So In Love

2 and a half weeks ago, while we were on vacation, I took a pregnancy test.
It was the first time I'd used one of the expensive ones.  Usually I buy the cheapest one.  You know the kind that have the 2 pink lines, or the 1 blue line and 1 pink line, or the 1 pink line and 1 blue double line, and so on and so on.  The pregnancy tests that make me look at the test and the directions and back at the test and back at the directions about 20 times to make sure I am reading the result correctly. I walk out of the bathroom and then walk back in a few minutes later to check it all over again.
This time I didn't want to mess around.
It was amazing to see "PREGNANT" on that tiny screen and know instantly what I had known all along: we are having a baby!

I plan on writing all about that day, because it was so wonderful and such a precious gift from God, but right now I'm fast forwarding to today.
Today I had an ultrasound.

While met with great joy, this pregnancy has been different from any of my others.  There is a shadow and all of us feel it.  We feel more vulnerable.  We have hope.  But we have fear too.
From the beginning, without any prompting from us, the boys have prayed for this baby.  They pray for it to grow healthy and strong.  They pray that it won't die.  
They are not sad when they pray this.  They are matter of fact, they are hopeful and they trust that God will hear their prayer.  But they are not afraid to pray that prayer and to admit that the fear is there.
I appreciate that about them.  And I echo their prayers.
I remember this:
"who of you by worrying can add one hour to your lives?"
I may not know what tomorrow holds, but I am rejoicing in today.


I always feel nervous waiting for that first time to see the heartbeat.  Today was no different.  Except that nervousness was intensified.
And when the ultrasound tech found that tiny, white spot and she said, "someone is in there and it's heart is beating away," my own heart swelled with joy and hope and LOVE.
This is my 5th baby and I am still in awe that I can love something so tiny and so new so very, very much.
That little life matters.


I looked at Aaron with tears in my eyes and we grinned and cried and he squeezed my hand because we were looking at our baby.
And more than I could ever tell you, this baby is our miracle.


I want to shout it from the mountain tops that GOD IS GOOD!


I am so in love already.


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Expected arrival of the newest Eskridge: June 20, 2011.
The boys already refer to the baby as her.  They are quite certain Lilly needs a sister.  After all, they have each other and she should have someone too.
Lilly wants a baby sister also.  Although she refuses to admit she will then become a big sister.  She responds every time with this, "no, I'm the little sister."  Perhaps she is worried about losing her current ranking as ruler of the house.
Aaron was pro girl too.  Until I pointed out that meant we'd have 2 teenage daughters at the same time.  That scared him.
No matter who we get, we are joyfully looking forward to meeting another brother or sister next June.
And we're praying a lot.
I'd so appreciate it if you'd pray along with us.


Much love from,
Greta


PS.  And yes, I am excruciatingly tired.  Like falling asleep while I read to them on the couch every afternoon tired, like put in a movie for them so I can take a nap tired, like falling asleep at 7 o clock tired.
It's hard to get much done beyond the necessities.
And some days it is hard to do even those.
Cause I am also sick.
Like complain a lot sick, even though I try not to.
It doesn't matter how many times I do this, I always forget how hard it is.
One of the greatest beauties of pregnancy and childbirth is the forgetting.
Postings may, or may not, be sparse for a bit here.
And I have totally been craving chocolate milk!
I think I'll go have a glass right now.

This Home Schooling Life: The Reality of Schooling With the Littles

Although I haven't been home schooling "officially" for very long, I have been teaching my children since they were born.  They have all been with me, all the time, since the get- go.  And yes, I still really like being home with them, and I like having them home with me.

I have longed for this for as far back as I can remember and God has given me the desires of my heart.

But.....

Lest you think that our days here at the George Emmerson Academy are all sunshine and smiling children in knickers and starched pinafores.   Children who sit at the table with folded hands and ankles crossed saying things like, "Mummy, dearest, may we please do our arithmetic now?"  Lest you think that I only tell you half truths, I give you this: 

a little bit of reality.

The reality is, I have to do school with a 2, 4 and 6 year old.  The little ones don't run off and play while I have uninterrupted time with the oldest.  Not at all.  In fact, the 4 year old wants to do school right alongside the 6 year old.  And he amazes me by how well he is doing.  That competitive drive can be a wonderful thing.

And the 2 year old, well she won't be left out of anything.  So she is right there with us.  All the time.  Sometimes she "writes" with them, listens to their stories or reads her own books.  And sometimes I give her something of her own to work on.

Which often distracts the 6 year old.

And sometimes, if she is particularly antsy, I give her a special treat, like letting her wash her baby doll in the kitchen sink.
And a bit later, when James goes into the kitchen for a drink, I hear this: 
"OH MY WORD!"
And I walk in to find this:

Because really, why would you want to just bathe your baby doll when you could strip naked and bathe yourself?

