Reflections on Relationship: Enriching Relationships with God's Creation

This is the fifth part in my planning series, Reflections on Relationship.  (Sorry they've been a bit slow in coming.  This little thing called 'life' and 'getting a new school year off the ground' keeps kind of getting in the way.  I'm sure you can relate, no?)  You can read the other parts here:

Introduction

Enriching Relationship with God

Enriching Relationships with People Around Us

Enriching Relationships with Mankind

 

Today, let's consider how we can enrich our relationship with God's creation.  This falls into the third area of Charlotte Mason's curriculum recommendations – knowledge of the universe (more from Volume 6 here).  Under this heading, she includes Science and Nature Study, Geography, Mathematics, Physical Development, and Handicrafts.

 

Again, some of these things are fairly straightforward to plan by simply following the Ambleside Online curriculum as written.  Natural history and geography books (coupled with mapwork) are scheduled each year.  In Year 3 and higher, some science experiment books are also added as options – we plan to include A Drop of Water.  Math for us is still just math, plugging away from where we left off last term.

 

Nature Study is the sort of 'obvious' way in which we can enrich our relationship with God's Creation.  I was reminded at this summer's Ambleside Online retreat that science studies ought to inspire wonder, and ultimately this is my goal.  This was a bit of a struggle for us last year since living in urban Africa limited our options somewhat.  We are looking forward to making this more of a priority in the coming year – we are living in a semi-rural area and have many lovely possibilities for local nature walks.   After our success with our focused plant study last year, we are planning to do a focused pond study for this late summer-fall term.   We have a pond just across the road from our apartment, so it should be easy to visit on a regular basis, and I'll add a couple of pond books to our read-aloud pile. 

 

My children are at times reluctant nature journalers, but if you look at the old schedules used in Charlotte Mason's schools, suggestions were given for specific numbers and types of nature journal entries.  To help encourage the children to branch out in their journals a bit, I am going to challenge them to do at least 10 entries over the term: 2 on a specific tree that they adopt to follow through the seasons, 4 related to our pond study, and 4 others of their choice – plant or animal.  And obviously, they are free to add other items of interest whenever they want - they surprised me by pulling them out on their own accord the other day and entering blue jays.  We'll choose a new focus area and journaling challenge for the winter-spring term – maybe rocks or climate or birds so we can compare with our African birds.  We'll see what strikes our fancy when the time comes. J

 

For physical development we will continue to swim as long as the weather is warm and the local pool is open, and walk, ride bikes, and play on the playground daily in decent weather.  We also have an opportunity to join a local homeschool PE class, although I'm not sure yet if it will work out schedule wise.

 

For Handicrafts – I consider handicrafts and life skills all kind of rolled into one. J   All of the children will continue with chores that they've been learning this summer and drawing (both in our co-op and at home as the mood strikes).  Michelle will also continue typing and crochet projects.  New handicrafts will be cooking lessons using Simplified Dinners for New Cooks (the littler two will start with the basic skills, Michelle I think is ready to jump in to the recipes) and plastic canvas needlework, which was suggested to me as a good prelude to embroidery and finer sewing projects   I'm thinking we'll tackle the needlework this fall (maybe with an eye to Christmas gifts for grandparents?) and focus in on the cooking skills after the first of the year.

 

How do you intend to enrich relationships with God's Creation this year?

What We've Been Up To....

Out and About:

Well, for people who are trying to rest this summer, we've been out and about quite a bit. J   We had a fun family 'exploration' of some of the wooded trails around where we are living on one cool-ish, gray Saturday morning.  We had a brief visit from my husband's parents (they hadn't seen the children since Christmas 2011!! - we will be spending some more time with them later this month) and a fun day out with an "auntie" from Papua New Guinea days.  We had a real 'proper' Fourth of July with fireworks – a first for our children.   Swimming, bike riding, and playing with neighbor kids have all been regular features of our days too.   We're keeping busy, but busy with good things. J

 

 

In the Schoolroom:

We are officially out of school until sometime in August, although Mama is in active planning mode.  More musings on that topic soon.  In the meantime the two older children are doing one school-related reading per day, just to keep moving forward a bit, and running through some math facts – adding/subtracting for James and multiplying/dividing for Michelle.   That takes all of about 20 minutes for each of them in the morning, so not too much.   We are enjoying having a proper break.

