Field Trip: The Museum of Flying

Model of Wright Brothers' plane

Today we went to a birthday party for one of my daughter's little friends. His party was at The Museum of Flying. The museum is filled with all sorts of airplanes and airplane-related exhibits. There are a couple of cockpits, as well as a cockpit simulator, in which children can pretend to be pilots.

My daughter loved being in a cockpit, flipping switches, pulling levers, turning knobs, and steering, and I loved listening to her talk to herself on her make-believe flight.

Ourselves 1.3 and 2.1

I daresay you have already found it difficult to make everything fit; but, never mind; what you do not understand now you may understand some day, or you may see a meaning better and truer than that which is intended. 

In Ourselves, Charlotte Mason uses an analogy to compare the soul to a kingdom, in which the government is made up of officers representing the following parts of the soul:

• Appetites
• Desires
• Affections 
• Intellect
• Imagination
• Aesthetic sense
• Reason
• Conscience
• Will

Mason's parceling of the soul reminded me of what I had read about Judaism and the soul. In Judaism, there are five "parts" of the soul: soul (engine of life), spirit (emotional self/personality), breath (intellect), life (will, desire), and yechidah - a translation of which is "only" and, to make it too simplistic, is the part of the soul that is connected to God.

~

In Part II: Chapter I, Mason writes about the appetite for food. He is "Esquire Hunger." Mason uses this character to discuss some of the following issues:

1. You shouldn't complain about the food put in front of you.
2. You should eat breakfast.
3. You should eat to fuel your body.
4. Don't spend your allowance on candy.
5. Do use your allowance to pursue your hobbies.

Reading this section, I thought of my childhood aversion to ingredients like peppers and onions and celery. Every Sunday after church, we went to my grandparents' house for lunch. My grandparents (my father's parents) were Armenian, and my grandmother cooked traditional Armenian foods. She used onions in everything. And she always made a green salad. The salad often included bell peppers and celery and raw onion. I picked out these ingredients and only ate the lettuce, cucumber, and tomato, and got a finger-wagging every week.

I perceived the food at my house and the food at school as normal. My mother, who is not Armenian, did not cook like my grandmother, and the food at school was especially normal. I liked the way the hot items came in an aluminum tray and the cold items came in a plastic one, and how everything was in its own compartment. I liked that nothing touched.

One day at school, my teacher gave us a journal prompt that resulted in me writing about how my grandma's food was "wierd." (It was after I had learned the "i before e except after c" rule.) At home, my father read my journal, and the following Sunday, he read it aloud at lunch. My grandmother was not amused.

Everyone else thought it was hilarious.

At some point - during my teens - I developed a taste for my grandmother's weird food. For peppers and onions and celery, and sumac and raw lamb and fresh mint. This gives me hope that my three-year-old will one day outgrow her very-preschool food preferences (example: still-frozen-chicken-nuggets - nugget-sicles).  Now, I enjoy most foods (sashimi, Ethiopian food, Oaxacan-style goat, everything my Korean-American neighbor makes). When someone makes something using spices I'm not familiar with, I can appreciate the flavors. I can also appreciate the effort that went into making it, and the generosity of the person sharing it.

When you read this section, does it make you think of your own childhood aversions to foods? What were they? How did your preferences change over time? How do you handle your children's food preferences? Or maybe this section makes you think of table manners? Read with me...

Therefore I have said that no one has discovered the boundaries of the Kingdom of Mansoul; for nobody knows how much is possible to any one person. Many persons go through life without recognising this. They have no notion of how much they can do and feel, know and be...

Ourselves Chapter 2: The Perils of Mansoul

...a great deal of it is unexplored, and men have not discovered its boundaries. This is exciting and delightful to the people, because, though here and there Mansoul is touched by another such country as itself, there are everywhere reaches which no man has seen, regions of country which may be rich and beautiful.

The above quote is from Chapter 1 of Ourselves, which I posted about here.

In Chapter 2, Mason discusses "the perils of Mansoul." They are sloth, fire, plague, flood, famine, discord, and darkness. As I read this chapter, I thought about the causes of these perils: apathy, pessimism, envy, discontent, carelessness, disorder...

Right off the bat, I can tell you that I work on "looking on the bright side" A LOT.

***

Two weeks ago, my 3 1/2 year old asked what a spirit is. It was 7:20 a.m., and we were in the car (my husband was driving me to work), and I hadn't had my coffee yet. This is all to say that I was not prepared for this question coming from a teeny-tiny person in her car seat. "Well," I said, "it's the part of you that connects you to God."

