Those Who Were Willing to Come

Reading through Exodus, something jumped out. After Moses had been to Sinai and received the instructions from the Lord, he cast the vision for the Israelites: They were to be His People; They were to follow His Law; And He would dwell among them in the Tabernacle.


And so they prepared to build His Dwelling Among Them.


The blueprint was specific. The materials list was specific. 


Then in chapter 36, it says this:

"Then Moses summoned Bezalel and Oholiab and every skilled person to whom the Lord had given ability and who was willing to come and do the work."

The craftsmanship was exquisite. Those gifted by the Lord were gifted for His Glory, for His Purpose. But, even though some were gifted for the work, it is implied that there might be some who were not "willing to come and do the work."

Of course, that little phrase provided lots of "food for thought."


Are there gifts He has given us that we aren't willing to use for His Glory?


Perspective makes all the difference.


If those craftsmen, gifted by the Lord, had truly understood what this Tabernacle meant, could anything have kept them away? If they had understood how that Tabernacle would be filled with the Glory, wouldn't they have lingered as long as possible? And their work? Wouldn't it have been carried out with more joy and passion and excellence than they could ever have mustered for any other project?


What about our gifts?


Do we have the perspective for their use that brings Him the most Glory? Do we use them for His Purposes? Do we seek excellence in their use because it's all for Him?


How can we, as parents with incredible ability to influence, how can we help our children to capture that Vision for their gifts? How can we encourage excellence, not for their glory, but for His? How can we help them have the true perspective on our time here?


Don't we have to have a true perspective ourselves first, before we can pass that vision on to them?

"every skilled person to whom the Lord had given ability and who was willing to come and do the work"

May we be willing. With everything that is in us, may we say, "Yes, Lord. Use us as You see fit."

Trebuchet Triumph

I learned something this week about my youngest son, Ben. And, I must say, it is a "game changer."


Background first. 


Thirty six hours after we met Josh (Sergey) and Ben (Oleg), they were our adopted sons and we were about to leave the orphanage in Magadan in far eastern Siberia. The orphanage director was giving us a brief, as in two sentence, summary of the character of these two little guys, who now shared our name but whom we didn't know at all. 

She explained how Joshua was like Cinderella, willing to work as hard as he could just so someone would love him.  Then she said Ben believed he was a prince and could get away with anything if he would just smile big enough.


YIKES!


When we got home, we learned just how astute her summary had been. 


Ben didn't want to do anything that he deemed "too hard." At first, that encompassed almost everything. 


I remember getting out the Duplo blocks (giant sized Legos) for the boys to play with because they would be easily understood without a language barrier. He was six years old, but he sat in the middle of the family room floor with a block in his hand, crying like a baby and sliding the block across the building base over and over and over again. It was too hard. He wanted someone to build it for him. Needless to say, he did not get what he wanted. Life, as he had known it, was over.


He wasn't planning to learn English, either. He was going to continue speaking Russian and have Joshua serve as his translator for the rest of his life. You think I'm joking? Nope. 


When we were able to begin their schooling, it was the same story. Everything was simply too hard. He didn't want to put forth any effort and he fought every step of progress we made. It has basically been the equivalent of dragging him along. For seven years. Granted, school is hard for him. And there are things he will probably never be good at--that's okay, as long as he does his best.


We required the kids to learn their math facts before they could start our math curriculum. Guess who learned them last? Yup! That's right. No matter what we tried, they just wouldn't stick. We tried flash cards, drills, worksheets, manipulatives, rewards. IT TOOK YEARS! And there was NO progress! I began to think that maybe he was just not able to learn them. Finally, I figured out that he was bluffing. 


We were planning one of our epic road trips and the cousins were coming along with us. The kids LOVE traveling with cousins. Everyone rides with everyone else and the miles just melt away. Knowing how much he was looking forward to that, I told Ben that if he did not learn his math facts by the time we left on our trip, he would be required to ride the entire 4600 miles in our vehicle working on his flash cards. And I was dead serious. A week later? He knew all his facts: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division! Now, without constant drill, they still aren't automatic. In fact, he has to stop and calculate almost everyone of them while working his problems. We may very well be dealing with some fetal alcohol syndrome, but he still has to learn to do his very best at every job he's given.


