Number Card Activities

I made over a hundred number flashcards about 10 years ago and I just keep using them over and over again.  Each card simply has one number 0 - 100 written on its front.  I have duplicates for 1-20 as well as smaller cards with + - =  signs on them.

Today we pulled them out to use with S and I discovered that I had a cheat sheet of activity ideas stashed in between the cards.  I don't know who to credit for the ideas, but it made for a perfect day of math activities with him.  I love it when my past-self helps out my future-self.

Grab a stack of cards and a marker and make your own set.  These were great activities to do with my 5 year old:

• Hold up a card and have him say the number on the card.  We worked with 0-20 today, but in the next few weeks we'll work through chunks all the way up to 100.
• Hold up two cards and ask which number is greater.
• Hold up two cards and ask your child to count forward or backward from one of the numbers to the other.  
• Pick a card without showing it to your child.  Have him or her guess the number by solving a number clue such as, "This number is one more than 63," or "This number is one less than 35," or "This number is between 59 and 61."
• Place the cards into number families (20's, 50's, etc.)
• For basic identification practice, create a concentration game using the duplicate cards and try to find matches.  
• Make your own number sentences:  put one card down, put a +/- card down and put another card after it.  Follow it with the = card and have your child solve it.  
• After you use them, they'll need to be put back in order so make this your child's last activity.

Broken for Me

The memory of tonight's homemade macaroni and cheese lingers.  

Made by my husband's hands with the guidance of a capable recipe, it met me after my Monday evening workout with all the comfort and satisfaction it promised.  I was looking forward to this meal.  It didn't disappoint.  Thirteen days without meat and I'm at the threshold of walking away from it for good.  

That's not the point of this fast.  However, as I daily engage it I continue to question what its point exactly is.  My understanding of Lent was enriched through some of my weekend reading. 

During Lent, death gives way to life, just as it does in the change of seasons.  

A part of Lent is death. That's the giving up.  Last Sunday I made sausage.  Sundays are a traditional day off from the fast. Our boys are enjoying that little break and I wondered if I should break my fast too.  My husband said, "Not for me."  And where he goes I will go.  It's easy to make succulent meals without the meat.  I haven't missed it.  I wanted to do some missing.  I made two sausages for myself, I thanked God for it, for the day of grace and feasting.  And I gave my share to my boys.  I needed to feel a little of the death -- to intentionally go without.  

The fast was a way to ritualize and enter into the death of Christ, with the hopes of sharing in the resurrection...

There is joy yet to come in this season.  In me.  In the world.  We daily step forward into it.  But for all of us, our death is present even at our birth.  All life is joy and sorrow; not one without the other.  In this season, I am attempting to invite a bit more of the sorrow.  But I can't keep from focusing so much more on the joy -- like reading a story when I already know the ending.  To this point, the true practice of penance is still quite lost on me.

For me this fast is a joyful tension.  I'm happy to give up, happy to work around, happy to find another route to nourishment.  The challenge itself makes me happy.  How carnal of me to actually enjoy Lent.  Yet, each time I prepare a meal I sense the brokenness of it.  It is incomplete and still it's the best it can be.  The meals without meat reflect who I am; broken and longing for a day to be made whole.  Knowing the joy will come... is coming.  I cannot completely grieve.  Yet I cannot completely rejoice.  This is the joyful tension of Lent.

...the practice of penance is a way to ritually experience in our own lives the self-emptying of Christ.

He gave himself up for us.  The fast doesn't truly make me more like him.  It's a tawdry attempt at best.  But as I continue to push into this meager sacrifice I can more intimately connect with the ultimate one given as grace on my behalf.  

Thanks be to God.

A Great Thing

We have begun a new unit study about India that should take us well into March.  Its purpose is twofold:
1. to expose the boys to a completely different culture, its inner workings and curiosities.
2.  to help me grow in knowledge for a trip there this summer.

These are my favorite studies to do; those in which we are all students together.

However, as I put my "teacher" hat on all of my lesson plan ideas were essentially me telling B what he needs to know about the country.  Yet I have never been to India.  Aside from a class in Hinduism in college, I have very little insight into the way the country thinks and works.  Yet, I embarked to teach him.

We started out with the geography of India.  B drew his own outline map of India (and did a beautiful job) and then over the next few days he filled in mountain ranges, rivers, bordering countries and bodies of water, major cities, listed all of the states, and drew the flag.  That was a fair enough assignment for a fourth grader, but he was still relying on me to give him the resources he needed and I'm not sure he was super interested in the process.  I was still at the center of the lesson and it didn't seem right to me.

