in wonder, time and space: Pope John Paul II on beauty

"On the threshold of the Third Millennium, my hope for all of you who are artists is that you will have an especially intense experience of creative inspiration. May the beauty which you pass on to generations still to come be such that it will stir them to wonder! Faced with the sacredness of life and of the human person, and before the marvels of the universe, wonder is the only appropriate attitude...

"Thanks to this enthusiasm, humanity, every time it loses its way, will be able to lift itself up and set out again on the right path. In this sense it has been said with profound insight that 'beauty will save the world'.

"Beauty is a key to the mystery and a call to transcendence. It is an invitation to savour life and to dream of the future. That is why the beauty of created things can never fully satisfy. Artists of the world, may your many different paths all lead to that infinite ocean of beauty where wonder becomes awe, exhilaration, unspeakable joy."

~~ Pope John Paul II, Easter Sunday 1999; quoted here.

Wednesday Hodgepodge: On the Fly

Notes from our Hodgepodge Hostess: "Hello Hodgepodgers! I have lots of catching up to do after a week away, but in the meantime here are this week's Wednesday Hodgepodge questions. Answer on your own blog, then hop back here tomorrow to share answers with the universe. See you there!"

1. Tell us about a time you felt like you were 'flying by the seat of your pants'.

Phrases.org says that to fly by the seat of one's pants (or trousers, if you're British) is to "Decide a course of action as you go along, using your own initiative and perceptions rather than a predetermined plan or mechanical aids." Maybe these days we need to rephrase it to something like "getting across town without the aid of Google Maps' route finder."

A lot of my life has felt like that, but it`s not necessarily a bad thing. 

2.  When or where would you most like to be 'a fly on the wall'?

How about on Noah's ark? Because the flies on the wall would probably be the least crowded.

3. 'Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.'-Henry David Thoreau

Would you agree? Why or why not?

Maybe.

I think it was the last time I participated in a Wednesday Hodgepodge, that the theme was slowness and patience. At that time we were waiting for something important to happen that did seem frustratingly elusive. However, if we hadn't kept chasing it, it wouldn't have just come and sat on our shoulders either. So sometimes sitting and waiting is enough, but other times you need to be persistent. This might also be true of happiness...not an end in itself or something to be pursued for its own sake (as I think Thoreau was saying), but you can take definite actions and make choices that do create more happiness for others or for yourself.

5. What is one task or chore you tend to do 'on the fly'? Is this something that really needs to be done another way?

The boring bits of housework are an obvious target. Mr. Fixit is a better house cleaner than I am, and he is always more patient with the small details of things. But I am good at organizing stuff and cleaning up messes.

Last year's board game purge

6. What was happening the last time you thought to yourself or said aloud, 'Wow, time flies when you're having fun', and you meant it.

The last time I thought about being married for twenty-five-plus years. (I hope my husband is reading this.)

7. This Thursday is National Garlic Day. Will you add garlic to your menu on Thursday? Do you like garlic? What's your favorite dish made with garlic?

Mmm, garlic...I never heard of National Garlic Day, and I'm not sure what we're eating tomorrow. These days I am often not sure at all what we're having for dinner. We are trying to eat everything in the chest freezer (no room for that in the apartment), and there isn't much left in there anyway by now; we're trying not to buy too many extra groceries, although we're just moving across town, so a trip over there with food isn't that big a deal. It's just the principle of the thing, as the Melendys liked to say.

So yes, the garlic...I made garlic bread on the weekend with some leftover Mini Pretzel Croissants from Walmart. I split them in half, arranged them on a toaster oven tray, spread them with margarine that had been mixed with garlic powder, sprinkled them with dried parsley and a bit more garlic powder, and set the oven to medium-toast. We had the garlic toasts with a frozen pizza and some salad, and it was about as good as being at Nameless Pizza Restaurant. Just missing the jug of root beer.

8. Insert your own random thoughts here.

Meals may be random, the seat of the pants may be random, but it's all coming together. Three Hodgepodges from now, we will be already settled into our "walking in the air" apartment. 

Linked from the Wednesday Hodgepodge at From This Side of the Pond.

How to unsquirrel (more moving stuff)

For years, our passion was picking up any acorns that seemed useful. There was lots of room to squirrel them away. Tool acorns. Craft acorns. Lots and lots of little acorns for the Squirrelings.

