Plan-It School Series: Organizing Supplies

Caution: You are about to enter the Disorganized Zone. In this sector of the universe, craft supplies run amuck. Materials for science experiments attack the unsuspecting people who open pantries. Messes spread like a fungus. And scissors are lost in the vast cosmos of God's creation, never to be held by human hands again. Enter if you dare….

Episode I: The Hunt for the Red Pipe Cleaner

The scene opens with Homeschool Dawn, Orville, and Wilbur seated at the kitchen table, unaware that they are about to be transported to The Disorganized Zone.

HSD: Boys, today I want you to use the craft supplies on the table to create a 3-D model of a caterpillar's metamorphosis into a butterfly. Each of you has a shoe box…

HSD looks at the table. There is one shoe box, but she does not see the other one.

HSD: Boys, did one of you move the shoe box?

O and W: No ma'am.

O: I have not seen a shoebox except for the one here on the table.

W: I don't even know what a shoebox is.

HSD: Okay, let's pause for a minute and go get another shoe box.

Our three characters get into the van and drive to WalMart. After successfully begging for a shoebox, they return 45 minutes later.

HSD: Now, you both have a shoebox. I want you to cover it with construction paper… now where did the paper go?

HSD looks on the table, in the cabinet, in the storage baskets in the classroom, in the closet, on her desk, and finally under the bed.

HSD: A-ha! Here it is… cover your box with construction paper.

W: Mommy, I can't get the paper to stick.

HSD: Wilbur, sweetie, that is because you have to use some glue. Did I not give you some?

W: No.

O: I don't have any either.

HSD looks for the glue. She finds one bottle that is empty and another that is mostly full. However, the cap on the full one was left open and the glue inside has hardened. She pops the top off the bottle and digs through the crusted glue mass along the opening. She evidently applies too much pressure because the liquid glue breaks free and squirts out onto her face, hands, and shirt. After cleaning up, HSD pours some glue into a plastic bowl and goes to the craft closet for two paint brushes.

HSD (while digging through mounds of craft sticks, art paper, bottles of paint, and craft pom poms): Now, where are the paint brushes?

W: I know, Mommy.

Wilbur opens his desk drawer and proceeds to pull out crayons, markers, dried-up glue sticks, stickers, and water colors that have been used until all the palates are black, but no paint brush.

HSD: I guess it's back to Wal Mart.

20 minutes later they return with paint brushes and more glue bottles. After the boys glue the construction paper to their boxes, HSD continues with the next step.

HSD: Now take your red pipe cleaner and cut it into four pieces using your scissors.

W: I don't want to clean the pipes. It's scary under the sink.

O: Wilbur, she doesn't mean the pipes under the sink. She means a pipe like Grandpa's. Mom, I thought Grandpa's pipe makes you cough. Is that why you want us to clean it?

HSD: No one will be cleaning any pipes, kitchen or otherwise. Pipe cleaners are the different-colored, fluffy sticks that we use in crafts. You should each have a red one on the table. Now, where did they go?

HSD returns to the craft closet. When she opens it, all the paint bottles she moved in her previous search roll out and land on her feet. The papers and pom poms start to slide, and she quickly throws herself against the shelves, blocking the landslide. While pushing against the mound of supplies with the left side of her body, she reaches around with her right arm and pushes everything back inside the cabinet.

O (from the kitchen): Mom! I found the pipe cleaners.

HSD (rubbing her sore arm, side, and feet): Where were they?

O: Under the table.

HSD: *sigh* Okay, cut your pipe cleaners into four pieces.

W: How do we cut them?

HSD: Carefully use your scissors to do it.

O: I don't have any scissors.

W: Me either.

HSD: Where are they?

O and W: I don't know.

HSD(exasperated): Oh, never mind.

When I read this scenario to my husband, his reaction was to ask (in disbelief) if this had ever really happened. "Well, yes and no" is my honest answer. This particular situation is fiction but it is based on reality. I have spent many hours looking for paper or scissors or paint brushes. I have made numerous trips to Wal Mart in the middle of the school day to purchase a forgotten supply. I have been injured by supplies toppling out of an over- crowded cabinet. Worst of all, many a well-planned activity has been abandoned because I did not gather the needed supplies ahead of time.

I already mentioned my best piece of advice for new homeschooling moms in this post. The second most important thing I would advise you to do is make a list of what you need before each and every unit and then check it twice.

