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Works for ME Wednesday: Family Economy

Aug23

I found the links to these articles on Family Economy a long time ago at Two Talent Living., aka A Gracious Home. The articles are long but worthwhile, I think.

Love Is Not Enough: Toward the Recovery of A Family Economics by Allan Carlton
The Power of the Home Economy by Kathleen Bahr

In one international study, African children who did “predominantly family-care tasks [such as] fetching wood or water, looking after siblings, running errands for parents” showed a high degree of helpfulness while “children in the Northeast United States, whose primary task in the household was to clean their own room, were the least helpful of all the children in the six cultures that were studied.”

How does ordinary, family-centered work like feeding, clothing, and nurturing a family—work that often seems endless and mundane—actually bless our lives? The answer is so obvious in common experience that it has become obscure: Family work links people. On a daily basis, the tasks we do to stay alive provide us with endless opportunities to recognize and fill the needs of others. Family work is a call to enact love, and it is a call that is universal. Throughout history, in every culture, whether in poverty or prosperity, there has been the ever-present need to shelter, clothe, feed, and care for each other.

In our family, each child has a morning job, a lunchtime job, and an evening job. These are “family care tasks” such as loading the dishwasher, or emptying the trash, or sweeping the floors. These jobs are to be done before the meal is served, providing an incentive for timely completion. And the jobs are necessary. Everyone knows if Someone hasn’t cleaned the bathroom properly because it gets very nasty very fast with ten people livng in the house. Children keep their same jobs for six months or a year because then I can remember who’s supposed to do what, and they can practice a particulaar job and learn to do it right. Sometimes, if some one is ill or out of pocket, another gets to do the sibling’s job, a gift of service to the family and to the sibling.

We still have some complaining and sometimes jobs aren’t done to the highest standards, but we have a plan and we keep on plugging. It mostly works for me.

Work your way over to Shannon’s Rocks in My Dryer for more Works for Me Wednesday tips and ideas.

Maps and Globes, or On the Road Again

Aug13

We start school tomorrow morning. I’m ready. The urchins have been alternating all day long between asking if they could watch TV and asking for a snack. I’m ready for some structure and scheduling and plans and . . .

Let’s play school for a while. I’ll get tired of that eventually, too. But for now school days, merry old golden rule days, sound really appealing.



Around the World is the theme for Semicolon School this year, and our first week’s theme is Maps and Globes.

Here’s the basic plan for this week:

Music:
Antonio Vivaldi—Four Seasons
Mission Study:
1. Window on the World: Missionary Kids
2. WotW: Children of the Streets
3. WotW: Gypsies
4. WotW: Navahos
5. WotW: Refugees
Poems:
Spectacular Science—Lee Bennett Hopkins
Science Theme:
What Is Science?
Nonfiction Read Alouds:
The Book of Where, or How to Be Naturally Geographic–Bell
Fiction Read Alouds:
Mr. Popper’s Penguins—Atwater
The Boy Who Sailed Around the World Alone–Graham
Picture Books:
Mapping Penny’s World—Leedy
Somewhere in the World Right Now—Schult
How To Make an Apple Pie and See the World–Priceman
Elementary Readers: (We won’t read all these this week, but the sixth grader and the fourth grader get to chooose one each. Brown Bear Daughter chose Open Your Eyes, a collection of adventure stories, and Karate Kid chose Ghost in the Noonday Sun, a pirate story.)
Windcatcher—Avi
Ghost in the Noonday Sun—Fleischman
Open Your Eyes–Davis
Other Books:
Wild Places (Usborne)
Maps and Globes—Knowlton
Games of Many Nations–Harbin
Movies:
March of the Penguins
Eight Below Actually, we already watched this movie, and I thought it was a good family movie, It’s about dogs and Antarctica, even though I’m not an animal person (how many times have I written that?), I really enjoyed the movie.