Over the past while, we've been unsquirreling. And since getting the go-ahead to move, we have put the pedal to the metal on cleaning out the Treehouse. We actually have some spaces now that look like this:

Cupboard that once held homeschool supplies. The shelves are not really falling out, it's just a weird camera angle.

And this:

Cupboard previously filled with board games, Christmas overflow, and extra fabric

Some of our unsquirreled stuff has gone to new homes, via Kijiji, our homeschooling friends, and the thrift store. Some of it, nobody else would seriously want.

The things we still like, want, and have room for are getting packed up:

Even the living room is taking on that "ready to move" look.

The fireplace is not coming with us.

From the archives: Now we really do have a "Real Easter Update."

First posted April 2006. Lydia was just about to turn five.

New readers can unintentionally provide a lot of humor. 

At lunch, Mr. Fixit was looking at something that came in the mail, and Crayons [Lydia] was looking over his shoulder. "Real...Easter...Update," she read. A real Easter update?

Oh, a real estate update.

I think I preferred Crayons' version!

Easter baking

These are what I'm calling Easter Morning Muffins, and they're going in the freezer to save for our church's annual bring-your-baking-before-church event this Sunday. Also known in MB circles as the Paska Party.

What's in them, besides sprinkles? Basic muffin batter, white chocolate chips, one banana, and a spoonful of raspberry jam.

(This is Paska. I don't make Paska.)

Birds and gardens: my Project 333 clothes for summer

My Summer Page  (this is the link)

This spring/summer brings change here in much more than clothing. We are in the middle/muddle of moving from a house to an apartment, which means that I've been busy with things other than what to wear, and also that I'm going to have less closet and drawer space when the moving is done. So, Project 333 to the rescue. Also the new (to me) idea of a One Week Wardrobe, which is another way of saying, "I have enough."

 Breakfast in the Garden, by Frederick Carl Frieseke,
also called Teatime in a Giverny Garden. Tea, breakfast, it's all good

From the archives: A school day five years ago

First posted April 2012. Crayons (Lydia) was doing AmblesideOnline's Year Five.

We read the last chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, and sang Morning Has Broken.

Crayons started a Math Mammoth worksheet about months and years.  Her homework is to calculate how many days old she is.

We read a little bit of Evangeline.  Evangeline is still waiting for it to be tomorrow so that she can go hunt down Gabriel.  But these are my favourite lines from this section:

Then from his station aloft, at the head of the table, the herdsman...spake to his guests, who listened, and smiled as they listened:--
"Welcome once more, my friends, who long have been friendless and homeless,
Welcome once more to a home, that is better perchance than the old one!
Here no hungry winter congeals our blood like the rivers;
Here no stony ground provokes the wrath of the farmer.
Smoothly the ploughshare runs through the soil, as a keel through the water.
All the year round the orange-groves are in blossom; and grass grows
More in a single night than a whole Canadian summer..."

Aw, c'mon, we do get summer here too, you know.

We read about Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee in June, 1897, using this short guide to the Royalty and Empire exhibit created in 1982.  This led into a discussion about Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee, and the Queen's family, and what happened to Princess Margaret Rose (Crayons remembered her from an American Girl movie), and the hats that the princesses wore to The Wedding (which was a year ago yesterday).

Crayons did some copywork, and we did a quick review of the writing lessons about paragraphs.

We also read about how Alexander treated the female relatives of Darius after the battle of Issus (kindly), and about the reluctant king Abdalonymus of Sidon. (It's a good story, even if it seems like kind of a historical urban myth.) Crayons recreated both stories with her dolls afterward.

Oh, and we started reading Orphan at My Door, by Jean Little, one of the Dear Canada diary series.  It begins in the spring of 1897, is set in our part of Ontario, and it mentions the Jubilee, which is particularly important to the main character because her name is Victoria.  And that seemed an appropriate way to end the school day.  If you don't count a swimming lesson tonight.

More moving things

What's up in the moving-in-less-than a month Treehouse?

I have been fussing about my spice jars, and looking at Pinterest, and wondering exactly how much screwing of things to cupboard doors I could get away with in a rental where they even made us sign a form swearing we would never use sticky contact paper.