Before school begins, I look through all my teacher's guides and plans that I have written for my first unit and make a list of all the materials that will be needed to complete it. I try to keep a stockpile of certain materials; however, I keep it to the basics like construction paper, crayons, and paint (we LOVE to paint). Be careful when making stockpiling decisions because you do not want a cabinet full of things that you "might need".

To avoid the landslides, I store these materials in shoe boxes, trays, crates, or any other inexpensive or free storage container I can find. I keep these inside a cabinet and do not look for pretty containers. Cheap or free and durable is what is important. I label the outside of the boxes so I know the exact contents. After I have my list together, I check off anything that I have plenty of on hand. If I see that I am running low on an item, I leave it on the list so that I can restock.

I have taken two different approaches to the next step. The first two years I homeschooled, I wrote out a weekly shopping list for school materials and placed each list in my planning folder in the front of the section for the week before I would need the supplies. Each week, I removed the list and added it to my grocery shopping list. I also wrote books I would need to check out from the library on this list and made my library stop on the way to the store.

I found this approach did not give me time to get materials organized and I would still find myself scrambling at the last minute for something I had forgotten or misplaced. Two years ago, I started buying everything that I need for an entire unit in one shopping trip. I plan this shopping trip for a day that I have time to organize the materials immediately upon my return home. I put general items, like construction paper, that will be used during multiple lessons in the correct storage bins in my school cabinet. I put items that will have a single use in a bin that is numbered according to the week it will be needed. I store all science supplies in the kitchen and have dedicated one shelf for those things… with the exception of common, household items like baking soda. Those are easy to find when needed and won’t send me on a scavenger hunt during school hours, so I leave them in their normal spot.

The 2009 Schoolhouse Planner has a shopping list with room for writing in schools supplies. There is also a form to help you keep track of library books.

To keep messes under control, I have arranged the boys' desks front-to-front so they serve as an individual work station or as a shared space for projects. Each boy has his own garbage can at his desk and is required to check it daily and empty it as needed. I also have an old, king-sized sheet that when folded covers the entire workspace and prevents paint, glue or other messes from damaging the desks. The paint has stained it, but I can throw it in the washing machine when finished to wash away the messy, sticky remains of a project. If we will be working on a painting project for multiple days, I spread newspapers beneath the sheets as the paint splatters will soak through if left to sit. The sheet over the newspapers prevents the boys from getting ink on their fingers (and arms, face, the furniture….).

Make sure you buy plenty of pencils, erasers, crayons, markers, and glue at the beginning of the year, too. Our state has a tax-free shopping weekend. I have found that the week before is the best time to buy though. The back-to-school sales usually run during that week, at least in my area, and the prices are so low that even after paying tax, it is a much better deal. I keep a basket on my desk for storing extras of these items close at hand and keep a can of pre-sharpened pencils there, too.

How do you stay out of The Disorganized Zone? Feel free to share your tips, too!

Blessings and Happy Planning!

Return soon for Plan-It School Series: Preparing for Household Responsibilities

Plan-It School Series: Preparing for Assessment

The principal of the school where I taught always said that there are three keys to good teaching…

Assessment…

Assessment…

Assessment….

When I say "assessment", what is the first thing that comes to mind? A written test, right?

Multiple choice, essay, fill-in-the-blank, and even standardized tests are what most often qualify as assessment. Though it is true that these are types of assessments, evaluating what your child has learned is an on-going process. It begins with pre-assessments and continues each day through several forms of evaluation.

Pre-assessment occurs at the beginning of a new unit or before teaching a new skill. It can be formal. You give your child a work sheet of problems or questions that pertain to the material to be covered. It can also be informal… a simple discussion in which you determine what your child already understands. A KWL table is a great way to begin the assessment process. Before you begin a new unit of study, your child fills in the K column with the information he already knows. If your child can produce this information in this way, you can feel confident that he has mastered it and that you do not need to teach it.

I find questioning to be the best form of on-going assessment. It is simple yet effective. At the end of a lesson, take a minute or two to close out the lesson. In Setting the Stage, I compared the set of the lesson to an introductory paragraph of an essay. Similarly, the closure of a lesson is like the closing paragraph of an essay. After writing the body, a good writer takes one last paragraph to summarize and end his presentation or argument. In the closure of a lesson, the teacher takes a few minutes to ask questions that pertain to the lesson or reading or activity. This informal assessment lets you know what your students grasped and where they need a little more work.

Writing is another great way to assess. Remember those dreaded essay tests we took in school? That is one way to assess through writing; however, anything that you have your child write that demonstrates a knowledge of the content area can be used. If you have your child journal or notebook, allow him to write about what he is learning. Younger children may only be required to write a sentence or two. The older the child, the more he should be required to write.

