The Spirituality of Parenting

Thought this was a great conversation about planting the seeds of a sustainable faith: Sandy Eisenberg Sasso talking to Krista Tippett.

Home Eating a Threat to Public Kitchens?

State Allows Growing Trend of Eating At Home
by Angela Paul
April 13, 2099
Reunited Press

After much heated debate on the house floor, legislation was passed today to allow a growing number of families to cook meals for their families in their homes. The children must have annual physical examinations to assure proper growth and weight gain. Attempts to require weekly meal
plans and monthly kitchen inspections were voted down.

A spokesperson from the National Association of Nutritionists (NANs) condemns this decision. "These children are being denied the rich socialization and diversity that is an essential part of the eating process. Without the proper nutritional background, it is impossible for the average person to feed their own children. We, as child advocates, see this as a step backwards and speak out for the sake of the children who cannot speak for themselves."

Homecooking parents say the benefits of eating at home include increased family unity and the ability to tailor a diet to a particular need. Elizabeth Crocker, a home cook, states, "We started cooking and eating at home when we realized that my son had a severe allergy to eggs. The public kitchens required him to take numerous medications that had serious side effects in order to counteract his allergy. We found that eliminating eggs was a simpler method and our son has thrived since we began doing so."

After this experience, the Crockers decided to home cook for all of their children, and converted their media room into a kitchen. Elizabeth says, "We have experienced so much closeness as we have explored recipes and spent time cooking together and eating together. We have a dining circle with other families where we sometimes share ideas and meals together."

The Crocker children have done well physically under their mother's care, weighing in at optimum weights for their ages and having health records far above average. It should be noted that Mrs. Crocker, while not a professional nutritionist, has a family history rich with nutritionists and home economists. "Surely the success of the Crocker children is due to the background of their mother," responded the spokesman from NANs.

"The results they have achieved should not be viewed as normative." Mrs. Crocker counters that her background was actually a hindrance to the nutritional principles she follows. "Our paternal great-grandmother was a home economist, but she prepared most meal from pre-made mixes. In our homecooking we try not to duplicate public-kitchen meals, but to tailor our meals to the needs and preferences of our children."

In a related issue, legislation is in committee that would provide oversight for the emerging homecooking movement. Says the Home Eating Legal Defense Association (HELDA): "We want to provide umbrella kitchens to aid parents in the complicated tasks of feeding their children. Many families lack the expertise of the Crocker family, yet desire to eat at home. As we have seen, the umbrella kitchens meet the needs of all concerned. We are happy to provide this service."

About the Author:

Angela Paul is a home schooling mother of four children aged 22, 21, 19 and 17. Before having children she was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Georgia Institute of Technology. She obtained Bachelor's and Master's Degrees in the field of Chemical
Engineering. While in college, Angela tutored students in math and science at all age levels. Witnessing the benefits of one-on-one teaching and the problems with mass education Angela and her husband Jim, a former high school teacher, decided to educate their children at home before any of them were born.

After working for two years in Research and Development, Angela "retired" from chemical engineering and became a mother at home. She returned to tutoring and had many requests from home schoolers to help them with science. Nine years ago she started teaching the Sensational Science Series, a hands on science program in her home. Angela has written five books used during the classes covering phases, acids and bases, crystals, atoms and molecules and chemical reactions. These books, The Sensational Science Series, are now available for use at home.

The Pauls live in Tucker, Georgia and host a science fair each year for home educators. If you are interested in classes, books or the science fair, call the Pauls at 770-939-1006 or e-mail: angelapaul @juno.com.

©Angela Paul, April 13, 1999, used with permission.

Homeschool Tutorial and Enrichment '08-'09

The Life Garden™ is a home-school tutoring and enrichment activities program serving children from the ages of 3 to 19. The Garden utilizes a five-stage methodology in its approach to educating students. The successive stages of that methodology are intended to produce:

Fun-loving
Eager
Respectful
Tenacious
Inquisitive
Limitless
Energetic

Secure
Optimistic
Interdependent
Learners
…within preschool-age children.

