Hockey anthems

The boys have been playing ball hockey all morning.  Every game they play (about every 30 minutes or so) they start with the national anthem, in French and English.  LOVE IT!

The rebel

I'm currently hosting a small women's scripture study group each Tuesday morning.  I selected a few chapters and wrote down some journal prompt questions to help us apply what we are reading to our actual, every day lives.

This past week we talked about rebellion, and we thought about any of our children who are currently rebelling against what we have taught them, or children who are young but seem to have rebellious tendencies in them.  (Yes, I have at least one.  Juliette is too young to discern as of yet.)

My friend noted this sage piece of wisdom: today's culture is completely counter to what we are trying to teach our children.  If we have a rebellious child, let us hope and pray that they decide to rebel against society, not against us.

I love that.  We always assume rebellion is bad, but really it is about being counter-cultural.  And isn't that what we actually want to be?  If we can plant a good seed deep inside, then they will see through the facade to the ugliness of the world's promises and run good and hard in the other direction.  Now that's the kind of rebellion I want in my kids.  In fact, I'm finding myself hoping for a little rebellion in all of them.

God's grandeur

I'm currently doing a bible study that was filmed in the great Canadian Rocky mountains.  It got me to thinking about the absolute majesty of mountains, rising up from the earth, towering above us, so powerful and strong and mighty.  I got to thinking about the grandness of all of nature, the vastness of oceans and the endless acres of forests.  Everything in this beautiful world around us has been created on a scale so vast it dwarfs us.

I thought about man's greatest attempts to build something large and beautiful.  I pictured Notre Dame de Paris, stone carved with great detail, its towers casting long-reaching shadows on the city below.  I thought about the years and efforts it took to cause such a great structure to come to be.  I considered the feats of engineering our largest and most ambitious buildings needed, the pain-staking decades of labour.  There are some buildings which took so long to construct I bet there were men and women who worked their whole lives just to complete them.

I think of all that effort, and realize that even those grandest structures are nothing, nothing in comparison to the grandeur of God's creations.  Nothing we have ever built can take our breath away like jagged rock reaching heavenward, wearing a cloak of snow and crowned in mist.  How tiny and small our little bodies next to the mountain.

How tiny and small our bodies next to God.

"Thou art the God that doest wonders."

Are you ever struck by the wonders of God?  Wonder struck?

A little dinner conversation

It started with the cub pledge.

"Who is the queen?"

So we talked about the queen.  Which led into the commonwealth and a look at our wall map at the countries included in the commonwealth.  Which led into emigration from England and France and the war of 1812.  Which led into the difference between a monarchy and a democratic form of government.  Then onto voting and elections which moved naturally into lines of succession and kings and queens.  Onto the birth of Prince George, and who can become king or queen.  And what happens if every son, grandson, aunt, uncle and cousin in the royal family dies.  Why people like the queen, and what she does, and what it means to be a figurehead and the parliament and the house of commons.  Why it is called the house of commons, and who can be prime minister.  Back to voting.  Then over again to the royals and what it means to be a celebrity and why millions of people watched a wedding and waited for a baby to be born.  Back to geography, and why some countries want to still have a queen and why some don't.  To the differences between Canada and the United States...

Yep - just a little dinner conversation at the Gawthroupe table with a five and seven year old :)

Some days are hard

Some days are just plain hard.  I could write here about silver linings, and "one day when they're grown," and learning and growing and gaining experience.  But some days are just hard, and today was one of those.

Juliette woke every 30 minutes last night until 4am.
I started the morning at the walk-in clinic getting a tetanus shot from the carpet I ripped up.
We went to a morning breakfast at the church where Juliette got a black eye and I couldn't keep track of the boys.
I ran around like crazy trying to buy what we needed for our family portraits, because the weather that had predicted gallons of rain today changed its mind.
The house gradually descended into utter chaos with every hour I was away.
James had to bring the kids home from the General Broadcast conference at church because they were beyond disruptive to the others.
The boys couldn't keep off of each other all day, with a never-ending battering of each other.
Juliette didn't stop crying.  At all.  All day.
Including at our family portrait appointment.  She screamed and hit whenever I tried to bring her into the picture.
The boys all ran around at the orchard instead of staying in one spot for the picture.
James dropped us off after the photos and took off for the men's broadcast, but not before throwing out that the house looked like a tornado had ripped through it and he can't live like that.
Instead of watching the opening Hockey Night in Canada with the boys, I desperately tried to clean.
While trying to clean, Caleb and Benjamin ended up locked in a wrestle on the floor, screaming and hitting each other.
I had to physically spank Benjamin (the first time I've ever had to do that) because he had bit down on Caleb and I couldn't pull him off.
The spanking caused him to open his mouth and let go, but only long enough to turn around and smack me on the back as hard as he could.
I lost it and, yelling, sent both boys upstairs.
I pushed through the bedtime routine in record time and flipped off the light.
Thankfully the end of the routine involved a scripture story and a prayer, which at least calmed everyone enough to give hugs and "I love yous" before the light went off.