Right now, they are sitting double-stacked in a basket on the kitchen counter. It may not be the best way ever to store them, and alphabetizing is out, but I kind of like them like that anyway, and I might just try it for awhile. It would save on screws, at least.

This is called pulling everything out to pack...and making choices about what comes along.

This is called a room that's emptying fast:

From the archives: If I could give the Squirrelings one thing

First posted April, 2010

When it comes down to personal application of Charlotte Mason's philosophy, we've done better at some things here than at others....and knowing that our homeschooling achievement isn't perfect is probably as it should be. We are human beings, after all, trying to take hold of what's offered but doing so, often, rather imperfectly. 

Some people find it strange that the original PNEU programmes defined so strictly what was to be done at each level during each term, since Charlotte Mason talked so much about the individual. But was it as cookie-cutter a curriculum as that sounds? Let's look at that for a minute. Each student was assigned certain pages in certain books to read or have read to him/her. Each one had a certain number of memory assignments--though those could vary, they were things like "Two hymns by Keble." Each one was expected to keep nature journals and, when old enough, history records (century charts, books of the centuries etc.). Each one was expected to make certain handicrafts (such as "a child's dress.") Each one was to be learning arithmetic, French, etc., though it was thought more important that each one be making progress than that a particular level be reached each term.

So--yes, it was all laid out, and there was a suggested timetable of subjects, and Charlotte Mason felt that the PNEU was doing parents and teachers a favour by going through the publishers' lists and picking out the best in-print choices at the time--plus having a few books specially written by PNEU members and friends. But what wasn't spelled out in the programmes is more "suggestive," as Miss Mason might say: what the children were supposed to think about such and such a fairy tale, what ideas they were supposed to take from a passage of Plutarch, or what vocabulary and what multiple-choice-type facts they were to have learned from a science chapter. Susan Schaeffer Macaulay tells a story about her childhood visit to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and how she "discovered" a famous painting by Rembrandt. She points out that nobody told her to stop looking at it, or what to think about it, or even what it was about. She just absorbed what she needed from it. The freedom that was given within a PNEU term was not in the assignments (find three catkins and three tree buds) but in the ideas; in each student's "digestion" of all this material, in each one's response, and in each one's growth.

Still, I think if our own family has erred in our application of CM, it's often been on the too-relaxed end rather than in the too-rigid...the parent's and child's comfort zone pushes our own natures forward, but those laws of learning have a voice of truth that we can't ignore. I think that, for instance, often our Squirrelings go away too fast after listening to something read aloud, when according to Charlotte Mason's plan they should stick around to discuss it a bit more. For one reason and another, we've read school books aloud at an older age than is probably ideal, and we've delayed written narrations for the same reason-and-another. I've never sat under a tree with my knitting and demanded that they go look at some other tree and then give me a full description so that I can identify it--I probably wouldn't know what it was either. I thought the Squirrelings were getting a pretty good overview of what's in the Bible, and they could even sing the Old Testament and New Testament books in order, but then I realized that they still didn't know how to find even the books quickly, much less chapters and verses. (We're working on that.) I'm not sure if they know what a catkin is, or a fjord. And I sometimes think that we could have done better at cultivating habits of perfect attention from the time that they were small...although, being Squirrels, that isn't something that comes naturally.

I find the years...particularly the school years...slipping away too fast, and with them, the number of chances we have to start fresh, learn new habits, rediscover what learning is about. And, ironically, I seem to understand this education thing better as my Squirrelings get closer to leaving the nest. (Well, they're not THAT close yet, but you know what I mean.)

If I could give the Squirrelings one thing during the next homeschooling year--which will probably be Ponytails' last before high school--it would be to increase their love of learning, that sense Charlotte Mason described as "everything seems to fit into something else"--and to extend it to some of the areas that stay at the edge or just outside of their personal circle of relationships. History and geography, even with good books, are often too far away from their own world to seem real. Literature sometimes seems to have just too many pages; math is unending (I'd like to try some math journalling with them), and French verbs are just made up to pester people. Isn't the boredom of doing something because somebody's making you do it what we're trying to avoid? So do we then make our curriculum easier, drop books or subjects, expect less, if this way doesn't always cause a sort of earthquake of learning? What do you do when, after all your well-thought-out planning, your kids find more to discuss from an Arthur episode than from a history chapter?

