Have a Clean Home and HomeSchool, Too!

In April of this year, I gave several presentations at the LDSOHEA Conference in Oregon. One of those presentations was about home management and training children to work. 

How to Inspire Insights 4-7

Here are four more ways to inspire love of learning--

4. Seek Ye Out of the Best Books!
"Seek ye out of the best books, words of wisdom..." Best books are great, inspiring, and living. "We live in a world where knowledge is increasing at an ever-accelerating rate. Drink deeply from this ever-springing well of wisdom and human experience. If you should stop now, you will only stunt you intellectual and spiritual growth. Keep everlastingly at it. Read. Read. Read. Read the word of God in sacred books of scripture. Read from the great literature of the ages. Read what is being said in our day and time and will be said in the future.” Gordon B. Hinckley - Commencement Address, Brigham Young University 27 April 1995.

How to Inspire Insights 1-3

Some helpful insights in developing and preserving the love of learning:
1. Be thou an Example! 
Do you love learning?  If not, why not? Being an example means at first, your focus is on you getting a superb education, and not focusing on them jumping through schooling hoops. Once you are established on your way, it is much easier to invite them to join you. Before you get going though, make sure you establish the habit and love for studying your central core canon.  A canon is your standard that everything is measured against. For me it is the scriptures and words of the living prophets. Time to sup it daily, to liken them to one's self, and to use it to discern good from evil; right from wrong; truth and error. Then apply it in one's own life and teach it to one's children. If one not living what they teach, it may become a stumbling block for their children. There will come a time as they mature where they have the skills and have learned to manage their wills, where they will be ready to commit to their own education. 

Going Crazy Do You Wanna Come Along?

One day my mom was going out the front door and I asked her where she was going. She answered, "Crazy, do you wanna come along?" With that "lead in," life was always an adventure. I never knew if she was going crazy or to a crazy place. She took us hiking, grocery shopping, to museums, concerts, plays, and traveling across country. I learned so much and I learned to love learning.

How Did My Mom Inspire Us?

So, how did my mom inspire us?

When I was four mom wanted to take oil painting class. I got to go with her. They gave me my own canvas, my own brushes, my own oil paints and let me at it.  I fell in love with art.  There were no requirements, no texts, no lectures. It became a part of me.

Mom did not teach me to read before school. I never saw my name until my kindergarten teacher wrote it down and told me to take that to my mother and have my mother sit down and teach me how to write it. My preschool years and that of my peers were not spent learning academics, beyond being read to and told nursery rhymes and singing children's songs.

Mom was not a college graduate until the year I graduated from college.  She took many college classes while I was growing up.  We would go to the library and we studied together. We did not have much money for books.  However, when the new library opened when I was 10 years old, we all went to the library and got new library cards. We went to the library often, and I began to love the library, the mysteries that unfolded from books, as well as its quiet order. I saw my mom grapple with learning new things. It was never a question of whether I would attend college. We had monopoly, scrabble and cards. Mom played these games with us. Mom always won at scrabble. This encouraged our learning to spell.  After all, we were trying to grow up and that was what the grown ups did! We had few books.  We had one oversized, beautifully Illustrated Hans Christian Andersen book. My sister and I had her read our favorite tales to us, even when we were in high school.

When I was nine my mother introduced us to the arts.  She explained about the reverential respect one shows at concerts, museums, plays etc.  It is a respect for the artist and their works.  We are not there to compete for attention.  It is also reverential respect for those who come to be lifted by the arts.  They sacrificed time and money to attend. We understood we were to not speak except at intermission of plays, movies, and concerts. That there were appropriate times to applaud. If we were sick with a cold, we did not go, out of respect for others. I came to love the preforming arts and visual arts.

Mom wanted to teach us about hospitality.  She taught us how to cook and clean right next to her. Then she even took off work to teach cooking to my junior Girl Scout troop. She arranged for us to use the kitchen at the junior high school.  I learned to love to cook. Then when I was in Junior High, mom would call home and say she was bringing dinner guest and asked me to prepare dinner for X number of people. I would tidy the house and have salad, sides, roast and dessert made, table set, when she walked in the door. More often than not it was a general and his wife or other very interesting persons. I learned to listen and to express myself.

Funny thing, the only thing she paid us to do was weeding. She paid a quarter a paper grocery sack of weeds!  Back then I could go to movies on the base for fifteen cents. I could by a candy bar for nickel. I could buy a burger for a quarter. A new Toyota was under two thousand dollars! So, a quarter had a lot of buying power for a child. Weeding was the only work we shunned! Mom did not want to do it, and so, neither did we.  I had to learn as an adult to find joy in the process. Yard work gives me great time for contemplation and saves me the membership at the gym! 

If we were sick we stayed home from school. It was respectful to others not to get them sick.

We lived in Hawaii and often had guests from the mainland. I got to skip school to take them on the tour of the Island! I knew the history and the great spots as much as any local. My mother bought matinee tickets to the symphony and I got to cut school to go. Mom understood that learning can happen anywhere and that learning and seat time were not the same. Awful you might say.  I still graduated one of 20% that could read at the college level, even though I was not in class every day and we had few books at home. She inspired us to LOVE learning.

Inspiring Learning and Commonplace Books

In a world saturated with visual images, children and adults can often become spectators, stagnate in their learning, fail to grow and develop. Sometimes they just need to limit some stimuli and replace it with richer, more varied, and valuable stimuli, so they can inspire, grow, and expand their learning. Two ways to inspire learning is through exposure to new ideas and  homeculture. This can be done through home environment and parental example, such as the home and example Gordon B. Hinckley's parents set for him. If parents take the lead in taking notice, developing health curiosity, following through, then sharing it with their children, they will find ourselves inspired, and it can plant the seed of inspiration in their children. Inspiration to learn more can come as parents read aloud great literature, discuss current events, visit museums, attend plays, attend concerts, visit the library, take walks in nature, conversations with interesting dinner guests, and any number of experiences that enlarge our window on life. Through all this, we often have impressions to look something up, experiment, explore, and learn something. If parents do not write it down, the opportunity for learning may pass them up, as then the next impression captures their minds and swallows their interest. 

A Commonplace Book is nothing new, they have been used as a learning tools since at least the 16th Century. A Commonplace Book, is a common or central place to gather quotes, ideas, things one learns, and reactions to those things. I find it is a great place to record those thoughts that inspire us to want to learn more and expand our horizons. A great place to record what is learned when we pursue new ideas. Sharing these impressions and investigations can expand others interests, as well. I like to use plain marbled composition books. They are inexpensive and relatively durable. Their hard covers making writing easier when there is no table or desk near. During back to school time they can usually be found for 50% or more off at Walmart and Target. I like to purchase a case so we can use them to record things we want to study and what we learn when we follow through. They can also be used to annotate books we read, lectures we attend, and even as a simple journal.  Sometimes we leave them plain. Sometimes we glue scrapbook paper to the front and back cover, make a large paper pocket on the inside cover for loose notes, and add tabs to the page edges to separate annotations for different books.

Consider this wonderful learning tool!

Quote of the Day- March 20th

"No matter what circumstances you sisters experience, your influence can be marvelously far-reaching. I believe some of you have a tendency to underestimate your profound capacity for blessing the lives of others. More often than not, it is not on the stage with some public pronouncement but in your example of righteousness and the countless gentle acts of love and kindness done so willingly, so often on a one-to-one basis." - James E. Faust