150 Years Later

Sometimes I wonder if homeschooling for the sake of Classical Education works.

Sometimes I wonder if my children hear one sixteenth of the thousands of words bombarded at them each day.

Sometimes I wonder if someone else couldn’t do a better job of teaching them how to figure out things like the fraction one sixteenth.

Sometimes I wonder if this journey through history, this daily hearing and reciting of God’s Word, this language saturation, this diligence to fact and foundation is working.

Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t just show them YouTube videos all day long.

But sometimes, just sometimes, there appears a glimmer of outcome.  After hearing the beginning of the Gettysburg Address on NPR this morning, Thomas’s immediate and unsolicited observation was that Abraham Lincoln must have been a Quaker.  When pressed to explain his conclusion he pointed out that Lincoln said that we were all created equal, and since that’s what the Quakers believed, then he must be one as well.

That, fueled by an immense sense of parental pride, launched me into my own lengthy address on the impact of the Quaker governmental system on the United States of America.

Just minutes later he was back to flipping through Pokemon cards and demanding that backwards 5’s are just as legible as frontwards ones.  But sometimes.  Sometimes . . .

Another exciting history lesson.

Go Big Red!

Family traditions are weird.  Some are handed down, and to maintain them is one of the long-time joys of family lore and love.  Others we’ve worked hard year-after-year to cultivate, so that they no longer feel new and innovative, but well-worn and adored.

Others happen by accident.  When you inadvertently repeat the same things in tandem more than twice you’re treading in those murky waters.  For instance, our children find their football viewing incomplete without the ability to munch on everyone’s favorite crunchy snack.  Pomegranates.

At least today they color coordinate with the team for which they’re rooting.  Or, as we traditionally say around these parts, “We’re voting for the Huskers!”