As I was reading The Courage to Teach by Parker J. Palmer, I had a brainstorm of sorts.  In his chapter on teaching in community he said this:

Passion for the subject propels that subject, not the teacher, into the center of the learning circle -- and when a great thing is in their midst, students have direct access to the energy of learning and of life.

I reviewed again the two purposes of our unit study.  What would help B and I move into the subject itself so that we both take hold of "the energy of learning and of life?"  And it hit me.  He shouldn't spend his time doing what I think is important for him to do and know.  He should explore India for himself.

I'm going to let him create and submit an itinerary for my trip.  He can research and compare plane ticket costs, find locations of religious or cultural significance, tell me how to take the train, what the money exchange looks like, and how I should respectfully dress.  He'll be my tour guide through India and present me with a little portfolio.  Anywhere within a day trip on the train from Delhi is fair game.  I'm certain the Taj Mahal will be in the mix.

We are reading YWAM's biography of Amy Carmichael aloud and will work on a journal project to go along with that.  This week we'll also begin working on some Indian embriodery  (yes, my son loves to sew).  And for a culminating activity we'll have to splurge on a little construction project:  These Nanoblock sets are perfect.

Lenten Eve

At Christmastime, I feel a sense of mixed anticipation when we light that first advent candle the Sunday after Thanksgiving.  As the flame ignites I feel the minor paradox of wishing it weren't so and wishing it would be tomorrow.  In that moment, all the work is ahead of me.  I had to unpack the advent wreath, find suitable candles and a book of matches. Nothing else was required in order to begin.  

At Eastertime, I have wished and wished for a way to lead my family to engage in the season.  My evangelical roots never mentioned Lent, only Easter.  It was about resurrection, yes, but also new clothes and deviled eggs and ham.  And it was just one day.  Later in my life, Good Friday practices began to creep in.  Even so, Easter still seemed to be something we bumped into as we went around a corner.

I think I've been sending up my own shoots from those roots for several years now.  I've observed Lent, but in my own way, taking up instead of giving up.   I've not felt compelled to move toward the traditional ideas of sacrifice, thinking perhaps they were overused or even irrelevant.  And just what vices did I have that I needed to break free from?  I don't drink coffee, watch t.v., eat daily doses of sugar.  It seemed that giving up wasn't what Lent wanted from this evangelical girl.  And that seemed to make perfect sense.  

This year we are going to lean in a little more.  As a family, we are going to do some giving up.  My children are intrigued.  My husband seems completely agreed.  I am expectant... of what I have no idea.  But we are moving toward resurrection together.

We are going to give up meat for 40 days.  We are not extreme carnivores.  Meat is not a stumbling block for us.  It is something of daily life.  Mundane.  Quotidian.  There is no sense of luxury in meat.  I don't feel any degree of attachment to it.  Or will I find that I do?  

I've spent the last several days looking up ideas, recipes, to help us move through this time with a sense of newness.  When giving up something we often go seeking something else to fill its space.  I have mapped out menus, watched cooking videos, asked friends for ideas.  I have shopped not once, but twice assuring my youngest that, yes, we would at some point buy salami once again.  We have slowly eaten away the vestiges of meat products as if we were moving or leaving the country for a month and knew everything would spoil if we didn't consume it now.  

And today as I moved the frozen sausage to the back of the freezer, safe to eat on those Bridegroom Sundays, and stacked the edamame and pre-cooked broccoli and cheese calzones in front of it, I reflected upon my work of preparation.  It reminded me a little of what the Jewish households do prior to Sabbath.  I sensed a bit of the sacred as I stacked cilantro, cucumbers and carrots whose day will come tomorrow.  There has been clear intention in my work.  I will do without this one thing.  I want to miss it a little, but I don't want my desire to have it back consume me.  I want to experience a new taste, but of God more than hummus made twenty ways.  

This is not about food.  It's about tension.  It's about paradox.  Paradox is that place where two profound truths can be true at once.  The same man who was savior was also decimated.  The God who loves generously exhibits bone-chilling justice.  We learn through effectiveness as well as failure.  We each need both community and isolation.  The paradox of new life is suffering.  Both are true.  But how much do I know even one of them well?