The lesson I've had to learn myself is to be patient with both the teacher and the students; and not to take the teacher's striving for "nice lessons" too seriously. (Charlotte Mason said much the same thing--that we cannot depend too much on our own wisdom in presenting lessons.) I've come to the conclusion that some students, in some subjects, will be like lettuce, springing up quickly and obviously; others are more like carrots under the ground, that must not be yanked up before they're ready. I've also had to remember that squirrels have a habit of taking acorns but then burying them to be used much later.

These are the things I saw the younger Squirrelings doing today: catching a Red Admiral butterfly...and letting it go again after we figured out what it was. Noticing that the centres of forget-me-nots look like embroidery. Finding forget-me-not poems in two Flower Fairies books. Designing a crocheted hair scrunchie. Helping cheerfully with chores and projects. Practicing on a yard-saled recorder. Standing in the driveway singing. Playing an online word game and beating the grownups. Putting together an awesome photography/Powerpoint nature assignment with music. Improvising orange-cream cheese filling for blintzes. Re-reading Magic Elizabeth (this makes several times). And yes...playing on the Stuffed Animal Site after school work was done. We celebrate our childrens' growth in the sometimes unexpected places, and trust for the rest...

Which doesn't mean that there still isn't room for teacher improvement as well. Definitely there are things in which I'd like to boost our CM-ness, without violating the uniqueness and particular gifts of these Squirrelings. But that'll keep for another post.

Frugal Finds and Fixes: the Packing to Downsize Edition

What have we done lately that's a frugal find or a fix?

Umm....we found an an affordable apartment, to which we will be transferring such of our accumulated possessions as we are choosing to take with us.

Notice I did not say as many as we possibly can jam in.

The apartment itself came up quickly (we signed the lease less than a week ago), but we've been "un-jamming" for quite awhile now. I won't say that moving is easy, but at least we have a pretty good idea of what will fit. And what won't.

{Current Treehouse living room)

We are trying to "shop our house" as much as possible, rather than buying new things. Even in a small apartment, there are surprises, and places where we can try out things that didn't work in the Treehouse. Small example: the kitchen cupboards here go all the way up to the ceiling. In the apartment, there is about a foot of space above the cupboards. So a couple of nice almost-forgotten baskets are probably going to go up there.

Another example: there's a perfect corner for Muffin the Guinea Pig, right near the kitchen.

Another example: we bought a deacon's bench years ago, in our first house, but in this house it's always been in someone's bedroom. The apartment entrance has a niche for it, right by the door.

Our current kitchen table and chairs will take over as dining room furniture.

Our new bedroom is a bit smaller than the one we have now, and we need to use the shorter of our two dressers as a nightstand. But the only way that worked, with the way the door opens, was for Mr. Fixit's dresser to be on my side of the bed. We both saw the obvious answer at the same time:  let's trade (dressers).

I am very happy about the fact that we will have not just one, but two bookcases in our dining area. Plus the china cabinet, in which I just recently managed to get the dishes arranged nicely. Plus the cool retro-style glass-fronted cabinet that Mr. Fixit's grandpa made.

The nice thing about having come this far, in adulthood and family life, is that I know what we really use, and what, contrary to popular advice, should come along.  I know which combination of serving bowls we use for a "Sunday dinner." I know that we have rarely used the cups that came with our everyday dinner set (we almost always use drinking glasses or larger coffee mugs), and have NEVER used the saucers that go with those cups. So they went.

Our microwave is several years old, and we won't be taking it with us; we'll have to retrain ourselves to be microwave-less. The toaster oven is still working well (after the struggle with bad models that we had a few years ago), so it's a keeper. The blender and two slow cookers (big and small) are necessities. I'm also taking a couple of the more frivolous appliances: the bread machine and the hot air popcorn popper. I would miss being able to make pizza dough, potato rolls, and popcorn, more than I care about being able to reheat a plate of food. (We will probably go through less plastic wrap as well.)

Finally, a frugal fix: Mr. Fixit spray-painted a big biscuit tin brown, to hide some ugly printing; and that's going to hold my drawerful of spice jars. There are only a few drawers in the new kitchen, and they're all going to be needed for other things (like forks), so the jars will have to sit somewhere else, and the tin will corral them.

Stay tuned for more Treehouse moving fun over the next few weeks.