Sometimes a more formal essay is appropriate. Younger students can be asked to write a few sentences on a topic. Middle aged children can be assigned a three-point essay while older students must write a research or term paper. If you assign a writing project as a means of evaluating what your child has learned in a different content area, it is advisable to give two grades… one for the writing quality and one for the content. The content grade can be averaged in with other grades in that particular subject. You would not want your child to receive a poor History grade because he failed to use commas properly. Likewise, you would not want him to receive a good History grade because his grammar was good while his content was lacking. Rubric grading is a great way to grade writing. The rubric can be generated to include both content and style or two rubrics can be used, one to assess writing quality and one to assess content.

Alternative assessments offer many options for closing out a unit of study. I love portfolio assessments. They help me stay organized during the school year and end up as keep-sakes later. They also make for a good place to keep attendance, standardized test results, and other records. You can read about how we organize a portfolio here.

Performance-based assessments ask students to put in action what they have learned. I observed a teacher once who assigned her class the task of creating a restaurant… not a pretend one, a real, functioning restaurant within their classroom. They had to seek out investors for start-up money, create a menu, hire a chef, set the classroom up to function as a restaurant, shop for food, décor, furniture and other supplies, send out invitations to the restaurant's "opening (and only) night", and serve as the restaurant's wait staff that evening. They put to use skills they had acquired in math, writing, health, economics and art. The teacher graded their performance in each of the core subject areas, and the attendees, including a restaurant reviewer for the local paper, evaluated their overall performance.

I have had my children complete a few simpler-to-pull-off performance-based assessments. They have created a grocery store which sold play food to the stuffed animals of our house. They created a society for their plush toy birds and organized the Birdieland government. They have written and performed short plays (at home with family members as the audience). All of these fall into the category of performance-based assessments because several skills from different content areas were put into practice. The success of their endeavor was measured by how well they used what they had learned.

The form of assessment I use most often is project-based. Technically, project-based learning is more of a style of teaching, and the projects are assessed with a checklist or a rubric. However, overseeing a project always gives me a clear understanding of my boys' abilities. A good project usually integrates skills from many different subject areas. It also involves organizational skills. Each time my boys complete a project, I am able to assess how well they can take a large job and break it into smaller steps. In the early years, I had to think through every project for them. Now that they are 4th and 5th graders, they can organize their work themselves and only need guidance from me. We complete so many projects that I compiled a list of 101 different project ideas.

So, let's review. What did you learn in this post? What is a portfolio assessment? What are performance-based assessments? What assessment form can you use to grade both writing and projects? Did I just make you look back over this post? Ah Ha! This, my friend, is what we call closure! :-)

Please post your answers as a comment and feel free to leave any tips you have, too!

Blessings and Happy Planning!

Return Soon for the next article in the Plan-It School Series.

Plan-It School Series: Setting the Stage

Setting the stage for learning is something I was encouraged to do during my teacher training and years as a public school teacher. I have found it helpful as a homeschool mom, too. The "set", as it is called in education circles (at least back when I was in that circle), is similar to an opening paragraph for your writing. When writing, you do not want to just jump into the body of your work. You write a introductory paragraph that draws your reader in and directs their thinking toward the topic. Opening paragraphs can vary in style from exciting to thought provoking, but whatever the style, they serve a singular purpose. Likewise, it is helpful not to jump into teaching but to find a way to open your units and your lessons that draws your students in and makes them want to learn more.

I begin each unit or mini-unit I teach with a set activity. I usually try to make these the highest interest activities and I try to develop a set that will help my children warm up to the topic of study and engage them. Here is a list of a few unit sets I have used in the past:

• Creating a banner
• Dancing
• Music
• Decorating the house for the theme
• Drama
• Field trip
• Playing a game
• Role play
• Feast
  
  

One of the most elaborate sets that I did with my children was as an opener to a unit on The American Revolution. Michael and I named our home Great Olive-tain. Each room of the house was a different part of the Kingdom, and the boys' bedroom was declared the Colonies of the Kingdom. Michael was crowned King of Olive-tain, and I played the role of Parliament.

The day before school began, I wrote and a read a proclamation which placed unfair laws and taxes on the boys. There was a Quartering Act in which they had to move out their bird collection to make room for some of Michael's and my belongings. There was a tax on play time. For every hour of play, they had to pay us $1 from their Piggy Bank (we did not keep this money, btw, but returned it after our role play). The boys were outraged. I told them that as citizens of Great Olive-tain they had the right to appeal to the King. He, of course, took no mercy on them. Instead, he declared them rebellious and blockaded their bedroom.