Fast forward to the past couple of weeks. 


Our little group of young people at church have been in a great study on Sunday nights. As part of the study, they completed a spiritual gift assessment. Of course, the accuracy of the results depends a great deal on understanding the questions and so we tried to explain any terms with which they were unfamiliar. 


Interestingly, the area Ben scored highest in was craftsmanship. Hmmm . . . Didn't really fit with what we had seen for the past 7 years, but we felt we needed to simply wait and see.


We didn't have long to wait.


As we prepare for the arrival of the cousins and the commencement of festivities in celebration of Thanksgiving, we thought having our own little "punkin chunkin" experiments would be great fun as a group activity. I ordered two trebuchet kits of very different design so the kids could learn about the physics involved in the different models. How difficult could it be to build them? They're only two or three feet tall, after all. We could add their construction to our already formidable list of preparations to be made. No problem.

When the box arrived, I wondered what on earth I had gotten myself into! These are the parts for just one of them!

This is the first one, completed.

And here is number two!


And guess who became completely and thoroughly engrossed?! Guess who took the very complicated instructions and read large parts of it himself and assembled complete sections without any help? The same young man who has absolute FITS with word problems in math! He was amazing! 


Not only did I see something completely new in him, so did he! It was so precious. He realized that he could do this. Even though it had many intricate steps and pieces, he understood what to do and how to do it! You should have seen his face! There was a new maturity and confidence in him that gives me such hope. 


He said, "Well you know, Mom, it is one of my Gifts." 


A switch flipped.


I think this will be one of those serendipity moments in his life that he will always be able to look back on and recognize that everything changed for him while building trebuchets.


Thank You, LORD!!

Patchwork Pillow Project

The girls just finished a little sewing project. It was fun to help them walk through all the steps from choosing a pattern and fabric . . .

to cutting everything out . . .


 

To deciding which fabric to use for which applique . . .

To learning about applying fusible interfacing and WonderUnder . . . 

To practicing patience . . .

To deciding if the front and back of the pillow should be the same or 
different . . . (they each chose a different layout)

To learning how to make a blanket stitch (while watching the Live Feed of "The Response"--a day of prayer, repentance, and fasting for our nation) . . .

To assembly and creating the "fringe" treatment!  


Ta-da!!! The finished products. 

Traveling with the Herd

We even have "jam sessions" sometimes. Uncle Scott is on the dulcimer.

We LOVE road trips!! And since our trips are epic, we have had to come up with lots of ways to constructively, happily, peacefully, pass the time with lots of kids and usually multiple vehicles. It's a logistical challenge to say the least. 

We try not to "let it all hang out" until we are ready to leave a campground. Don't want to scare the "locals."

Another blog I read was asking for suggestions for traveling with children and I just got excited remembering all the fun things we have done on our journeys. So I thought I would force you to read about them so that I can remind myself of those golden days of exploring our amazing nation. Oh, and also so I can make a packing list for our upcoming adventure.

This was at an amazing aquarium we visited.

As homeschoolers, we are constantly looking for ways to help our kids practice a love of learning. Not that that pursuit is exclusive to homeschoolers, but it is just always on our radar because that IS MY LIFE! I am not hyperventilating, in case you were wondering. 

"The best laid schemes o' mice an' men", you know. Even the best planning can't prepare for every contingency.

Here is a list of things we have done on our trips, in no particular order, other than how they tumble out of my feverish brain:

• I make a master notebook that contains info pertaining to the places we will pass on our route. It includes our reservations for campgrounds, info about historical places we will pass, hours/prices/online coupons preprinted for admissions to museums, zoos, gardens, etc. I include lots of optionals so that we have choices wherever we are.
• Notebooks for the kids that contain info about each state we will pass through. There are all kinds of puzzles, coloring pages, etc. about the state bird or plant or historical points of interest. 
• We take lots of field guides and binoculars so we can identify what we see and then record it in a notebook. You can have sections on birds, mammals, trees, flowers, etc.
• We have, over the years and the miles, collected lots of wonderful travel games. We look for self contained games, often with only one or two players. Many of them from one of my favorite places: Timberdoodle
• We have always looked for all 50 license plates and usually keep a master list in one of the vehicles. But I recently found a great alternative that I quickly snatched up and purchased before anyone else could get it. 
• We use our comb binding machine to make travel journals so the kids write about our adventures. I usually have them write about what happened, what we saw or did, where we went from the day before. They love to add illustrations. Well, some of them do. Some of them treat the assignment like it's a death sentence and just want to get it over with. But it is amazing how much even these reluctant participants love to read their travel journals months after we are home. They make great keepsakes.
• There's a great book series called The Roadside Geology of ________. They make them for different states. The book is arranged by roads so that you can look up which road you are on to be able to read about what you are seeing at mile marker whatever. It is a very detailed book, but you can simply scan the information and hit the high points.
• There's also a book series that covers the historical markers. It's called Why Stop? I'm always curious about them, but it isn't always convenient to stop and read each one. It, too, is arranged very logically so that you can read about the historical event as you are driving past. Great references. 
• We always take lots of wonderful reading material and each of the kids spends a certain, age appropriate amount of time reading on our driving days or before "lights out." Now we have jumped into ereaders and will be taking them all with us this summer.  Have "big" kids read stories to "little" ones. 
• A good idea for little ones is hand puppets. Have the bigger kids take turns sitting beside a carseat child. They can put on puppet shows and tell stories to the little ones. This help can be "rewarded", as mentioned later in this list.
• We take a couple of really great read alouds that I read in the travel trailer or around the campfire at night before bed. It's so much fun to all curl up in blankets and listen to a great story. Since we usually travel with lots of cousins, there is a large crowd and it's one of our favorite parts of each trip.
• Of course, we take our Bibles and spend time in the Word on a regular basis.
• Another thing we like to take are crafts that can be worked on in the car. Things like origami, or crochet, or small hand-sewing projects, braiding lanyards, etc.
• When the kids were little, I had two little jars with screw-on lids (preferably plastic ones) and some bright colored beads or beans. I would use them to help the kids visualize "how much longer" our drive was each day. I would set a value for each bead and put that number of beads in the "How Much Farther Jar". For example, if each bead equaled 50 miles and we were driving 400 miles that day, the first jar would get 8 beads. Then as we traveled 50 miles we would move one bead into the other jar, the "How Far We Have Come" one. It really cut down on the impatience. You can adjust the value up or down depending on the age of your kids. You can even have a "Total Trip" set of jars.
• Since we are usually in multiple vehicles (the truck has to pull the trailer, but it won't hold all the kids so we also take the Suburban), we bring along two-way radios. They are great for communicating between vehicles, especially in remote areas where cell coverage is spotty. We use them for games of Hinky Pinky between vehicles, or we have been known to have a contest between vehicles in composing new verses for old familiar songs. It helps if they are silly songs.
• We have several ipods/mp3 players that I have loaded wonderful music and audio books on from another great place: Blue Behemoth
• Another thing we have invested in over the years are cameras. We love to give each child a little point and shoot camera that they can use to record their trip on. Then we can add those pictures to their travel journals.
• Another great activity for whiling away the hours is memory work. You can make little index cards with their Scripture memorization or poems they are learning and punch a hole in the corner of each card, then put them on a metal ring. These are great for traveling!
• We often take some flower/plant presses so we can preserve some of the lovely things we see. Just remember not to collect anything in National Parks, etc. where it is restricted.
• Another great motivator if you have ones that aren't great travelers is to establish a award system for behavior. You can set it up as a daily thing, a weekly thing, or for the entire trip. Stickers can be placed on a chart for "Most Cheerful", "Most Helpful", "Best Wildlife Spotter", etc. These little awards could be in a notebook for the entire family, or you could make places for them in their travel journal.
• Bringing along multiple travel atlases is a great way to practice map skills. You can have the kids calculate the distance you plan to travel in a day and they can keep a travel log with a running total of your distance. You can also incorporate the cost for mile if you have older kids. They will learn how the terrain affects the mileage, and how the two different vehicles get different mileage. You can also add in all kids of variables so that they could compute the total cost of your trip per mile, including food, lodging, admissions, etc. 
• We love to sing, so take along lots of "sing-a-long" options. That can be one of the best ways to settle them down or distract the young ones. If the whole family is belting out a goofy song together, it's hard to stay grumpy for long. When things get really rough, we roll the windows down and the passengers occupying window seats work with their seatmate to "flap their wings" in unison out the windows. We are advanced wing flappers and so we alternate upward and downward strokes between front and back seat people. It's great for making the other vehicle laugh--we pull in front of the other vehicle, roll down our windows and start flapping. I dare you not to laugh. 
• We take lots of puzzle books like Sudoku, mazes, word searches, etc., along with mechanical pencils.
• The other HUGE thing you must include in your planning is this: expect the unexpected and figure flexibility into each day. It's those days with no "margins" that raise everyone's blood pressure to the boiling point. So just relax. Go with the flow. Enjoy every moment as a gift!! :)

