A beautiful mess

Our baby is now 8 months old. Life is pretty cumbersome at the moment. I am treading water in a sea of cuteness and chaos. I cannot blog predictably, so, I am popping my head up out of the water to note an assortment of things I am learning:

• When I write a list of "things to do", every second item on my list is now, "unexpected job". Most of what I do in a day are things which interrupt my task list. Nappies, coaching children through conflict, dealing with the flood of milk on the kitchen floor, the broken glass. These "interruptions" are my job. If I account for the unexpected little jobs which I have to stop and attend to, then I am less surpised when it takes me four hours to do something which would ordinarily take twenty minutes.

• With five children, it is unusual for everyone to be happy at the same time. There is almost always someone who has an issue in any moment. The more I expect this, the less draining it is. It is still draining though.
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• The very things which make home education difficult are the same reasons why we are doing it. It would be easier in the short term to not have to deal with the inter-personal and attitude complications. It would be nice to outsource some of the frustrations and feelings of inadequacy. But we do want to actively parent these issues, so we remain present in our children's education. It is harder, but it is good.

• The rubbish in our studio will make some great artworks one day. I have made some prints from paint left on pallettes which the kids were finished with. I would also like to make a collage with all the random little drawings that the kids have done over the years. All the gadgets, creatures, weapons, castles, vehicles and maps brought together in one image.

• Minecraft is fabulous for many things. The problem is, those good things might be at the expense of other things which I care about more. We are now saving minecraft projects for school holidays. Since cutting minecraft out of our typical days, the kids are reading for fun again.They are no longer sitting around bored, waiting for when they are allowed to go on the computer again. Cutting off that option means they are once again seeing the other fabulous things around them.

• The studio space is a real gift. It gets used so often. The four year old is able to get out the materials he needs whenever an idea needs to come to life. This didn't happen when the art and craft things were in a box in the cupboard. It is a beautiful mess.
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• The chalk wall is great for me. I find my mind is so cluttered, that being able to write a note to myself, or for the kids to write a note, is a big help. I will often idly stand in front of the chalk wall, feeling like I don't know what to do with myself and the answer is staring right at me. It externalises some of my thinking. 

• It is really hard to sit and read aloud to everyone, or anyone, at the moment. This hurts because it is what I want to be doing most in our home learning environment. I often find I spend several hours in the morning setting up the conditions so I can sit and read to them. Because of unexpected jobs, no sooner do I sit down and there is an emergency of some sort. Or I am exhausted. 

• The stages of life when you need a couple of great, gritty friends are the same stages of life when you've got very little capacity for relationships. God has given us a couple of people like this who keep us afloat. Friends who know our family well enough to just the domestic reins sometimes are priceless. The sort of friends who share our space, eat meals and then blitz the kitchen while we put the kids to bed. The sort of friends who aren't offended when I am too tired to string a sentence together. The sort of people who we don't need to perform for. 

• I've had enough children to realise that these particularly messy, tiring stages come and go. Every month is different as children move through various stages of development. We must not despair. What feels impossible this month might be ok in a few weeks.

• I am also reminded that even when I am tired, or completely not achieving everything I think I ought to, my kids are still learning. Sometimes much more because I am not getting in the way with my own agenda.

• On the really challenging days, I am so glad to be doing what we are doing. I want to be here. I like this mess.

A happy relationship with spelling

I have found two articles which are helping me make sense of teaching and learning spelling. I thought I'd share them, for the sake of those who are anxious about their child's spelling performance. It helps to look at the problem from other people's angles, to work out our own solutions.

Trevor Cairney's post outlines the developmental stages in spelling, along with several spelling strategies. I find it helpful to see the patterns of what is typical at different stages of development, so that I can be realistic and not create unnecessary angst. As always, his blog is a hub of useful links.

Misty Adoniou's post focuses on just one, the morphemic (meaning based), approach to teaching and learning spelling. She highlights that teaching spelling is more than testing lists.

In the very least, this reading confirms my conviction that learning skills in English is best done by spending lots of pleasant time with words, in many different forms, in the company of some more experienced English speakers.

It often feels that when we open a book with a child, the words become little creatures which behave in certain ways and which each have a story to tell.

The value of the chalking wall

Until the recent string of public holidays, we have had a large wall covered in maps. It has been a good reference (and had a lot of visual punch when home school inspectors came to check us out). It has been a nice thing for visitors to look at and talk about-everyone comes from somewhere on a map. Most days there is a reason to look at the world map or the anatomy charts with the kids.

On an impulse, I sent the maps to the hallway and painted the giant wall with chalkboard paint.

Everyday since, I have found a new surprise on the wall. Every visitor has left their special mark. It is an invitation to play in our space; to teach and learn with us; to remember useful things.

It is also an easy way to encourage written communication for the kids. When they want me to remember something, they can write it on the wall. My husband drew up a plan for the week and we both knew what we were working toward. When I wrote my own task list of housework, I was delighted to find Steve had crossed a few jobs off the list for me.

There have been some spontaneous lessons between father and children about perspective drawing. When one visitor drew a rose, one of our kids copied it. Another visitor introduced games based around writing words backwards. !gnilleps rof noitavitoM. It has encouraged drawing on a vertical surface which is good for some low muscle tone among our children. The wall is a place to draw temporary things, which is good for perfectionists who are paralysed by permanence.


