Category: Family Life

Turning 40

~ ejmcewan ~ Leave a comment

This Fall, I officially entered my forties.
What did I do to celebrate?
I hit the rails.

About this time last year, my husband and I began discussing what we’d like to do to celebrate my 40th birthday. My first suggestion was to take the whole family on a cross-country train trip, maybe out to Colorado or up to Maine. He wasn’t opposed to the idea but, after doing some digging about options for the trip, he asked–

“Wouldn’t you rather just go someplace by yourself? Like maybe go on a writing retreat somewhere? Or rent a cabin in the woods and be alone for a few days?”

Ding! Ding! Ding!
We have a winner!

Let me pause here and say that some of you probably think it’s absolutely bonkers that I would want to celebrate my 40th birthday alone, let alone be alone for days at a time. To be honest, my husband thinks it’s a little bonkers, too. But he knows me well enough to know that one of the things I long for most these days is a quiet moment alone to do my favorite things–rest and read and write and be outdoors.

So, I got to work planning my perfect 40th birthday adventure—
80 hours of train travel.
A few days of hiking.
A few days in an idyllic small town.
8 total days alone to rest and read and write and hang out outside.

Then, in September, after months of planning and waiting and waiting and waiting, I put my kids to bed in Cincinnati and hopped on a train for Glacier National Park in Montana.

The trip went off without any major issues except that, 24hrs before I was to head back home, Amtrak cancelled my train due to an impending labor strike (that never actually happened). Because of the weird train schedule in Cincinnati, I couldn’t just reschedule for the next available train because it would have set me back a full two or three days. So, instead of enjoying a 40hr train trip back home, I spent an extra day in Whitefish, Montana and then flew home via Seattle, Washington.

It was a little frustrating to arrive home tired after a sleepless night in an airport, but the whole debacle only set me back 12 hours total and gave me a great story to tell about “that time I was stranded in Montana.”

My trip was honestly the perfect way to celebrate my birthday.

A few notable thoughts and highlights–

  1. I planned the entire trip to be accessible on foot, rail, bike, and shuttle.
    Everything–my hotel and airbnb, the national park, grocery stores, coffee, and restaurants–was in perfect proximity to each other. It was a pedestrian dream and now I can’t imagine traveling any other way.
  2. My family did just fine without me.
    This is huge because, leading up to my trip, I struggled with a lot of anxiety about how my husband and kids would make it through a whole week without me. I’d never been away from my kids for more than 48 hours, and have not traveled alone in 15 years. I wasn’t afraid of being alone, but it was a real stretch for me to extract myself from our home life and trust that everything would be fine. As it turns out, the world doesn’t revolve around me like I thought it did and my husband is a great dad and a perfectly capable grownup man. This was a good lesson to learn.
  3. I had so. much. time.
    My life at home with four kids and a family business and all the other things we do is really chaotic. I feel like there’s rarely a moment when someone doesn’t need something from me. It has been years since I had the time and space to enjoy extended moments of mental quiet and physical space. Talking with my husband after I returned, I marveled at the fact that there were moments I was actually “thinking about nothing.” Friends, this never happens in my daily life. It was a real blessing and exactly what I needed.
  4. I have a lot of unprocessed thoughts and feelings.
    One of my goals for my trip was to do a lot of writing and get down on paper some of the thoughts and ideas that have been swirling through my head the past few years. “Maybe I’ll start writing a book, or finish my new album,” I thought. But I didn’t quite get to the point of producing any sort of finished product during my trip. In the time I had to be alone with my thoughts, I realized I have a lot of unresolved things swirling around inside me that I might be getting closer to understanding, but not expressing in a meaningful way. This was a surprise to me because I consider myself a pretty introspective and self-aware person.
  5. Health is a great blessing.
    I traveled a week after Labor Day, which I’ve now affectionately dubbed “retiree season,” because most of the other people I met and saw traveling were Boomers enjoying their retirement. While chatting with strangers about their travels, I had a recurrent thought that it is a great blessing to be in good enough health to be able to travel in older age, let alone to be able to climb a mountain into your 60s and 70s. I pray for the blessing of good health into my empty-nest years. And, while I am happy to say that I am healthier now at 40 than I was at 30, I know that I have a lot of work to do if I want to be as healthy at 60 as I am now.
  6. I miss being in the woods.
    There’s something exhilarating about being at the mercy of the outdoors. I think it’s the same thing I love so much about living in the city–that feeling of vulnerability, of being a small part of something so much bigger than yourself. But, in natural spaces, the feeling is magnified by all the unknown and all the uncertainty of wild things. I love that feeling. I’ve never been a hardcore wilderness woman or anything like that, but the second I stepped out of my hotel that first day and started walking into an unknown, outdoor space, a missing part of me came alive again. And it felt amazing.

