KONOS Playing Out in Our Home

Today's post is a small little peek into how KONOS plays out in our everyday living and learning.

It always amazes me that the moment we start a new character trait, God begins to test us in that area. Not just the children mind you - us as parents, as grown up individuals!

We are currently working through Self'-Control. The very week we start looking at this character trait we are given ample opportunity to display self-control in so many areas! People who are trying are brought across our path. Situations in the workplace for my husband arise etc...

It also amazes me how the character trait can be practised, experienced, discussed and demonstrated, through an activity -that on the surface of it all - does not seem to afford the children much room for all above said learning.

So when I scheduled activity 32 on page 7 of Self-Control, which is to write a silly story about a child who makes excuses all the time,  not for a moment did I think that it would give us any practice in this area. Once again God has shown me that if I am faithful to step out in faith and teach, then He is faithful to provide opportunity to learn about our character trait. He is always ready to step in and work in our hearts.

So, here is how this activity and subsequent lesson played out in our home...

THE ASSIGNMENT:
Girls are given the assignment to write there own silly story. It is greeted with excitement as they each have ideas and just can't wait to read their stories out in order to make us all laugh. I hand each child a pretty notebooking page that I drew up with the title of the story heading the page as well as the activity instructions typed out underneath that.

SETTING THE SCENE:
Miss V-L is a competent writer. She is able to organise her thoughts clearly and always makes good use of the English language, richly weaving the various components of her writing and bringing her characters to life.

Miss J-L has battled with reading and writing, is behind according to 'world standards' and has trouble integrating the rules she has learnt in Grammar with creative thought. She is very much in the beginning stages of learning to write a good story so much of these writing assignments are used to teach her - which means allot of discussion between the two of us, allot of correction and allot of re-working. A difficult process

Mama KONOS needs infinite patience in teaching Miss J-L to write as she deals with allot frustration and needs to be careful to be encouraging while correcting and discussing.

IT'S SHOWTIME!
So here we have one common goal, 3 different personalities and a whole lotta twists and turns to get to the finish line. Each child works silently on her story. Miss J-L finishes first. I don't expect a long drawn out story with lots of detail from her. I know that she has expended allot of energy and mental power on this task. Her writing takes up 1/4 of the page. We start reading through it. She has forgotten all her grammar rules even though I reminded her of them before she started writing. Some of her sentences don't make sense and spelling - well - I do not point that out to here at this stage. We begin discussing our grammar rules - what do we do to show someone is speaking? What about showing when a sentence is finished etc...

Miss V-L is working on her paper and keeps glancing up at us. Next Miss J-L and I start discussing sentence construction and better ways in which a thought or idea could have been conveyed. Miss V-L has not stopped work on her paper to give her 10c worth. I ask her to please not interrupt but to rather be diligent in working on her own paper. Said interruption continues. I remind her that she needs to please ensure that she keeps a control over herself and if she cannot do so, I will have to send her to another room to complete her work. She clearly is lacking self-control today and has to be sent out to complete her work.

Miss J-L is beginning to get upset with all the advice being thrown her way and I can see her defences coming up. She is un-teachable when this happens so I remind her that she needs to try and get her emotions under control, that she does not need to apologise for getting her work 'wrong' but that this is an exercise meant for her to practise and learn the art of writing. This seems to help and we continue to discuss in a lively way some improvements that could be made. We end up laughing at some of the outrageous suggestions that she makes. She looks at her rough draft with all my red corrections all over the place and asks me if I wouldn't mind writing our new draught on the black board for her. I know that she will battle to make sense of it all with her visual motor integration issues so I agree. This seems to give her a boost and she copies out her revised story neatly onto her page. She is happy with her work and I congratulate her on being able to stay on top of her emotions during the exercise.

UPSTAIRS:
Miss V-L is completing her work. As I come upstairs to see what she is doing, it appears that she has had time to reflect on her meddling ways and apologises. We have a discussion on how her lack of self-control at the table meant that I had to take parental control. We discuss the importance of being able to control ourselves in the little tasks now so that in adulthood we wont have a problem. She illustrates her understanding by using an analogy to drinking and driving and how people who cannot control themselves are arrested - having to be brought under the control of the law. I think she's got it! Of course - there is still plenty of time and I'm sure loads more opportunity for us to practise this character trait coming our way!