Focused Attention::Montessori Style

In Montessori style education, a big part of it relies on the parent/teacher creating a prepared environment. But, sometimes the environment prepares itself.

Once per month, I host the delivery, unpacking, sorting and tallying up of a large Frontier order of home and body products. This is for my family and several others. My children help me with this order more or less. Everything from using my calculator to make "tickets" to playing with all the corn and water soluble "peanuts" packing material to even kind of..sort of...helping me sort.

Today, to my surprise, we had an enormous amount of "peanuts" and the children made three box "boats" full of them for creative play while I worked on the order sorting. Much of this stuff went all over my craft room, spilling to the other two adjacent rooms too and I just kind of walk through it, contain it to the room as much as possible so it is not all over the downstairs, and then we deal with it when I am finished with every one's order.

Much more to my surprise, with less coaxing than what can be more typical with a dirty job unwanted, I suggested to my seven year old that he get a trash bag, his dust pan and, begin to shovel it and bag it up. The bag pictured is the result and that is a tall kitchen bag full and tied by him without complaint! He even told me he was hungry but was going to finish. I could not help but to tell him after he had worked for quite a while that we would have cookies and milk afterwards....but, I have to say, he did not seem to be too concerned about the snack but more about focusing on getting his work done. He even was patient with his little brother in admonishing him for his help...sometimes, there are blessed times like these.

Thank you Lord for ways, unforeseen, unplanned but very useful to teach (in a relaxed playful way) focused attention. I believe these little exercises have potential to transfer to academics as well. We shall see.

Obedience Training (was 'Changing the Schedule')

So things seem to happen when I get reminded of them. Even though I have a written and posted school schedule, an exercise schedule, a dry erase board to jog my memory, and a notebook for ideas and priorities...I remain, a forgetful person..forgetful of my priorities. The priorities that God would want me to focus on as a wife, mother and believer. With day to day life..diapers, laundry, dishes, meal planning and preparation, shopping for things, planning things and then implementing my school/exercise/nature study schedule, just reading to the children or, to myself...obedience training has heretofore (love that word) become something that I do 'on the fly'. Well..not anymore!

(photo:Washington-On-The-Brazos Park Tuesday, Oct. 20)

With all that being said, I also must say that parenting for me seems to be a constant evolution of re-evaluation of priorities. What I think is important today, may not be tomorrow or, even a few hours from now OR, in the next minute..depending on what my little people present to me in the moment and what I judge to need correcting, discipline or just some guidance. What every parent should be doing, right?

So now, onto the topic at hand. Last week, my husband informed me that a new gentle reader of my blog (someone other than my husband, sister and grandparents read this?) was interested in my post on obedience training and was passing it on to three friends. Thanks for the reminder gentle reader!

(photo: Wash-On-Brazos Park, Tues., Oct. 20, rare pic of 'the girls)


I posted earlier about changing the schedule based on the need for more purposeful obedience training in our home but in teaching other things about the dreaded holiday of Halloween (that's another post), the changing season to fall and Bible teaching, I forgot to obedience train or train MY mind to obedience train. Then I recalled a link I had stumbled upon about tomato staking and then a friend commented on my post about 'changing the schedule' about tomato staking and I recalled I did peruse the website on tomato staking but then again..forgot to go back.

So here I am again. Tomato staking. L. Elizabeth Krueger. A mother of eight or ten children, I don't remember, i.e., multiple children spells E-X-P-E-R-I-E-N-C-E. She is a believer and she has evaluated other parenting philosophies and I agree with her evaluations. See the one on AP here if you are interested in her core beliefs that guide her thoughts to reject these modern philosophies. I agree with her 100%. I found myself prey to AP years ago when my oldest son was born. I totally agree with so much of it...you can't spoil a newborn and up towards the end of the first year, the co sleeping, baby wearing, feeding on cue, responding to needs and lots of holding and interaction..no crying out to sleep train them..all good stuff but Dr. Sears is against spanking. I wondered how this would play out and by the time my oldest was 20 months old, he received his first spanking and then I got the guilt. I have since then read Dr. James Dobson, my pastor and learned from other Christian mothers that spanking is an uncomfortable but necessary tool in parenting. However, this mother takes the ideals of Christian parenting to a more focused use of it I guess you would say...I knew I did not ever want to react in anger and she gives ideas toward that end. Ideas that change the (heart), I prefer to use the term 'mind', of the child towards godliness. Changing their mind from sin is the ultimate goal.

(photos: entrance to The Star of the Republic Museum, history of Texas before it became the 28th state to the union)

(Writing now while all the little ones are up and ready for the day.) So I will cut short for now. I have been reading about teaching obedience on Raising Godly Tomatoes. Mrs. Krueger has a book but seems her entire book is on her website too. Here is the 'Basics and Before'. You can also read above that link on the left, 'Raising a Godly Child' for a very basic for why she made this website and of course, read on and on! I am enjoying reading it when I can right now. I will share my thoughts on reading her advice in an additional post later today I hope while my thoughts are still fresh....got to get breakfast on oh, and I will share some more photos of a field trip from last week too. ;-)



Do you like how the oldest is holding down his brother (not at my request) for the photo?...priceless.

In closing, I love blogging. I can be long winded in exploring my point without enduring your facial expressions growing tiresome of me getting to my point! You can just scroll on or link away when you grow tired of my ramblings on. ;-) Thank you to those who endure and read on though! ;-)