They are going to remember their childhood like a song

A powerful excerpt from The Mason Jar #27, featuring Lesli Richards of The Homegrown Preschooler

Cindy asked Lesli where she thought it was most important for homeschool moms to focus their attention.  Her answer, supported by hundreds of years of tradition and current scientific research, is powerful.  I transcribed it below:

I think the first thing you really need to think about is the ritual in your home. Because your children are going to remember far more about the overall aroma and ambience of your home, and the rhythm of your home. They are going to remember their childhood like a song, and there is a rhythm to it. 

And so, I think it's important to think, especially, how you can prepare to draw your children into the presence of God before you start your day. Usually that involves doing something for yourself before they wake up. And I think one of the huge things is to think about, how do you want your children to wake up in the morning, that's huge...I mean, how [are you] gonna wake [them up]? 

And I think we've become really utilitarian. The other thing about that [waking] ritual is I think cell phones are just a terrible, terrible thing...for me I use it as an alarm clock, right..but what I do is, I reach across, I look at, and I start my day as a consumer. As soon as...I am consuming whatever information is coming at me from that thing. And so, that just starts my day off poorly. 

And so I think it's important to think about how we start the day.  How we are going to build community with them during the day? What are the things that they can look forward to every day? What habits do I have to [have to] develop a culture of peace for them? 

The second thing I think is so important is because children are such sensory creatures - primarily (especially when we are talking about preschoolers) sensory creatures - what should they see in our home? what should they hear? what should they smell? I mean, we need to think about, are we laying a feast before them? Am I ok with letting them touch beautiful things? How can I teach them to be around beautiful things without harming them. We need to think about that. And I think, if we thought about that as much as we think about curriculum, we'd be completely out of the woods. We wouldn't have anything to worry about.  

The third thing that I think is so important, is, yourself as a teacher. Because I think you are worth cultivating. And we pour all of this into cultivating these little kids, a lot of times because we didn't have it for ourselves, right? But, you are worth cultivating. And so, I think it's important for you to think about some things that you've always wanted to do or always wanted to learn and how you can create space for those things for yourself, because that's going to model more to your children than anything else, a love for learning, a sense of wonder about the world...those things shouldn't come
last, we should cultivate ourselves. 

...Moms, the best thing you can do is ask yourself, "What can I do this year, to become the teacher I want for my children next year?" Rather than putting all the weight on them, what can you do? Because I think that modelling, it's almost like you're creating place for them to be free. Where you are giving them the structure. Your surrounding them with beauty and nice music and beautiful things to look at and good things to eat and smell and you're modelling learning. To me, that's like the perfect little environment for them.