Some Unconventional Math

As some of y'all have pointed out, my blog has been silent for awhile.  It's been a season of redirection, with many upcoming changes in the wings.  I took some quiet time, but I'm back.  More about those changes soon...

In the meantime, let's talk unconventional education (ahhh, one of my passions!).

Remember...true education is not simply getting through a textbook and passing the tests.  Most of us grew up like that, so we accept it as the definition of education.  But think back...really ask yourself what you remember from your many years in a classroom.  To learn it is to own it.  How much do we own from those textbooks of days gone by?  Or did we merely store it in short-term memory until test day, spit it out and move on?

Sometimes education does beg to be redefined, and we have found our family to be always on the path of discovering and honing the definition of true learning.

Yesterday we embarked on a fun activity making a pop-up card.  Sounds simple enough.  Construction paper, scissors, and glue littered the coffee table, and they looked at some directions on how to make a triangle fractal cutout.  So, with brows wrinkled in concentration and hands busy, the questions began to surface.  What is a fractal?  Is this math as well as art?  Whoa...check out what mine looks like...how does that work?  (Remember...Mama is a facilitator here, letting them probe and discover)

When they were finished with their triangle fractal cutout, they wanted to understand fractals.  We looked up information, learned about how a French mathematician discovered the concept, and then looked at a gallery of math fractals.

When Daddy arrived home from work, it was the first thing they talked about.  "Look what we made today.  Do you know what a triangle fractal is?"  Right in the middle of the kitchen, they educated him on fractals with bubbling excitement reserved for only the coolest of discoveries.

Their cutouts were set out on the kitchen counter, and they discovered that when the light shone through them, it decorated the counter with repeating patterns.  And little lightbulbs went off in blossoming minds: "OH!  Look at the pattern on the counter!  They were right...a fractal really IS a repeating pattern...see how it repeats and gets smaller?!"

Could math get more delicious than this??  And fractals are now part of the rich treasure chest in their minds.  They discovered it, and they now own it.  How much more vibrant and real than to simply read the definition in a textbook and memorize it for a test?

frac·tal  (frăk′təl)

n.

A geometric pattern that is repeated at ever smaller scales to produce irregular shapes and surfaces that cannot be represented by classical geometry. Fractals are used especially in computer modeling of irregular patterns and structures in nature.

Taking Time to Remember

I keep this quote taped above the calendar.  It's a reminder to keep me focused on what really matters.

And as one month closes and another opens, I look back and see the failures and successes in living this focused life during November.  I see ordinary days, extraordinary days, and everything in between.  I can remember days of joy, days of pain, days of love unleashed and days of heartache.  This is life...the ever unfolding array of emotions and experiences.  Only one life, and it will soon be past......

Before falling into December's busy pace, I wanted to sit quietly and remember November...

Cups of hot tea...

Daily meals that fed body and soul...

The whirring of the grinder and the smell of fresh ground wheat...

Autumn books coming out of storage...

A Medieval night's candlelight dinner planned by my youngest son, including live music as both boys alternated between eating and playing instruments...

Sugar pumpkins that were decorations in October were baked in November for fresh pumpkin pies...

A growing boy's hands helped Mama snap green beans...

Sweet potatoes were mashed...

I passed along my secret recipe for mashed potatoes to my oldest son (who did a fabulous job!)...

Pumpkin pies fresh out of the oven (this recipe is for Crunchy Pumpkin Pie and is topped with pecans)...

Sweet oldest daughter with her hands messy in meal preparation...

My 2 boys came inside with sticks they found in the woods for our thankful tree...

Our thankful tree...

Lovin' these things we are thankful for...the simplicity of gratitude struck me...

Creative and fun place cards for our Thanksgiving meal...

Giggling...one of our favorite things to do!  A little more that 4 years ago, this child was in an orphanage...her face etched with loss and hurt.  To see sheer joy on that same face now is a miracle to behold...and to be chosen as her Mama is a gift.

Siblings enjoying each other....ahh, this makes my heart happy...

Crowded in together enjoying a book...one of my very favorite pastimes...

A Thanksgiving meal that everyone helped make...

Goodies...

Eating pumpkin pie, watching Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving, and enjoying a fire...a perfect way to wrap up the evening.

These moments I treasure in my heart...the mundane, the amazing, the calm, the storm, the happy, the sad, the love, the hurt...all blend together into a mosaic.  And I will remember this November.

The Language of Love

Here's just one way to speak love...  Oatmeal pumpkin cookies.  And the icing has maple syrup added in...a delightful discovery that I plan to put in future icings!  This particular recipe came from CHOW. 

One of my children once told me that she loved the secure feeling of seeing cookies in the cookie jar.  It was one of those things that spelled H-O-M-E.  Those cookies were far more than treats.  They meant that there was a Mama in the home who was always there...for baking or cooking or mending broken hearts or cleaning tree-climbing wounds or listening to secrets or reading books...whatever the day or hour or situation, there was always a Mama within reach.  Love is spoken in many languages, and I suppose a jar full of cookies is one of those languages.