Like I said earlier, this was my most elaborate set ever. It gave their brains a jump-start, and they were fully engaged. As we read about the events that led to the Revolutionary War, the boys would say things like, "That is just like what you did to us, Mom," or "Dad did that to us, too." Though a role play like this must be handled carefully… our boys are thick-skinned and enjoy reenacting history, even if they have to suffer a little… it demonstrates how abstract or foreign concepts can be brought to a child's level and made applicable for them. This is what engages them in the learning process.

I make sets for individual lessons much simpler. Sometimes questions are the best way to begin.

• What did you learn yesterday?
• How do you do x?
• Why do you do y?
• How is x different from y?
• What do you already know about x?
• What do you hope to learn about y?
  
  

If the lesson involves reading, we thoroughly discuss the book cover and make predictions.

• What do you see on the cover?
• What do you think this character is doing?
• Why do you think the book is titled ____?
• What do you think will happen in this story?
  

Sometimes I do the unexpected.

• Don a costume. (Like the one in the picture at the top of this article. I dressed as a mad scientist for the start of our Chemistry unit and performed a science demonstration with a surprising result.)
• Perform a science demonstration.
• Do something that is purposefully and obviously incorrect (like before a lesson on verb tenses, write on the board "The boys went to school tomorrow.")
• Show a picture that relates to the topic and discuss.
• Tell a joke (that relates to the lesson of course).
• Read a poem that relates to the topic.
• Dance, jump around, act, or rap. (Once again as it fits the lesson. Oh yes, I really do "rap"... Notice I put that in quotes. :) You'll have to ask me to do the continent rap or verb conjugation rap sometime.)
  
  

More times than not, I show a picture or object that illustrates the concept to be learned. For instance, when teaching a lesson from our Chemistry curriculum on lab equipment, I placed a pen, paper, and books on one table and a fireman's hat and play hatchet on another. We discussed who would use each piece of equipment and why. We also discussed how each could not use the other's equipment. A pen would be of little use to a fireman as he fights a fire. A teacher could be sent to jail for carrying a hatchet to school. This drew them into the lesson and began the process of thinking about why a chemist needs a particular set of tools.

Think for a moment about the parables in Matthew 13 that the Lord Jesus used to teach us. In these parables, he was teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven. For us, that is an abstract concept. It is a place we have not seen, yet we know of it because of His teaching. Think about what He used to explain Heaven to us… treasure, a mustard seed, a pearl… all concrete, tangible items that held meaning for his students. He used the familiar to explain the unfamiliar. This is, in a way, is what we are to do with a lesson set.

What do you do to jump-start your children's thinking? Feel free to share.

Blessings and Happy Planning!

Return soon for Plan-It School: Preparing for Assessments

Plan-It School Series: Writing Objectives, Part Two

My best piece of advice for new homeschooling moms is to remember that learning takes time and learning takes effort. No one can be told something once or read it in passing or fill out a worksheet on it and remember it. Though the process may be easier for some than for others, even those we consider most intelligent have to work to learn. Some of the brightest children in America are those who make it to the National Spelling Bee finals. As gifted as these children are, their achievement is the product of hard work. Those who are best prepared, do more than just memorize, too. They dissect words. They analyze them, categorize them, and evaluate them. Their learning moves in two directions, horizontally and vertically.

Since I am the Olive Plants mom, I want you to think of learning as a vine. I am fascinated by vines. In fact, my dream house is an English stone cottage covered in them. What makes the vine so beautiful is how extensively it grows. It is not easily confined. It grows in every direction along a wall, both horizontally and vertically. In my previous post on this topic, I mentioned that when I write objectives, I look to this list of verbs. This list helps me brainstorm and create learning activities that give variety to the work of learning. Planning activities that climb the ladder of thinking has promoted both horizontal and vertical growth in my olive plants.

Horizontal growth involves the progression of skills. For example, first our children need to learn to count, then to add, subtract, multiply, divide… and so on through Algebra, Geometry, and perhaps Calculus. This is the pace of acceleration, and this pace should be set according to the needs of the child and the difficultly of the skills being mastered. Some areas of study need more time and more work. All students will get certain lessons more quickly and other lessons more slowly.

