Never Underestimate Your Children

Somehow I've managed to get tendonitis or something in my right wrist. This is interfering with my Schumann and Beethoven. So Mimi's taken me off the big boomy, chordal sounds and put me into Czernys and various etudes that involve an overemphasis on wrist rotation so I do not aggravate the issue further. She encouraged me to look at a Rondo by Bartok and Trois pieces pour la legende doree by Pepin in my Celebration Series Repertoire book.

Darn it, and I was getting good at the Schumann, too. But it was painful to play, and piano shouldn't hurt.

Had a lovely practice this afternoon with a soloist at church who's been classically trained. Together we are working on Panis Angelicus/O Lord We Pray to Thee, and she's planning to sing a Dvorak solo ("I Will Sing New Songs") in the South Sound Classical Choir concerts in May, so I was helping her through some trouble spots.

Friday I went on a field trip with the kids to the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma. The docent got us all seated in the media room for orientation before we got started, and began her presentation talking about artifacts. "Do you know what artifacts are?" Well, in a room full of homeschoolers, duh, yes, there's several junior/junior high boys that can tell you exactly what artifacts are, and they proceeded to do so. Perhaps a little surprised that we rube homeschooling families knew what artifacts are, she continued on...."what artifacts do you think our generation will be remembered by, 500 years from now?"

A few seconds of silence, while the students pondered. Being helpful, the docent volunteers ideas: "Who in here has a Playstation?"


Silence.

"An X-box?"

Crickets chirp.

Desperation in voice: "a computer??!"

And every hand shot up. Of course we have computers, we use k12!

The docent then drew the conclusion that years from now, archaeologists may find our computers as artifacts, yada yada. But I got a secret chuckle over the fact that there were no playstations or xboxes in our group.

It got better though. The docent then began to discuss some things we would see in the museum upstairs, one exciting find being some Clovis Points (they look like stone spearheads) found near Wenatchee just after the Ice Age 16000 years ago.

David's hand shoots up.

"Uhm, yes?" the docent asks politely.

"Only one problem..." David begins, with the air of explaining something to one who is slow.

"What's that?" the puzzled docent responds.

"It wasn't 16000 years ago." He is certain.
I smile inwardly.

"Oh, well...um, that's what I have on my information sheet." The docent hurriedly got us up and started on our self-guided tour, no doubt glad to wash her hands of this weird homeschooling group.

Later on I thanked David for standing up for his beliefs, but reminded him that it might have been better received had he not corrected an adult in public.

Five minutes later we're upstairs and in the first section of the museum--how Washington looked 17 million years ago. Sammie chimes in loudly: "But Washington wasn't even HERE 17 million years ago!!"

I know of the 5 or 6 families that came on this museum trip, four of them are families of faith, so we all had about the same perspective on the old earth viewpoint.

I need to arm my children with more facts so they can defend their faith against an unbelieving world. This means I need more education in this area myself. I can't just depend on Andy to do it all/answer all the questions. but doggone it, this has been a lifelong passion for him. Me, I didn't even believe dinosaurs existed until I was in late in my high school years, no doubt due to other people like myself who didn't consider themselves qualified to deal with the dinosaur/ice age/history of the world from a Creationist viewpoint. So there is a great silence in my particular history of the world. Andy throws out certain words at me and I have to sort through whether it's an evolutionary term, or if it is a legitimate description of an actual era of world history.

So many things to learn, and only one lifetime to do it. *sigh*