Which leads me to my most vivid memory of the trip–

I arrived at the train station in West Glacier, Montana, around 10pm at night and had a room booked at the historic chalet across the street. I had a seat booked on a shuttle at 7:30am the next morning to take me into the national park for a day of hiking, but the shuttle never showed up. (It was a private hotel shuttle from the train station to a hotel inside the park and, because the train was delayed, the shuttle was delayed to accommodate.)

I checked my map and decided that I’d just grab a coffee at the camp store and walk the 3 miles into the park to the nearest visitor center where I could hop on a public shuttle up to my planned hike. So, I started walking.

Once I entered the park, most of the walk was on a mixed use bike/hiking path straight into the woods.
It was cold.
I was alone.
I was surrounded by tall, looming trees.
It was almost completely silent.

And it was amazing.

I cried like a baby for that first 30 minutes.
It was so beautiful and I was just so damn happy to be there.

It feels really weird to admit that the happiest moment of my 40th birthday celebration was spent alone, in the cold, 2,000 miles from my husband and children. But I am willing to admit the profound tension I feel between loving the amazing, beautiful life I’ve been given and mourning the amazing, beautiful things I gave up to have this life.

I think it’s okay to be honest about those complicated feelings.
I think it’s more dangerous to pretend they don’t exist.

I really, truly love my normal, chaotic life, even if I’m often overwhelmed by the need and noise of it all.
And I am really, truly thankful for the five amazing people who were waiting for me when I got home.

(And I’m also really, truly excited to take another trip someday…)

Empty Moms; Empty Shelves

~ ejmcewan ~ Leave a comment

I’ve not been very interested in offering “hot takes” these days. But the media buzz–especially on Twitter–surrounding a nationwide baby formula shortage is so full of hot takes–the good, the bad, and the ugly–that I felt like offering one of my own.

(A good one, hopefully.)

Talking about breastfeeding and baby formula is rough terrain. Some women enshrine breastfeeding as a sacred art. And it’s common for women to feel great shame over their own failure to succeed at breastfeeding.

While I’ve always been a huge proponent of “breast is best” and gave 11 of my body’s best years to breastfeeding my children, I hope those close to me have never sensed any judgement or shame if they chose otherwise or couldn’t make it happen for them and their baby. And I hope anyone reading now hears me loud and clear when I say that formula feeding a baby does not make you a bad mom.

I’ve always been comfortable affirming what I believe is best, and encouraging others toward it, even when I couldn’t achieve it perfectly myself. And I’m always honest about my own shortfalls along the way. But I understand it’s hard to hear that someone thinks you’re not doing what’s “best” for your children. And it’s even worse if you feel you have no better options. So don’t hear what I’m not saying, please.

I’m an idealist. I want things to be the way they were created to be.

And I believe that women and their babies are created for a symbiotic relationship.

There is categorical evidence of the biological and emotional benefits of the bond between mom and baby, for both mom and baby. This bond is strengthened by breastfeeding, but breastfeeding is not necessary for it to happen.

Bonding is a complex tonic of physical closeness and emotional security. It happens through smells and sounds and touches. A child will naturally form a bond with any primary or consistent caregiver. (This is why adoption and fostering relationships can become so strong–as strong as blood.) But we have to be honest about the natural design of motherhood and how the biological relationship between mother and child naturally flows from pregnancy and childbirth into a period of postpartum healing and bonding as a pair. Severing the relationship between mother and child, at any point in this journey, affects both mom and baby. And it can be traumatic.

This doesn’t mean that women and children cannot thrive independently of each other. Certainly, children can effectively bond with another adult in the absence of their birth mother. But it does mean that independence is not the natural state of motherhood or childhood. And it will have consequences.