Caleb confiscated my camera on this trip

Okay, that's probably enough for now. Can you tell, I really get into this stuff? I just love to "enrich" our time together, especially when it could so easily be considered "lost" time. No matter how much you plan, traveling is still hard. And there will be times when you just have pray through a tough patch. But the better I have planned, the fewer tough patches we have. When it comes down to it, traveling together reveals character. That can be a good thing or a bad thing. But, either way, there are so many teaching moments when you cram your family in a vehicle or two and take off for a several-thousand-mile-adventure. We wouldn't trade for our time spent traveling together "en masse." You just miss so much if you don't drive on some of your trips. There are so many wonderful treasures to be found "as you are going along."

It is always good to make it home again. Yes, they are kissing the ground.

Hope these are helpful. Let me know what you do. What have we left out? We would love to try some new things on our next journey!

 

Lego Creations

How's this for perfect timing? After mentioning lots of our favorite resources to help our children cultivate creativity, Melissa at The Joys of Home Educating reminded me she was hosting a Lego Mania Link-Up today. Well, two of our four homeschooled kiddos are still horizontal with upper respiratory gunk and fever. But the other two were more than happy to show off their creations. So from Josh and Ben to you, here they are.

Now that's a lot more fun than sitting around glued to a video game or dvd, isn't it? :)

Love Notes

Okay, I posted a link yesterday to this idea I just love about a "Love Calendar". Each family member writes every other family member a Love Note each of the first fourteen days of February. I made a mad dash to Hobby Lobby while the kids were working on some independent reading and projects. (And may I also just say that I love Hobby Lobby! I love what they stand for and their public declarations of faith.) Anyway, since I needed to have this project ready yesterday afternoon, I changed it up a bit. Leslie's calendar is so adorable and creative, but in a pinch, here is our "non-crafting-instantaneously-ready-alternative".

I found these adorable little galvanized metal racks that each have three metal pouches. On the front there is a rectangle of chalkboard paint, perfect for labeling with kids' initials. I looked and looked and looked for an all inclusive solution that would work for the eight of us. At one time, I had little wooden boxes with hinged lids in the cart, but they needed to be painted. Then I changed those out for little colored baskets. Next I looked at cute little file boxes. I thought about colored paper sacks, or those cute photo storage boxes. But then I found these little racks. They only had two of them, or I could have gotten three and used the extra bin for writing supplies. 

Instead, they had a little metal pail divided in half, so that one works for Mom and Dad. 

                                                 
Hobby Lobby also had lots of inexpensive note cards, so I stocked up. Let's see, if each person writes 7 cards per day (8 x 7) for 14 days (56 x 14), well you get the picture.

My two favorite things about the metal racks is that they fold flat for storage and they required no assembly or crafting time! Not to mention the fact that they are pretty versatile. Wouldn't they be cute to use at a baby shower or to hold different candies at Christmas?

Anyway, I had the kids sit down and write their first set of notes and put them in each person's mailbox so they will be ready in the morning. We will have to make sure and allow time for everyone to write all seven notes a day. The kids are going to love this.

One more logistical item, when I sat down to write my first round of cards I wrote down a little description of what I put in the note for today. I got concerned that, after 10 or 11 days, I might say the same thing more than once. I know me. I could even say the same thing two or three times, thinking each one was completely original. :)


Are you doing anything special with your kids for Valentine's Day?