Tomorrow I'll know what tomorrow will hold.  Not today.  But I've loved the preparation. Alongside my giving up, I'm taking up daily prayers, repeating them every ten days.  Vowing to live with whatever discomfort arises.  The loving and the suffering go hand in hand.  And when celebrating Easter I will rejoice that all the work has, indeed, been done.

There is a name for the endurance we must practice until a larger love arrives:  it is called suffering.  We will not be able to teach in the power of paradox until we are willing to suffer the tension of opposites, until we understand that such suffering is neither to be avoided nor merely to be survived but must be actively embraced for the way it expands our own hearts.         Parker J. Palmer  - The Courage To Teach

Silence and Solitude

It's unusual for a homeschooling mother to say that she makes regular space for a discipline such as silence and solitude.  For all of us there are pressing needs to attend to, plans to outline, materials to find, children to guide, meals, field trips... The list could go on and on, unless we are intentional about pressing pause.

We think a lot about who we are teaching to but many days we lose sight of who we are teaching from.  We teach out of who we are and, for me, that means I teach from that point where the gospel transforms me with grace and truth.  If I try to teach from any other place, I grow weary.

And so I take a day every couple of months to practice silence and solitude.  To talk with the God who gives me life and breath, creativity and skills. To listen to what the next steps may be.  To pray with intention and thought.  To read and consider the passages that affect me.  To come to new understanding and take steps toward transformation.

The hardest part about taking a day for silence and solitude is first deciding to do it.  Some mornings as I rise early amidst sleeping boys to gather my materials I question the necessity of my plans.  There are other things I could and should be doing.  Indeed, there will always be.  And I believe that God works even while I daily accomplish, but having your best friend beside you all the time is different than looking her in the face and really hearing her.  And so, I push myself to go so that I can hear.

There is a retreat center near my home that allows me to rent a dorm room for a day.  This takes me away from all distraction.  Though I nearly convince myself that I could accomplish much devotional writing, my laptop stays home.  I cannot have that pull to go any other place. I make myself exist with little.

I begin the day in my journal, longhanding a list of what’s on my mind and heart: struggles friends are having, uncertainties about what’s next for me, unanswerable questions I’ve been asked, temptations and tendencies I can’t seem to move past.  Doing this allows me to move beyond the circumstantial in order to get to a place where I can see and sense God’s presence.  I then present my list to God in prayer and ask, “What to YOU want to do today?  Which of these will we address, or will you take me somewhere else?” 

Other days I simply ask, "What do you want me to hear?"  And throughout the day when I'm unsure where to go next, I just go back to that question. 

I bring materials that make me think more deeply about the truth of God; books with questions that pull me out of myself (a raging introvert) and more toward the person he's creating me to be.  

For a portion of the day I dive deep into a particular scripture:  the whole book of Titus, reading John for the sense of the greater story, or looking up verses about perseverance.

Incorporating the physical connects the mind to the soul and opens up new ways of seeing: walking and whispering aloud nearly always provides clarity.  Adhering photos to an album gives room to think and pray for the people within them.  Using my camera to observe the details of creation gives practice in counting gifts.  Practicing physical postures of prayer takes my thoughts to their deepest importance.

When I'm hungry I eat, but only after I ask, "Is this really what I need, or am I escaping from something hard?"  When I'm tired of sitting, I walk.  When I'm tired of walking, I rest.  And at the end of the day I try to determine: 1. What did I hear? and 2. How will this time away affect my time back with people?  Our time with God should, to some extent, change us and benefit those we love and serve.  I am refreshed and challenged.  I shouldn't go home and assume everyone else feels the same.

When choosing books to bring, I select only those that I'm currently working through.  I often begin one a few weeks ahead so that I can be in the thick of it, struggling to appropriately place it in my life. I believe in working from where God already has you.

I encourage you to give it a try.  Once a year, twice a year, once a season.  Make yourself available and see what becomes of you.

These are some of the titles I easily suggest.

• Invitation to Silence and Solitude by Ruth Haley Barton
• Spiritual Direction: Wisdom for the Long Walk of Faith by Henri J. M. Nouwen
• The Divine Hours: (any of them) by Phyllis Tickle
• The Artist’s Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom by Christine Valters Painter
• Praying in Color:  Drawing a New Path to God by Sybil MacBeth
• Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster
• The Reflective Life by Ken Gire
• The Courage to Teach by Parker J. Palmer
• The Religious Potential of the Child by Sofia Cavaletti