What does this have to do with baby formula?
Well, a nationwide baby formula shortage is only a crisis because so many American babies are dependent on formula. And the fact that so many American babies are dependent on formula is emblematic of a culture where mother and child live independently of each other. The bond has been severed.

Empty moms; empty shelves.

Now, hold on a minute. Hear me when I say this–
Breastfeeding, in and of itself, is not the solution. And formula, in and of itself, is not a problem

I can attest to the fact that breastfeeding is complicated.

We know that–on paper–the vast majority of women (say, 95%) are capable of nursing their children with success. And we know that doctors recommend at least 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding. But breastfeeding is often difficult at first. It’s sometimes painful. It requires a significant time commitment. It can require dietary and lifestyle changes. And, for a small minority of moms, it is simply impossible.

Many women achieve initial success but then stop breastfeeding around 6 weeks due to exhaustion or concerns about milk production. Sometimes they quit because they are returning to work and want to transition their baby into being bottle fed. Sometimes they’ve started sleep training their baby and stopped night feedings, which affects production. And we know that, once a mother begins supplementing formula because her production slows, it spells disaster for production all together and the likelihood of extended breastfeeding shrinks.

So, while most women will attempt breastfeeding after childbirth, only 1 in 4 continue past 6 months. And half won’t even make it that far.

Enter the $6B baby formula industry.

Remember when I said “Breastfeeding, in and of itself, is not the solution. And formula, in and of itself, is not a problem.” Well, I meant it. Thank God for the modern science that created safe and healthy formula in the first place, right?

Formula is not the problem.
The problem is this: modern society works so hard against our created nature that we have to create more complicated and unnatural systems and industries and tools to survive. And that makes us very vulnerable as a society.

Complicating things has always been a problem with “modern” parenting through time, epitomized in wealthy women who hired wet nurses and tutors for their children while they enjoyed life as, functionally, non-mothers. Now it’s 2022 and we no longer employ (or enslave) wet nurses for our babies. But we do hire nannies. And send our toddlers to “preschool.” And choose to formula feed.

Don’t misunderstand me–
Any benevolent society maintains its safety nets. And things like affordable preschool and WIC and paid maternity leave need to exist. Yes! But they should continue to exist, primarily, to protect the vulnerable and mothers who have no options other than to work or use formula or pay others to care for their children.

Let me clarify–
I would never suggest we should force a woman to submit to the work of motherhood rather than pursue her career or her social life. Every woman navigates these things for herself. Sometimes, a woman’s decision to send her kid to preschool is a matter of mental health and her own survival. (Trust me, I understand it.) And sometimes a woman truly feels that she has no options other than to maintain her career. (Sometimes she is correct.)

Remember: this post is about formula and breastfeeding, but it’s not really about formula and breastfeeding.

It’s about a modern society where the symbiotic relationship between mother and child is too commonly severed too quickly. Our dependence upon baby formula, as evidenced by the current crisis, is both a symptom of this cultural problem and symbolic of it.

Empty moms; empty shelves.

This is why, when idiot internet ideologues suggest, to the moms searching desperately for baby formula, “Why don’t you just breastfeed?” they are both very wrong (because that’s not how breasts work, dummy) and very right.

There is a very simple solution to this problem.
But it’s much more complicated than we want it to be.

I’ll end with this:
The first, best option for mom and baby is always “baby with mom” for at least a year. Maybe longer.

In every developmental sense, with the exception of abusive situations or severe neglect, this is the best option. Not the only good option. But the best option. And I don’t think any intellectually honest person could argue against this. The benefits to both mother and child are significant and one of these benefits–only one–is that it makes breastfeeding much easier.

But to make this possible, to make it easy for moms to choose the work of motherhood, even just for a season, we need support systems–inside the family, the workplace, and the government–to make it happen.

I have a few ideas for how this could work. And I have opinions about a few of the ideas I’ve heard for how it could work. This is a conversation that needs to happen. But the first step is admitting we might be doing it wrong in the first place. We might be wrong about motherhood and what’s best for our children.

I’d love to help build a world where a different kind of modern motherhood is possible.

2021: the expanse

~ ejmcewan ~ 1 Comment

When I logged in and saw that my last post was in March, I freaked out a little bit.

I guess it’s been a while since I published anything here, huh?

