Our homeschool group is having a World's Fair this weekend that Sherry, with a wealth of creative ideas, dreamed up for us last Spring...and we postponed for this Fall instead. The community is all invited and the children are all excited!
Since we have Scandinavian roots on both sides of our family, we've decided on Sweden for our country. In the meantime, however, our family volunteered to make a banner for the event.
My point in all of this, though, isn't about the banner or even the event itself (not yet anyway!)...but to simply share my continual revelation that serendipitous learning takes place in areas that I forever least expect.
For instance, it never occurred to me initially that this World Fair event would include math, elements of geometry, and measurement...among a host of other (what I thought to be) unrelated subjects. We're talking the mixture of various properties and the results of those mixtures with various properties of physical elements.
The fact that paint applied to a blue background distorts and darkens the paint color immeasurably than when applied to a pristine white background...or that 15 times more paint is needed to cover one small area of porous fabric...and due to this porosity causes fabric to wrinkle up into thin little ripples...than when applied to a not-so-porous flat sheet of paper....or that paint causes paper to stick to fabric and is impossible to remove once it's dry. I do believe this involved something way beyond the merely physical level but entered into the realm of some fantastic chemical fusion. I'd say much more effective than any glue we've ever tried!
My children have used chalk and rulers and learned new tricks on how to lay things out and that what we think might work one way works much better another way. They've learned what it means to enlarge something 1000 times...and that it still might not be big enough!
But I think the most important thing we're continuing to learn...and this is especially true for Mom here....is that patience and perseverance are the most integral part of any process...and the most valuable lessons learned. The creative process IS indeed a process....and we need to savor and enjoy that process for it's own sake. This means extracting all that we can learn and discover and require of ourselves...which ultimately becomes way more beneficial and fruitful than the finished product itself.
And the things we learn from one thing or incident (mostly prayerful patience and perseverance) can then be applied...hopefully with more wisdom...and creativity....to later things or endeavors. It also means that we can work as a family and come up with ideas, or fancy ways to fix mistakes, or the ability to join together and start from scratch again...as it dawns on us together that learning lasts a lifetime and is never really a formula and is also never finished. Unpredictable, non-formulaic, outright messy, serendipitous happenstance...laced with patience and perseverance and a joyful, thankful heart...will always be there to bump us blessedly along the path.
Life's Race
Life is a long cross-country race
Where Christ Our Lord once set the pace,
And taught us how "Life's Race" is run -
Not only run, but truly won.
He taught us of His Father's Love
Which floweth freely from above.
By His example he did show
The way to live and the way to go.
By Clayton G. Mosely
The Tree of Life - Salesian Collection
And let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due season, we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Galatians 6: 9