Home(school) improvement week 4: Expansion and contraction

Understanding the principles of expansion and contraction has helped me better understand my children and live more peacefully with them. I've even learned a little more about myself and the way I feel and act. Here's my personal understanding of this topic after reading about it in The Heart of Learning and observing it in my life.

Expansion - open-ended activity for the sake of exploration and relaxation, with no goal in mind

Examples:
sandbox play
water play
wire maze
trampoline
play-doh
playing/talking to other children
nature walk
miscellaneous outdoor time
playing dress-up
"free play" in general


Contraction - focusing attention and effort with a certain outcome in mind

Examples:
puzzles
reading books
sitting and doing a lesson, once we start this in the fall
helping me cook something
helping with chores such as picking up toys
singing songs


It's a little confusing because one activity might be either expansion or contraction depending on how you handle it. Say to a child "build me a mermaid out of this play-doh" and that's contraction. Just squishing it into random shapes and feeling it in your hands would be expansion.

I think I am on the right track but correct me if I'm wrong. For some reason when I first read about these two principles, I envisioned alternating equally between the two. I soon noticed, after paying attention to how we experience expansion and contraction every day, that it's different for everyone. Suzi needs mostly expansion. She loves playing in the sandbox, in the yard, and with open-ended toys inside. Right now she is playing with a wire bead maze and singing a song about what the beads are doing. Today has been a pretty good day, we are more than halfway through it, and there might have been 30 minutes total of contraction activities so far. Suzi and I worked on a puzzle for about ten minutes and later we read books together. Because Ivey is not even two yet, about 15 minutes a day of contraction is all I can really expect. It usually happens while we read. When she gets tired of focusing, she wanders off or flips through a different book on her own while I read to Suzi.

Usually I can tell when we need to change from expansion to contraction because the girls have become irritable and have begun to fight over little things. Another sign is when Suzi says "I don't know what to do." This is probably the equivalent of boredom, and directing her to another expansion activity usually does not help. When this happens, I stop what I am doing if possible and spend some time with them. We sing songs together or read some books. (With Suzi, I sometimes start a craft or other activity with a goal, but Ivey is still too little for most of this.) They seem to enjoy having something to focus on and when we are done they are ready to move on with renewed interest to another expansion activity.

It's obvious when they have become too contracted and need to change to an expansion activity. Ivey will usually move herself to a new activity easily and there is no need to think about it. Suzi begins to get frustrated with what she is doing. Frequently she says she doesn't want to do it anymore and moves on. Simple! From what I've seen, the friction comes when an adult tries to keep a child in contraction for longer than they can comfortably stay. I have observed this while trying to let my kids help me in the kitchen. Here, stir this! Pour that! Wait for my instructions. Okay, cut this fruit. Now throw it in the bowl, and... Wait a minute, where are you going? The child just can't focus as long as an adult. I recently changed the way I treat my children in the kitchen. They can help and learn, but it needs to be 5% contraction and 95% expansion. Here, Suzi and Ivey "help" by playing freely with bits of ingredients on the counter as I bake Robert's birthday cake--and we all had so much fun. After reading about expansion and contraction, I can see why this approach worked better.


Once we start doing homeschool lessons, I will be careful not to overdo contraction activities with Suzi. A few minutes to an hour of focused effort a day for lessons is enough. I will also try to work her expansion/contraction cycles to our advantage by waiting until a time when she is naturally coming back into contraction to start lessons. This usually occurs mid-morning after outdoor play time, and again a couple of hours after lunch.

I've been working on this already without really focusing. I've greatly increased the girls' outdoor time and can see now when it might be beneficial to offer a directed, structured activity. There are still a couple of things I'd like to accomplish this week and beyond, and they are:

1) Compile a list of good expansion and contraction activities, and collect the materials for some of them. I would love to have a closet dedicated to these things with a list of activities taped to the inside of the door. That is my vision. But, alas, we have no free closets. Perhaps someday we will live in a bigger place. Please leave a comment with your ideas and the activities your family enjoys!

2) Continue on in my quest to become unafraid of messes. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, check out this post by Megan. I need to be more like her!

3) And then I need to think of some (somewhat controlled) ways to make messes. Messes are excellent expansion opportunities!