There are posts I’ve begun these past few months and never finished. Posts about homeschooling. Posts about ministry. Posts about the politics of maternity leave or vaccinations.

There are posts I’ve dreamt up in my head, rehearsed in the shower or on a long drive. I’ve even recorded a few on a voice memo on my phone, thinking I could transcribe the best of my thoughts at a later time, when I felt like writing it all out.

But I don’t feel like writing. Not really. I simply don’t care as much about my own opinions as I did a year ago.

Possibly related–
For the first half of 2021, I forced myself into a literature fast.

Even though I’d recently accumulated a good dozen nonfiction books I was eager to read, I decided I’d read only fiction for at least six months. It was an effort to extract my mind a from the world of problems and solutions and embed it more deeply in human experience.

What resulted from this experiment was a sense of ideological ambivalence that I’ve rarely experienced in my life before. I’m maybe taking myself and the world a little less seriously these days. Or at least feeling a little less responsibility to have a strong opinion about it as I go about my business.

So, what’s new in my life?

In 2020, even in the midst of a pandemic, our family life remained fairly stable and unchanged. My husband kept working. We were already homeschooling. We stayed healthy. Etc.

2021, on the other hand, has brought our family a lot of changes.

First, in June, my husband resigned from his pastor position at a local church. There was no scandal or anything like that. It just didn’t work out.

We invested more than three years in a hard place. We wanted it to succeed. We fought hard. But, we lost. The church didn’t really want us and disagreed about what it needed. So we walked away.

To most of the people who watched it all happen, his resignation was not a surprise. Maybe it wasn’t even a surprise to us. But it was still hard and confusing and there’s probably more I’ll say about that at some point.

Then, a month ago, my husband resigned from his “day job.”

After 13 years working at a nonprofit affordable housing ministry, he’s now working for himself full-time. This is very exciting for our family. It’s something we’ve discussed on and off for a few years and finally felt it was the right time. But, as he’s the sole provider for our family, this is also a huge transition and a significant step of faith for all of us.

These big occupational and vocational changes have been upsetting. I don’t mean they make me angry or depressed or “upset” in the colloquial sense, but that they have rattled me a little bit. Shaken me up. Made me question where we should be and what we should be doing.

Maybe my husband’s work is only the tip of the iceberg.
Maybe it’s time for everything to change.

In some ways, here in 2021, our future as a family feels like a vast expanse of opportunity. We could go anywhere from here. But, the things I’m longing for most seem the most elusive–quiet and peaceful spaces, work I can be proud of, a slower pace, and the comforts of community.

Lately, when I feel like chasing a rabbit hole, I’ve been doing some research into my family history.

I’m tracing the roots of my family tree into old, distant places like Bohemia, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the West Midlands. I’m looking for photos and searching property and census records, scanning immigration and military records, and searching through Holocaust victim records (what?) to find out who I really am.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I’m suddenly interested in my ancestry. So much of our life is in transition that I’m feeling untethered.

I want to know where I belong.
I want to know who my people are.

Who are my people?

Theres’s probably a season of every person’s life when they start to ask these questions–whence have I come and to where shall I go?

And, even more so, what am I supposed to be doing along the journey?

Maybe there’s something about my 40th year that makes the questions more poignant. At this stage in life, it doesn’t seem to too late to make a change. But I get the sense the tipping point is approaching and the urgency is rising.

When I think about a new season for me and for my family, I think about buying a farm or a defunct Bible camp or a historic estate in the middle of nowhere, as if a few acres and some honeybees will give me the space I need to find “my work” and as if getting a dog will cure my children’s loneliness.

Dogs are easier than friends, I think.
And keeping honeybees could be more fruitful than songwriting.

But the thought of digging up roots, starting over again, building something from nothing, is terrifying. And I don’t want to do it.

I don’t want to have to walk away and move on to find a new place. I wanted this to be my place. I wanted to find my people here.

But I haven’t found them yet.

I’m very distracted these days. I try to focus on the task at hand. I try to be present with my kids, with my husband, with my friends. But my mind is somewhere else, trying to peek around the corner, into the expanse, to see what comes next.

I still can’t see it.

I wonder if I’ll ever get to write a book. Release a new album. Go back to school. Hike that big, long trail.

