Homeschool Video

(and my brother just got a cup stacking set for his birthday…)

from www.doublesharpevide posted with vodpod

Ideas Have Cons.-hysterical optimism

The idea of “hysterical optimism” (pg. 11) strikes me as such an interesting phrase.  Weaver states that this is our current state and we will be in it until we again distinguish good and evil.  I think this is another aspect to our discussion on sheltering and training- we must teach our children good and evil but they need the capacity to see the difference. 

If we have to recover a “ceremony of innocence”, we have to have the time to clearly and definitively teach our children truth, goodness and beauty.    In being indoctrinated in the transcendence of truth, students will later be able to see the evil that is always there.  The sheltering and training we provide students allows them to see the “alien and destructive.”  Weaver argues that we must pursue this appreciation and love for truth now, before we are too accustomed to evil.

Christine’s Favorite Recipe

1.  Ask kids what they want for dinner.

2.  Rule out their three different choices - Arby’s, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut.

3.  Go to freezer and open door.

4.  Pick up items that immediately fall out, having been jammed in tightly.

5.  Set aside the one that lands on top of the pile and shove the rest back in. 

6.  Read directions on back of the “winner” of the freezer avalanche and turn oven on to appropriate setting.

7.  While oven is heating, choose a nutritious vegetable.  Open can.

8.  Put entree in oven.

9.  Open jar of applesauce and set on table.

10.  Direct youngest to get out paper plates and put on silverware and napkins.

11.  When timer rings, direct oldest to remove entree while middle child pours milk.

12.  Call husband for dinner, have everyone pray and begin.

13.  Go in and lay down on bed for first quiet moment of the day.

Hey, try it, you’ll love it!!!

Ideas Have Consequences, pt 1 Sandi

Weaver keeps reminding us that modern man has lost his referense point. I think we all would have to say this is why we are home schooling. To try to help our kids have a better referense point. Christ of course is that reference point. All things filtered through the view of truth proclaimed in the World of God. Your ideas to shelter are appropriate. The real world people often speak of, does not include God. We live in a very anti-God world. The difference is this,… from my perspective. In Weavers book, he speaks about the media, showing things like a woman crushed by a subway train, and this is used on the front page, he calls this obscenities. He is correct, but this information needs to be passed on to our children(the truth about it being obscene). Its not a matter of never showing them the front page, or trying to protect them from the front page. It is about preparing them to live in a world , where this is what is on the front page. This is what I believe the bible means when it says we are to take all things captive for Christ. We are to take the junk that is on the front page, let them know whats there and then say, this is JUNK, why? because this women and her emtions (back to the crushed woman) are being exploited. This front page tries to suggests that this is the “real” world. and it is only one aspect of the real world. This is junk because if you view it too often you will not “feel” anything for this woman -eventually a regular diet of these obscenites will cause you to be less human….etc. Of course the preparation comes at an age appropriate time, and because you and I are still pioneers in how this is all done, there is no text book for good timing. One example that comes to mind for our generation is the Vietnam war brought into the homes of Americans. The affect of this was monumental. Should we have hidden ourselves from the realities of war? I think not, but do we need them served up in our living rooms? And how aware we all became of the easily manipulated point of view. The camera so easily swayed americans against the war, as it still does today. Do we shelter ourselves from the reality, again No, but is there an appropriate place? I think so…

Quick and Tasty Almond Chicken

So

Ladies, I tried this out last week and it was super-easy, fast and the whole family loved it.  Kudos to Martha Stewart!!

http://www.marthastewart.com/page.jhtml?type=content&id=recipe2417

Ideas Have Consequences, pt 1 from Denise

As I mentioned to you all a while back, I was finding Weaver hard to understand until well into the first chapter. Right around the middle of the 1st chapter I started really connecting with his ideas. He starts to talk about what has happened to the imagination of modern man.

Weaver really gets going, I think, about page 28 when he starts talking about our culture’s preoccupation with immediacy and the focus on ‘removing the veil’ and exposing everything previously considered private. “It is contended that such material is the raw stuff of life, and that it is the duty of organs of public information to leave no one deceived about the real nature of the world. The assertion that this is the real world begs the most important question of all. The raw stuff of life is precisely what the civilized man desires to have refined, or presented in a human framework, for which sentiment alone can afford the support.”p.29

My daughters have led lives sheltered from alot of what many would call the ‘real world’. We hardly watch any TV (the ads gross me out!!), the newspaper is vulger, the radio often trashy, too. Now that they are teens I stuggle more and more, knowing that they will be ‘out there’. But then I ask myself…what IS ‘out there’. THe ‘real world’ many tell me I am protecting them from isn’t MY world. IS it the real world?

I was thinking alot after our recent discussion over your classroom issue, Sandi. As I said, I was so grateful to you for sharing this situation with us. It’s the spirit of CIRCE to seek the truth and TALK ABOUT WHAT THAT IS.

I think the atmosphere of CIRCE encourages the re-establishment of higher ideals. On btm. 32, top 33…”(communities)which are but people living together in one place, without friendship or common understanding, and without capacity, when the test comes, to pull together for survival”. CIRCE encourages the opposite of this, I think.

I’m interested especially in what you all think of pages 28-32 and what it means to the importance of the child being both protected (especially their imaginations!)and prepared for living in the world.

Ideas Have Consequences, pt 1

Well, I am going to post some of my rambling thoughts to get things started here. 

The first thing I was struck with in Weaver’s introduction was his discussion on the superiority of an ideal-what a lost concept!  Again and again I see that we as a society are long past the “norm” of holding up the ideal and likewise the authority that must accompany the ideal.  I have seen that part of my task as a teacher is to help my students understand the value of the ideal and their striving to attain it.  This is tough and beyond trying to be faithful to point to the ideal, I am not sure how to help them.  I am seeing it is very necessary for me to keep the focus beyond just the task of the hour-the ideal inspires.

I also loved the analogy of our loss of ideals with Macbeth-this created a very clear picture for me!

I’ll keep writing more thoughts over the next few days, so chime in with your thoughts.