4) I was going to read more about expansion and contraction, but there is surprisingly little online about it and that's where I do most of my reading. I think I'll re-read that part of The Heart of Learning while considering what I've observed with the kids.


Update coming Friday!

Home(school) improvement week 3: Update on feeding the family

Cakes by Suzi. Very delicious.

I'll have to make this fast. The girls are in bed and it's Jenny and Jordy time. I'll go through this point-by-point.

1) Plan. I decided to have millet pilaf (again, from this post) for lunch Wednesday since we had plenty of squash in the fridge. I'd made it once before. I'd been meaning to do something with rye for Thursday, and didn't want to bake bread, so I decided to try out this rye borscht recipe I found.

2) Shop. I did this Wednesday morning, and it went great! A lady stopped to compliment my Maya Wrap ring sling and ask about my children. A man gave red balloons to the girls. Ivey rode happily in the cart while Suzi walked and helped pick up what we needed, and I taught her how to look for a good deal. I even bought chicken breasts, and I think that's the first time I've ever bought (raw) meat all by myself. The hardest part was getting the kids and groceries all into the house when we got home. I let the girls help me carry stuff. Ivey dragged the bag with the chicken in it until the plastic on the inner packaging wore through, but it was okay because we used it that night. I think I will do the grocery shopping with the kids most of the time from now on, because it saves family time with Jordan and expedites dinner prep.

3) Cook dinner as a family. Um. This one is hardest. Right now it could be dangerous for the girls to really help. Boiling water and sharp knives, you know? I am cool with letting my children help as long as it's safe.

See? Totally cool.

And here they are helping their Grandma snap green beans, which she then helped us can. The bean prep is fine, but once you get to the canning part? That is a prime example of something that just does not lend itself to being accomplished with three children around! It got done but we spent the whole time shooing them out of the kitchen when they really wanted to help!

So what I need to work on is creating real work for the girls to do alongside me that is also safe. So here's what I think I'm going to do. I'm going to clean my counter off really well, let the girls sit across from me while I'm in the kitchen, and give them veggies to cut with butter knives (whatever I'm working with at the time). This would've been great to do while Jordan and I prepared borscht. Also, I should have foreseen how long all those vegetables would take to chop and done that ahead of time, before Jordan got home, and refrigerated them in bowls until it was time to start boiling the soup. So I still need to work on planning a little, don't I?

But we did make the borscht, and it took forever, but it made a HUGE stock pot of soup. We put all this in the freezer and had enough in the fridge to eat leftovers tonight besides. So now we can pull our borscht out on Rye Thursdays until it runs out, and then I have some ideas for improvements. Jordan would like meat added, for one. Lesson learned: Any recipe that calls for an entire head of cabbage is going to make a heck of a lot of food! Duh.

Anyway. I would love to have a little child-sized section of our kitchen (I saw this on a Montessori blog, but I can't find it now, sorry!) but that won't work for us. We have a dog who would love to clean off a low table of food, and besides, our kitchen is too small. We do have a nice big counter though, so I think I'll take advantage of that.

Clearly, I have plenty to work on when I go through this point for the second time. But I do think I improved, considering how behind I was to begin with!


Monday: #4 - Expansion and contraction. Work to better understand these concepts and discover new ways to offer both experiences when needed.

A cleaning trick that works for me

The other morning I woke up and came downstairs to this.

It has been much worse at times. Just imagine this photo, but with cereal strewn across the floor, puddles of water here and there, a path of broken crayons, and a few more toys scattered about. This angle doesn't do it justice. You can't see the dirty dishes and junk piled on the end tables. It's just the way things are with three little kids, for obvious reasons.

It stresses me out to have things so messy, and the main problem is it's hard to tell where to start. I tried several different systems and came up with one I like. I can wake up in the morning, come downstairs to a big mess, and within 20 minutes have my day back on track.

First, I get a timer set for five minutes. Each step should take only that long. If I finish one step with time still left, I work on one of the others.

1) Run around with a trash bag and throw all the garbage you see into it.

2) Grab all the dirty dishes and throw them in the sink, and then get started washing them.

3) Collect all the dirty clothes and get a load going in the washer. Start folding anything that might be in the dryer.