In addition to this list of resources, we’ll be doing math (Miquon and Saxon) and grammar (Dailygrams and Easy Grammar) and handwriting (cheap practice books). And we have a family Bible reading and prayer time each morning. And soon they all start outside classes at co-op and dance and drama and piano and karate and Spanish and an English/history class for the tenth grader. If that sounds way too busy, it is, but we don’t ALL do all those things, and I do have eight children after all.

Oh, I almost forgot I have to send two of them to college next week. Yes, we really are on the school bus road again.

Tour of the Semicolon Home

Jul28

front doorI’m a little late because it took me all week to get Computer Guru Son, who has also turned into Camera Guru Son, to take the pictures for me and load them into the computer. However, I wanted to participate in BooMama’s Tour of Homes. I always say that the purpose of inviting people over to my house is to make them feel better about their own housekeeping abilities, so enjoy the lived-in look.

We begin with the front door. I wanted to paint it red or bright yellow or green, but I was overruled by Engineer Husband who’s into basic browns, whites and tans. The goose hanging on the door says, “Welcome!”

living room

Next we enter the living room. Most people notice the wallpaper map on the wall. It was our Christmas present to ourselves several years ago, and we spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day hanging the wallpaper over the paneling. The map and several built-in bookcases and our lack of financial wherewithal are the reasons we can never, never leave this house and buy another. You can’t take it with you, you know.

gameroom

The gameroom is where we begin to really get the ambience of a Semicolon home. Note the cereal bowl that was not returned to the kitchen after breakfast, the book left forlorn and forsaken on the table, the half-used bottle of citrus drink, the toys in plastic buckets, the general family-friendly decor. Neither of the computers you see in the gameroom is mine. My computer blogging area is in my bedroom.

desk

I know. It’s way too messy and cluttered and Fly-Lady and Don Aslett and any other cleaning gurus that you could name would never approve. But it’s my space, and the kids say I spend way too much time here. The bed next to the desk, barely visible in the picture, is where I usually read. Did I ever mention that I have lots of books? In the bookshelf you can see some of my treasures. The other treasures are my children. The younger set wanted to be photographed with the house, but the older set vetoed that idea. The Elders said it was bad enough to have our house displayed on the internet for all to see.

kitchen

Finally, we circle back to the kitchen. I’d love to invite you in for a snack and a glass of Texas iced tea. (That’s what’s in the pitcher.) Oh, I also want fire engine red countertops, but I haven’t managed to save up the money yet. Nor have I convinced anyone else that it would be really fun and inspiring to have red countertops. Sometimes these campaigns take a long time.

I’m glad you came over for a visit. Now that we’ve done the whirlwind tour, let’s sit down and talk about books and kids and God and life and education and whatever makes us think and gives us joy. Oh, yeah, that’s what we do here at the blog. Y’all come back now, you hear?

ADDED LATER: For those who are interested, this map appears to be the same one we have on our living room wall.
And here’s a different one that I thought was nice.

What My Children Are Teaching Me about God

Jul18

I think God gave me nine children because He had at least nine different things to teach me about Him. If some of the things I’m learning seem a bit similar to one another, it’s because I’m a slow learner.

Eldest Daughter taught me to be a mommy, taught me that God is there to listen to all my mommy-worries and give answers. When Eldest Daughter was afraid of her own shadow (literally) at age two, and when she wanted to spend the summer after her junior year in high school in Italy, I took all the questions and concerns to the Lord, and He provided peace and assurance that each new experience in motherhood was a part of His path for me and for my precious Eldest Daughter.

Then I had a son. My immediate reaction to his birth was to say, “But, God, I don’t know any thing about raising boys!” God’s answer was, “You’re about to learn!” And I did learn. Computer Guru Son wasn’t at all like my sedate, cautious, plan-making Eldest Daughter. He tried things, good and bad, she would never have dreamed of doing. I learned that God is a giver of adventures, that He wants to take me outside my little zone of comfort to give me experiences that I would never have sought on my own. Computer Guru Son is still exploring: music, web design, photography, psychology. I wouldn’t have gone into any of those areas of interest except as I am following my son.