It makes perfect sense, don't you think?

This was one occasion where we all laughed, but there have been others, where the damage or the mess was a bit more, that I have not felt like laughing.

But it is reality.

And it is not forever.

Soon she'll be able to sit at the table with us for longer stretches of time and I'll be schooling 3 instead of 2.  For now I work with it and do my best and laugh a lot.  

It helps to be laid back.

Because I know that if my kids were in traditional school, they'd be dealing with interruptions  there too.

For example, let me tell you another tale of reality.

The reality of my 5th period class, my first year of teaching.  They were 35 9th graders at the end of the day.  They were, truly, a class from hell.  My mantra before each class started was, "don't cry and don't cuss them out."

This was just one, just one, of the many, many, many interruptions I dealt with daily in that class.  After asking Gustavo to stop talking, stop whistling, stop getting up, stop looking at comic books, stop poking the person in front of him, to stop playing with his tech deck, to stop using his pencil as his tech deck and to let me teach the class, I finally sent him to sit in the hall.

A few minutes later, another teacher knocked on my door, asked me if he, pointing to Gustavo, was my student.  

"What is he doing?" I asked knowingly.

"Crawling around to each classroom door on all fours, and barking into the room like a dog."

See what I mean? 

Life is full of interruptions.  

And we have to learn how to deal with them and still get our work done.

Otherwise, we'll all be really terrible at parenting, won't we? 

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I hope you are enjoying these glimpses into this home schooling life of ours.

I'll be posting next about some of the more regular subject like math, reading and science.

But before I do, I am taking a little break to post about our vacation.

We made some mighty good memories and I'd like to put them down for posterity.  

Or at least for us.

Be back soon!

Love from,

Greta

This Home Schooling Life: Art

We love art at our house.  It is a major part of our lives--and not just because Aaron is an artist.  Making art is one of the kids' favorite ways to spend time.  The boys spend, on average, an hour and a half to two hours a day drawing.  I don't mean coloring books. I mean killing trees with reckless abandon as they cover sheet after sheet with detailed drawings of everything under the sun.

James has loved drawing since the age of 2 and could create recognizable images at that age.  It has taken William a bit longer.  He used to get very frustrated that James could draw anything that came in his head, while he could never get the things that were in his head to look the same on paper.

I know exactly how he feels.

But in the past few months, his drawing skills have become much more developed and he and James will happily lay on the floor, or sit at the table and draw and draw.  It is a lot of fun to watch.

I am not an artist nor an art teacher, so I have little to offer them.  In fact, James can draw almost anything better than me, so I really have nothing to offer him. This book, by Ed Emberly,  has helped a lot.  When Daddy isn't home to show them how to draw a walrus, this book breaks it down.

It has really taught them to see the shapes in everything and that every thing they draw is made up of different shapes.  

But in addition to the time they spend drawing every day, we also incorporate some other kinds of art.  Because they love to draw whatever is in their imagination, I feel it is important to push them a bit out of their comfort zone and make them draw or paint from life.

I think it is important to learn the skills of study and observation.  Of concentration and paying attention to details.  

I also think it is a marvelous opportunity for them to be out in nature and making art.

There is nothing like seeing a 2, 4 and 6 year old enjoying en plein air painting!

I took these photos on our first day of school.  After our nature hike with our home school group, we all sat on the grass by the stream, ate lunch and made art together.

I ask the kids to gather treasures along the way that they think they'd like to draw.  William chose to draw a bird we saw on the hike and he's using his favorite medium, pastels.

Watercolors were a new addition to our art box this year and James is really enjoying them.  He wanted to draw his leaves with a pencil fist and then paint.

Even Lilly joins in.

This art is hardest for James.  Not because he can't do it, but because he would rather draw an elaborate pirate ship.  But with each new piece, he is developing his skills and taking more pleasure in both the process and the end result.

Our home school group tries to incorporate art time into each of our nature days.  So in addition to art at home, both free drawing and more structured time, my kids get it each week with their buddies.  

I find it really wonderful that they belong to a community of friends that sits together each week and studies God's creation and then celebrates it in art.  What an amazing thing for my kids to be a part of!

I love too, that even the little ones are involved.  It is just the way we do things.  The littles are there, and they aren't going to be left out.
Don't get me wrong, it's more work this way.
But when I look down the road and think of the end result, I am pretty confident it will be worth it.

And in a time when art is being cut from so many schools because there is limited time and limited funds, I am very, very grateful that it is such a key piece of my children's education.

I am so enjoying the journey I am on with these little people.

Greta

Home Schooling Week: Music

My kids don't take music lessons yet.  It is something I'd like them to do, but we haven't gotten there. I didn't take music lessons until high school when I took guitar.  We could not afford music lessons when I was little, and truthfully, I don't know how interested I was.