I wonder who my friends are. Whether people want me around. Who I could call at 4am if I needed them.

I wonder whether my kids are learning enough. Whether they’ll resent the way we’re raising them. If they’ll remember me at my best or at my worst.

I wonder if I’ll ever be any good at being married.

The whole point of this post, I guess, is to say I don’t really have anything important to say right now.

And to say that, yes, I’m still here. But I’m busy with a new family business. And I’m distracted by life’s biggest questions. And, while I do have opinions to share and stories to tell, I’d rather offer them in real time, in real life, with real people.

I’m just trying to quiet my heart, keep my head down, and walk faithfully in one direction until I’m pointed elsewhere.

Homeschooling: The Materials of Education

~ ejmcewan ~ Leave a comment

In my last post, I outlined some general information about how I organize our homeschool. Now, I’ll get into some of the specifics–the materials of our home education and what each child will be assigned for this school year.

This year, I will have a 2nd, 4th, and 6th grader, as well as a preschooler.

A note about preschool: I have no formal work for the preschooler, but I do keep some simple letter recognition activities and number games on hand so I can give him “school work” when he wants it. (My experience says that most younger siblings like playing along with school, so it’s good to have a few tricks in your bag.) One good goal for preschool siblings is to include them in as much of the group lessons as possible, even just in proximity and within ears reach, so they will more easily transition into full participation at some point. My three year-old will even fake his way through narrations during tea time, which is kind of hilarious.

Now–what do I actually teach?

I’ve uploaded a very detailed materials list for reference if that would be helpful. You can find a good digital version (to view online) here and a good printable version here. This list will change throughout the year. I consider it a map, not a rule.

To make it easier to understanding how this all fits into our school day, you can refer to my last post.

MORNING BASKET-
In the mornings, after the kids have finished breakfast and prepared for the day (and I have had a moment to myself for Mother Culture), we sit together at the table for our Morning Basket. This is a great way to begin the day by praying together, reciting Scripture, and singing songs.

I usually trade off days between Bible/Hymns and Folks Songs/German lessons. I usually have one designated Bible passage for memorization/recitation, a hymn, and a folk song per school term with some holiday-appropriate things thrown in, as well. I try to do a weekly Bible study with the kids but keep it short and simple.

(Sidebar: I don’t really know German beyond very remedial things so we do a lot of basic greetings and vocabulary, plus songs and rhymes and German culture, picture books, and history lessons. When the kids move up into about 8th grade, they can choose their own foreign language study and we will buy a language program for them to use.)

Includes:

MORNING PRAYERS

BIBLE-
– Recitation and memorization of long portions of scripture. (The same passages will be used for copywork and spelling/dictation exercises throughout the term.)
– Weekly group Bible lesson

HYMNS-
– Three or more hymns per year, one per term, memorized for morning worship and used for copywork throughout the term.

FOLK SONGS-
– Three or more folk songs per year, one per term, memorized and used for copywork throughout the term.

GERMAN LESSON AND SONGS-
– Remedial German lessons with picture books, vocabulary flashcards, coloring sheets, songs, and nursery rhymes.

INDEPENDENT WORK-
We jump into our most difficult work first. In addition to being the hardest mind-work, this is the work that might require my full attention with only one child. So, this is the time of day when the big kids bounce back and forth between working independently, sitting with me for tutoring, and helping with the preschooler. If all goes well, they can be done with this in one or two hours.

Includes:

READING
– Daily assigned reading- kids choose from a few options. These are often “stretching books” for them. They are sometimes more difficult than the books they’d normally choose for themselves.

COPYWORK
– Daily copywork- kids alternate between workbooks, scripture, poetry, hymns, letter-writing, etc. We begin cursive in 3rd or 4th grade.

GRAMMAR
– Izzy and Elsa do one or two lessons a week in Grammar, usually alternating between dictation exercises, spelling quizes, basic language lessons and sentence diagramming. Content for these lessons is taken directly from their reading assignments. We literally open whichever book they’ve been reading and discuss the grammar or use an excerpt for dictation/spelling.

LATIN
– Izzy does two Latin lessons a week.

PLUTARCH
– This is a once weekly independent reading for Izzy, a good hard lesson in classical literature.