4) Put things away and straighten up the main room, as fast as you can.

It doesn't fix everything, but once 20 minutes is up my living room looks more like this:


Now the house looks decent, dirty dishes are all in one place, and laundry is underway! From here I have a much easier time seeing what needs to be done.

Do you have a system you use to help with cleaning?

Home(school) improvement week 3: Feeding the family better

Where we are now:

I grew up eating home-cooked meals but never got into the joy of cooking. Only now am I truly starting to become interested in it. Meals at our house frequently begin with a sigh and Jordan and I asking one another "so... what are we going to eat?" I will bust my butt cleaning and be so pleased with what I've accomplished at the end of the day, but totally forget about dinner! Not good!

This week's goals:

1) Plan. I think my biggest problem is the lack of a plan. I am usually busy with other things and don't make it a priority. I'd like to think two or three days in advance, go through my kitchen to see what we need to use, and plan what to cook around that. We are also doing the Waldorf grain of the day when it's convenient, and I love it. I'm discovering some of these grains for the first time. It's so nice to have them to inspire me and give me a little direction! I want to post more on the grains later, but for now here is a wonderful post on them which helped me get started.

2) Shop. I am pretty scared of going to the store alone with all three kids. It's hard with two, and could definitely go horribly awry with three. But Jordan gets home at 5:00 and that's a terrible time to take the kids shopping. They are ready to spend time with Daddy, eat and wind down for bed at that time, not shop and then wait around for dinner to be prepared after we get home. So I'm going to try to take them all shopping. Pray for me. No, seriously.

3) Cook dinner as a family. I'd like to make dinner preparation a happy, fun family time and instill a love of cooking in my children at a young age. Most meals can wait until Jordan gets home for preparation to begin. Sometimes I'll let the girls help me before he gets home, but other times it would be better to wait than to start something that would end up stressing us all out.


Jordan's parents just brought us a bunch of vegetables from their farm, and it couldn't have come at a better time! I'm going to look up recipes online and see what I can make with squash, corn, potatoes, peaches, etc. My first shopping trip alone with the three kids will be today or tomorrow.

Update coming Friday!

Home(school) improvement: Update on connecting, not yelling

Note: I really did write this Friday, but we've been really busy so I didn't get a chance to post! Lots of pictures soon.

Well, Wednesday was awesome. I prayed for patience Tuesday night and Wednesday, I got it.

I read chapter one of Naomi Aldort's Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves. It took me a long time while watching the kids and spending time with them, but I got a lot out of it. The main thing was something I already knew but needed to review: When upset, I should STOP for a minute and let my first impulse run silently through my head. It is not what I want to say. When I am done and can respond calmly, I should move my attention to my child and handle things from there. I did so well with this Wednesday! I'm planning to go back through chapter one and highlight my favorite parts to look over again when I'm having a hard time.

On Wednesday, there were several tests throughout the day and especially at difficult times that normally would have gotten the best of me.

Ivey asked to sit on the toilet. While she was sitting there, I decided to make up our bed. Then she called for help, asking for more paper. When I looked, she'd unrolled all the toilet paper that was left on the roll and stuffed it between her legs into the toilet.

While I was outside taking the cloth diapers off the clothesline, Ivey piled the dog's bowl full of food even though she'd already fed her.

Suzi broke off a piece of our tent and was running around the living room waving it over her head while Ivey cried under the collapsing structure. All while I was trying to talk on the phone with my mom and take care of Robert.

These might not seem that bad but I have a low tolerance for chaos, and I am proud that I kept calm through all of it.

Thursday was wonderful, too. I got a lot of work done in the morning while the kids played outside. Then we went to our babywearing meeting, and Suzi had a couple of little meltdowns. I used my new techniques for validating her feelings from the book I'm reading, and it worked, and I felt we were immediately closer.

We spent the rest of the day at my parents' house making birthday cakes.


What I've learned so far:

1) Kids need nearly unlimited outdoor play time. Let them do what they want out there, as long as it's not hurting anyone.

2) Assigning innocent intention is BIG. It helps to understand that Ivey really just wanted to wipe her butt; she only wanted to make sure the dog didn't go hungry; and four-year-old Suzi was so immersed in a game of pretend that she didn't notice she'd taken apart the tent.