But by high school I wanted to learn to play guitar so I could play worship songs at church and youth group.  I bought my own guitar and paid for half my lessons with my babysitting money.  I appreciated those lessons a lot because I had a personal investment. And while I was never very good, playing guitar was something that brought me a lot of pleasure and I was able to use a lot on mission trips and while leading Bible studies, VBS, Sunday school and discipleship groups.

It is my hope my kids will want to play an instrument one day like I did.  In order to build in them a love of music, I try to let them experience many different types of music.  We listen to a very broad range and try to "feel" the differences.  At this point, our musical experience is pretty informal.  Mostly I want them to enjoy it, have fun and begin to hear and recognize the differences in the kinds of music we listen to.  

Here we were listening to the great jazz station, 88.1, and playing along.  The song had a distinctive beat and the kids picked up on it easily.  It made us want to play drums.

After that, James wanted to draw some musical notes.  Sadly, I don't remember enough about reading music to teach him how to read music, but recognizing the notes is a good place to start.  There is nothing like teaching your kids to make you realize how much there is to learn and how much you want to learn it.
Maybe when they start music lessons, I will too.

After jazz and musical notes, we listened to the sound track from Star Wars.  The kids could feel the difference in the music immediately.  The music roused them and made them want to march.

One look at William's face and you can see he is feeling the power of Darth Vader's song.

Even Lilly was feeling it.

Simply by listening to music and sometimes pointing out things about a certain kind of music that makes it distinctive, the kids are beginning to develop an ear for music, just like I hoped they would.

One day while driving, we were listening to the classical station.  Music from John William's ET came on.  As the boys listened to it, they said, "this sounds like Luke's song."  

They were right, it did.  And since it was by the same composer, there was a reason it sounded alike.  

Sometimes our music "class: looks like this.  We spend a chunk of time listening to different music and interacting with it.  But other times, our musical education just happens while we live life.  (are you noticing a theme here?) 

We often listen to classical music in the car because usually by the time we get in the car I am a bit (or a lot) frazzled and classical music soothes me.  I find it does for the kids too.

We love Johnny Cash (they love the song about John Henry) and Elvis.

We like to listen to hymns, especially the ones we are memorizing.

We like to listen to blue grass to hear the fiddle, like Pa played to Laura and Mary.

They love to dance to the Beach Boys and the "Mr. Roboto" song.

We like Glenn Miller and the music of the big bands.

We like old jazz.  I am not a fan of much modern jazz.

We also love old country music--like from the 40s and 50s.

For a while Lilly wanted to listen to "Big Rock Candy Mountain" from the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack every time we got into the car.

It was pretty funny to hear my 2, 4 and 6 year old singing, "there's a lake of stew and of whiskey too, you can paddle all around it in a big canoe, on the Big Rock Candy Mountain."

But they also learned a lot of history from that song.  It spawned conversations about the men riding the rails, the Great Depression and what it was like in our country at that time.

That is one of the reasons I am trying to expose them to such a variety of music.  Besides enjoying it for its own sake, we can learn and connect to history through music.

And, not to offend and Radio Disney lovers out there, but if they were just listening to those songs, I'm afraid I'd be raising kids with a very limited musical palate.

And that would really bum me out.

Hope your day is filled with beautiful music.  Whatever kind it is that you like best.

Love from,

Greta

Home Schooling Week: Vocabulary and a Bit of my Educational Philosphy

I know there has been a lot more absence than here lately.

I'm missing it too, but life has been getting in the way.

That happens sometimes and I'm rolling with it.

Thanks for rolling along with me.

Now, vocabulary.

I know, it's an odd place to start.

But I have been thinking about this quite a bit and it actually makes a lot of sense.

The way I teach vocabulary sort of sums up a large part of my educational philosophy.

An educational philosophy that has changed greatly in the past 10 years.

And I do mean greatly.

Before I had kids I was a high school teacher.  I went through credential school and taught for 5 years.  I loved it.  But much of what I was taught and what I was expected to do in my classroom, I now think about with some sadness.  Much of it was formulaic, forced and manipulated.  Often I was filling time or preparing for tests.

Of course, I was working within the confines of 35 students for 50 minutes a day and a curriculum that I had to get through.  I was working with struggling readers whose favorite book in the 9th grade was still The Cat in The Hat.  There was only so much I could do.

Even 3 years ago, when James was 3, I loaded up on the little workbooks in the dollar section at Target, sure that he was ready to learn! 

He was beyond uninterested.

I realized then that I was trying to give him the exact thing I was trying to avoid by choosing to home school.  I had fallen into the trap of doing what I was "supposed" to do.  And I realized afresh how much more I wanted for my own children.  More than just what some officials writing state standards and curriculum told us to do.

And that was when things began to change.

