Little Thrills

I'm not a homeschooler mom but I can't help wanting to teach my kids. I love to teach them to read and all the other stuff moms teach like hygiene and manners but sometimes I find myself crossing into other territories like (gasp) history and geography. One of my favorite stores in town is the parent/teacher school supply store here. I LOVE IT. I'm wierd. This has been proven. Which, I guess, explains why I am getting a little thrill from this recent purchase from little passports. Each month the kids will receive a package from their "pen pals" Sam and Sofia. (What a coincidence!) Every month "Sam and Sofia" are in a different country and send the kids a package with souveniers, pictures, maps, passport stickers and information about that country.





First of all: what kid doesn't love getting mail! Second of all: I plan on expanding on the idea by hanging up a map of the country we are learning about that month in the kitchen, making some of the foods from that country and maybe, possibly, really only if I feel like it, checking out books from the library about that country and checking it out in the Atlas.

I justify this wierdness by remembering one of my all time favorite parenting tips from James MacArthur. He said that the home should be a place of learning (of course) --but that it doesn't really matter that much WHAT you teach, just that you teach something. Apparantly,(aside from the basic religion, morality, hygiene thing) the thing that is good for kids isn't information as much as it is having parents who take the time to teach something. Which means you can teach your kids silly dances in the kitchen or how to make balloon animals or what the capital of brazil is.

P.S. Ponder this irony. The very day that I made a resolution to be better about documenting my children's childhood through photos on this blog -- I lost the charger for my camera battery and my camera battery went dead. Grrr.