Not-So- Perfect Learning

(Note: I wrote this yesterday, so when I refer to "yesterday" in the post, I mean Thursday!)

Learning is often messy, at least for us. I don't like this necessarily - I would rather have order and quiet, and every once in awhile I conjure up the image I saw once on TV of a homeschool family sitting around their kitchen table (on which all the food, even the crumbs, had been cleared away, probably by one or more of their cheerful and industrious children and probably right after breakfast - which they probably ate fully dressed and not in their pajamas...) saying the Pledge of Allegiance together. When I think of it, once in a blue moon, I make sure the kids know the Pledge of Allegiance. And oh, by the way, you guys know who the president is, and the capital of our state, right? Check. Breathe a sigh of relief.

Maybe I'm exaggerating just a hair, but one thing is for sure - we hardly ever find ourselves neatly dressed (all at the same time), just after breakfast, saying the Pledge of Allegiance around our spotless kitchen table before we began an orderly day of school. Rather, I find that for us, if we're going to get around to learning, we just have dive headlong into it. We do have a loose morning routine - breakfast, morning chores, Bible memory verses - and we do our best to tidy up as we go along, but the beginning, middle, and definitely the end, is just messy in all kinds of ways. And the truth of it is that often those messy days (I don't mean the completely chaotic ones, obviously) result in some of the best learning, even if the house, and my sanity, takes a hit.

Yesterday was no exception. We couldn't wait for everything to be set up just right - I had to catch them before they escaped in all different directions for all sorts of recreational pursuits. So I put the baby on my back, corralled the little boys into the kitchen to help me make some salt clay for an art project they had asked to do, and I directed Aimee to start on her math and Drew to do his violin practice. It went something like this:

Me: Boys do NOT put any more flour into the dough. Aimee, find a pencil - ANY pencil. Drew, open your violin case and start playing.

Aimee (continuing a thread she's been on awhile) I can't find a pencil. We don't have any pencils in the house. The boys take all my pencils. Why do they always go in my room? Why do I have brothers?!
Ryan: Chase is pouring water on the dough...!
Drew: [doing something other than getting his violin out]

Me: Drew, GET YOUR VIOLIN OUT. Aimee, just use whatever you can find. Yes, ok a pen - just this once. Boys, let's knead the dough. DON'T push each other off the chair. Share!

Drew finally gets his violin out and begins playing, Aimee finally settles in to her math. We have flour all over the kitchen, and I have it all over my hands as I go back and forth from the kitchen to the the school room, directing the various pursuits.

Me, sounding a little manic: Drew, that's great! Left hand straight, right fingers curved! Keep going, keep going - don't get distracted! Boys, keep kneading, we're almost done. No, do NOT get the paint out yet. That's for [much, much] later. Yes, Aimee, all the questions from the lesson practice. If it's "so easy" than it shouldn't take you very long...

We finish the dough and put in on the dining room table (on which there are still some cereal crumbs). Ryan and Chase start making the birds and nests they had wanted to do, which means I start making their birds and nests. Aimee and Drew join us as soon as they finish their respective assignments. Aimee spends almost the whole time lamenting that she can't do a perfect bowl shape. Drew has little sense of perfectionism, and just makes all kinds of things, while the little boys clamor for me to make birds that are exactly like each other's. The baby sleeps, somehow. Eventually I walk away to clean up, and they all end up making some pretty nifty little creations, which we put in the oven to bake.

When all this is done, I clean up what I can, but we move on to other things, and throughout the day, I tuck things like spelling and history into whatever nooks of time I can find, and in the quiet(er) moments, I read aloud. At the end of the day, the house is a mess, which I still can't bring myself to love, but what I do love are the things like Drew's big smile over mastering "Ten Little Indians" on the violin, the boys' joy over lumpy, uneven pieces of clay, which they painted (in yet another mess) with bold colors and then carried around in their pockets when they were (mostly) dry, and the way Aimee got a little huffy over the noise but as a result took her books upstairs and did two hours of work on her own. I love thatt our day was filled with God's Word, literature, music, some math, and a little more about the ancient world. I love that it feels as though we didn't just cram information in just to get it done, but that, somewhere in the craziness and somewhere far away from a perfectly ordered homeschool world, we made our way a little further up, and further in.


(Another note: I was in the middle of writing this when I took a break and saw Hannah's post about a typical homeschool day. Nice timing!)