FREE READS
– Each of the kids has a list of mom-approved “free reads” that they can read anytime and anywhere (when not otherwise engaged). I will often use these books as a calming measure if things are tense or as a distraction from twaddle books I’m not as excited to see them reading.

MATH
– Daily math lessons. I have never used a textbook or work book for early elementary. We have transitioned into a formal curriculum around 2nd – 4th grade. It’s been different for every child.

GROUP LESSONS-
I usually alternate days, with two days a week for Science & Nature Study and two days for History and Geography. This year, we’ll be focusing our first two terms on a “hard science” and then we’ll try to spend as much of the Spring term as possible outdoors, studying birds and conservation.

These lessons are done together, usually around the table or outdoors, in a very conversational style. We narrate our lessons orally as we go and then each kid responds with age-appropriate work. (After a history lesson, for example, Izzy might do a three sentence written narration in response. Elsa might write a sentence about what we read and draw a picture to illustrate. Edith might draw a picture and dictate a short narration for me to write in her notebook.)

Includes:

SCIENCE & NATURE STUDY-
– We have two science lessons a week, alternating between one “hard science” curriculum and a more nature-based study. We also consider any nature study done while hiking and nature journaling as a part of our science work.

IMG_2626

HISTORY & GEOGRAPHY-
– We have two history and geography lessons a week, alternating between a story-based world history curriculum and history-relevant geography lessons, and things like map drills, US states and capitals, and understanding landforms and topography.
– Starting in 4th grade, the kids begin their own Book of Centuries, which is their own record of world history.

A note about the book Pagoo: This is the third book we’ve used by this author, Holling C. Holling. His books tell a long-form story and work as a history, geography, and science book all in one. They have lovely detailed illustrations and diagrams. We use these books in addition to a formal science study. We usually draw the book out for most of the year, reading a chapter every other week or so, and doing appropriate science observations and mapwork/geograpy lessons as we go. Pagoo is about a hermit crab and tidepools, so we’ll use it to study the ecosystem of tidepools, crustaceans, the history and geography of coastal regions, etc.

RICHES and OCCUPATIONS-

Includes:

RICHES-
These are the really beautiful parts of education–art, music, poetry, etc. Sometimes we sit down to study these outdoors. Sometimes we sit at the piano or the record player. Sometimes we do it over tea or while learning something else like how to crochet. A lot of this is fluid. In a normal year, we would add as many live performances and museum visits as possible.

I choose one artist and one composer per term to study, plus a poet per child. And I choose a list of family read-aloud books for the year, but the list is very fluid and we don’t always keep to the list.

This year’s selections:

ARTIST STUDY- Titian, Leonardo, Rembrandt

COMPOSER STUDY– Wagner, Handel (Messiah), Mozart

SHAKESPEARE– A Midsommer Night’s Dream, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing

POETRY-
– Izzy Poetry Study- Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes
– Elsa Poetry Study- Alfred Tennyson, Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth
– Edith Poetry Study- Walter De La Mare, Eugene Field, Christina Rossetti

FAMILY READ-ALOUDS-
(Our Family Read-Alouds are often done either over tea or at bedtime.)
– The Wingfeather Saga III and IV, Heidi, Understood Betsy, Five Little Peppers and    How They Grew, The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: Book I, At the Back of the North Wind, The Vanderbeeks of 141st Street

OCCUPATIONS-
Three days a week, the kids are basically on their own to occupy their afternoons. This is the time for their individual lessons or skill-building. They can engage in reading, games, build something, or learning something new on their own. The goal is to put their education to life. If they need to, they can take a nap. If they want to, they can help me prepare dinner or (sometimes) do an extra chore for pay. Sometimes I let them listen to an audiobook or play an iPad game.

Izzy- can choose from things like Typing 1, piano lessons, Karate, art & handicrafts (carpentry, carving, sketching/drafting, book-binding), nature journaling, creative writing

Elsa- can choose from things like Typing 1, piano lessons, American Heritage Girls badges, handicrafts (painting, sketching/drafting, claywork, gardening), nature journaling, creative writing

Edith- can choose from things like piano lessons, ballet, handicrafts (bracelet making, claywork, painting, baking), nature journaling, creative writing

 

I do not run our homeschool on a tight regimen.