3) I don't need to fall all over myself trying to make someone else's child feel better when there's been a disagreement and my child is upset. Especially when she has done nothing wrong. Especially at her expense. Her feelings matter and I am responsible for hearing her, not someone else's child. (Nothing specific happened, just something I realized.)

4) It is such a privilege to listen to their problems and heal their hurt feelings and hold them. I love doing it. Maybe I didn't fully recognize this before.

5) This is getting easier the more I practice it. For some reason I didn't expect that!


Next week: #3, Feed our family better. I'm a little nervous, but we've already gotten started so I think it's attainable.

Home(school) improvement: Update on #2

Yesterday was lovely. Jordan took off work at 1:00 and we took the kids to the zoo for Suzi's birthday. We had such a good time, and while we were there we purchased a family membership, so for the next year we'll go to the zoo a lot. It'll be the perfect way to break up a week and spend time together, particularly when the weather gets cooler.

Today has been hard. I decided to make a pinata for Suzi's birthday party today, and because I let the girls help me (of course!) they had to have a bath when we were done. This was probably too much activity for me to take on in one day. I got kind of snippy--probably set myself up for it.

Pinatas hanging out to dry

Seeing the contrast between a day Jordan is home by 1:30 and a day he isn't home until 5:00 made me realize that I frequently fall apart midday. It would probably help to give all of us some kind of break shortly after lunch. Today I took the girls outside after lunch (so I could put another layer on the pinata). Right after coming inside seems like a good time to read some books and maybe see if I can get the girls to lie down for a little while. If I could manage to get the girls to take a nap or read some books or even just stay upstairs and play quietly for 20 minutes or so while I grab some coffee and read a book, I think I could be a much nicer mother to them in the afternoon. It would also remove the temptation to show them a movie the last hour or two before Jordan comes home.

Anyway, just some things to think about. I'm going to get started reading my book now while Robert naps.

Home(school) improvement week 2: Don't yell, connect

It's Suzi's fourth birthday today! I love her so much and am so thankful for her.

This week's goal, and where we are now:

The #1 thing I hate and want to change is that I yell at my kids. I know the techniques. Lock myself in the bathroom until the urge to scream and pull my hair out subsides. Count to ten. Take a moment to silently imagine your knee-jerk reaction playing out, then take a deep breath and react calmly. These things and others have indeed helped me.

But, you know. I've got three kids. It's not a matter of implementing these things just several times a day and then saying whew! Glad that's over! No. It's nearly constant. And when I've got the baby in the ring sling and am changing a diaper/helping someone in the bathroom and the other child picks that exact moment to throw a fit or make a big mess or whatever, it's hard to think. Right now, on a good day, I can usually handle things well for most of the day. Then I get tired and start running out of patience. It's not just me, either. Jordan and the grandparents also seem to have a hard time. And I am with them all day (8-5), five days in a row, alone.


What I want to change:

I don't honestly know how much I can improve upon this in a week, but I'm going to try. Here's what I'm going to at least start consciously working on.

1) Adjusting my expectations. Do you ever catch yourself expecting your little kid to behave like an adult? I sometimes do. A reality check on what is developmentally normal for the child's age can help. A young child isn't able to think things through fully and they are still working on gaining control of their bodies. One of my best friends has an admirable amount of patience with children, both hers and other people's, and something I've always noticed is that she doesn't let little things bother her. I'm going to try to remember to ask myself, before I tell the kids to stop doing something, why I am upset by it. Is it mildly annoying but I could let it slide? Or is it dangerous and I need to take action? There are many battles I wish I'd never started.

2) I want to read Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves again, this time all the way through.

3) Listen more than I talk. When there's conflict and I stop myself from fussing at the girls long enough to listen, I frequently come to understand things much better. This leads to a peaceful resolution a lot faster. Also, I think I get so hung up on taking action right away when there's a conflict that I don't give myself time to think of what I really want to say.

4) I know all the other items on my home(school) improvement list will help with this as well. I'm going to continue to work on #1. It's coming, just slowly.

Do you have issues with patience too? What do you do about it?

Stay tuned for the follow-up Friday!