Stone soup!
Do any of you remember reading to your little ones Stone Soup? Maybe you caught it when your were a kid on 'Little House on the Prairie.' (perhaps on re-runs?) Here's the gist. The idea is that soldiers came to a village (in our version it was monks) and wanted food and lodging. No one would open their doors to them. So, they made a fire in the market square (this is an old story) and boiled water and put some stone's in it and some salt. They made it look like it was the best thing ever. People started looking. However, they said if they just had an onion it would be perfect. Someone left for a minute and came back with an onion. Then they mentioned carrots. You get the idea. Soon, every one was contributing a small amount and it really became the best soup ever. They had a feast.
I think sometimes as homeschoolers we get stuck in our own worlds. We are like misers with time. Meanwhile, we're lonely and we don't have the best days. But if we each connect with each other we could feast.
When we share our own tips and tricks it may help make someone's day better and ours too. It's like stone soup. Could there be a way you and someone else could trade thing's you're good at doing? So, maybe if you're like me, just when you want to clam up and be your own entity, you get more by giving. Perhaps even here on this blog, we can help each other.
This is how I feel, today. I really don't have much to contribute, but my one thing that seems to work with homeschool is this. This is my stone. Find something good to read and read it together. This has lead us to all kinds of fun, silly stuff, like making wii characters of our book characters and serious discussions, from books like The Hiding Place. If you don't have time to read together anymore (older kids) spend a little bit of time having them talk about what they've read. I know, it's too easy. It's the stone in stone soup. What's helped your homeschool work?.
Call it critical thinking/home ec. Let your little challenges lead you to victory. For instance, we were out of chocolate, so I suggested Summer figure out if we had the ingredients to make some. We did...kind of and it was good...kind of. But it taught us to think through things.
Do you have anything to add to this stone soup? What's one thing, just one, that's worked for you?