Dancer Daughter came along two years later, and the activity level in our house doubled. God taught me that He can handle the one I don’t have a hand to hold onto anymore. Two hands plus three children equals depending on Him for the extra hand and the extra energy to keep up with all three of them. Dancer Daughter shows me how to worship the Lord with art and music and writing and dance, and even though my talents in all those areas are limited, I can see how He gives us gifts and then delights in our offering them back to Him.

Organizer Daughter made four, and I began to see that with each child I had to re-learn how to parent. She wasn’t like any of the first three; she was a unique creation. I began again with this serious, focused child who at the same time laughed and related to other people more easily than the rest of us. She was my first little extrovert, and I began to see through her that God starts all over with each one of us, wooing us and teaching us to know Him. And I began to learn from watching Organizer Daughter that I, too, could reach out to other people and not think so much about myself.

Baby Joanna Kirsten came two years later, and she has a name here for a reason. Joanna Kirsten was stillborn eight months into my pregnancy with her. I learned that God is sovereign, that He gives and takes away. Joanna Kirsten taught me that I don’t know why God chooses to do as Hedoes sometimes, that I must trust Him when I don’t understand His ways. She taught me not to take for granted the health and well-being of those I love, that we live in a fallen, broken world and that God is always good but not often comprehensible.

Almost exactly a yeaar later, at Christmastime, Brown Bear Daughter was born. She was our return-to-flight baby, our Christmas present from the Lord. I learned from her that the Lord gives good and perfect gifts, that He sometimes replaces our sorrow with joy. And Brown Bear Daughter continues to teach me to live life to the fullest. She’s my drama princess, always full of emotion, living big. I watch her making friends easily and liberally, and I can only thank God that He gave us another girl with the outgoing personality of a playful bear cub.

Karate Kid raised us all to a new level of boyishness and friendliness. He taught me that God is no respector of persons. Karate Kid has friends everywhere he goes, all ages, all kinds. He has friends who are mentally slow, and they play physical games and sports. He has friends who are extremely intelligent, and they play intellectual games and computer games and talk about books. Karate Kid doesn’t really draw any distinctions between his friends; he doesn’t rank them. They’re all just friends. And I learn that God is the same. We’re all his children. He doesn’t rank us or love one more than another.

Bethy-Bee was number eight, the seventh child living in our home. She teaches me to be quiet, to wait on the Lord, that God can speak when we are still and open to him. She’s a thoughtful child and very different from her brothers and sisters, probably the most shy and self-contained child of all of them. I am learning that God gives different gifts and that He gives them for different purposes. Although Bethy-Bee can sing and dance as well as the rest of my children, she’s not a public performer. I can see her using her gifts quietly behind the scenes to build up her family and her church as she gets older, and I can learn that God doesn’t always have to put me in the center spotlight in order to use me to serve Him.

Last but not least, we received the gift of our Z-baby. She was born with twelve toes, and even though we had one toe removed from each foot so that she could wear shoes like the rest of us, she continues to be the girl with something extra: a little extra energy, a little extra creativity, and a little extra exuberance. She teaches me that God gives exceedingly, abundantly above all that we could ever think or ask for.

I am blessed with eight living children and one in heaven with the Lord because God had many lessons to teach me. I’m sure there is still more to learn from the children with whom God has blessed me. May I be open to hear His voice in the voices and actions of my children.

So, Did I Miss Anything?

Jul17

What did I miss while I was tucked away in Mexico? I’m going to post some impressions of our mission trip to Matamoros, Mexico soon so that you’ll know what you missed by not being with us.

In the meantime, what’s the most interesting thing going on in your summer?

Did you enjoy my guest blogger? Would you like to read more from Eldest Daughter Rachel? I’m trying to talk her into blogging once or twice a week here at Semicolon. If you enjoyed her book meme or her discussion of young adult fiction or her tea party, leave comments and ask her to write some more.