Students
Encouraged to
Explore,
Discern,
Love,
Initiate and
Nurture
Good
…out of our elementary-age children.

Students
Actively
Pursuing a
Life that
Initiates and
Nurtures
Good
…out of our junior high-age children.

Happy
Ambitious
Respectful
Virtuous
Educated
Succeeding
Teens
…out of our senior high-age children.

The Life Garden™ provides parents with the small group, self-paced, holistic education alternative in which children thrive. Each small academic group of 4-6 students (called a “grove”) is assigned to a teacher-mentor (called a “gardener”) of the same gender. This specific gardener is responsible for the academic training of his grove for 4 hours out of a regular day. He utilizes materials specifically designed for self-paced study, such as Mortenson Math, SRA, Spelling Power, Sonlight, etc. Our gardeners seek to make lessons as interdisciplinary, interactive and hands-on as possible to speak to the various learning styles of our students.

For the balance of the day, each grove combines with four other groves (no more than 30 students total, collectively referred to as an “orchard”) to participate in service learning, chores, recreation or one of the arts. For example, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings we volunteer at the Glover Family Farm, a beautiful 43-acre organic facility located in South Fulton County (this particular activity also serves as the lab portion of our Science curriculum). Other afternoons we may paint or draw or bring teachers in to provide music, dance or karate lessons. We also look for opportunities to volunteer at local nonprofit facilities. And everyday we get in a good dose of exercise. Our desire is to provide students with a fully enriched experience.

Throughout the day, gardeners look for opportunities to impart wisdom regarding the specific character virtue that is our focus for that month. Each week there is at least one activity or project that requires students’ demonstration of the principles emphasized thus far that year. As an organization, KCINC believes that youth must be taught the principles of private and public maturity, and then held accountable to them. We accomplish this by maintaining an environment where virtues are regularly discussed, practiced and rewarded (see The Life Garden™ Discipline Strategy).

The Life Garden™ functions on a school-year schedule of generally 6 weeks-on and 1 week-off, with a summer break of 13 weeks, two of which are used for a service learning trip for students 12 and older. Summer services are provided based upon gardeners’ availability. We provide services from 8am to 4pm, Monday thru Friday. Most materials and field-trip fees are included. Parents provide lunch daily and transportation to and from our meeting place for that day.

The Life Garden™ is unique in a very significant way. We seek to promote the family as the primary learning institution in a child’s life. Parents are encouraged to utilize our services only to the extent necessary for them to provide a well-rounded home-school experience for their children. For some parents, that means utilizing only our half-day tutoring services. For others, it means availing themselves of only the enrichment activities we provide. For still others who have to work 6 hours per day or more, it means accessing the entire day’s program. From these parents we require at least 40 hours of volunteer time during the school year. Our greatest delight is to see parents take off to conduct their own one-on-one fieldtrips with their children. We believe that kids learn to value what their parents value for them. So the more time they can spend with loving parents, the better.

The Life Garden™ is also unique in that its gardeners (at grove capacity) typically teach for only half a day. For the remainder of the day they are freed to pursue other missional endeavors. This allows gardeners to remain fresh and fulfilled in the work they do with kids. It also allows students to learn up-close that regardless of the work one does to provide for her family, she must also make time to pursue those other things that help to fulfill a greater purpose for being.

The Life Garden™ is a fantastically innovative program designed to help parents grow their children into healthy, wholesome, balanced, intelligent and mature adults, committed to making positive contributions to the world by cultivating them from the inside-out.

Atlanta-area Homeschool Support Group

Are you a homeschooling parent? Are you just starting out? Have you been thinking about homeschooling and don't know where to start? Would you like to find support with others on this journey? If so, you're invited to join our homeschool support group, Kid Cultivators Atlanta Homeschool Cohort. We are newly formed but very active. We hold our monthly meetings in SW Atlanta. Our playdates are held at area parks and vary by month. We have an online message board which we use to keep in touch between meetings, exchange ideas, seek advice and share resources.

If you are interested in joining us and becoming an active participant or would simply like more information about the group please follow this link: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/KidCultivatorsATLHomeschoolCohort/

We look forward to meeting you soon!