Over the past 3 years I have learned that the best way to teach my children is to know them.  To know what they love, what motivates them, what interests and excites them and how they learn best.  I study my children the way some teachers study their teachers' guides.

My children are my teacher's guides.

What I have discovered is that most of our learning takes place as we live our lives.

It isn't when we sit around the kitchen table and "do school".

Some of it happens there yes, but the vast majority of it happens in a much more natural way.

It goes something like this:

James is carrying his dishes to the sink.

I say, "wow, James, that looks precarious."

James, "what does precarious mean?"

I explain.
He grins.
He understands.

And the next morning he and William are carrying their dishes to the sink, carefully balancing a wobbly stack, and they both ask, "Mom, is this precarious?"

If it ended there it would be a cute story but not much else.

But it doesn't.

They take the word as their own.  

Weeks later they are building a tower with blocks.  William says of his tall stack, "James, look at how precarious this is."

It didn't take a word wall, crossword puzzles, tests or word searches.

It just takes seizing the moment and seeing that almost every thing in life provides an opportunity to learn.

The other way we learn vocabulary is by reading lots and lots of good books.  When we're reading The Little House books, and they want to know what the big slough is, I explain.  And when they hear the word slough again in Pilgrims Progress, William says, "I know slough!"  

And when we're driving by the wetlands and James says, "this is kind of like a slough, isn't it?  Except I think this has more water in it."

The taking on of new words as their own happens naturally as we read books that they love.  

Yesterday when we were reading a biography of Benjamin Franklin.

"What's a gale?"

"Can you figure it out?"

He thinks for a minute, "like a big wind?"

"Yep."

This is the way they wanted us to teach vocabulary when I was in credential school, but it was very hard to do given the confines I was working with.

But now I have a classroom of 3 and a lot more freedom to teach the way I see best.

And let me tell you, it is so much fun!

And no, I am not an unschooler (although they aren't as crazy as I used to think) we do follow some curriculum, but I am not going to talk about that yet.

Next up is music.

Stay tuned.

Love from,

Greta

Remembering This Moment: Best Friends

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to bring you this important message.

Home schooling week, the longest running, shortest amount of posts ever, will be back tomorrow.

But today is Monday and it is time for Remembering This Moment.

To learn more about it check out more here.

Remembering this Moment: Best Friends

While I was growing up, and to this very day, my family had some very dear friends, the Pedersons.  They were family friends while I was still in diapers, or at least running around with my underwear on my head.  We grew up with their kids, Erin and Brian.  We loved them and we also fought like siblings.  We had the chicken pox together.  We went trick or treating together.  We invented many elaborate types of tag and hide and go seek. We've been in each other's weddings.  Erin was with me when James was born.  Brian still teases me like a sister.  We have cried together.  Laughed together.  Loved each other.  And our lives are entwined forever.

Cathy is my second mom.  I love her more than I could ever say.

I know I could call on Ed anytime, day or night, and he would be there to help me out, no questions asked.  Just like my own dad.

Everyone should be blessed with friends like that.

I am so grateful my kids are growing up with their own set of best friends.  

We have been friends with the Bartlesons for over 10 years.
Jana and I were pregnant with James and Noah at the same time.
We both brought our ultra sound pictures to church on the same Sunday to share the news with each other.
We went through birthing classes together and groaned together each time we got in and out of the car, while our husbands tried not to make fun of us.
The boys were born 3 weeks apart and have been the best of friends ever since.

James future plans for wife and life always somehow include Noah.  He has mentioned everything from having bunk beds for his own wife as well as Noah and his wife, to owning property big enough for a house for his family and for Noah's family.
These boys are not afraid to hold hands or put their arms about each other's shoulders as they hike or walk together because they simply love each other that much.

William and Natalie are part of the crew, too.  William goes back and forth between playing with his beloved big brother and best friend Noah, to playing with Natalie, the girl he plans to marry someday.

They are a dangerous pair, though.  They get into mischief.

And, as Lilly has gotten older, Natalie has become her playmate.  Sometimes they let the boys play boy games while they play a game of house or babies.  Natalie is the big sister Lilly doesn't have.

 I love these kids like they are my own.  And I know that my kids are loved the same way.

Watching them together, seeing all the different sorts of friendships and bonds that have blossomed and grown gives me such great joy.

They are a handful: of trouble, fun and love.

We took our first family camping trip with the Barts this weekend.
I think James summed it up the excitement of such a trip nicely when he said, "when I wake up, Noah will be there and it will be just like we're brothers."

It is so good to have friends that are more than friends.
They are family.
And they are forever a part of your heart.

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I hope you'll take the time to remember a moment this week.  Something or someone that you want to remember for always.
Have you noticed how fast the days slip by?  If you don;t take a minute to remember that moment, it will be gone and you'll forget.
Be a memory keeper.  It is one way of spending your precious time that you won't regret.


Love from,
Greta