"Oh," she said. That answer seemed to suffice.

The following day, she asked what a soul is.

"Well," I started, "it's your spirit."

"But where is my spirit?"

"It's inside you."

"Like my skeleton?"

"Yes. But it's invisible."

"What's 'invisible'?"

I explained to her that when something is invisible, you can't see it. We've talked about how God is everywhere and how we can't see him, but she's three, which means she thinks God lives on the moon and needs to wear shoes when he goes outside.

I'm not sure at what age I first understood that souls are eternal, but I know I knew at six. When I was six, my grandfather (my father's father) died. His funeral was open casket, and I remember my father lifting me up to see my grandfather's body, my grandmother kissing my grandfather's hand, and telling me to kiss it too. I remember kicking and squirming and telling her no because it wasn't my grandfather anymore. It was just a body.

How do you explain 'soul' to a preschooler? One idea that I read said to liken the soul to an astronaut, and the body to an astronaut suit; an astronaut needs a special suit to travel into space, just as a soul needs a special suit (a body) to travel to earth.

Or maybe she got the answers she needed. Invisible. Inside. Connects you to God.

We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.     - Stage Manager, from Thornton Wilder's Our Town

End of Daylight Savings Lantern Walk

This evening, we met with a bunch of families with young children, brought picnic dinners and homemade lanterns to the beach, and took a walk as the sun set. There was tree climbing, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star singing, dessert sharing, and apple cider drinking.

Ourselves Chapter 1: Mansoul

  

There are lots of posts that discuss the "how to" of CM, but there is less written about Ourselves, Our Souls and Bodies.

It's not an easy read.
 
I'm curious as to what CMers think about Ourselves, Our Souls and Bodies, not from a "Ms. Mason was saying..." perspective, but from a deeply personal one. I'd love to hear not what you think, but how it makes you think, starting with Chapter 1. If you haven't read it, here it is at Ambleside Online. Chapter 1 is short, less than 3 pages.

I chose the image for this post because Mason likens each of our souls to a kingdom. "Mansoul" is an Eden where God walks and talks with the people, where art and music inspire heroism, and where the unlovely parts can be made lovely. The kingdom touches other kingdoms, equally rich and beautiful.

Her description of Mansoul takes me there. I can hear the rippling stream and singing birds. It is a place far away from the 30 report cards I have to do this week, the never-ending household chores, the bills that must be paid. I am surrounded by blue forget-me-nots and yellow marsh marigolds (king's cups). I am in this quiet hazel copse.

The land of Mansoul has everything it needs. I know this to be true - that I have all I need - but it doesn't hurt to be reminded. A lot. When I need a reminder (which is daily, sometimes more), I think about the lives of my father's parents and his grandmother. My great-grandmother was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide. She was forced from her home (she was 19, married, and lived in her husband's parents' house), and forced to walk from her village in Turkey to the Syrian desert. Then, in the desert, my great-grandmother watched her young husband die in his mother's lap. Her mother-in-law looked up at her and said, "You're free now. Go." I imagine her looking around, at the tent city survivors had erected, thinking, Go where? My great-grandmother and my grandparents had far less than I have, but they had what they needed. When I start to think how nice it would be to have more space, a second car, etc., and the thinking-how-nice turns into discontent, I walk myself into the desert and stand with my great-grandmother. Me? I have more than enough.

How does Chapter 1 make you think?

Daylight Savings Lantern Making

Daylight savings ends tomorrow morning, so tomorrow evening, we are meeting up with a bunch of other families with preschoolers and going on a lantern walk.


You can turn just about anything into a lantern. We used pressed flowers, a leftover party favor box, scissors, a gluestick, a sheet of white paper, and tissue paper squares.

 1)Glue pressed flowers onto a piece of white paper.

 2)Get a leftover party favor box. (You can use almost anything!)

3)Cut out windows (any shape!).

4)Cut apart the flowers so that each flower is on its own rectangle. Glue the flower rectangles and tissue paper squares inside the box. Put a mini flashlight inside. Viola!

We're ready to walk!

Take Me To Your Leader

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about how I had purchased my daughter's Halloween costume (a penguin), instead of making it, and about how I had made several costumes for her. This is one of them. It was not for Halloween; it was for our local 4th of July parade a couple of years ago. Daddy made her spaceship and Mommy made her costume. The next day, she made the front page of the paper.

Any excuse to play dress up...