Leslie Bray, Coordinator

Always Good to Learn Something New

This is the second year for the Life Garden. We did not hit our participation goals for the year. That's okay. I have one full-time tutee that I work with daily.

After 2 years, I've gotten somewhat use to seeing him take new challenges in strive. I've watched Jamal grow so much sense I first met him 3 and a half years ago as a shiney-faced 6th grader. But that's just the natural course of things. You can't really stop something from growing if you give it the right nourishment. So it is with Jamal, and it's easy at times to wonder if he wouldn't be just as well off planted anywhere. Nonetheless, every so often something happens that reminds us of why the Life Garden has proven a particularly fertile habitat for him.

On Monday we were going over another math assignment: another day, another lesson. Jamal had spent the past 2 lessons practicing how to translate complex word problems based on inequities into algebraic equations with variables on both sides: you know, easy stuff. Same old... same old. Then I noticed something! It seemed that he was getting every other word problem wrong. This was strange. Not that Jamal doesn't ever get math problems wrong, but that it's usually a random thing.

So I asked him to do a few examples for me until I could pinpoint his area of misunderstanding. It turned out that somewhere along the way he had never associated the phrase "less than" with subtraction or "greater than" with addition, as it might be used in a word problem such as this, "If the sum of a number and 6 is multiplied by 2, the result is 10 greater than the number." This is the point at which those of you who despise higher math usually get on your soapboxes and rail against the impracticality of having to learn such abstractions, but the thing is that, as with any problem life may throw at you, you need to be able to make sense of it if you must. Thus, we learn to reason through higher math, if for no other reason, to teach ourselves how to think. It was important that this relatively straight-forward association not become an empasse for Jamal, however, impractical having to make such associations may be.

So we stopped our daily progression through the lessons of the textbook to work on it. For homework that night, Jamal had to translate 50 addition and subtraction problems into "less than" or "greater than" terms, as in "-6-13=6 less than -13". The next day we plotted several of equations out on a number line. Then I showed Jamal how each one could be restated in another way, as in "-6-13 also equals 13 less than -6". These are not always easy associations to make. It the mist of all the intensive practice it finally clicked for him, and it was like someone had slid a brick into place that somehow had been skipped over when his math foundation was first laid.

When we say that "home-school is the environment in which all students can thrive," it can at times, I know, sound like a sale's pitch, but it's not. It's simply a powerful statement of fact. As I worked with Jamal that day, my heart ached for all the students who were sitting in class at that very moment whose teachers didn't have the time or curriculum flexibility to stop, pinpoint and address whatever specific difficulty they were having--particularly if that difficulty were based on something that was missed long before. I'm glad Jamal can be in a learning environment that has the adaptibility to remain partcularly fertile for him.

A Year-End Hope

As we came to the end of our first year, I wanted to leave with my fellas a reminder of the most important things that I have endeavored to teach them this year. I think I've figured out how.

I've always loved the artist Bobby McFerrin. Though much of what he writes is lyrically ambiguous, his music has always spoken to me. There's one album in particular that for me is the music of Life itself--Bang! Zoom.

I had lost Bang! Zoom a few years ago right about the time I founded Kid Cultivators. Recently, as I was preparing a PSA concerning The Life Garden, it became imperative to me that I find a song off of that CD called "Remembrance". "Remembrance" is a Bobby McFerrin "instrumental," but as I listened to it again, I swear I could hear faint whispers of words behind his vocalizations.

Well, I've spent the past 2 months listening as closely as I could trying to catch those words I've been hearing, and I think I've finally got it. I call it the "Remembrance & Revelation". My original goal was to pen the lyrics to a Life Garden theme song, but I think it will become the theme for all of Kid Cultivators. The chorus is the statement of our vision for kids.

It's hard to get teenage boys to sing, but I've made them learn the words. Hopefully, it will be for them one of those tunes that they just can't get out of their heads. And as they hum it to themselves along the way (love it or hate it), I pray they will remember.

