Tag: kids

Be Your Own Teacher!

Jennifred Jones

Little kids love to learn anything. It’s all new to them. Exciting! Adventurous! Beginning to ‘adult’. and they like it.

Don’t say, ‘You can’t’; they will try to show you they can 🙂

We (I) need to go back to this part of childhood again. Seek out something we’re interested in – or maybe only a little interested in – and find out more about it. Maybe it’s a new hobby, craft, skill. Some new subject – farming, gardening, woodworking or refinishing, computers, finances, a new language…even better methods to clean your house…investigate!

You be the teacher and decide where to start learning. Which book, which YouTube video to begin; who you might meet for coffee to talk about it. You will be the teacher and you will be your student. Yes, you will grade yourself. No embarrassing call-out in front of the entire class, “Jones! you got a C- on your project!” You will quietly tell yourself to keep at it, and you will get better.

I love that part of self-learning. Actually this was the method of old when kids couldn’t go to school. Twasn’t any adult education night class either. You found a book or neighbor and learned yourself.

Really this is empowering! We don’t have to wait on anybody else’s schedule to allow time for us. No need to procrastinate. Merely begin.

So first, what piques your interest? How could I become better in a certain area? What could I learn that would help me save time around the house? And then after you get grounded in your new study, tell somebody else about it. As you teach them it further teaches you.

It’s so exciting to take the power of learning back into your own hands!

What can you think of today, what’s going through your mind right now you’d like to teach your new student – you- about?

Begin! Now!

(Right now I am teaching myself Latin again…been a few years since high school, but this language interests me)

Who You Talking to Mom?

Jennifred Jones

It’s a parental habit developed when the kids are small. You are conversing with them about daily happenings even though they aren’t talking yet…maybe even listening.

The ongoing narrative about what you’re doing, what’s happening next, what’s on your mind as you go about the day.

It’s a form of early learning about the ins-and-outs of family life, whereby from infant-hood on up the kids see (hear) how the family works.

The kids leave home and there’s nobody to talk to….

They come back for a visit, or you go see them and next thing you know, you’re narrating again to them what you are doing.

“Who you talking to, Mom?” my daughter says 🙂

“I don’t know, anybody who’ll listen, I guess.” I reply.

Once a mom, always a mom.

Now the narration is happening with the grand-babies.

Maybe, it could be classified as a form of storytelling…

Do you do this too?

One Lonely Pot

Jennifred Jones

It all started with one lonely pot.

After my kids grew up, each having made little potteries in art class, fired in the kiln using their choice of colored glazes, or the ones with no glaze, because they were sick that day and weren’t able to apply it, so into the kiln it went bare; I became a noticer of other potteries wherever I went.

No two are alike, I don’t collect production line or limited edition pieces, I am drawn to the hand shaped, imagined as they went, this is how they turned out like it or not masterpieces that has been disapproved of by somebody, discarded as worthless and imperfect, or just a ‘what do we need that for?’

And so my collection has grown…if I mention I have given away over 50 pieces, does that tell you how many cast-offs have been recovered and loved? 😊

They are all over my patio and sprinkled in and around the garden — some containing plants, many just standing beautifully as small works of art to be enjoyed. Others are in my cupboards used as one of a kind serving bowls or plates. Prized vessels are changed out on the mantle or table tops.

I love them!

To me they represent someone’s thoughts and skills. They represent the beginning effort of a dream to make something beautiful. Some are made by children, many are crafted by adults. Almost all are signed and dated…truly one of a kind, irreplaceable and unremakeable!