Part of the beauty of homeschooling is that you can tailor your lessons to fit your children's learning needs. If they master addition with regrouping in three lessons, do you really need to complete the ten lessons presented in the text? However, if your child needs more time to master a particular skill, you can take the time needed for him to learn it well. Or you can decide that it is something that needs to be postponed until a later date. Your vine will grow at different rates over the years, and you, as the gardener, manage that growth.

I suggest you give your vine ample room to grow vertically as well. The list of verbs I use is based on Bloom's Taxonomy, which organizes learning activities from lower to higher order thinking. I believe incorporating higher order thinking skills is important because it offers a child the opportunity to put skills into a context and put them to work which increases retention.

Opponents of HOTS argue that it pushes children, especially younger ones, beyond what they are naturally capable of accomplishing. To a small extent that is true. It takes practice to learn to apply, analyze or evaluate. I do not think it happens automatically, even in older children. Starting this process earlier and tailoring HOTS activities to match the skill set of your younger child promotes reasoning that strengthens the ability to learn and builds good judgment. I have also found that young children, when given the opportunity to learn along side older children and adults, will accomplish far more than most would imagine they could.

At first, higher order activities require a lot of help from mom and dad. Just as you would provide a young vine a trellis, a stake or other prop to support its upward growth, teachers must provide the support needed for children to stretch their thinking. If you try to incorporate these types of activities do not be discouraged by blank stares. Instead, ask a lot of guiding questions to prompt the upward growth in your students. Just because they cannot accomplish it on their own at first, does not mean that they will not get there with proper support. What I have experienced with my students in a school setting and with my children at home is that the baby steps of progress soon become giant steps which soon become leaps.

It is my opinion that some who argue against HOTS, however, confuse vertical growth and horizontal growth. To incorporate HOTS, a teacher should not force a child to approach information he is not ready to process. I have heard it said that incorporating HOTS means something akin to asking 1st graders to use complex sentences or gerund phrases in their writing or to be able to identify these more sophisticated writing elements in other's work. This is not my interpretation of HOTS. I have always been taught that incorporating HOTS challenges teachers to take grade appropriate skills and ask their students to put them to use and to learn them thoroughly. It asks teachers to move beyond skill and drill and help their students find a purpose for what they learn.

For example, if a second grade child is learning about nouns, he must first define the term. That is the first level of learning called "knowledge". Then he must demonstrate comprehension. Can he recognize a noun in writing? From there he must analyze and apply… learning differences between common and proper nouns and using these words in his writing. He must synthesize the learning by integrating it with previously mastered skills. How do nouns and verbs work together? What function do they perform? Finally he must evaluate. Daily editing is a great way to work at the evaluation level. Can they find mistakes within their own writing or their siblings or even yours? They should only be held accountable for the skills they have mastered. A second grader should not be asked to find comma splices. That would not be HOTS. That would be a horizontal progression and would fall under acceleration. To incorporate vertical movement through HOTS, he would find misspelled plural nouns, proper nouns that are not capitalized, or perhaps places in his writing that a pronoun could replace a noun to make the reading flow better. After he has worked his way up the ladder of learning, he will have a much better grasp of the material and will be much more likely to retain the learning.

HOTS should also shape the types of questions we ask. For example, after reading The Three Little Pigs, you could ask "Who were the characters?" When your child answers, "The three pigs and the wolf", he has demonstrated knowledge, the first rung on the learning ladder. If he can summarize the story, he has moved up the ladder to comprehension. Next, ask him to prove the wolf's intentions were no good. If he can explain that wolves like to eat pigs and quote the wolf as having said, "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down," he has moved up the ladder once more. Then require him to analyze by asking a series of "why" questions. Why did the pig build his house from bricks? Why did the pigs boil the water in the fire place? These are analysis level questions. Require your children to synthesize knowledge by asking them how the story would have differed if all three pigs had built their houses of bricks or of straw. Finish by evaluating the behavior of the pigs. Who was the wise pig? Perhaps synthesize again by comparing the story to the Biblical principle of building your house upon the rock. All of these questions fall within the realm of what a younger child can answer, however, they require him to chew, savor, and fully digest what he is learning.

Another aspect of incorporating HOTS that I like is the variety it offers. If you look at the list of verbs, there are many potential activity ideas there. If you want to spice up your school day, try exchanging some of the rote activities and worksheets for activities like dramatizations, debates, discussions, constructing models, presenting, illustrating, and diagramming. These higher-level activities also promote families working together and learning from each other. Whereas, the lower-level activities of completing worksheets or rote practice tend to isolate children and make learning a chore instead of a joy. There have to be those times. Like I said earlier, learning takes time and work; however, teaching as we go, by doing and enjoying, just makes learning a little kinder and nicer. It builds up the family by getting everyone involved.