Works-For-Me Wednesday: Friday Night Movie Night

Jul5

Curly Top



One of our family traditions is Friday night movies and pizza. We try not to watch much TV or videos during the week, but on Friday the kids (and parents) may watch a movie, eat pizza, and, best of all, sleep in the living room! I don’t usually sleep in the living room, but Engineer Husband is such a good daddy that he’s been sleeping in the living room on the floor with four or five or six urchins on Friday nights for the past ten or twelve years.

“Friday night is movie night” works for me because it limits the movie time to one night a week. It also creates a family time for movies, and we have to try to pick out movies that the entire family, ages four to fifty, will enjoy together. We haven’t chosen a movie for this Friday. Any suggestions?

Semicolon’s 105 Best Movies of All Time

For more Works-for-me-Wednesday ideas, visit Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer.

100 More Things To Do When You’re Bored: Summer Edition

May28

Last year about this time one of the urchins was concerned that she might be bored over the summer. So I made her a list of 100 possible things to do when she was tempted to use the B-word. This year no one is using the word, but the natives, who insisted upon taking a hiatus from regular schoolwork this week, are becoming restless. So I’m making another list, mostly cribbed from a selection of my favorite blogs.

Yes, we’ll be doing plenty of math this summer, but a Saxon lesson a day only takes about thirty minutes to an hour. And even I can only read for most of my day. Then what?

1. Build fairy houses in the backyard.
2. Start a nature scrapbook.
3. Canstruction.
4. Play chalk games. or draw pictures with chalk on the sidewalk.
5. Make mud pies and have a tea party.
6. Have a real tea party with some friends and tell stories.
7. Play with rice.
8. Make a yummy salad and eat it.
9. Paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
10. Work a jigsaw puzzle.
11. Copy a famous painting.
12. Get your bicycle out, clean it up, and get it ready for summer.
13. Practice folding a shirt.
14. Make a poster collage.
15. Make some playdough.
16. Preschool Paper Crafts
17. Mix 2 cups water with a little food coloring, add 6 cups of cornflour/cornstarch to make goop. (I hate it, but my urchins love it.)
18. Cut out and play paper dolls.
19. Watch a familiar DVD dubbed in a foreign language.
20. Make a house of cookies.
21. Volunteer to help a neighbor for free—just because.
22. String beads on dental floss to make a necklace.
23. Listen to Peter and the Wolf and act it out.
24. Make a milkshake or a smoothie.
25. Start this “childhood in a jar” project.
26. Make a lapbook.
27. Learn to sew.
28. Write a story.
29. Watch a Shakespeare play on video. HT: Buried Treasure.
30. Have a backyard carnival.
31. Make up a math scavenger hunt game or a treasure hunt for a younger brother or sister or for a friend.
32. Learn the alphabet in sign language.
33. Make sand pictures.
34. Make birthday cards for all your friends and relatives for the year. Date them and file them in date order to be ready to send.
35. Make a kite and fly it.
36. Plant a flower bed.
37. Write an old-fashioned, hand-written letter to a friend.
38. Go for a bike ride.
39. Try origami (Japanese paper-folding) or make a paper airplane and fly it.
40. Make a collage.
41. Play store—or library–or school—or???
42. Spring/summer clean.
43. Play a card game.
44. Play in the rain.
45. Play a map game.
46. Put on a play.
47. Open a day spa.
48. Build with LEGOS.
49. Learn a few magic tricks and produce your own magic show.
50. Give yourself –or a friend –a pedicure.
51. Take a long, hot bath.
52. Play hopscotch.
53. Swing. (“Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing ever a child can do.”)
54. Go camping–or stay home and camp out in your own dining room.
55. Create a new word. My new word for this month is semicolonic. I’m now trying to popularize it.
56. Start a lemonade stand.
57. Make and walk on tin-can stilts. We read about these in Ramona and Her Father.
58. Make a summer snack.
59. Blow bubbles.
60. Play with water guns.
61. Play scoop ball.
62. Laugh 400 times today. Keep count.
63. Visit a playground. But don’t go to the park on an August afternoon in Houston. There’s a story there that I’ll tell someday when I get over the trauma of it. It may be a while yet because it all happened about fifteen years ago. We’re talking Houston heat, sand, buried shoes, lots of tears and one exhausted, hot mother. I should have laughed. Not a happy memory.
64. Practice your Morse code— or your tap dancing.
65. Create your own Roxaboxen.
66. Arrange some flowers for a centerpiece.
67. Watch a movie based on your favorite children’s book.
68. Go to the library.
69. Memorize something meaningful: a psalm, a poem, a passage from the Bible, the Gettysburg Address.
70. Pop some popcorn.
71. Climb a tree.
72. Bathe the ponies. Or your dolls. Or the dog. Not the cat.
73. Practice tying knots.
74. Swim.
75. Wash the car, or wash someone else’s car.
76. Collect some canned goods for the food bank.
77. Dance to whatever music you have available.
78. Iron some clothes while listening to a recorded book.
79. Paint a picture: use watercolors, tempera, oil paints, acrylics, what ever you have on hand.
80. Organize your own marching band.
81. Draw a map of your block or of your town, or trace a map of your country and fill in the states or cities or other features.
82. Get a haircut. If you’re really adventurous, give yourself a haircut. (Has anyone ever done this—as an adult? I’m much too klutzy to cut my own hair.)
83. Find a joke and tell it someone else.
84. Practice playing a musical instrument. If you don’t play an instrument, try learning to play one, maybe the recorder or the harmonica.
85. Shoot baskets or play tennis.
86. Interact with nature.
87. Make your own fireworks for the Fourth of July. Engineer Husband really used to do this when he was a young adolescent, and I can’t believe his parents let him. He tried to make nitroglycerine once, but he got scared and made his father take it outside and dispose of it! Maybe you should just read about how fireworks are made and then imagine making your own.
88. Read another list of 101 things to do in the summer. You could stay busy reading lists of things to do and never really do anything!
89. Use fabric paints to decorate a shirt.
90. Walk around your block and pick up all the litter you can find.
91. Visit a nursing home. Bring handmade cards or pictures you drew or something to give away.
92. Read the book of Ruth in the Bible. Or another book of the Bible.
93. Rearrange the furniture in your bedroom.
94. Clean out your closet.
95. Make up a scavenger hunt.
96. Make a macaroni necklace. Or string beads.
97. Water the yard or the houseplants or the flowers you planted.
98. Write each of these activities on a separate piece of paper and fold the papers and put them in a jar. Choose two or three papers out of the jar whenever you need a suggestion for something to do.
99. Run around the block 3 times.
100. Make your own list of things to do when you’re bored.