Below you should see an audio button. Press it to bring up a low quality copy of the tune. For those who know me, don't be afraid: I did not attempt to sing. Below the button you'll find the the words. It shouldn't be too hard to follow along. He does a little scatting to begin with. Then he moves into the melody; the words follow the melody.

Remembrance & Revelation

We know where we’re going
Not always how to get there
We’re not left just to figure it out
We have examples to guide us

There’s no use in guessing
Success is not by chance
There's song and sense to how life works
We'll take the time to learn it.

The Creator gives us life and love
That we might freely share them
So we’ll make the most
of all the opportunities we’re given

And we'll grow
From the inside-out
Into healthy, wholesome, balanced,
Intelligent and mature young adults
We're committed to
making positive contributions
to the whole world
‘cause that’s what life is about!

Life is a garden
Planted by our Father
It’s his choice what he plants and where
and what it takes to nourish it.

Our part is to trust him
And cultivate what he’s sown in us
Then seek to find the Big Dream
that best suits our skills and talents

Our Gardener gives us grace and hope
That we might freely share them
Meeting needs, especially if
we’re the only ones who see them

We’ll grow
From the inside-out
Into healthy, wholesome, balanced,
Intelligent and mature young adults
We're committed to
making positive contributions
…‘cause that’s what life is about!

We’ll grow
From the inside-out
Into healthy, wholesome, balanced,
Intelligent and mature young adults
We're committed to
making positive contributions
to make a better world

Oh, yes, we grow . . . GROW!
inside-out . . . into
wholesome . . . balance . . . mature
young adults . . . and so WE WILL!

Becoming Producers Sure Feels Good

After almost a year of volunteering and learning about the process of growing organic produce at the Glover Family Farm in Douglasville, GA, Melvin was beginning to feel it was time for him and his students to learn about the financial side of farming. At the urging of Skip Glover, on March 12th and 13th Melvin participated in a Growing Power workshop in Milwaukee, WI, at which he learned about vermaculture, aquaponics and growing organic micro-greens as a cash crop.

Melvin returned from Milwaukee with the vision that micro-greens might just be the missing element to sustainable growth for which Kid Cultivators has been looking. They can provide students who need financial assistance with a work-study scholarship opportunity. They can provide staff a supplemental income opportunity. And they can also serve as a fundraising project for persons wanting to contribute to Kid Cultivators' efforts.

It only took a day before Melvin was hard at work building the micro-greens growing system he learned about in Milwaukee. After a little trial-and-error, he and the boys are up and running. After 2 weeks they already have more market than they have product. May blessings of abundance accompany their efforts.

Melvin learned the hard way that he had to pre-drill every whole before driving in the screws to avoid splitting the wood.

"Why guess? Just mark where you want the hole to be."

After measuring and marking, things come together so nicely.

Getting all the pieces screwed together was a bit of a balancing act.

"What is he trying to do?"

"If it falls, I had nothing to do with it."



Like father, like daughter.

"Whalah! Our first growing crate."

"See they're stackable!"

It only took one watering for Melvin to recognize that although the growing trays fit perfectly (after some minor adjustments) and the crates stacked neatly and the lights worked properly, Leslie (Melvin's wife) was going to beat him to death for having water all over the floor as it drained out of the plants.

Back to the drawing board.

Melvin designed a drainage system.

As the trays drain...

...water hits the plastic tarp under each crate, flows to a drain and drips through to a bucket.

"Isn't it nifty!"

This is our first crop of sunflower sprouts.

"This is our first crop of Daikon radish."

The radish was ready for havest first. It took about 8 days. Sunflower takes 8 to 10 days.

All harvesting involves is just a sharp pair of scissors. You cut a handful off at the base.



That's one entire tray harvested.

It weighs exactly 400 grams (14 oz).

This is the very first bag of Life Garden Organic Micro-Greens. Isn't it beautiful! With this Melvin and his students have become producers and not just consumers.

Just in case you couldn't read it.

We thought this shot had good composition.

Once the greens are harvested the soil is dumped into a tub to be mixed with freshed worm casting. In about 30 days it will be ready to be reused.