 

 

Creatively:

I crocheted a few dishcloths, and am now trying to teach myself some new embroidery stitches.  I have long admired embroidery, but have never known how to do much more than a basic running stitch and backstich (which I didn't even do properly!).  I have this book (I can't wait until I feel confident enough to try one of the projects in it!) and have also been using some of the tutorials here when the pictures in the book don't cut it.  So that's my latest crafty challenge.  With the children, we've been doing a bit of nature journaling:

 

 

 

 

And a bit of drawing, following the suggestions in the Artistic Pursuits Elementary 4-5 curriculum.  This was purchased mostly with Michelle in mind, but the littler ones are enjoying joining in too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the Kitchen:

Local Peaches.  I was worried when my husband brought home a box with probably 30-40 peaches in it that I'd have to mess around with freezing them or something, but I needn't have.  I think we ate at least half of them within the first 24 hours.  I now know how to make my picky 5 year old who tends to eat three bites of her food and then insist she is full actually finish her meal…just promise her a peach.   I love summer fruits….

 

 

Around the House:

Trying to reorganize chore routines in a way that will be sustainable once we get going with a full school schedule again (meaning Mama doesn't have to be responsible for it all).  We're getting there, slowly.

 

 

What have you been up to?

Handicrafts for the Not-So-Crafty: Felt Bookmarks

I think that I have mentioned before that one of the reasons why I tend to hate crafts is that I hate useless clutter around my house that is eventually destined for the trash can.    I love that Charlotte Mason's emphasis in handicrafts is on making useful items and developing useful skills.   (Did you see Brandy's recent post on planning handicrafts by these criteria?  It was great and sums up my approach to crafting pretty well too.)  Over the past month or so, we have been busy making felt bookmarks.    I was first inspired to this project by the fact that we are using a lot more printed books for school this year (just the way it worked out – we use the Kindle when we can to cut down on international shipping costs) in addition to the mountains of free reads scattered all over the house, and all of those books were being dog-eared.   It also struck me as a good project to help Michelle continue to practice her sewing skills (she's being doing simple hand sewing a for a couple of years) and introduce basic sewing skills to James (6.5) and Elizabeth (almost 5).

 

 

 

 

 

Once I got them started with the initial project, they took off with it.  The older two went on to make several more on their own time.  After the first couple, James was threading his own needles and tying his own knots.   I was  pleased with the end results:

 

 

I did the two on the left (patterns from here), then Michelle's (age 9), James' (6.5), and Elizabeth's (almost-5) first attempts.  Their other efforts have gotten consistently better.

 

Useful life skills and bookmarks that went to immediate use.   Handicrafts just the way I like them.

 

Click Here for More Handicraft Inspiration

Handicrafts for the Not-so-Crafty: The New Year's Cookie Basket Project

We didn't travel anywhere over our Christmas-New Year holiday break this year.  Since we were just planning to be at home, I knew I needed to have some kind of little project to engage the children in.  (Just at home + No routine + More than a day or two = Recipe for Disaster.   Please tell me this is true at your house too?)  We also hadn't done any cookie baking in December, just too many other things going on.   The solution: the New Year's Cookie Basket project.

 

The first stage of the project was that each child got a 'baking day' with me.   On their designated day, we made a big double-batch of a Christmas cookie of their choice.  (I also made pan of mint fudge to round out the choices.)  The first 3 dozen of each we set aside, the rest were for general family consumption.  I rarely bake (I have an aversion to unnecessary messes in the kitchen and turning the oven on when it's hot, which it nearly always is in Africa), so this was a special treat for everyone.  Learning their way around the kitchen is an important life skill too, and this was a fun way to get some more kitchen experience in.

 

 

The second stage of the project involved making little baskets from fancy scrapbook paper.  I modified the instructions from one of the projects in Paper Sloyd: A Handbook for Primary Grades. (My modifications just made the dimensions of the boxes a little larger than the one in the book.) Paper Sloyd involves cutting and folding paper to make useful items of various types.   Each child made two baskets.  Well, the two older ones made them.  I did most of the work for Elizabeth (age 4) although she helped with the glue and choosing the paper. 

