The Mindful Homeschool

C-chan is really into mythology again.  She loves this book called D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths that we have borrowed from the library over and over again.  She has read it numerous times and now knows much more than I do regarding mythology.  She has taught her younger brother much more than I know about Greek myths.  I don’t think I even had a class in mythology until I went to college.  That was the first I had heard of Icarus and other mythological characters.  Maybe it was because I went to a private Christian school???  The only character I know that C had not heard of was Bacchus, the god of wine.  (I think this is because there was a group at college with this name but my recollections are quite fuzzy.)

Anyway, this interest in mythology has been fueled even more by another series of books that deal with mythological characters.  The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan and the other books in the series have been keeping her happy and busy reading this summer.  She told one of her good homeschooling friends about this book and this friend also liked it.  Seeing as C-chan reads much faster than I can, I am glad that she has another buddy with whom she can converse re: her latest book finds.

W is enjoying reading Hardy Boys books.  I just picked up one for him at Barnes and Noble that we were unable to borrow from the library.  He was so excited that I had gotten it for him.  We are still reading to him at night and I am so glad that he has truly developed a love of books.  Yay!  For me right now, seeing my kids reading and loving books makes me really happy and very proud.

We had Vacation Bible School this week which the older kids thought was a blast.  H-man wasn’t so sure.  I stayed with him and the other preschoolers in his group.   I think that is partly to blame for my miserable cold.  C came down with something on Thursday night and because of that we ended up not going to VBS on Friday.  Then on Friday afternoon I started feeling all achey in the head and am still not feeling like I am back to normal.  I think I was exposed to an awful lot of germs when I was with the 3 and 4 year olds.  I will spare you the details but let’s just say my immune system was not strong enough to fight off the attack.  Of course, I feel bad that we missed not only Friday’s VBS but we also missed the celebration on Saturday night.  Oh well, C is getting back to her old self and soon my summer cold will be a distant memory as well. 

(I wonder if my lack of time spent on the mat was what made me so vulnerable.  I remember my former yoga teacher, Karen, saying that balancing poses helped to strengthen the immune system.  Next year if H-man wants to do VBS, I will have to remember to do a lot of tree poses that week!  Last month, according to my health fitness club’s records, I went to the club (i.e. yoga class) only 9 times.  This month I plan to go a lot more.)

The kids enjoyed VBS so much I was thinking it would be good to incorporate some of the ideas into our “school year”.  They enjoyed the different crafts, snacks and drama presentations that were scheduled into each day.  And it seemed as if they really enjoyed singing and dancing to all the VBS songs.  The downside of all this was having to adhere to a fairly inflexible schedule.  When the time was up for crafts, we had to stop even if we were in the “flow” of doing something and not yet done with our craft.  Same with snack time.  We were given a certain amount of time to finish our snacks (sometimes as little as 3 minutes due to a scheduling mistake) and the children were instructed to throw their food in the trash bag even if they weren’t done with it.  Although I can understand the reasoning behind all of this, it seemed wasteful and just plain wrong.

But overall, we had a really good week.  C and W laughed a ton while relaying VBS stories to me.  I heard my kids singing VBS songs in the shower and under the kitchen table.  And they also did a great job learning their dance moves and participating in the huge gymnasium “Sing and Play” time at the beginning and ending of each day.

“You, just as you are, and your life here, right now, are all there is and all you need to know. You don’t have to do anything special. Mostly, you have to be open to meeting face to face, and even dancing with, the truth that pertains to your life right now. You have to find a way to collect your fractured pieces, examine them, and then accept them as part of who you are. Spiritual practice is about transformation, but it’s also, and more importantly, about working with what is. –Angel Kyodo Williams

I came to the practice of asana with a curvature in my spine. Thousands of hours of my life have been devoted to struggling with the effects of this. On the mat, my lower back became a battleground. I fought and lost, fought and lost. My efforts to heal myself often ended in debilitating back spasms. Over time, though, I began to respect my back. I marveled at its ability to bend backward and forward, to recover from tremendously painful injuries. Eventually I started to befriend my back, and even to see it as something to be admired. I began focusing on what it could do. As this attitude developed, the need to change my back, to fight my reality, lessened and gradually disappeared. The curvature in my back is gone, and I can’t remember exactly when it went away, because when it did, I no longer cared.”

(from Meditations from the Mat by Rolf Gates)