Works for ME Wednesday: The Book Basket

May24

Shannon at Rocks in My Dryer started something called “Works for Me Wednesday” about a month ago. Everybody posts some (household) tip that works for them and then links back to Shannon’s post for that Wednesday. OOOh, OOOh, I wanna play! The trouble is that I don’t KNOW any good tips that work for me. I’m homemaking challenged.

Oh, OK, this one sort of works. We keep all our library books in a laundry basket in my bedroom when we’re not reading them. I just paid a $34.00 fine at the library this morning, so this idea for keeping the library books rounded up must not be working all that well. Or maybe it’s just that I fail to renew the books on time every time, even though the library sends me an email reminder that the books are almost due a couple of days beforehand and even though all I have to do to recheck them is go online to the library website and put a check mark beside the titles of the books I want to renew.

Anyway, it kind of works for me!

Ben Hur

Apr14

We’ve been cleaning house madly all day, and we finished one and a half rooms and the hallway. And one of the bathrooms. Oh well, it’s a start.

I’m going to reward myself by sitting quietly and watching Ben Hur with Charlton Heston. (The movie is with CH; I’m going to watch it with whichever of the urchins I can corral.) He’s old enough to be my dad, but still Mr. Heston is a good-looking Judah Ben-Hur. And it’s a long movie. I’ll get a lot of rest.