Mom School Meeting

Today I had a little heart to heart with the children as we started our Mom School. I talked to them about what I expected out of our core phase children (as well as all of them). I had realized that I had never clearly defined my expectations. They were not anything new, but just having a conversation about it was important for them. My younger two looked at me and said, "What's core phase?" Huh? What? I guess we haven't talked about it in a while. Our family's list of core phase "requirements" (or expectations) is found in our core book in the D&C 88 (out of our core book). Of course these are expectations for over their lifetime. But it's a base for them to come back to throughout their life... (Please remember this is the "gospel" according to Deanna).

Core phase (from the Thomas Jefferson Educational model aka TJED) can be summarized as a stage (around 0-8/10ish) were the most important "lessons" the children focuses on are true/false, good/bad and right/wrong. An understanding of appropriate behavior and the demonstration of this behavior is the most important training. Also within this stage the basic skills of the 3 R's are taught: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.

I also asked them if I was reading to much to them or things they didn't want to hear about anymore. (They've always picked most of the books). Olivia and Luke said that while they liked science they didn't want to do it everyday. Jared said he didn't want to hear about history everyday. Jared wants to hear about Science everyday. Olivia wants to read family history and general history everyday. Luke wants to read history and stories (like Narnia) everyday. Ha! So we talked about missions in life a little bit. I pointed out that Jared's mission in life will most likely involve a heavy amount of Math and Science (this is no surprise to anyone as we talk about everyday). So it was important that we spend a little time every day on Science for Jared. Luke is probably going to grow up and be an author and so he needs the history and the stories to generate ideas and fill his head. That's important for his mission. Family is very important to Olivia (she's set a goal to memorize her personal pedigree chart) and so we need to read that also. They readily agreed they would be more than willing to continue learning about the subjects they were not as interested in for the sake of their siblings. In the end the only thing they wanted changed was that they want our character book switched every other day with the Children's Friend. Laugh out loud! They love hearing me read to them! Yeah! Today our Mom School lasted three hours and they were just as happy as can be.

I also talked about the three languages that were important to us that they learned well. 1. Language of English (self-explanatory) 2. Language of Math (besides the obvious reasons I believe that Math teaches you the skill of problem solving which transfers over to reading were you can following logic and the line of thoughts of others) and 3. Language of Music (Music is full of patterns if you look. Learning Music will improve your Math skills. Really. Trust me). I told them of course it would be wonderful if we could learn Spanish, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Sign Language, but for now these top three were what I felt were the most important languages for our family.

Giving your kids knowledge empowers them to make their own personal "right" choices. And quotes from the "good books" seals the authority. We are blessed with wonderful children. They work hard to be good. I am proud of their choices each day to improve and learn. They motivate us.