I used Murobond Society Inc Chalkboard paint in Ship Chandler (a delicious chocolatey brown). The chalk wipes off effortlessly with a damp cloth to look like a normal wall. I am very impressed with the product. I am tempted to paint a few more walls with it. I have limited myself to a handy rectangle of chalkboard in the laundry for listmaking. The cubby house will get a dose of some of the fruity chalkboard colours available at some stage. It is lovely to start the new year with useful novelty!

Image from here

Respecting our own human-ness

I went to a conference earlier in the year for women who home educate. The best part for me was the anecdotal advice I gleaned on the edges of conversations and presentations.

One particular point stuck. It was about recognising our own personality and wiring as we parent. Creative people need to keep being creative as they do whatever family life requires of them. Movers need to move. Some people can't think while there is a basket of dirty laundry waiting to be washed. People caring for small children who need a nap need to make sure they get one. Introverted folk need to be realistic about their capacity for constant interaction. Some people need to put a date with silence in the schedule. Some people need to wake up to a slow coffee. I'm sure everyone has one element that makes a disproportionate difference to everything.

If we ignore our build and pretend we are infinite, living as if the world is dependent on us, then we will not last long. We are dependent creatures.

This isn't about getting everything we want ("me time" makes me feel very ill). It is working out what we need so we can keep functioning (even joyfully!) for the good of others.

I have worked out a few things which easily get sidelined, but which help me persevere more cheerfully:
1. Time reading a bit of the Bible and talking to God each day (apart from the moment by moment dependence).
2. A novel nearby, to escape into when an odd, empty five minutes appears.
3. A creative project.
4. Time to plan and write each week.
5. Afternoon rest time.

a little sanity knitting project (it's a baby sleeping bag)

To do these things, I have to leave other work undone for a while. But we could work 24 hours in a day and still never get things conquered. We need to pause the constancy, recognise our limits and invest in perseverance. Anyone for a cup of tea?

(I have worked through similar themes, mostly depression, on Women Bible Life. This post is a starting point.)

Some weeks...

We've all been sick and tired and volatile. So, the kids have watched a lot of DVDs. No, actually, they have just watched a lot of How to Train Your Dragon. Every time I tried to read something aloud, my body and patience gave way. It felt like a giant, but unavoidable, waste of time. Across the sick week, there were little surprises which reminded me that even slow, sick weeks can't stop the learning.

When I was finally able to turn off the screen, the kids had another set of shared stories to play with. Mr 4 has been inspired to construct some props based on the film. Mr 8 is interested in the extra footage about the animation process. Miss 6 was happy to walk away from the movie when she spotted me hunched over some watercolours. We had a nice, spontaneous, still life painting experience. The story is laced through pretend play, conversations, Lego constructions and drawings.

I need to be on the couch and sick every now and again, to see that kids are great learners even when I am sick. I do prefer our usual routine, though!

The studio evolves

Here are some photos of the studio, just to document the changes and the reality. A reminder that this is what we started with:

Below is a glimpse of how it looks most of the time. Since the kids appreciate the space, they are generally alright about cleaning it up. Our next step is some display wires running across the room, to hang artworks and objects from. No one has quite settled into a particular project. We are in the "experimenting with materials" stage. We need to keep tinkering with the storage so that space can be clear for making.

Current reading

Well, I haven't quite finished reading the other items I was working through. All the same, I have another couple of titles which I am reading.

Give Them Wings: The Experience of Children's Literature Edited by Maurice Saxby and Gordon Winch, Sydney: Macmillan 1987
Following my last reading list, a dear friend recommended this book of essays. It is a lovely mix of usefulness and inspiration. I expect it will be a plunge pool I dip into regularly. I can't resist sentences like this,

Children are indiscriminate readers, it is argued, and the avalanche of published mediocrity makes it possible for children to have a steady diet of indifferent books, and such a diet will produce emotional and aesthetic acne. Maurice Saxby (1987) The Gift of Wings: The Value of Literature to Children in Give Them Wings: The Experience of Children's Literature p.11

Saxby goes on to make the point that a wide diet of literature will grow children to value and prefer good literature. Quite apart from the point, I had never thought of emotional and aesthetic acne before. Quite a fun textbook!

I am still reading Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child by Anthony Esolen. I bought a Kindle version. It is entertaining, but I feel I have to play mental gymnastics to follow his argument. I am a bear of little brain these days, so that is tiring. It is also a different perspective from the Project Based Homeschooling, so I am constantly measuring each against the other. This is a great thing to do, but sometimes it is better just to pull out a picture book with the kids.

For joy, I am reading Australian Christian Life From 1788: An Introduction and an Anthology by Iain H.Murray, Banner of Truth Trust, 1988.

Australia has a bizarre and troubling history. It is sobering and encouraging to read the stories of some who loved Jesus here, in the middle of the mess. I am also finding that the more I read about Australian history, the more spills into conversation with my kids.

For the record, my reading is creeping along slowly, with stolen minutes while feeding a baby, or ten minutes before I fall asleep at night. Many of these books will be long term companions.