A Wednesday : hallway marathons, coffee on white shirts, Sikhism
Games
The eldest boy got his brothers intensely involved in a competition involving small wooden rings. I do not know where they come from or what they are; one of the beauties of our household is the many treasures waiting to be uncovered and rediscovered. They raced these down the hallway dozens of times, whooping and yelling and running 26.2 miles while doing so.
A five-year old begged and pleaded with somebody to play Candy Land with him. As these requests were all well before 7am, there is no happy ending to this. No one played Candy Land with him before breakfast.
Food
I made a delicious breakfast of cold cereal, toast, and bananas. When I say I made these, I mean that I took them out of the cupboards and refrigerator and let them figure it out.
Thoughts
Why, in any universe, would I think it’s a good idea to confidently walk around our circus home learning environment, with a cup of coffee and clean white shirt, thinking that everything’s gonna be alright?
Again: coffee + movement + white shirt + four children
I question my judgment sometimes. On the other hand, you gotta live life bold and crazy on occasion. And thus we’ve arrived at this juncture.
Religion - Christianity, Sikhism
Moses
We re-read the story of Moses, the Israelites, and the parting of the Red Sea (see my chapter on this here).
And then we watched excerpts from the film versions : 1956’s The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston thumping his staff, and from 2014’s Exodus: Gods and Kings with Christian Bale as the great and flawed leader.
Sikhs
We spoke of the Sikh religion. What is my motivation in introducing other religions, faiths, and ideas to our family? To our Christian family? Here’s why:
We are a single unit made up of individuals. Someday four of these individuals will be out of our household, and they will carry what they’ve embedded and learned out into the greater world on their own. Ideally they will leave valuing the sanctity and beauty of life in all forms, and the unlimited opportunities to be producers in this world with a mix of compassion, intellect, imagination, creativity, resilience, and appreciation for working well and playing hard. We will always be a family unit, but even now, this family is made up of writhing, living, arguing, questioning, vibrant personalities that refuse to be conformed to most dictates that end in “because I said so.”
So I want them to know what we believe now in our hearts and minds, collectively, and to proactively let them know about other ways that others believe. Just like with names or gender, we don’t have to understand or even agree with something in totality in order to respect it. There’s simple steps we can take: learning and remembering people’s names and calling them what they’d like to be called. Learning some of the differences amongst different faiths rather than lumping them all into some vague religion ‘…over there, where they wear turbans or whatever.’
We learn a little about other faiths because we believe in the Gospel and the teachings of Jesus.
We don’t learn to convince or convert.
We learn to understand and to connect.
That’s why.
So what do we know about Sihks that we didn’t know previously? Here’s five things:
Five things about Sihkism
The 30 million Sikhs in the world make it the world’s 5th largest religion. Most Sikhs live in the northwestern area of India (around Punjab) close to the Pakistani border. It developed in the late 1400s as a reaction against religious hypocrisy, classism, and social divisions. It shares some common beliefs with Hinduism and Islam, which places its birthplace in a unique position geographically between India (predominantly Hindu) and Pakistan (predominantly Muslim).
Sikhism rejects social inequities and distinctions and is focused on divine oneness, equality, and peace.
It’s similar to Islam in their monotheistic foundations. Both believe in the existence of a single, all-powerful God as a father-like figure (“The One True God”). Both religions also reject idols and strongly encourage helping the poor and needy.
It’s similar to Hinduism in a belief in reincarnation and karma.
There are five articles of faith that faithful Sikh women and men commit to - they’re known as the 5 K’s:
Kes - hair stays in a state as close to nature as possible - uncut and long
Kara - steel bracelet
Kanga - wooden comb (often kept in hair)
Kirpan - a small sword
Kachera - a type of undergarment (like shorts)
Turbans are an important and personal way to keep long, uncut hair up and another way Sikhs show devotion to God. Sikhs also show devotion by dedicating their lives in service to others in order to rid themselves of pride and ego. They believe in everyone’s capacity to change and in helping enable others to do so while living ordinary lives.
Sikhs are not only tolerant, but accepting of other religions. They believe followers of all religions can find salvation. They are respectful of the holy writings and scriptures of other religions, although they do not have a single definitive volume themselves. They also do not have a specific day of the week set aside for worship.
Science
Talking of dark matter, dark energy, and this expanding universe over a hot dog lunch led us to Oliver Jeffers doing a TED Talk on this planet and our role in it. Recommend. Here’s the link on YouTube. :)
Oh, in fairness to truth I was also reading several of his books aloud at the table. Love his illustrations, stories, and general attitude about being a decent human being.
Letters
A five-year old labors over a hand-written letter to his beloved friend, two years his senior, that will go in the mail soon (the letter, not the friend). The most important portion of this letter, I suspect, is the carefully-printed closing:
“Love you, Stinky Pickle”
Books
Circus! by Peter Spier (1992)
Dick Whittington and His Cat by Marcia Brown (1950)
Other
There were other happenings and learnings that included Rhetoric, Philosophy, Geography, Music, and Playing.
But my journalistic and literary energy are depleted. I just know that they happened, and ideally my fellow learners retained more of those topics than I did upon this day of days.
Other posts about Homeschooling on certain days