In some ways, the flexible nature of our school day reflects my own struggles with personal discipline and we would benefit from tightening things up a bit. In another sense, my ability to pivot in a moment and reorient our days is necessary and has kept us relatively at peace in the home and happily learning together.

Let me know if you have any specific questions about how this all works its way out.

What would you like to hear more about?

Considering Homeschooling?

~ ejmcewan ~ Leave a comment

With the COVID pandemic threatening to make traditional classroom education untenable this fall, a handful of my friends have recently asked for help navigating the world of homeschooling, just in case.

Instead of addressing them all individually, I thought it might helpful to publish a few things publicly here on my blog so they’ll be easier to share.

I anticipate publishing this content in 3-4 parts over the next few days.

For this first post, let me address some of my friends’ most pressing questions (And please forgive me if I didn’t do a great job proofreading this. I’ve been staying up super late the past few nights and I’m seeing double) —

“Where do I start?!”

When you start homeschooling, it’s really normal to obsess about “the stuff” of school. The material. “What will I teach!!?” you ask yourself. But, honestly, why you’re teaching and your goals for education are far more important than the materials you use. If you can pin down your “why,” it will be easier to choose your “what.”

If you have your “why” in line, you’ll be able to adapt any materials to your use. (Though some materials are obviously better than others!) Your materials and methods may very well change over time anyway, even with every child. These should change in response to the refining of your goals and your guiding philosophy. So don’t get too hung up on the materials of school first or you’ll miss the whole point of education—“missing the forest for the trees,” as they say.

Speaking personally, my methods of schooling have changed over the past few years as I’ve developed a more refined philosophy of education. I usually tell people I prescribe to a loose Charlotte Mason (CM) philosophy. (I say “loose” because I’m certainly not a purist.) If you’re interested in learning about Mason and her pedagogy, you can read some of her books here but there are some great books about her philosophy that are a little easier to digest, like this one. (And there’s a good primer here, too, if you just want to read something quick online.)

“But how will I know what to teach for science or math, for example? What curriculum should I buy?”

Many of the resources I use here at our home are what you’d consider “the Classics” together with what Mason called “living books.” I do use some modern Classical Christian homeschool materials, as well. But I apply these with a CM method.

I am a bit of a minimalist in regards to schoolwork and materials. Our school days are very book-heavy, with a lot of reading together and we do very little paperwork and very few worksheets, especially in early grades. The kids’ school “work” is mostly accomplished through conversation, in oral or drawn/written narration, which is a hallmark of the Charlotte Mason method. (I’d be happy to explain this concept further.)

And I try to give my kids ample time to work out their education and develop their own unique skills and interests in their unscheduled time. To that end, lessons are short and we don’t clutter our days with unnecessary busy-work.

For now, all of the lesson are done here at home with me (with John teaching most fine art technique and handling the bedtime reading). But now that Izzy is in 6th grade, his independent work is becoming increasingly more demanding and I may eventually have to outsource more of his lessons (like Latin, for example) with tutors, outside classes, or online classes.

I gravitate toward using older “Classics” but I’m not afraid of new materials. And I definitely avoid dry text books and picture encyclopedia types of books, opting instead for beautiful living books that are more humane and memorable. For early grades—prek through about 4th—you can truly teach an entire school year with little more than a collection of picture books and ample time spent outdoors. (Honestly, there are entire websites dedicated to it!)

Some of my favorite homeschool materials/resources.

Many of the books I use—as well as the subject matter I choose for art, poetry, and music, for example–are recommendations found on Ambleside Online, which is an online Charlotte Mason curriculum. I also love to steal recommendations from the book lists published by Read-Aloud Revival for my kids’ independent reading.

We use Singapore Math for our math curriculum. The Primary Mathematics series works best for us, but they do have a Common Core series that might work best for you if your kids will transition back into traditional school. (I don’t bother buying the textbooks until about 5th grade level but if you’re weak in math, go ahead and buy them.) In early years, I find it helpful to teach math conversationally, without workbooks or paperwork. I have never used a curriculum for k or 1st grade math. Edith has asked to “move faster,” so she will be starting a 2nd grade workbook this year so she can work independently.

If you’re looking for a packaged curriculum, I highly recommend The Good and The Beautiful. This will be our second year using one of their Science curricula, as well as a typing curriculum, and they have many more subjects. (We used their Anatomy curriculum last year.)

