Family Fun and Culture

by Wendi Capehart

A few years ago I participated in an online discussion with a woman who said that she wanted to work outside the home because her family wanted to provide extra cultural experiences for the children, and that could not be done on most single incomes. I'm not really sure what she meant - she was rather vague about it all. It's possible that the kinds of things she had in mind could not be done on one income. For my family, if it can't be done on one income, then we won't be doing it. But it's surprising what can be done on a limited single income.

Here are some ideas for including culture on a modest income.

Instead of eating out, fix a fancy dinner at home. Set the table with the best dishes and candles. Have everybody dress up and pretend to be eating out, practicing table and restaurant manners.

Invite people over often. Make sure to include interesting, fun people; eccentric, odd people; tourists and immigrants, and unusual people. Include old people with stories to tell and young people with dreams to share. Include missionaries, former and current. Include your minister and the elders of your church. Ask for stories of faith, stories of when God blessed them, and stories of dark days.

Art museums often have free days. Check out the one nearest you. We've often taken advantage of this, even when the museum was an hour or two away. We packed a nice picnic lunch and ate at a park when the weather was nice, in the car on the way home if it wasn't. Always keep your eyes open for free or inexpensive attractions.

We buy a year's family pass to a different attraction each year. It may be the zoo, the children's museum, the children's theater, or the symphony. We can't afford to do them all at once, and with a family our size the cost of a yearly pass is seldom more than it would cost us to get in once, so we choose one each year and immerse ourselves in that one, attending at least a dozen times a year.

Study another country/culture in our homeschool once a year, learning the customs, meals, holidays, and so on, and incorporating something of your studies into your daily lives.

We study art and artists using old art calendars. We hang works by a particular artist each month, discussing the paintings and the artists.

Take advantage of NPR and other radio stations. Listen to classical music all the time, studying the lives of composers at the same time.

Call local colleges and ask if there are any international students who would like a home-cooked meal with an American family.

Volunteer at the nursing home. We have met natives of several different European countries in a small Midwestern nursing home (I won't embarrass myself by trying to spell them).

Read, read, read. Spend lots of time at the local library. Once we lived in a home that was not was not very near to any library. Paying the extra fee for a library card was my birthday present from husband and I loved it.

Every once in a while the older children and I get out the Shakespeare and read it aloud together, each taking a few parts.

My husband chooses a different classic to read aloud to the kidlets at bedtime. He's done Pilgrim's Progress, Farmer Boy, Bread and Butter Indian, some of the Childhood of Famous American books, and many, many more.

Vacations? As a military family every time we moved we tried to make part of the move include visiting an interesting spot. We did stay in two locations for five years each so we took lots of short jaunts to places of historical or environmental interest. We prefer camping to staying in motels (family size, again. With a family this large most hotels want us to pay for two rooms.

Have poetry recitations at home.

Plant a garden, perhaps an historical herb garden.

Collect sea shells, stones, or pressed flowers - label them with their Latin names.

Many libraries in larger cities like Chicago and Boston hold passes to museums and other educational attractions, and sign them out to local residents.

If you live near a college, look into their music and drama productions. Sometimes tickets are very inexpensive. Sometimes you can attend rehearsals for free.

Host a hymn singing.

And, as I said, read, read, read. Discuss what you read together. And then read some more.

Living Book Failures

by Wendi Capehart

From time to time just to keep things interesting (for me, if nobody else), I add a non-AO book to my children's school reading. O.K. AO is interesting enough on its own, so t's really not just to keep things interesting. Usually what happens is I come across our book in our own many volumed library, I skim it and think it looks delightful. This is usually a book no longer in print (and thus not readily available to AO members), but I think it is a book my children should definitely read. Furthermore, we own it, after all, so we should use it, yes?

Recently, my 15 year old brought me one such book I'd added to her school list and asked if I would read a chapter aloud to her. I complied.
"Hmmm," I thought, as a tiny twinge of doubt struck me. What looked like lively writing when I'd skimmed it by myself seemed stilted, awkwardly phrased, and distracting when read aloud. Especially when I was the one doing the reading aloud. But I didn't say anything. I wanted to think about it.

The next night she brought it back to me for the next chapter. I was just about to read aloud to the two small children who come visit us most weekends, so I read this chapter, one on Queen Elizabeth and Drake, aloud to them instead. The older boy promptly fell asleep. The younger boy crossed his legs one way and then another, twisted, twitched, and sighed dramatically until his torture was over. It was my own private torture as well.

Reading aloud isn't my favorite thing to do at any time. If the book is really well written and engaging, however, my problem is that I want to quit the tedious pace of reading aloud and skim quickly through the rest of the reading. With this book I merely wanted to quit the tedious read aloud and go do something more profitable and amusing with my time. I wanted something more stimulating, like playing tic-tac-toe with a 7 year old who has figured out how to win, or scrubbing the grout in my bathroom. It was really that bad.

I do not know if this was my 15 year old's nefarious ploy all along, but I've taken this particular book back off of her schedule, and I have put 'read a chapter aloud' on my internal list of things to do when deciding if a book is a living book or not.

I do not know better how to describe the sort of books that children's minds will consent to deal with than by saying that they must be literary in character.
...the question of books is one of much delicacy and difficulty. After the experience of over a quarter of a century [The P.U.S. was started in 1891.] in selecting the lesson books proper to children of all ages, we still make mistakes, and the next examination paper discovers the error! Children cannot answer questions set on the wrong book; and the difficulty of selection is increased by the fact that what they like in books is no more a guide than what they like in food.

Charlotte Mason, volume 6, Toward a Philosophy of Education.

It is a great comfort to me that after over a quarter of a century Miss Mason and her colleagues were still making mistakes in the books they chose. They only found their error at the end of a term, when students sent in their examinations.

We homeschooling parents can discover that we have chosen a stinker of a book within a chapter or two.


P.S. I don't want to tell, but I am sure you'll all be asking- The Book of Courage by Hermann Hagedorn.