Culture Night

I got the idea recently for a fun tradition that I decided to start in our family. We call it "Culture Night". One night a month we focus on a specific country--we either prepare a meal from that country or go out to a restaurant (one benefit of our area: there are tons of ethnic restaurants from all over!). In order to attend the meal you have to have completed your research. We each decide on a certain aspect of that country that we'll learn about and then teach to the rest of the family.

We had our very first Atkin Family Culture Night last Saturday. I chose Tanzania to start with since I thought it would be pretty easy. We've been there before, plus I had already checked out an East African recipe book from the library. (I stumbled upon that entire series of recipe books in the kids section of the library recently and I thought it was so cool. I can't wait to try more of them.)

Here's the table:

Here's the food:

(beef and plantain stew, rice, chips miyai, chapatis, and mangoes)

You'll notice the lack of silverware. We ate with our hands! That was definitely the kids' favorite part. In fact just today Elizabeth had some leftovers and insisted on eating them with her hands, too. We have this system where the kids get a warning if they are not using good manners and if they get 3 they have to do some sort of cleaning job later. Anyway, during this meal the girls kept joking that if we used a fork we would get a warning! :) Nate was having great fun playing with his rice (which--come to think of it--isn't too different from any other night).

I thought the kids wouldn't even touch the stew but they loved it! They really loved the chips miyai, too.

After dinner, we got dressed up:

Joe let Elizabeth wear his shirt since the girls both wanted something to wear.

Then we did our little presentations. Natalie was assigned language so she learned some Swahili to teach us:

1-10, plus she learned some other words:

I think Elizabeth outdid us all. She wanted to learn about the history of Tanzania. We got a book from the library and she literally wrote a 5 page report all by herself. Granted, it was entirely plagiarized, but still--I was completely blown away by her enthusiasm for this. If only she could work up that kind of enthusiasm for her school assignments!
I'm not sure how much of it she understood but she read it all to us and I think some of it sunk in.

I talked about Tanzanian holidays and traditions and Joe was assigned wildlife. We watched some of his safari videos. It was a really fun night!

I think this tradition will have a lot of benefits:
1) We haven't been able to eat dinner as a family very much lately (except on Sundays) because of Joe's hours. This make me sad because I have dreams of beautiful family dinners where we grow closer together while we eat delicious, nutritious food (I can dream, right? :). This tradition helps me live that dream a little bit.
2) We love to travel and we love to learn about different parts of the world. While we can't really travel right now, we can at least experience new things now. Then, if we do travel in the future, maybe the kids will at least be more adventurous and willing to try new things when the time comes (or on their missions, or whenever).
3) It makes learning fun.
4) It's a scheduled time in the month where we will definitely be together as a family. We need to be better about scheduling more things ahead of time so that other stuff doesn't get in the way.

Natalie got to choose our next country and she chose Greenland. I think this will be a bit more challenging....

Checking in

I've been wanting to put something up here for awhile but I'm having one of those blog-writer's-blocks. So, maybe I'll just start writing? Who knows where this will lead...

I've gotten it into my head that I want to try teaching Elizabeth how to play the piano myself. We are on a pretty tight budget right now and I've been worrying about how to pay for her lessons, and feeling guilty that I haven't started her yet. I don't know why--I keep reminding myself that I was 7 when I started. Still, she's been wanting lessons for awhile now and is definitely ready. This feels like a good solution. Plus, anything that will keep us home rather than running everywhere in the car after school is good. Anyway, the book is in the mail and we're going to try it out as soon as it comes. Any tips on what or what not to do when teaching your own kids would be appreciated. I'm not too proud to admit defeat and pay for someone else if it just doesn't work. I may as well give it a shot, right? (Please tell me I'm not crazy!)

Update: We had our first lesson and it went great! She is very enthusiastic so far and is really cruising through the early stuff. Hopefully this keeps up, but we shall see...

Elizabeth's teacher snapped this awesome picture of her on Dr. Seuss' birthday (Read-a-thon/pajama day):

She told me that teachers kept coming over to take pictures of her. She's a good poster-child for Read Across America Day, I guess. She absolutely loves that flower pillow that Grandma Marsha made her for Christmas.

Natalie celebrated Dr. Seuss' birthday in preschool, too. She got to dress up like the Cat in the Hat:
Nate...well, he is 2. He does what 2-year-olds do best: make messes when his mom's back is turned...

Like painting his nails on the couch
(luckily the only casualty was a throw pillow I didn't much care for).

Joe is working hard and putting in a lot of hours. He revels in being outside whenever possible:
As for me, I do exciting things like make granola when my kids insist there's nothing to eat in the house:

It's a glamorous life I lead. :)

I leave you with a quote I read recently that I really liked:

"When you are exasperated by interruptions, try to remember that their very frequency may indicate the value of your life. Only people who are full of help and strength are burdened by other persons' needs. The interruptions which we chafe at are the credentials of our indispensability. The greatest condemnation that anybody could incur - and it is a danger to guard against - is to be so independent, so unhelpful, that nobody ever interrupts us, and we are left comfortably alone."

-Anonymous
from The Anglican Digest

Writing Samples

I stepped out of my shower the other day and found this note slipped under the door into my room:



I couldn't help but laugh and laugh. I don't know if that was quite the intended effect. Don't worry, by the time I was dressed and ready they were laughing and playing.

This next note I received awhile ago. About a week before Christmas, again while I was in the shower (why is it that I can't take a 15 min. shower without some sort of craziness happening?) Elizabeth led the other two in opening nearly all of the presents they had under the tree. I was pretty upset, especially when Nate saw the Thomas PJs we'd gotten for him. We were so excited to see his reaction to those.

Anyway, I must have expressed my disappointment pretty well, because I got this note later in the day:

Here's a happier note....
We had the week off of school last week and it was so fun to see all 3 kids pretending and playing so well together, including this circus they put together. There were feats of strength, and feats of silliness...

Big finish!