We use Learning Without Tears for copywork and penmanship/cursive.

Simply Charlotte Mason publishes some really lovely packaged curriculum, especially for artist and composer studies. They have a great elementary arithmetic program.

I like The Well-Trained Mind Classical curriculum offerings but have never used them as scripted. We use their history curriculum–Story of the World–and Grammar–First Language Lessons. (I use these books more a guide for what to teach, not how to teach it. I don’t follow the rules.)

Brave Writer is awesome, too, for developing writing and reading comprehension skills.

Khan Academy is probably the best free secular resource available online. It’s great for educational videos. And I love the math tutorials for times when I need extra help teaching something. (IXL is great for this, too.)

There are as many homeschool curricula available as there are stars in the sky. It can get overwhelming really quickly. Just focus on your goals and philosophy and choose something that you can imagine wanting to take off the shelf every morning.


What about testing and assessments?

We do not do formal testing. Instead, we do oral exams at the end of each term. These exams just walk each child through a few of the things we’ve learned throughout the term to gauge comprehension. I record the conversations and make detailed notes. And it helps me know what’s working and what’s not so I know how to move forward.

I will likely have the kids suffer through two or three standardized tests prior to HS graduation, just to familiarize themselves with the process, but we have not done it yet.

In the state of Ohio you can choose, instead of standardized testing, to submit an assessment of your year’s work. You just need a liscenced Ohio educator to assess the work–sometimes called a portfolio–and verify that your child has done “an adequate amount of work for their ability.” Every assessor is different, but we hire a woman who is a former homeschool mom. We create our portfolio of samples of the year’s work and she talks through it with us and asks a few questions and then signs off on it. She also offers any advice or suggestions we might need for the next year, if we want it. The school system itself will never even see your child’s actual work.

(We would usually submit this assessment to the Superintendent when we submit our official “Intent to Homeschool” paperwork to withdraw for the following year. But, for 2020, due to COVID, assessments are being waived.)

So how do we organize our days so we get everything done?

I’ll run through the basics of our day now and then my next post will have more info about the elements of our school day and what we study, specifically. (So if something doesn’t make sense yet or a concept is completely foreign, stay tuned.)

Click here to see a basic outline of our daily schedule.

Our days begin with rising and preparing for the day. After feeding the kids, I “excuse myself” from responsibilities for about 30-45 minutes so I can focus on what Charlotte Mason called Mother Culture. This is my time for feeding my own body, mind, and soul.

Our school time starts with a Morning Basket.

Then we move into Independent Work.

Then, there is hopefully a nice break before lunch for tidying/chores and resting or outdoor play.

After lunch, we do our Group Lessons, which we can all do together (and is best done when the 3 yr-old is sleeping).

Then we alternate days between Riches–which are often done during a shared tea time or outdoors–and Occupations, which the kids work on independently.

One day a week, we try to hike and do a nature study outdoors. (This is usually our co-op day.) To make this possible, we leave most Fridays pretty wide open but can adjust the day as necessary.

Also–we organize our school year in 3 12-week terms, roughly Labor Day until Memorial Day, with about two weeks’ wiggle room for holidays.

Tongues of Fire and the City is Burning

~ ejmcewan ~ Leave a comment

I can hear the crackling outside my window.
Between the police sirens and helicopters’ beating and distant voices yelling, I hear it spreading through the cracks in the pavement.

Fire.

It’s the fire that grows from pain and frustration bubbling over into anger and chaos and it demands to be heard.

Well, I hear it.
And I understand where it comes from. I always have.

(I’m serious. Please believe me.)

The racism. The injustice.
Yes, I see it.

It’s one of the reasons I’m here.

I loved you and I wanted to do something to help.
I prayed to be a blessing.
I asked for the Spirit of God.

Maybe not enough.

For what it’s worth, you should know that I almost joined you yesterday, early, before the sun went down. Before things got crazy. Before the cops pulled out the body armor and shields.

But I was too tired. And too concerned with right and wrong and “the appropriate way to solve the problem.”

So I stayed home.

Now it’s 2am and there are sirens nearby.
I am not afraid because I am not the victim here.

But now I know that I am also no help.
And I have no answers.

Today is Pentecost.
We should be on Fire.
Instead, the city is burning.