***

Some days are hard.  I'm sure glad this one is over.  I'm sad because we had planned a lovely weekend full of spiritual nourishment from the conference.  Instead I read Facebook statuses about how inspiring the talks were and how renewed everyone feels, and I'm left wondering why my children always seem to lose it when I try to do everything to make a day lovely for everyone.

Piano methods

I've been a piano teacher for over 15 years now.  People often ask me what method or book series I use, and it's a question that's hard to answer: I use so many different ones that I can't pin it down to one thing.

I've used the Royal Conservatory of Music.  I've taught children using the Bastien, Alfreds and Adventure series.  I've taught adults out of hymn books.  I've taught teenagers with popular and Disney music books.  I've taught by ear and by sight.  I've let students pick their own style and music and I've used their interests to teach music basics.   I guess if I had to sum up my theory to this point, it would be teaching my students not perfection in music technique, but simply to enjoy making music.

This year, I've subconsciously started something new, with the challenge of teaching my own children. I've only had one boy in all my students, so maybe it also has something to do with the different learning styles of boys to girls.  Whatever the reason, I slipped into something new without even realizing it.  It wasn't until I was trying to explain my method to a friend yesterday that I realized how radical, but hopefully effective, the method is.

When asked if I was using the regular children's books series (Bastien, Alfreds, etc) I replied no.  I'm using a book by John Schmidt that has the student playing 3 different songs each day.  The goal is to learn to read notes by interval, not by note name.  I'm teaching rhythm or fingering or italian terms.  The student does not have 2-3 songs per week that they practice over and over until they master that song and associated skill.  This is not like most music teachers.

This is the analogy that I used yesterday explaining it to my friend, and it was completely spur of the moment, but totally true.  We don't teach children to read by giving them 2-3 books and making them read them over and over and over until they can read each word perfectly, until they read with appropriate inflection and rhythm.  Instead we provide a mountain of books for them to look through, encouraging as much exposure to as many books as possible.  We teach the sounds the letters make, or we teach whole words by sight.  If they don't know a word we might cue them, or let them jump over it.  We don't insist on perfection, and yet somehow they learn to read, and generally quite quickly.

So I'm teaching piano the same way.  I'm providing some basics without overwhelming them with note names and fingering and rhythm and staffs and markings.  I really think that as they have exposure to more and more music, they will start to see that the notes look different, and then I'll explain that some are long and some are short.  They will start to see markings and terms and we can talk about interpretation.  But I have a feeling this will be a much more organic way of learning music, and instead of forcing things they aren't ready to learn or understand, they will inquire on their own about unfamiliar marks on the page as they become familiar with sheet music.

It's all new right now, but I'm not in a rush.  Caleb is only six and Colin only eight.  I figure in two years they'll be playing full songs and you'd never know the difference between my method and the traditional one.  (Which, coincidently, is what they also say about letting children learn to read when they are ready and in their own way - after two years you can't tell the difference!)

The results of being calm

"If you are calm and peaceful, you can slow time down, and do and see more and better."
(Shawni Eyre Pothier)

While I might work at the wording of the above statement, I love what it's trying to say.  I have discovered the truth of being calm these past 8 years of being a mother.  Before children, I would whip around from one project to the next.  I walked with a quick gait; in fact, a pre-requisitite for shoe buying was the ability to run in them (even my black dress shoes with big fat square rubber heels.)  I piled my plate with projects.  I easily ran down to-do lists.

Now, in the chaos that is young children, I crave calmness.  I centre myself first so that I don't add to the noise and busyness around me.  And in the process I have discovered that I am more productive at a calmer, slower pace.  I reduce the amount of errors, I lower time-eating stress, I start with a clear vision and move through it step by step so as not to repeat or go back to something I miss.

You'd think that doing things more slowly would result in less time, less accomplished.  But the ever-true axiom "haste makes waste" will swirl around someone rushing too quickly.  Besides, what am I rushing for?  If I must move in a hurried manner just to get everything on the list done, there is too much on the list.  If I never seem to get to important things then my priorities are out of line.  If it takes forever to do something then I'm probably doing about it the wrong way.

Our own nature will overflow from within us and touch all that is around us: our tasks, our children, our family, our friends, our projects, our jobs, our homes.  I am convinced more than ever that the mood of a mother will set the tone of her home and those who enter.