 

 

The final stage of the project involved dividing up the cookies into the baskets.  Each basket got two dozen cookies – 6 each of 4 different varieties.  Yum!  Then each child choose two different neighbor families and went to deliver their cookies!  Plan A was to deliver on New Year's Day, but in reality we didn't reach the final stage of the project until the 2^nd.  I'm sure the neighbors were okay with this. J

 

 

So there you go - a fairly simple handicraft project for the not-so-crafty Mama.  We had so much fun with this one, we might need to make it one of our holiday traditions.

 

I'm sharing this with Amy's new Learning By Hand link-up at Crossing the Brandywine.  Click on over for more handicraft inspiration!  (I don't know about you, but I need all the inspiration I can get!)

 

The Summer of Handicrafts

Let me just say up front that I'm not a particularly crafty or creative person.   Nor am I a 'fun mom'.   You won't find me culling Pinterest for fun projects I can do with my kids.   One of the things that I was so relieved about when I discovered Charlotte Mason was that it gave me permission not to have to do cute 'hands-on' projects that I have no idea what to do with once they are finished for every history or science topic we cover.  I hate clutter.  And I hate pouring time into a project that is eventually destined for the trash can.

 

That said, Charlotte Mason education is much more than just books and narration, as Celeste points out in the article she wrote for the Charlotte Mason Myth Busting series over at Afterthoughts.  One of the many more active pursuits she included in her curriculum is what she called "handicrafts".    Celeste explains: "The goal for [handicrafts] was beauty, usefulness, and quality -- this is not crafting for the sake of crafting, as so many educational supplements seem to be."   Handicrafts can be things we might consider to be in the realm of crafts such as sewing or crocheting or paper folding, but I would say it also rolls over into what we might term 'life skills' too – even such things as chores, and cooking, and home repairs.  In this excellent article about handicrafts, Nicole lists four purposes for teaching our children handicrafts:

 

1. A possible lifelong hobby (fire making and camp fire cooking, knitting, woodworking, sewing, basket making, carving)
2. A skill which can be used to gift friends and family (homemade ornaments, sewing, knitting, preserving food, cooking, card making, basket making, carving)
3. A life skill that allows you to care for family or otherwise makes things more comfortable in your home (cooking, preserving food, cleaning)
4. A means to training hand-eye coordination (all of the above examples)

 

Ah yes.  This I can wrap my mind around.  These don't involve shoe boxes, papier-mâché, salt-dough, or glitter.  This I can do.

 

I didn't really plan it to be this way, but this summer turned out to be the summer of handicrafts.  I thought I'd show you some of the things that we did.

 

James, age 6, was often (always?) around and involved in the process whenever his Papa was repairing something:

 

 

 

He also helped his Papa put together a model airplane from a kit that was given to us:

 

 

 

Michelle, age 8-going-on-9 learned how to crochet when my mom was visiting:

 

 

This was her first completed project, a little bag.   She's working on a scarf now (almost done), and wants to do some dish cloths next.

 

 

Even I got in on the action as I learned to crochet along with Michelle.  I'd never been interested in learning to crochet before because it always looked sort of tedious and fiddly to me, so I only intended to learn enough that I could help her out if she got stuck somewhere once Grandma went home again.  Alas, I got hooked (pun only sort of intended).  I don't have any pictures, but I have crocheted a small pencil-pouch, some flowers, quite a few dishcloths, and am working on a garland for Christmas decorations now.  I also got out my sewing machine this summer and made some covers for Michelle and James' Bibles, both of which were looking a little worse-for-the-wear (which I guess is a good problem to have for a Bible!!)

 

 

I find that handicrafts work best for us when I don't try to schedule them….they just sort of ebb and flow with our life.  James is learning lots of 'handyman' skills by shadowing his Papa when he does fix-it jobs around the house.   All three of them float in and out of the kitchen to help as I cook, and the older two are starting to be able to follow recipes and make a few things on their own.   Papercrafting supplies are always available to them to make cards, books, stationary, little decorations, and they often do.  Michelle has learned the basic techniques for handsewing and crocheting and is often working on a hand-project of some kind during read-alouds.   

Handicrafts: simple, natural, beautiful, and useful. 

 

What kind of handicrafts have you enjoyed in your home?