Just like you would fill your planter with a variety of foliage for a beautiful landscape, I challenge you to fill your planner with a variety of verbs. When you do, get ready to watch your vine grow!

Blessings and Happy Planning!

Return soon for Plan-It School Series: Setting the Stage for Learning

Not Me Monday: Not a Hard Week

We did not have the kind of week that felt like an uphill battle. First, Michael did not get chigger bites while we were not camping last week. We did not try the new Off Clip-ons which protect against mosquitoes but little else so we did not think we were protected from all bugs and sit on the ground while setting up. Several of the bites he did not get did not become infected either, and his feet and ankles did not swell up like a pregnant woman's. The doctor did not give him a shot and an antibiotic, and he did not have an allergic reaction to one or both of those. He was not dizzy and nauseated for two days. The doctor did not advise him to buy clear nail polish and paint his wounds with it. We could not have avoided the infection and the expense of a doctor's visit and prescription by buying a $2 bottle of this polish to begin with. I did not immediately begin to paint his bites and the boys and mine. I did not get dizzy and feel nauseated for two days from the paint fumes.

I did not enjoy substitute teaching at an ESL program this week either. My students were not as cute as could be, and we did not have any fun together. There were not any confusing, language barrier moments either. For instance, Michael, who also did not teach ESL, did not visit my classroom while I was not teaching my second class. This was not a girls-only class. After he did not leave, they did not giggle about having not met my husband. Later in the class, I did not explain to the girls that I would not talk to their regular teacher over the weekend. They did not wonder how I know their teacher. After not explaining that she is my friend, they did not look at each other with raised eyebrows and giggle. One of the girls did not ask me how many friends I have. I did not think her question opened the door to a teachable moment and I did not ramble on for three or four minutes about who all my friends are not. I did not explain that I am not friends with people at church or my doctor or the banker… or just about everyone in town. I did not think discussing all these different people would exercise their vocabulary, so I did not list almost anyone with whom I am even slightly acquainted. I did not pull out the map, point to different states and say, "I have a friend in Tennessee, and a friend in Ohio, and another friend in Illinois." While I was not rambling on, one of the girls did not interrupt and say, "Excuse me. What did you call the man who came in earlier?" I did not immediately understand what the giggles and strange looks had been about. I did not feel like crawling under the table either. I did not instead quickly explain that Michael is my "HUSBAND" and the these other people are my "FRIENDS". I did not follow up with "1 husband... many friends." This did not open the door to a conversation about my wedding day and Christian marriage.

I did not dress up like Martha Washington and teach my students about Independence Day either. I would never wear costumes while teaching... so not me!

Not Me with the Boys

They had not brought show and tell items that represent the phonemes they were learning... like "giraffe" for short i and short a.

Nothing exciting happened on the home front either. Like, the air conditioner did not stop working… twice. A month ago, it did not stop working either, and we did not call the repairman. When the repairman did not arrive, he did not go to the thermostat and switch it on. We had not switched it off the night before so it would not run needlessly. Cool air did not immediately begin flowing from the vents as soon as he did not flip the switch. We did not pay over $100 for the repairman to come to our house and turn on the thermostat.

We did not think that perhaps the last time the a/c did not stop working that the coils had not frozen. We did not wonder if turning it off over night had given them time to thaw so that it would not work the next day for the repairman. We did not decide to try turning it off for a day again before not calling the repairman. We have not gone one day with air and the next day without all week. We are not thankful for ceiling fans and box fans and cool showers and popsicles because we do not live in the deep south where it is not hot… not hot at all.

I have not been slightly envious of my southern friend who now lives in the North who had to wear a sweatshirt to a July 4th bonfire. I did not think it ironic that while she was missing the hot South, I was longing for the cool North. This did not make me think about the fact that while I am hot, others are cold. Each time I did not refuse to turn on the oven because it would only add to the heat and did not struggle to feed my family, I also did not remember that there are those who have gone days without food. I did not imagine while I was unable to do laundry because the drier would make the house unbearable that there are many others in the world without a change of clothes. I did not have a heightened awareness each time I could not get a glass of water cold enough that there are those who could not get water at all. It was not a week of contemplating Christ and finding my contentment in Him alone. I did not remember that while our trials are temporary, the seeds we planted among the Korean community will be watered by God and the growth that He produces will last forever.

"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." 2Cor 4:16-18