We recently finished a missionary biography about Wilfred Grenfell, and near the end of the book, there was a description of love that struck my heart.  Wilfred and his wife Anne had spent their lives working together in ministry to the fishermen and other families on the Labrador Coast.  Near the end of their lives together, Anne was very weak from surgery for a stomach tumor, and Wilfred knew she would be going to her Heavenly home very soon.  He wrote a note to a friend:  "Now that the final goal seems not so far away, we are holding hands closer than ever, confident that the final experience of life also will be easier to face then and indeed become another joyous adventure, when these worn-out bodily machines of ours shall be discarded, and on the other side we shall work again in a new field together."  What a precious love and life work they had shared together!  And there was the realization that their love would go on beyond this earthly life...that there would be new adventures for them together on the other side.  They had a thread connecting their souls.

Genuine love is eternal.

Amid all the stuff that clutters our lives, we can often forget about those things that matter most...the things that aren't really things at all.  A plate of cookies, a meal shared around a table, a hug when we most need it, encouraging words that are spoken at just the right time...these things can be submitted to flame, and when it all burns away, what is left is love...simple and eternal.

Daily Meals: Labor of Love

When tired children come in from playing outside, they pass through the kitchen on their way up to take showers.  And inevitably, at least one will stop to ask, "Ooooh...what's for dinner?"  Usually by that time, dinner preparation is well underway, and they begin to peek through the glass on the oven door or into bowls or pans that are filled with goodies.  This is more than just food.  It's an environment of the home...a stable routine...the smells of home in action.  These meals are not wasted effort that will soon be forgotten but rather are tangible forms of love.  Feeding the body and the soul...

This particular meal was chicken on tortillas (call it burritos or tacos or whatever you want...I created this recipe but haven't stopped to name it).  It involves chicken thighs marinated in Vinaigrette dressing and a little bit of white wine.  Before baking, top chicken with 1 onion (sliced), 1 pablano pepper (chopped coarsely), 1 can of green chilies, and spices (cumin, cayenne pepper, paprika, garlic powder, black pepper and salt).

Bake at 350 degrees for approximately 40 minutes or until done.  Cut cooked chicken.

While the chicken is baking, we make homemade wheat tortillas.  We have a child who simply cannot process preservatives well, so I try to make as many foods from scratch as I can.  Tortillas are very easy to make and are always good.  This particular recipe calls for butter instead of lard, which is a personal preference.

Tortillas:
4 cups of flour (I usually use 3 cups of wheat and 1 cup of white flour)
1 tsp salt
1 stick of butter, softened
Warm water

Mix flour and salt.  Using pastry knife, cut in butter.  Add water a bit at a time (I begin with 1 cup and then add a bit more until the dough reaches a good consistency).  The dough should be fairly moist but not wet.  You should be able to pinch pieces of dough off for rolling easily.

Pinch a piece of dough off about the size of a golf ball.  Roll onto clean countertop.  If your dough is of good consistency, it should not stick to the counter or the rolling pin.  If it does, add more flour to the dough until it works well.

Roll flat.  These are homemade, so they won't be exact circles...especially if little helpers are involved.  You'd be surprised at all the creative shapes we've had in the past!  :)

Cook tortillas on the griddle (set on 350 degrees) until done on both sides.  You'll have to toy with the time on this, depending on your griddle (or medium heat on stovetop).  These cook quickly, so don't walk away.  We usually do this as a team, with one person rolling and one person flipping tortillas on the griddle.  If your tortillas get crispy, you're keeping them on the griddle too long.  If you want some more visuals, I saw that another blogger has lots of photos of the whole process of making tortillas.  Her recipe uses lard, which you may or may not find to be what you'd prefer, but the process is about the same either way.

Someone is assigned salad-making for this particular night.  He chooses all the ingredients and makes a nice big green salad (which we have with nearly every meal).  This is my natural-born cook...always helping in the kitchen.  This night, he flipped the tortillas and made the salad...huge help!

I love Organic Girl's lettuce.  This particular salad is a combination of spring mix and spinach.

The chicken mixture is spooned onto the tortillas and topped with homemade salsa, sour cream and cheddar/pepper jack cheese.  Black beans are added, and it makes a simple and really good meal.

Oh, and here's a labor of love for dessert...   Our oldest baked a homemade carrot cake (complete with shredding a zillion carrots...bless her for such endurance!).

She's an artist, so she created her own pastry bag out of a sandwich baggie and filled it with homemade cream cheese frosting to make carrots on the cake.  Really, this was an amazingly delicious treat!

Another meal has been prepared and eaten...but so much more is wrapped up in this daily event.  It's love tangible and worth every minute of effort.